Rocktober 2018

October always seems to be action-packed. Here’s this year’s batch of performances and presentations:

• Sept. 30 I am playing with Cello Pudding at Cafe NELA. This is an early one for NELA: we’ll hit at 7, so we can make it down the street to see the big orkestROVA Angel City Jazz Festival show at Zebulon at 8…
• Oct. 3 I am hosting the Angel City Jazz Festival’s Young Artist Competition Finals at the Santa Monica Public Library. This is also a 7pm show. Four bands will play short sets and the judges, including Lauren Baba, Azar Lawrence, Dan Atkinson from UCSD’s jazz camp, and (yikes!) me, will choose which one gets to open for Azar at LACMA on the 5th. Free admission.
• The 14th is yet another Angel City-adjacent show, though an unaffiliated one. From 3-5pm at Coaxial Arts Lisa Mezzacappa, Charles Sharp, and I are staging a statewide improvisers collaboration called California Unification Process. The East Bay-based members of Lisa’s avantNOIR sextet: Lisa (bass), Aaron Bennett (tenor sax), Mark Clifford (vibes), John Finkbeiner (guitar), Jordan Glenn (drums), and Tim Perkis (electronics), in town to play Angel City, will represent Northern California, while the southern delegation will be the ad hoc coalition of Kris Tiner (trumpet – Bakersfield), William Roper (tuba – Altadena), Tina Raymond (drums – Burbank), myself (bass – Culver City), Charles (reeds – Long Beach), and Wilfrido Terrazas (flute – San Diego). We’ll play two sets of free and semi-structured improvisations in various combinations.
• The 17th is the third Wednesday, which is the usual night for the Soundwaves concert series I run at the Library. This month is Brightwork newmusic, a Pierrot ensemble playing recent work by David Lang, Thomas Ades, and others. 7:30pm. Free.
• Then the 18th is the Third Thursday, which means it’s Thirdsday: Ellen Burr and my residency at the Industry Cafe & Jazz. This month is a special one. We’ll play the first set at 8 with Berklee-trained guitarist Derek Bomback, ready to cut loose after months leading cruise ship bands, and polyrhythmic polymath Peter Valsamis on drums. Then, at 9 Peter will be joined by his Canadian brethren Yves Charuest on alto saxophone and Lisle Ellis on bass. Free, but donations are encouraged.
• The 20th is the first show of the new Santa Monica Symphony season, at SaMo High. Bernstein, Tchaikovsky, and the US premiere of Roman Kim’s violin concerto, with the composer as soloist. I’m back in the section with these folks. 7:30pm. Free.
• On the 21st Michael Intriere and I are accompanying vocalist/soundmaker/performance artist Anna Homler at the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. 4pm. Free.
• Finally, for now, I’m playing with the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble for Jack’s new semi-improvised score for Nosferatu. That’ll be on the 29th at the Art Theatre in Long Beach (7pm)and the 30th at the Santa Monica Public Library (7pm, free).

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Summer’s Almost Gone…

…but I wanted to check in again before all the orchestra stuff gets rolling.

The 2018-19 season of the Soundwaves concert series I run is underway. Hit the link to see all the cool stuff I’ve managed to line up.

I’ve been writing some short pieces on Culver City music for a new politics & lifestyle website, the Culver City Catalyst. Check it out! So far I’ve covered where to hear free classical music, profiled the Boulevard Music shop/venue and my new pal Eric Revis, promoted the City Hall outdoor concerts, done a bit of research on the Hare Krishna mantra and Throbbing Gristle’s 1981 concert in CC, and paid tribute to the late great Jonathon Gold. More to come…

Speaking of Culver City, Ellen Burr and I have a residency at the Industry Cafe & Jazz on the third Thursday of the month. One or both of us will play each month with guests. I missed July and won’t be there in August either, but September 20 Ellen and I will play two sets of free improvisation in a quartet with Vinny Golia and Breeze Smith. Vinny, Breeze, and I just released a pretty cool trio recording. October 18 Ellen and I will play a set of tunes with guitarist Derek Bomback and drummer Peter Valsamis, then hand the stage over to Peter and his Canadian brethren Yves Charuset and Lisle Ellis for what I expect will be some burning free jazz. I’m excited about having a venue so close to home. We’ll keep this one going for as long as they let us…

My other August and September shows also involve Ellen. We’re improvising soundtracks to some silent films with Jack Curtis Dubowsky on analog synth at the Carlsbad Music Festival on Aug. 25, and on Sept. 13 we’re driving even further south to play at Palomar College with Andrea Centazzo as the West Coast Chamber Jazz Trio.

All these gigs are free; hope to see you there!

