Community Music Center
544 Capp Street SF
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14th Annual Outsound New Music Summit
Comprovisation(the art of compositional improvisation)
Tickets for 14th Annual Outsound New Music Summit

Vacuum Tree Head Jason Berry, Amanda Chaudhary, Richard Corny, Michael de la Cuesta, Richard Lesnik, Justin Markovits, Amy X Neuburg, Tom Ferguson
Lisa Mezzacappa: avantNOIR w/Bait & Switch
Aaron Bennet, John Finkbeiner, Lisa Mezzacappa, Jordan Glenn, William Winant, Tim Perkis
Cabbages, Captain, & King
Jon Arkin, Karl Evangelista, Eli Wallace



Vacuum Tree Head is a band which was formed in 1989 by Jason Berry and Michael de la Cuesta. JB and mike form the nucleus of an ever-evolving, ever-changing musical concept; VTH has created music ranging from ambient electronics pieces scored for feedback, bass clarinets, singing bowls and bowed gongs (Tar'Hai Wizard, a piece dedicated to the great Jean "Moebius" Giraud), to tightly composed, guitar-based punk/prog songs (the album "THIRTEEN"), to abstract electronics and audio collage (the album "Aum Carve Etude H"), and all stops in between. The band is currently moving into areas involving the intersection of tightly composed compositions and free improvisation.Many amazing musicians have performed or recorded with VTH over the 25+ years the band has been active. Some of the more notable have included Amy X Neuburg, Thollem McDonas, Matthew Waldron (Irr. App. Ext., Nurse With Wound), Steve Mackay (Stooges, Snakefinger, Club Foot Orchestra), Gino Robair, Tim Byrnes and Keith Abrams (both from Time of Orchids and Kayo Dot), Thomas Scandura, Michael Mellinder, Moe!Staiano, Ross Bonadonna (Eric Mingus Trio), Charles Lloyd, and countless others. "Explaining this music to the uninitiated is almost impossible, stylistically jumping from punk rock to prog, to avant-garde atonalism, to klezmer, Arabian and Bollywood themes, and beyond. Or perhaps something like the vocal numbers on the CD version of Zappa's "Sleep Dirt", as played by Black Flag. In short, it must be heard." - Exposé Magazine, Issue #39, summer 2011 "Bay Area polymath Jason Berry's under-appreciated, but amply recorded Vacuum Tree Head can almost be heard as a post-rock tribute band" - Dr. Thomas Stanley in his book The Execution of Sun Ra, page 119

avantNOIR is a new project by bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa, for her critically-acclaimed experimental jazz quartet, Bait & Switch. The music is inspired by noir genre fiction set in New York City (where Mezzacappa was born and raised) and the San Francisco Bay Area (where she has lived for the past 13 years). For this project, the quartet is joined by special guests, percussionist William Winant and electronic musician Tim Perkis. avant-NOIR is a musical companion to Paul Auster’s abstract “soft-boiled” crime stories from his New York Trilogy of the 1980s, set in conversation with the West Coast classic hard-boiled 1920s-era detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett. The music progresses like a detective’s case, using clues and imagery from the crime novels such as maps, letters, messages and relationships between characters and places, to create compositions with acoustic and electric sounds and composed and improvised material.
Lisa Mezzacappa is a San Francisco Bay Area-based bassist, composer, and music curator. An active collaborator in the Bay Area music community for more than a dozen years, her music spans avant-garde jazz to ethereal chamber music, scores for experimental film and immersive sound installations. Mezzacappa was voted “Rising Star” bassist in the Downbeat 2013 and 2014 critics polls, and leads her own groups Bait & Switch, Nightshade, the Lisa Mezzacappa Trio, Eartheaters and the Interlopers, and co-leads the ensembles duo B., Cylinder, BODABODA, LMNOP, and Les Gwan Jupons.

The cerebrally fervid avant garde free-jazz trio Cabbages, Captain, & King recently released their eponymous debut album on Edgetone Records. With a unique instrumentation of piano, guitar, and drums, the direction of the music and the sound of the ensemble is unconventional. Furthermore, the diversity of repertoire creates for variegated musical terrains from bombastic and raucous, to sparse and delicate. Starting with compositions conceived by Eli Wallace, these three musicians collectively shape the inchoate tunes according to their unified musical vision. While these compositions deal with predominantly free improvisational sections, Cabbages, Captain, & King always emphasizes the need for a strong sense of direction in their music, especially in relation to the written material. They are elated to be performing at the 14th Annual Outsound New Music Summit, and their set will comprise of pieces from their recently released CD and new material that directly cogitates on the notion of freedom as it pertains to our modern culture; these new compositions will relate to our own freedom as improvisers and as members of society, and the freedom of others at home and abroad.



Cost: $15/$12

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