Video of Aurora Group

Here's a freaked out video that someone put together of the last time I played with Weasel, Aurora, Liz and Damon. Not good for those who experience discomfort with flashing lights.

Improvising 8th St Performance Space 12-7-2006

One thing I've done alot out here in the bay is play improvised music. And when I say improvised music, I mean it in the "improvised music" way. Free of charts, free of overly defined & sometimes limited concepts, open to possibilities. Out here there are a good number of improvisors with good possibilities for instrumentation. It's a good thing. One "steady" group I'm in is with Damon Smith (bass), Liz Albee(trumpet), Aurora Josephson (voice) and Weasel Walter (drums). This night I played in two quartets: one with Damon, Charity Chan (piano) who moved out here from Montreal, and her friend Scott Thomson (trombone). Scott is visiting form Montreal - is a great trombone player - able to do many things with the instrument, can play quiet... I played alto and it was well paced throughout - from all sonic textures to more lyrical parts. It felt good & went by fast.
I then used both alto & computer in quartet with Noah Phillips (guitar), Cory Wright (baritone & clarinet), Jordan Glenn (drums). Cory moved up from LA recently - a good player on reeds - friends with Noah from there. Our set also went by quickly - I did live sampling of Jordan & myself along with trying out this new system of triggering short samples based on amplitude response - I've developed this as a way to get away from static comupterland - or rather, add to my options. I'm getting interested in just using a large array of sounds, similar in the way that some percussionists just go to work with all their gadgets and bells - one very good one played the same night - Gino Robair. Great sense of timing, and I'm glad he covered the "massage" device he used in the set with a piece of cloth - kept you guessing.
Noah sounded great on guitar - I won't see him for quite awhile as he's going overseas for abit now that he's finished with Mills. We recorded with Charity and Andy Strain (trombone) last weekend (I've been taking advantage of the studio at Mills to fill up my harddrive with some of this improvised music).

Dragons 1976 in Columbia back in 2005

This is a video from back in January of 2005 when we played down in Columbia, S.C.




You could read about it here.

Bill Horvitz Expanded Band 11-17-2006

A busy few weeks here with travelling down to SoCal and back. A few months ago I was asked by Bill Horvitz to play in a large ensemble he was putting together for a few concerts in November - things tend to creep up on you & here we are at the end of November. The group was a twelve piece with Omid Zoufonoun (conductor), Steve Adams (sax/flute), Jon Raskin (sax), Kyle Bruckmann (oboe), Hal Forman (trumpet), Darren Johnston (trumpet), Liam Staskawicz (trombone), Matt Montgomery (violin), Katie Harlow (cello), George Cremaschi (bass), Robin Eschner (piano/vocals), Joseph Sabella (drums), and Bill Horvitz (composer, guitar and vocals). I played clarinet & bass clarinet - since moving out here a good deal of my playing has been on those instruments - even though there's a good deal of clarinetists out here on the scene that are quite good - (Jacob Lindsey, Matt Ingalls for two). Though, I guess folk have an ear towards the orchestration out here & stay away from having too many saxes in a group (a good thing).

This band in a way was a reunion of Harris Eisenstadt Ahimsa Orchestra that played a few date much earlier in the year and the music was much different. The music was written by Bill as a tribute to his younger brother who passed away suddenly about a year ago. He wrote songs that were reminders of what his brother meant to him.
We played twice - once at the Capp St Community Music Center in San Francisco and two nights later in Sebastopol. The Capp St space is becoming a personal favorite, it seems it would be a perfect setting for a festival of improvised music.

