ORNETTE!: A TRIBUTE TO ORNETTE COLEMAN — ② Show
— Set 1:
John Ingle /
Kjell Nordeson Duo • sax/percussion pas de deux in hyperspace
— Set 2: Aram Shelton’s Marches (Aram Shelton,
Cory Wright, Steve Blum, Safa Shokrai (صفاء شکری), Britt Ciampa,
Jordan Glenn) • double reed / double drum power in action
— Set 3: Joe Lasqo’s Tomorrow Is The Meta-Body (Lisle Ellis,
Darren Johnston, Joe Lasqo,
Donald Robinson) • réprise of bass/piano dialog from Ellis’ Ornette Coleman Songbook (Downbeat ✰✰✰✰), now expanded with trumpet, drums, & laptop. With visuals by Bill Thibault.
◉ Set 1:
John Ingle /
Kjell Nordeson Duo • sax/percussion pas de deux in hyperspace
—
John Ingle’s music is informed and influenced by contemporary concert music, improvised music, electronic music, jazz, Asian folk music traditions, & the blues and gospel of his native Southeast US. He collaborates with electronics innovator Laetitia Sonami, in duo with NYC-based composer/dulcimerist Dan Joseph and is a founding member of the sfSoundGroup. John's solo sax music emphasizes multiphonics, vocal harmonics and subtle control of extended sax techniques, while his chamber music explores such musical parameters as spiral time, linear pulse, & non-linear harmony, and indulges in both simple resonance as well as complex timbre and auditory sleights-of-hand.
—
Kjell Nordeson divides his time between Stockholm & San Francisco.
Together with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, he formed AALY Trio and has performed with Peter Brötzmann, Barry Guy, Ken Vandermark, Joe Morris, William Parker, Paul Rutherford, Gerry Hemingway, Frank Gratkowski, Stefano Scodanibbio, and many others. He also founded Co. Alba with choreographer Nathalie Ruiz.
Since 2004, Kjell has been active in the San Francisco Bay Area’s thriving community of free-improvised, experimental and new music,regularly playing with musicians Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Greg Goodman, George Cremaschi, Scott Looney, Damon Smith,
John Ingle, Aram Shelton,
Darren Johnston, Lisa Mezzacappa & many others.
◉ Set 2: Aram Shelton’s Marches (Aram Shelton,
Cory Wright, Steve Blum, Safa Shokrai, Britt Ciampa,
Jordan Glenn) • double sax double / double drum power in action
— Aram Shelton performs on saxophone, clarinets, & live electronics. Based in Oakland, the projects Tonal Masher, Broken Trap Ensemble, Gold Age, & Ton Trio II represent his music. His writing and playing has been documented through more than two dozen albums since 2003 and is grounded in and influenced by the rich history of avant-jazz & free improvisation in America. He’s performed in Europe, Canada and the United States including appearances at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Chicago Jazz Festival, the Suoni per il Popolo Festival in Montreal, and the Krakow Autumn Jazz Festival. A tireless curator and instigator of new, creative music throughout the Bay Area, but especially in Oakland, Aram’s events have long lit up the scene at The Uptown, Studio Grand, and other pioneering East Bay venues.
— Reeds player
Cory Wright, has been involved in both the jazz and creative music worlds for the past 20 years, in New York, L.A., & in the San Francisco Bay Area. His recent projects reflect his interest in blurring the distinction between composed & improvised material and in combining the harmonious with the atonal, & groove with the arrhythmic. Cory has played in ensembles lead by Anthony Braxton, Vinny Golia, Eddie Gale, Adam Rudolph and Yusef Lateef. He is currently a member of bay area groups Bristle, Wiener Kids, the Nathan Clevenger Group and the Oakland Active Orchestra, and leads his own projects Green Mitchell and the
Cory Wright Outfit.
