13th Annual Outsound New Music SummitPoetryFreqs - a night of spoken word, poetry, electro-acoustic music, and noise
Watkins/Trammell/McZealZachary James Watkins – Electronics,
Marshall Trammell – Percussion, Amber McZeal - Voice
Poet ruth weiss"Goddess of the Beats" Hal Davis - hollow log &
Doug Lynner -Buchla Mystery Serge
Pitta of the MindMaw Shein Win: poetry - spoken word,
Amanda Chaudhary - Electronics
Advance Tickets @ Brownpapertickets
Watkins/Trammel/McZealZachary James Watkins, electronics;
Marshall Trammell, percussion; Amber McZeal - Voice
Word is Law, all life is vibration, and intention dictates experience. These words have shaped and guided the artistic and creative maturation of
Amber McZeal over the past decade. Beginning in the swampy halls of New Orleans, Amber began her journey under the tutelage of Mr. Ellis Marsalis and Leah Chase, studying jazz vocalization. Her passion for harmony and humanitarianism led her down a path of scientific inquiry: an inter-disciplinary intersection of neuroscience, quantum theory, and acoustic art. Amber has recently received her Bachelor of Arts with a focus on vibrational theories and sacred intellectualism. Her current body of work, Mudzimu, is a combination of original music compositions and cultural, futurist mythos that is committed to expanding the discussion of trauma, life and identity from the purview of matter as vibrating energy. Amber is currently a Ph.D. student at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and resides in Oakland.
Zachary James Watkins and Marshall Trammell currently work in collaboration as two soloists who have found a new platform for the intersection of tone-generating electronic technology and the heart-thumping technology of acoustic percussion. This duet features a new tradition in conversant, duo vernacular dynamics that sparked a revolution in our conceptions of space, stage, ritual, performance, geography, praxis, brotherhood, relationships, rockin' out, and more.
"Goddess of the Beats"ruth weiss - poet
Hal Davis - hollow log,
Doug Lynner - Buchla Mystery Serge
ruth weiss, dubbed by writer Herb Caen as "the goddess of the beat generation," is a poet, performer, playwright and artist and original member of the first Beat Generation, a label she has recently embraced and that is used frequently by historians detailing her life and works. Her first performances of poetry and jazz were documented in Chicago at the Art Circle in 1949, and she is considered the first poet to experiment with jazz. weiss spells her name in lowercase as such as a symbolic protest against "law and order," since in her birthplace of Germany all nouns are spelled capitalized. ruth came from a climate of political turmoil. Born to a Jewish family in the tumultuous years of the rise of Nazism, her early childhood was spent fleeing her home with her parents. After a brief time in the U.S. during the war she returned with her family to Germany in 1946 as her parents worked for the Army of Occupation. In 1948, weiss and her parents moved back to the United States, resettling in Chicago. weiss left home in 1949, at first staying in Chicago. She originally moved into the Art Circle, a housing community for artists. It was in this community that she began experimenting with poetry and jazz.
In 1952, she left Chicago and hitchhiked to San Francisco, where she began jamming and reading poetry with street musicians. ruth weiss and Jack Kerouac first met in 1952. They had, in her words, a "fantastic connection on multiple levels." weiss and Kerouac engaged upon a "haiku dialogue," spending hours over bottles of wine writing haiku back and forth to one another. Occasionally Neal Cassady would show up and the three of them would drive off, adventuring outwards in California at dangerous speeds. In 1959, weiss published her book Gallery of Women, a book composed in poetry, honoring the female poets who she most admired. In 1960, weiss finished her narrative poem "The Brink," which Painter Paul Beattie asked if weiss could turn it into a film script. In 1961, weiss had finished her creation and filming of The Brink, incorporating "found objects" into her style and philosophy towards the film.
ruth weiss continues to perform live in North Beach and at many jazz and poetry festivals. In 1990, weiss won the Bay Area poetry slam and consequently released recordings of her poetry performance, entitled Poetry & Allthatjazz. She currently has over 15 works published since 1958 with her latest, Fool's Journey published in 2012. In 2011, Can't Stop the Beat was published documenting her life and words as a founding member of the American Beat generation.
Doug Lynner, a.k.a. synthesizerman, was editor/publisher of the seminal synthesizer magazine, Synapse. He attended the California Institute of the Arts where his primary mentors were Harold Budd, Morton Subotnick and Leonid Hambro. He is a founding member of the synthpop bands Invisible Zoo, Moebius and LEM; and is a radio host on FlashbackAlternatives.com with his monthly show,
Doug Lynner's World of Noise.
He performs, composes and records using vintage and contemporary analog modular synthesizers, digital and virtual synthesizers and traditional instruments. Of special note is Doug’s Mystery Serge, an amazingly versatile analog modular synthesizer designed by West Coast synthesizer pioneer, Serge Tcherepnin. Created in 1975, the Mystery Serge has been painstakingly conserved and upgraded and stands more than well in comparison to contemporary analog modular synthesizers. Its unique design gave rise to "patch
programmability," the ability to reconfigure a single module for many different uses by patching it differently.
Doug Lynner’s music is based upon the notion of “sound for sound’s sake” He explores the intrinsic value of sound through mixtures of ambient, avant garde, rhythmic and soundscape genres.
Hal Davis is a retired officer in the merchant marines as well as a consummate multi-instrumental musician since he was a child. He has worked with ruth weiss touring from Vienna to New Orleans since 2010.
Pitta of the MindMaw Shein Win - poetry/spoken word,
Amanda Chaudhary - Electronics
Pitta of the Mind is the duo of composer and performer
Amanda Chaudhary and poet Maw Shein Win, combining poetry with abstract electronic music. Their highly theatrical performances center around a theme that is explored via text, sound, and visuals. Pitta of the Mind will present a 40-minute set of poetry by Maw Shein Win with music by
Amanda Chaudhary. The theme of the first half will be abstract art, and the second will focus on cinematic distance. This performance will debut new material by Win and Chaudhary, created specifically for this event.
Amanda Chaudhary is a composer and performer specializing in contemporary and electronic music. Her solo work involves experimenting with innovative sounds via analog synthesis and custom software with computers and mobile devices as well as folk and toy instruments. Her other ensemble projects include Reconnaissance Fly, an art-pop band; and Surplus 1980, a post-punk band.
Maw Shein Win often collaborates with visual artists and musicians, and her latest poetry chapbook, Ruins of a glittering palace, with paintings by Mark Dutcher, was published by SPA/Commonwealth Projects. She is currently a poetry editor for Rivet: The Journal of Writing that Risks for Red Bridge Press, a freelancer at the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, and a co-publisher for Stretcher.
Cost: $15 general $12 Students/Seniors