Tiny Lights California November 2006

the Tiny Lights are myself, Ben Bracken and Jacob Danziger. Ben & Jacob hail from Ann Arbor and I met them over the years through Matt Bauder. Once out here on the west coast we three started making music together as we all found ourselves at the Mills College. Last spring we started making some music together and this fall we got the opportunity to play four shows with Anathallo, a band from Ann Arbor. ben's brother Dan plays with Anathallo and was the connection for getting this project form the recording land to the live performance world, which is a good thing.
This last weekend we played shows in San Francisco, Anaheim, Los Angeles and Long Beach and it was a good time. When wer recorded our first few songs we used lots of overdubs to record piano, guitar, violin, clarinets, melodica, glockenspiel, bass clarinet, trumpets etc... for these show we had to pare it down to be played by the three of us with one guest each night for a guitar part and some clapping - this was a tough task, but definitley a good exercise in orchestration. I brought my clrainet, bass clarinet and computer, ben brought guitar and computer, jacob brought violin, glockenspiel andboomerang pedal. In each venue we caught the soundmen off guard - they're just not used to be asked for multiple line inputs and they get spooked when a condenser mic is to be used on stage. For us, a condenser is necessary - bass clarinet and acoustic guitar jsut give too quiet a signal for dynamic mics in a live setting. But, each night as we got more used to our setup the sound improved - I felt that I didn't have any feedback issues with my condenser - the only time anything crazy happened with them was in LA when a bad cable was used - apparantly Monster Cables don't work so hot with phantom power.
Anyway, enough about the tech requirements - our shows were fun and though we were playing to crowds that are more used to straight up rock we had some real positive comments from unexpected people. Check out undressmerobot.com for a possible upcoming interview that happened after we played in Anaheim in front of 100 or so underagers.
Spaceland in LA was the best show for sure - great sound, real friendly folk - the electric piano sounded real only there. Watch out for vegetarian tacos in Long Beach - make sure they realize youre asking for "whole" beans, not "cold" beans.............
Hanging in Los Angeles was a good time - we stayed with Justin Shay in Angelinos Heights each night - had good food at the Brite Spot & Home - Jen came down for the weekend also and we got to hike around Griffith Park and have delicious pie at the House of Pies. LA knows how to cook.
As for Tiny Lights, we'll be recording a 5 song EP in the near future and more shows will come.

Quartet Mama Buzz 10-20-2006

It was a friday evening and I played a few sets in a quartet with Ben Bracken, Jacob Lindsey and Ava Mendoza. Two electric guitars and two winds. Ben played tabletop prepared guitar with a large array of devices to get lots of sounds. Ava played in a more melodic style, branching into the sound world at times. Jacob brought his Bb, Ab, Bass and Contrabass clarinets - lots of range and he really knows how to play each. I brought my alto, Eb clarinet and Bass clarinet - so we had many options in terms of sound and range. I'm getting pretty used to playing at Mama Buzz - though it's a pretty modest place to play at, usually there are enough listeners that you can concentrate on playing the music and know that the audience will be attentive and appreciative.

Here's two pictures by Jen Dunn:

Weasel Walter Quartet 10/7/2006

A sunny day in California. A perfect day to drive to a field somewhere near Davis (about an hour away from Oakland) to play a short set of fast & loud at a day long festival. I've been getting to know Weasel Walter better since moving out here last year. He asked me to play in his quartet with Damon Smith and Randy Hunt a little ways back. We've played together before in some other groups, but today was the loud & fast day - after making the drive with Jen & Maria, we found ourselves at a Roadhouse near Davis, in a field with the Numbers playing a set on a small stage. We played on the smaller stage - well on the grass. But that was kind of good cause everyone there circled up around us & it felt more up close & personal. I think our set was about a half hour - and we recorded it. Kind of a strange place to have a little day long fest, but worth the trip.

solo set Mama Buzz 9-15-2006

got back to the bay area more than a month ago, and i've been doing some playing with some different groups, a Moe Staiano date and a few dates with Damon Smith and others. haven't written about them though, have i? Nope. Sorry. But, this last week I played my first solo instrument show....ever? I think so. It took me to enter my 30s (on the 14th) before I would play a show alone with just a wind instrument (well, 2 in this case) since I was an undergraduate at UF playing a solo recital. Why? Well, I usually don't think much of solo sets - music is good with multiple people involved, so why screw it up? Well, (I'm saying well alot) I tried to make this a duo set, but all the folk I asked to play (scott rosenberg, liz albee, though of some others) were all unavailable for this date. So, I decided that solo was the way to go.
I played alto saxophone & bass clarinet - my favorites. It's taken me awhile to start to feel like I'm actually able to play some shit on bass clarinet, but over the few years I've been working on it, things are starting to feel better. I played a set of about 40 minutes, all improvised, with some guiding thoughts, nothing very specific, but a desire to play different pieces, each focused & without playing everything in each piece - it was a good experience for sure. I do remember that after my first bass clarinet piece I had worked up a pretty good sweat. One funny thing was that as I was starting my second piece, on alto, I heard from outside the windows two guys talking about different saxophone players they'd seen play around town - i'm an eavesdropper for sure....

also - i've got a website now!

audio clips!

