Oakland Freedom Jazz Society: Bristle + Dunkelman/fluke-mogul/Weeks Trio
BRISTLE
Bristle’s unique reeds and strings sound explores the boundaries and links between modern jazz and chamber music, between intricate compositional schemes and free improvisation spaces. In addition to its two CDs, Future(s) Now(s) (Queen Bee) and Bulletproof (Edgetone), Bristle has performed at venues throughout California and the Northwest, including San Francisco’s Center for New Music, Seattle's Racer Sessions, the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts in LA, and Sacramento’s In the Flow Festival. The group began in 2009 when
Randy McKean invited fellow reeds player and composer
Cory Wright to form a group to play their original compositions; both share a love of traditional jazz and its experimental, creative offshoots.
Lisa Mezzacappa was drafted to anchor the group on bass, and brought her formidable talents as composer and bandleader to the mix. The addition of Murray Campbell, with his rare talent of doubling equally well on violin and oboes, gave the foursome an agile, elastic quality that influences the writing and performances of this drummerless quartet. Equally at home in both hushed concert halls and raucous clubs, Bristle seeks to mix the high and the low, the serious and the playful in one compelling package.
Alto saxophonist/clarinetist
Randy McKean is carrying on the tradition of those performer/composers who have revitalized creative music from the inside out, drawing upon its rich history of ideas to produce his own unique forms of expression. McKean leads or co-leads several bands, including the chamber jazz quartet Bristle, the saxophone quartet Goggle, the avant-folk duo Sawbones, the acoustic-electronics duos Wild Horsey Ride, Zap!, and The Gargantius Effect, and his latest project, the African trance band Tumble. McKean’s releases include the CDs Wild Horsey Ride, Bristle’s Bulletproof (Edgetone), So Dig This Big Crux (Rastascan), the Great Circle Saxophone Quartet’s Child King Dictator Fool (New World), and the electronic release Gargantius Effect +1+2+3 (w/Han-earl Park, Gino Robair & Scott Looney). He studied with trumpeter Paul Smoker and composers Anthony Braxton, David Rosenboom, and Maggi Payne. He currently lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills town of Grass Valley, CA.
Reeds player
Cory Wright, educated at Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Southern California, has been involved in both the jazz and creative music worlds for the past 20 years, including time spent in New York, Los Angeles and his current home in the San Francisco Bay Area. 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.
Lisa Mezzacappa is a San Francisco Bay Area-based bassist, composer, and curator. An active collaborator in the Bay Area music community for 13 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. She has released her music on the Clean Feed, NoBusiness, Leo, NotTwo, Evander and Edgetone record labels, and has recorded as a sideperson for the Tzadik, Kadima and Porto Franco labels. Her own label, Queen Bee Records, was launched in 2013 and focuses on releasing the work of her West Coast creative musician peers
Murray Campbell, originally from Scotland, comes from a prodigiously talented musical family. He studied electronic music in the Netherlands and plays double reeds in the Auburn Symphony and many other regional symphonies and chamber music groups. He is a member of Beaucoup Chapeaux, Gargantius Effect, Bristle, and
Lisa Mezzacappa’s Interlopers.
DUNKELMAN/FLUKE-MOGUL/WEEKS TRIO
Nava Dunkelman is a Bay Area based percussionist and improviser. Born in Tokyo, Japan and raised in a multi-cultural environment by an American father and Indonesian mother. Her musical interests span the globe from Japanese taiko to Indonesian gamelan to American marching band, and from classical to contemporary to the avant-garde. Nava studied percussion under Eugene Novotney at Humboldt State University before attending Mills College, where she graduated with a degree in music performance in 2013 and studied with William Winant, Fred Frith, Maggi Payne, Zeena Parkins, and David Bernstein. She has performed and collaborated with William Winant, Fred Frith, John Zorn, Ikue Mori, George Lewis, Matmos and many others. She has performed classical and contemporary pieces with the William Winant Percussion Group, Joan Jeanrenaud, San Francisco Girls Chorus, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and others. She also formed electro-percussion experimental noise duo IMA, and improvisational duo DunkelpeK. Nava enjoys discovering her own musical language by exploring experimental approaches to communication, progression and space.
gabby fluke-mogul is a violinist, improviser, composer, & educator living in Oakland, CA. gabby explores the depths, infinite sounds, hues, & multitudinous voices of the acoustic violin. through improvising//composing, gfm hopes to create space for individual & collective intersectional process, intimacy, & vulnerability. they are interested in the sensual nature of sound—how desire & eroticism are embodied & translated within the political & poetic context(s) of improvisation. gabby holds a BA from Hampshire College (Amherst, MA) in Music & Critical Studies of Childhood, Youth, and Learning where they studied with Rachel Conrad, Marty Ehrlich, Jamie MacDonald, Dan Warner, & Becky Miller and a MFA in Music Performance and Literature with Improvisation Specialization from Mills College (Oakland, CA) where they worked with Pauline Oliveros, Jennifer Wilsey, Zeena Parkins, India Cooke, Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell, Kala Ramnath, W.A. Mathieu, & Kara Davis. gabby will complete Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening Certificate Program in December 2018. gabby believes in the power of listening, improvisation, babies, children, & kindness. gfm performs with a variety of ensembles & collaborative projects in addition to facilitating community-based workshops & teaching (toddlers-adults) in public, private, & non-profit learning spaces.
Tom Weeks is a composer, improviser, and saxophonist from the San Francisco Bay Area, CA. He has received a Bachelor's degree in Jazz Composition from Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA, and a Master's degree in Composition from Mills College, Oakland, CA. He has studied with Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Pauline Oliveros, Chris Brown, W.A. Mathieu, Steve Adams, Richard Evans, Phil Wilson, and Greg Hopkins, among others. His music is influenced by various African-American musical traditions, the historical avant-garde, and the heavy metal and hardcore traditions; utilizing improvisation, extended techniques, and traditional and experimental notational practices. He has worked with musicians such as Alvin Curran, Makoto Kawabata, Ricardo Descalzo, The MolOt Ensemble, Hans Koch, Walter Thompson, Vinny Golia, William Winant, G. Calvin Weston, members of the ROVA saxophone quartet, and Henry Kaiser, among many others. His frequent collaborators include Camille Emaille, Nathan Corder, Joshua Allen, and Scott Siler.
DOORS 9:00 PM; SHOW 9:30(ish)
$7-15 sliding scale