1st set: addleds (maximalized minimalism? aggro-gagaku improv?)
Kyle Bruckmann (oboe/English horn), Tony Dryer (bass),
Jacob Felix Heule (percussion), Kanoko Nishi (koto)
2nd set: Bristle (curveball-riddled chamber jazz) Randy McKean & Cory Wright (saxophones/clarinets),
Lisa Mezzacappa (bass), Murray Campbell (violin/oboe) http://www.bristlemusic.com
Please come out to help us beta-test this fine acoustic space, longtime home of a "legit" chamber music series, for the BANM community before it closes for major renovations!
Addleds -- the quartet of
Kyle Bruckmann (oboe/English horn), Tony Dryer (double bass),
Jacob Felix Heule (percussion) and Kanoko Nishi (koto) -- explore timbral and textural extremes of distended instrumental technique via improvisation and open-ended compositional strategies. Their music tends towards a brutalist minimalism as informed by the noise underground as by recent developments in the field of free improvisation.
Individually, the members have performed with other groups and regular collaborators across the gamut of new music both local (Basshaters, Caroliner, Ettrick, Ghost in the House, Jacob Lindsay, Pink Mountain, Jon Raskin, Gino Robair, Aram Shelton, Shudder, sfSound) and elsewhere (Michel Doneda, EKG, Boris Hauf, Giuseppe Ielasi, Lozenge, Polwechsel, Jack Wright, C Spencer Yeh). Together, they began developing their collective sound in 2010.
Bristle’s unique sound is a fortunate accident: when saxophonists/clarinetists Cory Wright and Randy McKean asked bassist
Lisa Mezzacappa to join them in 2009 to perform their original compositions, they were looking for a drummer to round out the quartet. A set of Spinal Tap-ish circumstances led them instead to draft violinist/oboist Murray Campbell, and this one-of-a-kind strings-and-reeds ensemble was born.
Bristle combines an intuitive chamber music sensibility with an off-kilter improvisational approach, seamlessly mixing fierce solo statements with intricate group textures in its pieces. The group explores the relation between written and open material, continually experimenting with popular song and through-composed forms. Wheezing accordions, errant looping machines, the kids’ game Butts Up, typographic glyphs, Donkey Kong Level 3 (the one with the elevators) and Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch all serve as inspirations for Bristle’s compositions, as does individual members’ past work with Yusef Lateef, Anthony Braxton, and Henry Threadgill.
Bristle’s collective sound is enhanced by its members’ long-time history of collaboration with one another. Wright and Mezzacappa are ubiquitous members of the Bay Area creative music scene, and perform together as members of the Oakland Active Orchestra, Mezzacappa’s group Nightshade and Wright’s ensemble Green Mitchell, among others. McKean and Campbell are members of several ensembles in their Sierra Foothills hometown of Nevada City, including the Balkan-tinged ensemble Chickenbonz and the café band Beaucoup Chapeaux.
Cost: $6-15 sliding scale
Videos featuring musicians playing at this event
avantNOIR, a suite of compositions for jazz quartet plus guests, is a musical companion to the crime novels of Dashiell Hammett and Paul Auster. All music by Lisa Mezzacappa.
Jacob Felix Heule, Clarke Robinson, Matt Ingalls
The premiere, at the 2013 Outsound New Music Summit, of Wrack ...Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire (made possible by the Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commissioning program).