(not yet, but soon)

guess what it's called?

Rolldown July 2006

I've been busy here in Chicago for the past week plus. One group in particular that I've played with is the Jason Adasiewicz led Rolldown with Josh Berman, Jason Roebke & Frank Rosaly. last summer we recorded as a group at Electrical Studios, since then I think they've played a few dates, but it was good to be able to play together this week. The first date was at Elastic on thursday the 13th. The second was at the Hungry Brain three nights later. We only had a chance for one rehearsal and Jason brought some new tunes that were tricky & good. The music takes advantage of the instruments - with complicated parts in the vibes, harmonizations in the horns, and counterlines in the bass & drums. Jason's composition style is definitely in the jazz tradition, and he's open to free sections right alongside chord changes and everything in between. His pieces strongly influence the improvising sections. Both times we played the band felt very fluid playing together - the best thing about having the experience of playing with people for a couple of years is that you don't need a lot of rehearsal to get things together. At sunday at the Brain, the crowd was really a good size and were listening - we played a full hour set, but it didn't feel long at all. After us, a quartet of jamie branch, jason stein, jeb bishop and anton hatwich played - they're called block & tackle. Pieces by Branch, a trumpeter - repetitive lines, one piece in particular had some really subtle phasing going on which sounded real good. A good night in all at the Brain - I stayed late with Jason as the crowd trickled out slowly - we hung out with Dan and and Jeb Bishop right there at the end.

Back in Chicago, July 2006

Back in Chicago after a long hiatus, got into town on Friday the 7th to play with Dragons at Heaven over in Wicker Park. I had taken the bus down to St Louis to visit Jen & her folks, coming back the bus was a bit late - I got in town at about 10:15, but the show was supposed to start at 10. We were to play two sets, so Jason & Tim played as a duo for the first one. I got in just as they were finishing their last improvisation, after a short break we played our set to some of the Chicago people - as we played more folks showed up - it was a pretty good turnout. It is a different feeling, not living in Chicago and playing here - in a good way.
The next night I played at the Charleston with Josh Berman, Nate McBride and Frank Rosaly. Used to always have a good time when I would play tunes there, so wanted to do it again. A plus is that the Charleston is now a smoke-free bar, so you don't get bombarded by the typical Chicago smoke clouds. We played alot of tunes by Monk, some which I'd never played before. McBride is really on top of those charts, he's good friends with a certain someone who made a lot of transcriptions of Monk's music. That music is tough to pull off - we definitely had a good time playing, but it also re-enforced my respect for the music.
Next up was getting together with the 774th Street Quartet - myself on alto, Guillermo Gregorio on alto & clarinet, Keefe Jackson on tenor and bass clarinet, and Thomas Mejer from Switzerland on contrabass saxophone. Interesting how things work out - we got together as a quartet when Thomas was in town back in 2003 I think, part of the Lucerne / Chicago sister city exchange (which is mainly kept going by Lucerne's government). Last spring we recorded the music we brought to the group (each of us two pieces) as George Hansen resurrected his label Bloody Murder and wanted to put out a recording by us. Now a year later the CD is finished so on this occasion that I'm in town Thomas came from Lucerne and we played at Deadwax records up on Lincoln Ave on Sunday afternoon, Live on Air at WNUR in Evanston and on Tuesday night at Elastic. It was fun to play that music again - each of us our very different in our approach to writing music and improvising, and balancing the different personalities is good times.
The show at Elastic went well, a good turnout including some people that I knew that didn't normally come when I would play concerts back when I lived here. Again, a good thing about visiting. In some ways, it's difficult visiting here because there are so many friends and people I'd like to talk to and catch up with - I'd also like to see other people play, but I'll be pretty busy while I'm here - I'm hoping to catch up with everyone in good time. Good thing I'm not here for just a weekend.
The other thing that I did here in my first 5 days back was play at Myopic with Steve Hess and Toby Summerfield - they on drums & guitar respectively, me with saxophone & computer. It was good to play - I haven't done live electronics in more than a month now - I felt kind of rusty. Got it get it together for a couple of Grey Ghost shows this week and a solo set the next weekend. Playing with Steve & Toby was a good match though - they share a good sense of pace & timing.

