→ Examiner.com review of
Biggi Vinkeloe Roughtet's kick-off 04 May show:
here— Set 1, 7:30pm: The Godfather of instrument inventors, Bart Hopkin (solo)
Bart Hopkin has worked as a guitarist and musical arranger for several decades, performing, recording, composing and teaching in many contexts and places.
He’s also an inventor and maker of musical instruments, and the director of Experimental Musical Instruments, an organization devoted to unusual musical instruments. In addition to building, teaching and consulting, he's written many books on instruments and their construction, and produced books and CDs featuring the work of innovative instrument makers.
Bart's long experience as an accomplished musician in the world of conventional instruments insures that his invented musical instruments are not merely exotic sculptures, but can be used with the expressivity and musicality of instruments which have developed through hundreds of years of historical evolution and design.
Check out the great photo + sound gallery of many of Bart's invented instruments at http://windworld.com/bart/invented-instruments.
— Set 2, 8:15pm: Master vibraphonist
Mark Clifford (solo)
A much sought after performer & improviser, Oakland-based vibraphonist/composer/percussionist
Mark Clifford is involved in free improvisation, new music, jazz, & rock, playing alongside musicians such as: Jeff Parker, Kjell Nordeson, Ches Smith, Joan La Barbara, Aram Shelton, Colin Stranahan, Ron Miles, Scott Amendola, Tatsuya Nakatani (中谷達也), Danny Meyer, Lisa Mezzacappa, Sō Percussion, as well as serving as a percussionist w the Colorado Symphony Orchestra.
Mark's performed w Aram Shelton’s Sound Quartet, Oakland Active Orchestra, sfsound, DRMS (Facebook link), Aaron Novik’s Cosimo Lissy, Dominique Leone Band, Jordan Glenn’s Beak, Denny Denny Breakfast, & Bells Atlas. Mark leads Dirty Snacks Ensemble, an eclectic post-jazz ensemble in which he's composer, vibraphonist & vocalist. As a composer, Mark’s recent writing employs conceptual parameters for long form works, e.g. basing compositional interval structures on the ratio of vertebrae in human spines ("Fair Slope"). Recently, Mark was commissioned to create a new work for SF’s Switchboard Presents Series, "Levity Factions 2-6". Further commissions include "Fair Slope", w choreographer Sam Stone, "No Awareness", a setting of a rhythmic transcription of a Kool Keith verse for vibraphone, drums, & piano, "Toddler Hammock" (for Oakland Active Orchestra), "Winona & The Moods" (for New Keys), & "A Crimson Hexagon" (w the Sam Stone Rooftop Dance Collective).
— Set 3, 9:15pm: The
Biggi Vinkeloe Roughtet
Swedish/German sorceress of avant / jazz wind energy, and veteran of stellar collaborations with Roberto Bellatalla, Alberto Braida, Chris Brown, Lisle Ellis, Marco Eneidi, Ken Filiano, Gianni Gebbia, Vinny Golia, Giancarlo Locatelli, Miya Masaoka (正岡みや), Barre Phillips, Gino Robair, Cecil Taylor, Peeter Uuskyla, and Marie Wärme, among many others,
Biggi Vinkeloe will réprise her long-standing collaboration with Bay Area master drummer
Donald Robinson, whom Coda Magazine has described as a "percussion dervish", and among whose most notable collaborators are Alan Silva, Anthony Braxton, Oliver Lake, Glenn Spearman, Larry Ochs, Bobby Few, Raphé Malik, and Joe McPhee.
Laptopist/pianist Joe Lasqo's special interests include applying AI techniques from expert systems, natural language processing, & computational linguistics to music; and the intersection of traditional Asian musics with modernism. He's a regular member of Aaron Bennett’s Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra & Jim Ryan’s Green Alembic, his own Renga-kai (連歌会) & Mukaiji-kai (霧海箎会) ensembles, & has played / recorded with musicians such as: Bruce Ackley, Steve Adams, Viv Corringham (London/NYC), Beth Custer, Thomas Dimuzio, Vinny Golia, Phillip Greenlief, Ron Heglin, Darren Johnston, Thollem McDonas, Lisa Mezzacappa, David Michalak, Tom Nunn, Suki O'Kane, Simon O'Rorke (NZ), Teddy Rankin-Parker, Rent Romus, Joe Snape (UK), Lucie Vítková (Czech Rep.), Jack Wright, & Pamela Z, & many others.
NYC bassist and computer musician Lisle Ellis. Veteran of 40+ recordings (including Down Beat ✰✰✰✰✰ The Ornette Coleman Songbook), he's worked with Paul Bley, Peter Brötzmann, Andrew Cyrille, Anthony Davis, Ben Goldberg, Frank Gratowski, Joëlle Léandre, Rudresh Mahanthappa (ರುದ್ರೇಶ್ ಮಹಂತಪ್ಪ), Miya Masaoka (正岡みや), Myra Melford, Bob Ostertag, William Parker, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Stefano Scodanibbio, Cecil Taylor, William Winant, Pamela Z, and John Zorn, among many others.
Those who have seen Warren at Joe Lasqo's shows or a Bay Area technorave know Warren Stringer's unique mastery in combining art and algorithm for the real-time visual accompaniment of improvisatory music. Not only a master of improvisatory video, Warren is a software fiend in many other areas, encompassing a wide range of applications to enable social self expression for mobile devices, game machines, and the web (cf. his technology company, http://muse.com).