The new year started with the January installment of Ellen Burr and my shared residency on third Thursdays (“Thirdsday”) at the Industry Cafe in Culver City. Ellen joined my power trio Disclaimer (pictured above, with Kristian Aspelin & Paul Pellegrin) for a set of Sonny Sharrock songs and one of free improvisation. We have great stuff planned for the months ahead:
- Feb. 21: Ellen with Charles Sharp, Steuart Liebig, and Peter Valsamis.
- Mar. 21: Ellen with the Scott Heustis Group: Scott Heustis, Scott Dibble, Keith Larsen, and me.
- Apr. 18: Scrappers: Dan Clucas, Joe Baiza, Brian Christopherson, and me.
Ellen and I can’t do May 16, so we will have a guest band or cancel it. After that, we’re looking forward to collaborations with The Scrapes (Jeff Gauthier & Maggie Parkins) and Vicki Ray, among other awesome musicians.
The reason we can’t play May 16 is that we will be at the International Society for Improvised Music (ISIM) conference for a performance and panel as The Present Quartet (with Charles Sharp and Anne LeBaron). That band also has a record in the can, which I hope will find a home at a label soon. There’s always Bandcamp.
Anne, Charles, and I are going to open for Samuel Blaser and Gerry Hemingway at Coaxial on April 14, presented by The Unwrinkled Ear, and Charles and I are playing a set of free improvisation Feb. 1 (that’s tomorrow night, if you read this as soon as I post it), with Andrew Raffo Dewar at Battery Books in Pasadena.
You will probably not read this in time to make it to Dewar’s solo performance (soprano sax & electronics) tonight on my Soundwaves series at the Santa Monica Public Library, but mark your calendar for these upcoming ones:
- Feb. 13: Wayne Horvitz & Sara Schoenbeck
- Feb. 21: Pianospheres Preview: Vicki Ray & Tom Chiu Play Morton Feldman
- Mar. 20: Daniel Corral “Unknown Summits” World Premiere
- Mar. 28: Pianospheres Preview: Susan Svrcek and Friends Play Arnold Schoenberg
- Apr. 10: Jacaranda Preview: “Stay on It”
- Apr. 17: Nicole Mitchell & Alex Lough
- May 15: Carillon Trumpet Quartet
- May 22: Jacaranda Preview
I will be leading the bass section of MESTO (the Multi-Ethnic STar Orchestra) in a concert of Egyptian music March 24 in Downey. For European classical music, I’m with the Vicente Chamber Orchestra Mar. 9 and the Santa Monica Symphony May 26.
The uncategorizable Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble is performing an original score to F. W. Murneau’s “Sunrise” Feb. 9 at the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana and Feb. 14 at the Art Theatre in Long Beach. That’s quite a film. Plus, Jack and I cut this tribute to Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks:
Searching for that, I found a couple of bootleg clips of Jack, Ellen, and me improvising to vintage experimental animation at the Carlsbad Music Festival a few months ago:
There’s also a full set of improvisation by Ellen, me, Garth Powell, and Jonathon Grasse, shot last weekend by taper supreme Tom Bartloac, and the rest of the set I played that night as part of the Scott Heustis Group will probably surface soon.
As if that wasn’t enough, Scott Dibble asked me to join the string section for his LP, which we cut Tuesday at Big Ego Studios. Mostly pads, but there’s a few minutes of the string trio alone, playing some really interesting (and challenging) stuff. Bruce Friedman is editing and mixing some recordings from a few years back of him, me, and Jim McAuley playing my arrangements of Stockhausen’s “Tierkreis.” I’m on guitar. We play all of Karlheinz’ notes. No shenanigans.
Jeff Schwartz (bass) 