A blur of a finish for the Dragons tour

Sorry, the last week or so of the Dragons tour went by quickly, quickly. After playing in Charlotte we played Greenville, Columbia, Nashville and Lexington before heading back up to Chicago. After the Carolina dates, our final three days had a good amount of driving added up which made us a little claustrophobic, but nothing too terrible. A blow-out in Kentucky on the way to a clinic at Morehead State put us about an hour behind schedule, but all was forgiven and we made it to everywhere we needed to make it to.
Playing in Columbia was a good time - two shows in two nights, one at the Whig and another at the Hunter-Gatherer.
Folks liked us enough to come to both shows, Ross Taylor took care of us in his special way, getting us food at the most opportune time and finding a hat for me after my hair started really fro-ing up in the humid southern regions...not that I have anything against a fro, I just don't know if it fits me that well...The Whig is an underground bar across from the State Capitol of South Carolina (and of course the Confederate flag which was recently re-moved from the Capitol dome, but is still prominently displayed on the Capitol grounds). The hunter-gatherer is on the other side of the Capitol, maybe two blocks away, we saw fireworks outside of the floor to ceiling windows at the front of the bar before we started playing.
A seven hour drive the next day got us to Deanna Varagona's place in Nashville, she took us by a cookout before the show which was at a gallery called the Ruby Green. She played the first set solo, with accompaniment by pre-recorded tapes. A large fan kept us cool that night while we were playing (relatively) but was no match for the Big Ass Fan at the new Mecca Dance space in Lexington where we played the next night. Wish I could give a link to the Big Ass Fan company, the thing was gi-normous, though still the heat of Kentucky in July took over....
We played two sets in Lexington to an appreciative crowd thanks to Ross Compton.
Finally got a relief from the heat on the way back to Chicago after a few rainstorms on the 4th of July. The tour ended up well and we're looking forward to the next one.

Dragons 1976 Charlotte 6-28-2006

Down to the south during June, not the hottest of months but the possibility is there for some true heat. Driving in the Benz with no AC....we had driven through rain for about 4 days and it finally stopped, so we were able to dry out the car that had built up some moisture. Got into Charlotte NC on wednesday the 28th - our friend Brent Bagwell set up a show at the Evening Muse, a nice venue in an up&coming neighborhood in Charlotte. Brent's a good guy - saxophonist playing tenor & baritone, we've done shows with him before down here and we played a bill together up in Chicago once - Dragons & his group Eastern Seaboard. For this night there were three groups - his Project Bluebird, a project witha bassist and a doubler on cello & violin. All improvised in a loose melodic style with each of the three building from what they heard each other do previously. We played the middle set & the crowd that came were good listeners, though the energy level wasn't really that high - maybe we could've done more...maybe not. Afterwards we hit a diner in Charlotte for late night snacks before heading out to Brent's place, which he's actually moving from in just a week. He's been living about 45 minutes outside of Charlotte on alarge piece of land with a turkey farm on it, a river nearby, lots of woods and fields with cows being the primaray population. We finished the night off with a glass of scotch and got a goo dnight sleep in the quiet north carlolina countryside.