— Pianist Steve Blum’s influences include Western classical music, the jazz avant-garde, Indian classical music, and West African ensemble drumming.Steve’s played throughout L.A. and has toured the U.S. playing piano with stage productions & vocal harmony groups. He was music director and keyboardist for the infamous lounge singer Tony Clifton for a 5 month run at the Comedy Store in Hollywood in 2012. Steve is now in the Bay Area, where he works as an accompanist/instructor for Pacific Boychoir Academy in Oakland & music director for Sophia Rose Choir in Sebastopol.
— Safa and (صفاء شکری) is inspired by visual art, architecture, and movement, informing the color and tone of his work. He strives to create a performance experience in which the audience steps into a film, a world that has been fabricated and imagined, realized with sound and sight. He has toured with Rupa & The April Fishes, and leads some of the Bay Area's finest musicians in his ensemble The Glasses, described as “step into your own noir film with our soundtrack".
— Percussionist and composer Britt Ciampa attended the prestigious Jazz Studies program at William Paterson University, studying with such jazz luminaries as Mulgrew Miller, Rich Perry, Kevin Norton, Horacee Arnold, Steve LaSpina, and Cecil Bridgewater, and continued his studies at UCCS Colorado Springs where he studied with improvised music masters Jane Rigler, Glen Whitehead, and Randy Bowen. In 2013, Britt relocated to the Bay Area where he can be currently found lingering about the Bay Bridge and seeking out suspension bridge/seafood enthusiasts who might be interested in making music.
—
Jordan Glenn spent his formative years in Oregon drawing cartoons, taking dance classes from his aunt, and putting on plays with his sisters. As he got older he began making movies with his friends and studying jazz, classical, and rock music. Later, he relocated to the Bay Area, received a masters degree from Mills College and since has worked closely with Fred Frith, William Winant, Zeena Parkins, Roscoe Mitchell, ROVA Sax Quartet, Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, John Schott, Dominique Leone, Aaron Novik,
Darren Johnston, Aram Shelton,
Cory Wright, Lisa Mezzacappa, Karl Evangelista, Michael Coleman, Matthew Welch and the bands Jack O' The Clock, Arts & Sciences, 20 Minute Loop, Beep!, tUnE-yArDs, and the Oakland Active Orchestra. He also leads and conducts the project Mindless Thing, a collaboration with poet/free-jazzer/sage Jim Ryan, as well as the long standing trio Wiener Kids & the 10-piece expansion, The Wiener Kids Family Band.
◉ Set 3: Joe Lasqo’s Tomorrow Is The Meta-Body (Lisle Ellis,
Darren Johnston, Joe Lasqo,
Donald Robinson) • réprise of bass/piano dialog from Ellis’ Ornette Coleman Songbook (Downbeat ✰✰✰✰), now expanded with trumpet, drums, & laptop.
Presenting Ornette on acid in a brand-new multi-colored coat with “heretical” instrumentation, weaving in modernistic LED threads of laptop electronics, and the almost-never-heard-with-Ornette piano. Plus the ultimate Ornette instrumentation heresy — no sax or reeds! A very fresh new sound with a new color scheme for tomorrow.
— Pianist / laptopist Joe Lasqo studied classical music in India; computer / electronic music at MIT, Columbia, Berkeley/CNMAT; has been a long-time performing modern & avant jazz musician; & has lived, played and listened in several Asian and European countries (now in San Francisco). He's keen on the application of artificial intelligence techniques to improvisation and the meeting of traditional Asian musics with the 21st century. His recent album, Turquoise Sessions, is available on Edgetone Records; with AU QUOTIDIEN, a new album with German-Swedish saxist/flautist Biggi Vinkeloe, master drummer
Donald Robinson, and cello madman Teddy Rankin-Parker is in production for release.
