Damon Smith (cb), Thea Farhadian (vln) and Karen Stackpole (gongs)
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The Oakland Freedom Jazz Society presents for your listening pleasure Damon Smith who has briefly returned to the bay area! The main man behind the ever popular Balance Point Acoustics record label will be performing with local legends Karen Stackpole and Thea Farhadian.

Surely a night not to be missed!

Thea Farhadian

Thea Farhadian is a violinist/composer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her projects include solo violin and interactive electronics, acoustic improvisation, solo laptop, radio art, and video. Her solo pieces for violin and electronics combine a classical music background with extended technique and live digital processing. Her work has been seen internationally at venues which include the Issue Project Room, Downtown Music Gallery, and Alternative Museum in New York City, Galerie Mario Mazolli, Sowieso, and Quiet Cue in Berlin, the Room Series, and the Center for New Music in San Francisco, the Center for Experimental Art and the Aram Kachaturyan Museum in Yerevan, Armenia, International Women's Electroacoustic Listening Room Project at Bimhaus in Amsterdam. She has collaborated with artists including Tomomi Adachi, Kim Anno, Shelley Hirsch, Heike Liss, Silvia Matheus, Tim Perkis, and Dean Santomieri. Thea is a former member of the Berkeley Symphony orchestra where she played under Kent Nagano for ten years. She has an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from San Francisco State and an M.F.A. in Electronic Music from Mills College.

www.theafarhadian.com

Damon Smith

Damon Smith studied double bass with Lisle Ellis and has had lessons with Bertram Turezky, Joëlle Leandré, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser and others. Damon’s explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. Visual art, film and dance heavily influence his music, as evidenced by his CAMH performance of Ben Patterson’s Variations for Double Bass, collaborations with director Werner Herzog on soundtracks for Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, and an early performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Damon has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra’s Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Keith Rowe, Jaap Blonk,Roscoe Mitchell, Weasel Walter, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Weasel Walter, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and six great years in Houston, Texas working regularly with Alvin Fielder, Sandy Ewen, Thomas Helton, David Dove & Chris Cogburn. Damon moved to the Boston area in the fall of 2016 and began working with Jeb Bishop, Pandelis Karayorgis, Joe McPhee and Ra-Kalam Bob Moses and many others. Damon has run Balance Point Acoustics record label since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians.
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Damon Smith
http://www.balancepointacoustics.com
http://balancepointacoustics.bandcamp.com
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