Dragons 1976 Baltimore 6-24-2006

Drove down through the rain from New York to get to Baltimore & Normals Books, home of the Red Room. Audrey Chen helped set up the night which had two groups playing, us and a quartet of Chen, John Berndt, Charles Cohen & Paul Niedhardt. Because of the rain both groups had a little it of noise to contend with, namely a leaky roof, and it really did affect the performance, but in a good way. The crowd that came were listeners, so in the quiet spaces during the quartet's set drips of rain worked itself into the music, which tended to be sparse between the group swells. Their quartet had alot of sounds to work with - Charles plays the Buchal along with assorted other electronics and has a real control of it, Audrey uses Cello and voice, and has lots of option swith each, Paul tends to use the drums & percussion as noise generators more than as a kit, and John played alto and soprano saxophone - lots of extended technique to get out a lot of sounds.
Our set was affected by some food poisoning that Tim & I got the last night we were in New York - pizza....but we made it through playing Drifting, Passage & Sock It. Kind of a shorter set in terms of songs, but longer in terms of improvisation. The Red Room records all their shows and have a duplicate ready to give to the musicians afterwards, which is a really good thing to do. Being able to hear back what you played the day before is a good thing to have access to. After packing up we got some food at a Korean/Japanese restaurant that's open until three AM. Finished my night with Sushi and Miso Soup.

Dragons 1976 New York Two Shows June 2006

New York City, not a place I've had much luck in playing shows at in the past. The scene there of course is overinundated with musicians trying hard to get gigs, plus there just don't seem to be very many places committed to presenting creative music, especially if your not already famous or playing with someone famous. We played two spots, the Tank in TriBeCa and a record store called Marquise Dance Hall in Williamsburg.
The show at the Tank was set up by our friend Jon Philpot of Bear in Heaven, we met him a few years back when we played a show together at the old 3030 space in Chicago at a show that Brad Loving set up. The first set was none other than Brad under the monkier Lobisomem with Jason Ajemian playing bass with him on laptop. Dragons played second and Bear in Heaven third. Unfortunately the show was a two hour affair for three groups. I guess regularly the Tank tends to have only two bands. So, the sets were short, but a nice amount of folk showed up and Taya and the others at the Tank were real friendly, and gave us some extra time.
The next night at the record store turned out pretty good too. I went down to Williamsburg from where I was staying with my aunt & uncle on the upper east side. When I got there Jason was playing with Brad again as Lobisomem and there were some people listening inside and Tim was talknig to Matt Bauder outside. It was good to see Matt, I don't know the last time I saw him. Even though it was real hot inside the record store, we played a good set and a nice amount of people showed up including Jon Philpot and Matana Roberts. We finished our night by going across the street to Clem's, where Joe from bear in Heaven tends bar.

Dragons 1976 Boston 6-21-2006

We had a two day stay in Boston, well Tim & I did anyway. We had our last day off of the tour before a stretch of thirteen straight nights with some playing involved. We got down to Boston on tuesday afternoon, Jason headed down to New York to play with Matt Bauder and Alan Licht. Tim & I hung out at Charlie Kohlhase's place - he's got a great jazz record collection. We spent much of the time we were there picking out albums we hadn't heard and watching some videos of jazz music. It was a nice way to spend a day off on the road. The first night we were there we actually rehearsed with Charlie's group "The Explorer's Club", another good way to spend some time off, playing some music you'd not before.
The show on wednesday was at a space called the Lily Pad in Cambridge. The order for the night was Dragons's, Explorer's Club, then a set with both groups - so three drummers, two bassists, three saxophones, a trombone and a guitar. Unfortunately, Jason ran into all sorts of bad traffic on the way back from New York, so his trip took 6 hours instead of the more typical 4. We pushed back the start of the night and within 15 minutes of him getting there we started playing. The set turned out pretty well, we started with Passage, our slowest piece, moved into Drifting and ended with Brand New - did I forget one? Maybe. I remember the set wasn't supposed to be too long because we started kind of late, but I think there was one more tune in there. Sorry.
I've been playing louder on this tour, now a week into the tour I feel like I'm getting more used to playing that loud, which is a good thing. Most of the folks at the show were other musicians and it was good to talk to them.

