Bird & Beckett Books and Records
653 Chenery St. SF
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Bird & Beckett Books & Records presents

Lisa Mezzacappa Six
COSMICOMICS 2018

new music for jazz sextet inspired by Italo Calvino’s stories on the origins of the universe developed this year in a series of salons at Bird & Beckett Books & Records

Aaron Bennett, tenor sax
John Finkbeiner, guitar
Mark Clifford, vibes
Tim Perkis, electronics
Lisa Mezzacappa, bass
Jordan Glenn, drums

Bookstore Residency & Work-in-Progress Salons
Thursdays at 7:30pm
April 19
May 24
July 5
Sept 13

Concert Finale!
Sat Nov 3 7:30pm

Bay Area bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa visits with her sextet for a five-concert residency this year, to develop a new suite of music inspired by Italo Calvino’s extraordinary Cosmicomics stories. Over a series of Thursday evening salons, she and her band of superlative improvisers will explore new musical material drawn from Calvino’s supremely imaginative musings on the origins of the universe, and the invisible forces at work in the cosmos. The salon series, which runs from April through September, concludes with a premiere of the complete work on Saturday November 3. 


Mezzacappa’s sensibility as a composer embraces the full panorama of jazz sound and feeling, from bluesy grooves to abstract soundscapes, playful collective improvisation and richly layered melodies that blend electric and acoustic textures. Her last suite of music for this ensemble, avantNOIR, was drawn from crime novels by Hammett and Auster - and earned a 4 1/2 star review in Downbeat Magazine last year.  

Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/lisamezz/sets/lisa-mezzacappa-avantnoir-1
More info: http://www.lisamezzacappa.com

Cost: $5-10 suggested

Audio samples in which musicians at this event play:

Videos featuring musicians playing at this event