Monday, November 26, 2007

Ton Trio at the 1510 Space

A Saturday evening - set up a date at the 1510 performance space on 8th Street in West Oakland, Mikaela and Jeremy are living and running the shows there now - I'm liking playing there recently, it's always comfortable, like a house show, plus there's a good chance of getting a good recording of your music.
The Ton Trio played our first official show in Oakland a month after playing in Santa Cruz. The pieces I've written are based on an idea of relative looseness between the voices, parts can be rearranged individually, small snippets can be focused on. We moved along together the written material in a collective way and our improvisations fed off of this interaction, being at times right together and other times more tangential. I enjoyed it.
I brought along my clarinet for the first time in quite awhile for this kind of music, as I've been playing it regularly in the Mills Contemporary Performance Ensemble for a concert in December of Roscoe Mitchell's Cards and Riley's In C.
I played it this night on Internal Frame and Staring Out Windows - two recent compositions. We were able to do a 4track recording of the set, and it turned out well - I've posted some of the tracks on my website here. thanks to Jen for the photo.

We shared the night with a trio made up of Tony Dryer, Jacob Lindsay, and Stefanie Ku. They played quiet improvisations with lots of space and a focus on smaller sounds. Tony's arco bass playing was right on, and Jacob brought his gamut of clarinets, from the Ab to the Bb, Bass to the Contrabass. Very good stuff.

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