Dragons 1976 Portland 6-19-2006

The tour continues through hot highways that are getting more humid as we've come down out of Canada and into the northeastern states. After a 12 hour stopover that included playing at a place for a few friends and "industry" (service) in Syracuse, we drove out to Portland Maine for a monday night show at Space Gallery. It was a triple bill with another trio of saxophone bass & drums called Mystic OutBop Review and Fence Kitchen. I'd never been to Portland, but it seems like a decent place, the gallery defintely has a good thing going on and we had tasty burritos in the Old Port section. By the time we played a good crowd had showed up and we played just one set - our first show with other groups so we could concentrate all our energies into one. We did our most standard set nowadays, starting with Felt and moving gradually into Passage. After taking a breath we got got into a more drone based mindset before settling into Drifting. We ended with Sock It, a song that was included on a compilation put out by Arthur Magazine in conjunction with the Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival in Montreal. On this last song, we had Jason's friend Johnathan Bangs come and play with us. He's a trumpeter & a dragon '76, so it made sense. The folk in Portland treated us well and we were glad to have been there.

Dragons Montreal 6-15-2006

We got into Montreal right during rush hour - there was a pretty serious accident slowing us down on the way into the city - looked liked about ten cars were involved two of which were in real bad shape - one completely flipped. Other than that the road from Toronto was nice with the slight Candian countryside rolling by.
We played at the Casa del Popolo as part of the Suono per il Popolo festival which is going all all month here in Montreal at the Casa as well as the larger venue La Sala Rosa across the street. We thought we'd have a chance to do a bit of practicing but were shut down by the sound man after just five minutes - one of the toughest things to do on the road is practice. It was alright though - by the time we played later in the night there was a good crowd and we played two sets with lots of energy. Our second set was an hour long and we took no breaks in between any song. Almost exhausting but I think it was more because the room was a bit warm than due to playing. During the first set we played a new piece which is very fast with almost a march-like quality - I had told Tim that I would cue him out with me in order to leave Ajemian alone, who I hadn't told about the cue - I was trying to surprise him, but when I cued out Tim & myself, he stopped as well - it created this pretty great long moment of awkward silence where no one clapped and we said nothing - I broke the silence by playing the rhytmic introduction of Heater.
We had an extra day off in Montreal - I spent most of the day walking around the town - there was a large street fair, mostly filled with shops, but some buskers and stages also. A good place to have a day off - but hot - it's summer after all.

Dragons 1976 Toronto 6-14-2006

Tonight was the first time Dragons 1976 has played in over a year. I flew to Chicago on tuesday and after meeting up with Tim Daisy at his place got a falafel at Sultan's in Wicker Park before heading over to Johnathan Crawford's place to help print the covers for our album Winter Break. After not getting much interest from any labels, we decided to make a limited release of 150 CD-Rs with handmade silk screened packaging. My first time back in Chicago since last December was spent working quickly to make sure we had the artwork printed, cut & folded before hitting the road.
Daisy played a show with the Rempis Percussion Quartet at the Hideout on wednesday night before we left town at about 1:30 AM. Jason Ajemian got into chicago on wednesday afternoon after flying in from Switzerland - he'd been there playing at an Art Show in Basel with his brother Lucas. So, a lot of driving late night and the next day to get us to Toronto on time to play at a club called the Red Guitar. It's a nice place - has two levels - one where the music is played and the full course menu is available, and above that a lounge and patio. We ate some food and had some good coffee - Ron Gaskin showed up a little later.
We played two sets to a small but attentive audience. As we had no time for any rehearsals before this date the music was loose but also fresh. We played many of our old tunes like Felt, Canopy, Heater, Brand New and tried to work in some of the new material I'd written recently. It felt good to play with Tim & Jason again - I definitely played more open than I had in previous incarnations of this band.

Dragons 1976 Summer Tour 2006

Starting June 15th I'll be on tour with Dragons 1976, here are the dates, come see us if you can!

Thursday June 15th
Toronto
The Red Guitar
603 Markham street
(414)913-4586
www.theredguitar.com

Friday June 16th
Montreal
La Sala Rosa
4848 St Laurent Blvd
9pm


Sunday June 18th
Syracuse,NY
Ohm Lounge
Armory Square 314S Franklin St
(315)475-1985

Monday June 19th
Portland Me
The Space Gallery
538 Congress St
9pm

Wednesday June 21st
Cambridge,Ma
The Lily Pad
1353 Cambridge st
8pm

Thursday June 22nd
NYC
TBA

Friday June 23rd
NYC
Marquise Dance Hall
251 Grand St
Brooklyn


Saturday June 24th
Baltimore,MD
The Red Room
425E 31st street
8:30

Sunday June 25th
Washington,Dc
House Party TBA

Tuesday June 27th
Richmond,Va
TBA

Wednesday June 28th
Charlotte,NC
The Evening Muse
3207N Davidson St
(704)376-3737

