West Oakland Sound Series
2201 Poplar Street Dresher Ensemble Studio Oakland
Click for Venue page

HANS TAMMEN with Gino Robair
sfSoundGroup plays: PHILL NIBLOCK + MONICA SCOTT


HANS TAMMEN is just another worker in rhythms, frequencies and intensities. He likes to set sounds in motion, and then sit back to watch the movements unfold. Using textures, timbre and dynamics as primary elements, his music is continuously shifting, with different layers floating into the foreground while others disappear. This flows like clockwork, “transforming a sequence of instrumental gestures into a wide territory of semi-hostile discontinuity; percussive, droning, intricately colorful, or simply blowing your socks off” (Touching Extremes).

In his Eigengrau series he explores overtones and noises that are emerging from pianos, guitars and other stringed instruments affected by vibrations from transducers. Eigengrau is the color you see when you close your eyes, which is due to the perception of an ever-changing field of tiny black and white dots seen in the phenomenon. For this concert Tammen is joined by bay area stalwart Gino Robair on assorted electronics.


The "house band" for the WEST OAKLAND SOUND SERIES, SFSOUNDGROUP is a unique collection of performer-composers that have presented their own compositions, improvisations, new commissions, electronic music, and standard avant-garde repertoire for over two decades. For this concert they remember PHILL NIBLOCK with a performance of Disseminate, commissioned in 1998 by Petr Kotik for The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble. As in most of Niblock’s music, he creates sound differences by combining many simultaneous microtonal pitches/tones (by means of multitrack mixing) to make clouds of sum and difference tones. The score for Disseminate specifies 16 parts which can be pre-recorded or live. For this concert the piece will be performed partially “on tape” with four “live” musicians.

sfSound also performs MONICA SCOTT'S Migrations for mixed quintet, where spectrograms of local bird calls are freely interpreted and translated into musical gestures both composed and improvised. While the work is a free-standing 4 movement piece, its genesis is in Scott's multimedia collaboration Lightfast - Intertwine, an exhibition that is showing at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art February 24-June 2, 2024.

SFSOUNDGROUP
Sam Weiser, violin
Monica Scott, cello
Kjell Nordeson, percussion
Brendan Lai-Tong, trombone
John Ingle, saxophone
Matt Ingalls, clarinet
Kyle Bruckmann, oboe

Cost: $10-$25 sliding scale

Audio samples in which musicians at this event play:

Videos featuring musicians playing at this event