Two Pair

Thursday the 28th I will play twice with Elliott Levin, First, at 7:30pm, I will join his Eclectic Electric Elders of Improvisation (the epic ensemble of Bobby Bradford, Don Preston, and Chris Garcia) on my Soundwaves concert series at the Santa Monica Public Library then, at 10, he and I play across town at Cafe NELA with the prodigiously polyrhythmic Peter Valsamis, and possibly other prominent participants. Both shows will almost certainly be high energy free jazz. This is the first Soundwaves concert with an aftershow. I feel like Prince.

The next week’s double is 24 hours apart but involves even more driving. My group with Ellen Burr, Anne LeBaron, and Charles Sharp, which I had figured would be a one-off special, has turned into a working band. We’re calling it the Present Quartet. On July 5th we’re on Brad Dutz‘ series at Sun Space (8pm, $5-10 donation, two sets) and on the 6th we’re at the Track 16 Gallery in downtown LA (8pm, free, but RSVP). This is also a free improvising unit, but is likely to explore subtler intensities than Elliott’s bands:

The fifth card is the Santa Monica Symphony’s first outdoor summer concert since I’ve been in the group, on the 21st, with a very conventional setlist. Reed Park, 6pm, free.

Hope to see you there!

June 2018

Here’s my next batch of performances and productions:

• Sunday June 10: Playing with the Palisades Symphony on the last concert of their season, featuring young concerto competition winners. Pali High, 7:30pm, free.
• Thursday June 14: Presenting Nic Gerpe at the Soundwaves concert series at the Santa Monica Public Library, 601 SM Blvd. This is a preview of his PianoSpheres show on the 19th. 7:30pm. Free.
• Saturday June 16: Playing with the Sonic Open Orchestra. Civic Center Studios, downtown LA. Compositions by Jóhann Jóhannsson, Julia Adolphe, John Adams, Jason Martin Castillo, and Jonny Greenwood. Yeah, the guy from Radiohead. There goes the little bit of cred I had. 7:30pm. $15.
• Saturday June 23: Playing with Cello Pudding at Coaxial Arts‘ Night of Strings. A special edition of this improvising unit with Maya MacGill (viola & voice) and Miller Wrenn (bass) joining 3/4 of the regular Pudding (Vetza, Michael Intriere, and myself). Details TBD, but probably 8pm and a modest admission charge.
• Thursday June 28: Presenting Elliott Levin, Bobby Bradford, Don Preston, Anders Swanson, and Chris Garcia at Soundwaves. Also playing on this one. Whoa. 7:30pm, free.

Some very cool stuff is in the works, including Soundwaves 2018-19 and a possible residency, stay tuned for details. I’m also continuing to write on music for the Culver City Catalyst, a fine new online publication.

Eat the Document

1.     Eat the Document was Bob Dylan and D.A. Pennebaker’s sequel to Don’t Look Back. Don’t Look Back followed Dylan on a 1965 solo tour of England, confronting fans and writers disturbed by his move from protest songs like “Only a Pawn in their Game” to more abstract and personal work like “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” He faced even more hostility on the 1966 tour, having “gone electric,” backed by the Hawks (later known as the Band). This peaked at a notorious concert, captured in the film, where a heckler shouted “Judas” at Dylan, who then directed his band to “play fucking loud” and counted off “Like a Rolling Stone.” The movie was never released, probably a casualty of the chemical and emotional burnout which led Dylan to back down from the intensity of his 1966 work to John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline but, like all things Dylan, it has since been bootlegged in every medium available. Big chunks can be found on YouTube, including a troubling sequence of Dylan and John Lennon wasted out of their minds, and much of the concert footage was reused in Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home. Meticulous reenactments of the offstage footage make up most of the Cate Blanchett section of Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, and it is possible that more people have seen that than the original, a glamorous example of Baudrillard/Eco’s theory of the simulacrum.
2. There are only a couple of minutes of film of Charlie Parker, and they are silent. The same is true for Albert Ayler, although there is also film of at least one concert locked in a European archive. It is almost certainly possible to watch all the existing video of John Coltrane in a day. As media have moved from photochemical to magnetic to digital, recordings have multiplied exponentially, and one can now, for example, follow a significant chunk of the New York jazz underground in almost real time thanks to Don Mount.
3. If I was still in the academic world I would have developed a theory of the underground concert as virtual event by now. I recently played for a few dozen people in a storefront gallery across from a strip club and a weed store. Our set was maybe 40 minutes, and the entire evening lasted around three hours, with two other acts, setting up, tearing down, hanging out, etc. That’s the actual event. The virtual event began weeks before, with the creation of a Facebook event and it being shared and commented on by the musicians, our friends, and members of various groups where it appeared. It continued through the show itself, with people posting photos, videos, and comments from the setup, performance, and hang, then lasted for a day or two afterwards as more documentation was posted and more comments generated. This will all revive when more formal recordings, video, etc from the show are made public. It is not unusual for more people to “like” or comment on a post about a show than were there. Likewise, the effects of the fact of an event will often exceed the effects of the event itself: people hearing that I played with a particular Famous Musician will have more of an effect than people hearing me play with him/her.
4. All this is an absurdly long-winded way of letting you know that I have some fresh documents of my own for you to check out. My March performance with Alicia Byer & Alexander Vogel is on Bandcamp, as are the results of a marathon session with Disclaimer (Kristian Aspelin, Paul Pellegrin, and me) plus Scott Heustis, Haskel Joseph, Tony Green, and Breeze Smith. There’s also video of my recent set at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts Open Gate concert series with Ellen Burr, Anne LeBaron, and Charles Sharp, and a track from Cello Pudding’s set at Coaxial last week is going to appear on a compilation LP in Japan. Enjoy!