Thursday June 29th
Greenville,Sc
Cafe Bohemia
2W Stone Ave

Friday June 30th
Columbia Sc
The Whig

Saturday July 1st
Columbia Sc
The Hunter Gatherer
900 Main St
(803)748-0540

Sunday July 2nd
Nashville,Tn
Ruby Green

Monday July 3rd
Lexington Ky
Underlying Themes
110S Upper St
8pm

Solo Set 21 Grand 5-26-2006

Played a solo set at 21 Grand last Friday night. It's the first time that I've played a solo show out here - and one of the few times in general. Instead of bringing saxophone, clarinet, etc I used my computer to make the music. Similar to what I do when playing with saxophone & computer, but more static and with more attention paid to the different layers of sound coming out of the audio output. For the set I used two long drum samples, one of Johnathan Crawford, one of Steve Hess & samples of my saxophone, clarinet and trumpet, one each. I got to 21 Grand a half hour after the show was supposed to start - I got my times all wrong and had my folks in town so had brought them up to the Armstrong Redwoods and Goat Rock State Beach up in Sonoma County. But set up quick and was ready to play my opening spot within about 5 minutes - that's a nice thing about just bring the saxophone or just the computer - no big setup system, no microphones etc... There were two other sets - one with Matt Davignon and the last with the group Mire that features pedal steel gutiar, drums & laptop. Unfortunately I had to leave in the middle of their set as my folks were getting tired & wanted to get back to the hotel. I made the mistake of leaving my jacket with the car keys basically on the stage, so had to slide my way up there while Mire was playing - sorry 'bout that...
- glad to play the solo set though and looking forward to doing more -

Pink Canoes Luggage Store 5-18-2006

A thursday night in the summer in San Francisco - that was yesterday when the Pink Canoes played at the Luggage Store on Market Street. Across the street was Phil Lesh & Friends doing there thing, so in addition to the regular tenderloin crack headed madness there were gaggles of hippie-kids getting ready for their show. San Francisco street scenes are tough to beat sometimes.... First show in a few weeks for the Canoes - they had actually played a show down in LA on the 5th opening for a Nels Cline group, but I couldn't make that show. It seems everytime I play with the Canoes it's a little different and I bring some different permutation of my set-up. This night I brought my soprano and the computer. I liked using the soprano in the group - the higher range worked well in being able to be heard without having to play overly loud. Using an instrument sans neckstrap also works well when needing to put it down to concentrate on the computer. Afterwards we all went to the Kerry House, a bar in Oakland away from the tourists. We talked about how to get people to come see our music. If anyone has a suggestion, let us know.

Quintet 21 Grand 4-21-2006

Last Friday I played at 21 Grand in a group with weasel walter on drums, liz albee on trumpet, damon smith on bass and aurora josephson on voice. The group was put together by aurora, who went to Mills and still lives in the bay area. We got together about a month ago to play and what happened last Friday was similar to our first meeting. Everyone in the group are good musicians that have just as good ears and our styles mesh well. At no point did I ever feel that the music was boring, or that something else "needed" to be done, but something else was always about to happen and for the most part all the decisions made affected the rest of the music in the way you'd want it to. Weasel was glad to play in a group where he isn't expected to play loud the whole time, Aurora is about the most tasteful vocalist I've heard in a long time and Liz's trumpet playing is right on, there were parts when each of us backed the other up. We played the longest set of the night, there were three bands, it started at 9:00 and was over by 11:15. We played the second set and we set up in the middle of the room, surrounded by the audience but facing in. This allowed for us to be able to hear each other before the natural echo of the space affected our sounds - a good idea when playing in a bouncy space. We'll be recording in early May, my last recording before the summer break at Mills starts.