Joe had a weekly residency for 3½ years in the piano series at Viracocha, & has appeared recently with Bruce Ackley & Steve Adams of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Aaron Bennett's Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra, Phillip Greenlief's Orchesperry, his own Renga-kai (連歌会), Mukaiji-kai (霧海箎会), & Fushigi Kenkyūkai (不思議研究会) ensembles, synthesist Thomas Dimuzio, clarinetist/vocalist Beth Custer, pianist Thollem McDonas, percussionist Suki O'Kane, sound artists Joe Snape (UK) & Lucie Vítková (Czech Rep.), technodivas/electronic musicians Pamela Z & Viv Corringham (NYC/London) & many others.
— NYC bassist and computer musician, Lisle Ellis, began playing electric bass in his teens & worked professionally from an early age in numerous environments including studios, radio & tv shows, & strip clubs. When his teacher and mentor, Walter Robertson, suddenly died, Lisle abandoned his studies at a music conservatory in Vancouver in favor of the seminal, & now legendary, Creative Music Studio in New York. There, over a period of several years, he had intimate contact with the vital NYC music scene at a time of surging changes & extraordinary developments. Almost immediately after relocating to the U.S., Ellis's music began to attract attention and acclaim on a global level.
Lisle is a 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, Paul Plimley, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Stefano Scodanibbio, Cecil Taylor, William Winant, Pamela Z, and John Zorn, among many others.
— Since settling in San Francisco, Canada-born trumpeter & composer
Darren Johnston has collaborated and recorded with an extremely diverse cross-section of artists. His interests rotate around composing instrumental music, writing songs, and performing all styles of jazz, experimental and purely improvised music, as well as traditional music of the Balkans, Greece, Macedonia, Turkey, & the Arab world. These interests have coalesced into his current primary ensemble,
Darren Johnston’s Broken Shadows. He’s performed and/or recorded with luminaries such as Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, Fred Frith, Meklit Hadero (መክሊት አየለ ሀዴሮ), ROVA Sax Quartet, Myra Melford, Ben Goldberg, Matt Wilson, Mark Dresser, Marshall Allen, Dave Rempis, Larry Ochs, Marcus Shelby, and others.
As a composer, he has written for small jazz groups, big bands, string quartet, chamber ensembles and more. He’s written for dance companies such as Axis Dance, Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, Robert Moses’ Kin, Liss Fain, & others, as well as for short films. In his song-writing the last few years Darren has focused on using found text. In 2012 he composed a suite extracting text from a series of interviews he conducted with a diverse collection of immigrants living in the Bay Area called Songs Of Seven Miles.
— Described by Coda as a “percussive dervish”,
Donald Robinson is a technical master of the drums. He’s a stalwart of the of San Francisco Bay Area avant-garde jazz scene, playing and recording with many of the area’s past and current improvisational players, from saxophonists John Tchicai, Marco Eneidi and Larry Ochs to koto player Miya Masaoka (正岡みや) and pianists Joe Lasqo & Matthew Goodheart, and with prominent visitors like Cecil Taylor, Wadada Leo Smith, George Lewis, trumpeter Raphé Malik, Canadian pianist Paul Plimley, & Swedish-German saxist/flautist Biggi Vinkeloe. Much of this work has featured the combination of Robinson & bassist Lisle Ellis as rhythm section: ‘the best bass-drums tag team on the scene’ (Jazz Times). His longest musical association, dating from the 1970′s, was with the late tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearmann.
— Bill Thibault (video) received a Ph.D. in Information & Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology (thesis: “Application of Binary Space Partitioning Trees to Geometric Modeling and Ray-Tracing”) As a Ph.D. candidate he worked at Bell Labs (now Lucent Technologies) in Murray Hill, NJ. After graduating, he took positions on the faculty of the Dept. of Math & Computer Science at California State University, East Bay, and more recently, with Obscura Digital.
Somewhere along the way he also turned to the Multispectral Side and became the notorious VJLove, master of the doors of visual perception, and co-conspirator in many raids on reality, with partners in crime like Kattt Atchley, Kenneth Atchley, John Bischoff, Chris Brown, Barbara Golden, Scot Gresham-Lancaster, Tim Perkis, and WIGBAND.
Cost: $12 General, $8 Members