 

May Shows

It worked out that, after playing Roscoe’s Seabird Lounge on April 1 with Dave Williams‘ Latin jazz project, I have no more April gigs. That’s actually good, because I just got the digital galleys of my book to proofread. It really looks like a book now. Terrifying!

May, on the other hand, is going to be packed.
On the 5th the West Coast Chamber Jazz Trio will play Alva’s Showroom in San Pedro. If you are anywhere in the Los Angeles/Long Beach/Anaheim Metropolitan Statistical Area, this is worth the trip. Virtuoso flautist Ellen Burr (LA Flute Orchestra, Adam Rudolph, Vinny Golia, Steuart Liebig, Harris Eisenstadt, etc.) and I play Andrea Centazzo‘s music with the man himself on drums. Andrea was a pioneer of free improvisation in Europe, working with Steve Lacy, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Albert Mangelsdorff, and many others, and also has composed prolifically for varied ensembles in many genres. This band revisits and unites these strands of his work. Two sets, ten bucks. Check it out!

The next night Ellen and I will be at the Open Gate concert series at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts in a quartet with harpist Anne LeBaron and multi-instrumentalist Charles Sharp, playing a set of free improvisation. This was an idea I had to celebrate my 50th birthday, to combine two of my most frequent collaborators, Charles and Ellen, with someone none of us had played with before. The Saxon/Vogel Duo also appear.

Then, on the 9th, Cello Pudding returns, playing at Coaxial, a DIY space in an ungentrified part of Downtown LA, along with Steuart Liebig and Emily Hay duo and Bernd Buerklin solo.

I get to rest for a couple of weeks, then on Monday the 22nd the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble will premiere Jack’s new score for the 1920 silent “Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde” at the Art Theatre in Long Beach and on Sunday the 27th the Santa Monica Symphony will present their Memorial Day concert.

Not a bad month. And what’s up with that image? I tell you what: it’s a blue wave.

 

2018 Part 2

Progress continues in several creative areas:

The Arabic orchestra MESTO makes its first LA appearance in two years at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall March 17. Tickets are expensive, but there is a strong lineup of star singers and soloists and the band is stocked with hot LA folk, classical, studio, and experimental musicians (and also me).

I will be on the remaining concerts of the Santa Monica and Palisades Symphonies’ seasons. These are all free admission, so if you go to a couple of these and the MESTO show, you can lower your average ticket price.

I have a cluster of chamber music-style free improvisation gigs coming up:

• March 28 will be the debut of Jackfruit Condenser, a trio with Alexander Vogel and Alicia Byer on reeds, at the Battery Books & Music. Also appearing: Corey Fogel solo.
• On May 6 a quartet which I assembled as a 50th birthday treat for myself, combining my frequent partners Ellen Burr (flutes) and Charles Sharp (reeds, etc.) with Anne LeBaron (harp), who none of us have played with before, will play a set at the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts/Open Gate series.
• and on May 9 Cello Pudding is at Coaxial downtown.

I feel much more connected to the instrument when I can play without an amp, but I also want to work on using amplification to make small sounds more useful, as well as to be able to play in loud bands, of course. Here’s some video from a fun and funky recent gig where I was not quite loud enough:

And speaking of loud music, I’m organizing a recording session for three guitar-bass-drums improvising trios: Disclaimer (with Kristian Aspelin, Paul Pellegrin, and myself), Moonville (Haskel Joseph, Darryl Tewes, and Breeze Smith), and the Scott Heustis Trio (Scott, Breeze, and Tony Green). The plan is for each trio to record a long track and for each musician to pick a mix & match group for a short piece, sort-of Company style. This might be a CD or a Bandcamp-only release, we’ll see.

Also, there’s plenty of good stuff coming up on my Soundwaves concert series. Don’t sleep on it if you’re in LA, and if you aren’t in LA, a lot of videos of past shows are on the site.

Finally, the publication date for my book seems to be set: May 25!