A Week in April 2006

The spring is coming into it's own out here in the bay area - this last week was a busy one, being involved in three different concerts in different contexts. Early in the week I played on a concert which featured a string quartet. The 2nd year compostion majors got a grant to pay for a string quartet to play their new compsitions. Paul Scriver wrote a piece for the quartet plus flute, piano and bass clarinet. I played bass clarinet and actually had to borrow his horn as mine, though has a nice tone & I like the feel of the instrument, tends to have trouble with intonation (which I think is mainly due to when it was made - back in the 20s I believe). I enjoyed the piece Paul wrote, some moments which dealt strictly with the instruments timbres, others which involved precise timing to achieve the right musical effect. The quartet which was hired was young & friendly, maybe not super-pro yet, but on their way to being solid. I definitely like the fact that there is challenging new music being written and played out here in the bay, except for a few experiences, notably with Guillermo Gregorio, there could have been more of it going on in Chicago.
There was an electronic music concert at Mills; an exchange between several of the music schools in California, CalArts, Stanford, UCSB, UCSD. Steini Gunnarson & I played as Son of Gunnar, Ton of Shel. We had a ten minute allotment of time, but tried to pack lots into it. Alto, Bass Clarinet, Guitar and lots of different processing. I had a bit of a technological failure at the beginning so Steini stalled the proceedings by rambling on about "as we approach the singularity...." always good to have someone be able to stall for you. Lewis Keller form CalArts brought a nice piece which utilized the sounds of two ibooks - he wrote a piece for wurlitzer and accompanied it by the whirring, static tones of the ibooks - I was impressed with the intonation between the two instruments - some complained that he didn't do much with the sounds, but I thought that it was a good piece - he limited what he could do and built a piece around it.
The Pink Canoes played on that concert and also on Saturday night at 21 Grand. Both sets were short - 10 minutes and 20 minutes respectively. Both times we set up in a way that we could all actually hear each other and it helped immensely. The past few shows we had tried to get creative with our set-ups only to realize later that it was close to impossible to hear each other and therefore be able to react and make music together. On these nights there were ebbs and flows, space was given between the five of us and the results were much better than in the past.

Signal Flow 2006 Mills College

This past weekend there was a four day festival at Mills which is called Signal Flow. I played on one piece each day of the festival and had my piece 'November' performed on Saturday night. November was written for two clarinets, bass clarinet, piano and live sampling & processing via MSP. It was a good concert on Saturday night, most of the other compositions had video along with the audio. Chris Kubick's Crowd Control was a particualr favorite of mine. The piece was based on sound files of clapping , applause and crowd reactions all triggered by Chris clapping into a microphone. Seems pretty simple but turned out to be very well constructed and performed really well in the room. I was happy with how my piece went as well - had a constructive soundcheck earlier in the dayin order to get the levels between the instruments and the computer playback. I set up my patch to be operated by Jacob Danziger, and though I could have designed it to be more automated, I feel that having someone actively controlling the processing and being able to balance the sound from the room made a huge postive impact on the performance.
Signal Flow ended on Sunday with a keg-fueled reception that involved Les Stuck and Fred Frith dancing just as goofy as the rest of us.

SOG,TOS Luggage Store 3-2-2006

First time bringin a project to play in San Francisco proper. The group Son of Gunnar, Ton of Shel, a duo between myself and Steini Gunnarson, the guitarist from Iceland. We started playing together last fall - we've actually been able to play together quite a bit and record a number of the session - sometimes it's just acoustic saxophone and guitar, but mostly we bring our computers along to play. We played at the Luggage Store Gallery in downtown San Francisco. It's right near (or in) the Tenderloin, on the second floor of a building on Market Street. A nice sized space with high ceilings next door to the delicious taqueria Cancun. The first group to play was a trio of Alexander Kort (electric cello) with Marty Dowers (reeds) and Christopher Fleeger (electronics). It was all improvised, Christopher was processing the two instrumentalists via MSP. We played at nine - the space is a bit boomy but we took advantage of this by letting our sounds bounce off the walls. It was a good first show for us - transferring what we do in a secluded environment to a public one is a little tricky, but you've got to do the public sometimes before you can relaly get your thing going. Matt & Rent, who run the series, were really into it and invited us back. Bob Marsh came out also - he lived in Chicago when I first moved there and moved out here about 5 years ago.