Violinist and Composer Concetta Abbate presents a program of music for solo violin and voice to showcase her new music and arts organization Sound & Memory. After completing her Death Doula certification in 2021 Concetta saw a need to incorporate music into contemporary rituals for both grief and death, as tradition evolves over time. She will present a program of original compositions and arrangements which highlight the healing nature of music around loss, and filling the void or empty space with warmth and regeneration. Sound & Memory provides music memorial offerings at sliding scale rates and accepts tax deductible donations through its fiscal sponsor the Groupmuse Foundation.

Concetta Abbate centers death, life, and their interplay in her work as a violinist, vocalist, and composer. Her work invites contemplation, reverie, and play into spaces often avoided: grief, loss, decay, and taboo. Abbate uses beauty as an entry point to make complex sonic forms accessible to a diverse audience. Her music elegantly crosses genres, drawing on her classical training and decades of study in jazz, folk, and popular forms. Using her violin as an extension of her voice, she weaves enchanting story-songs that ask profound, challenging questions.
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Please join us for the last installment of The Opus Project in the 2023-2024 season, Opus 4!

We have an exciting program, featuring composers Marie Herrington, Mark Alburger, Ravel, Gounod (in a world-premiere arrangement by Jonny Incipido), Hindemith, Nadia Boulanger, Sarasate, and Copland!

Playing and singing on this concert we have newcomers Paul Dab on piano, Emily Tate Daniel as a soprano, Caleb Alexander as a tenor, Charles McGregor as a baritone, Sarah Biagini on violin, and Stephen Zielinski on clarinet. Returning Opus Project favorites will be singers Megan Cullen and Maya Goell.
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THIS S#^T IS UGLY
Thomas Dimuzio - live electronics
Phillip Greenlief - tenor saxophone, Bb clarinet
Wobbly - live electronics, sampling, all the other things

TSIU Is a trio sound bath of fire and ice in rainbow colors - the kind of music that leaves light stains on the soles of your feet. Tt will also be one of the final performances from soon-to-be-no-longer bay area saxophonist Phillip Greenlief with still waking in san francisco electronic wizards Thomas Dimuzio and Wobbly (Jon Leidecker). Electro-acoustic improvisation, sure, but not the well mannered stuff that could pass for Audi commercials. this is America, after all, where water is soon to be an endangered species.
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This is the first solo concert of Yifan Shao. He will be premiering his latest work Colors of the Wind and Love Letter. Get ready to embark on a Spiritual journey.

Artist Bio:
Yifan Shao (b.2003) is a Chinese composer, vocalist, photographer, painter, poet, and performance artist.

Yifan Shao's music is fluid, relational, and nonlinear. Instead of directly developing certain melodic, harmonic, or timbral motifs, he manipulates the relationship between the elements via various approaches of permutation, fission, diffusion, compression, and extension with the inspirations from his diverse background in music, visual art, performance art, and literature to achieve a delicate dynamic equilibrium. While running rigorous experiments of microtone, micropolyphony, and polyrhythm, he also involves improvisation, interaction, and aleatoricism on appropriate occasions. His voice is also a powerful weapon: he sings over five octaves, ranging from profound undertone to radiant overtone, magnificent bel canto to ethereal folk, and acrobatic leap to subtle microinterval.

As a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary artist, Yifan Shao tirelessly seeks for diverse voices. His work has been performed or exhibited all over the world, including but not limited to Carnegie Hall, Center for New Music (San Francisco), Foreign Cinema Modernism West Gallery, Blank Wall Gallery, Huntington Beach Art Center, and Artly Mix Espaço Cultural. His poems have been published by Columbia Journal of Asia and Beyond Words Literary Magazine.

Yifan Shao is the recipient of the Emerging Composer Award from Tribeca New Music, and has been in residence at Nordingrå Konstby in Sweden and Musical Life Foundation in Carnegie Hall, United States. He is a PhotoVogue photographer and a member of ArtSpan.
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NYC jazz guitarist Paul Kogut presents selections from his ongoing project of reimagining classic Grateful Dead tunes through new harmonic lenses. He will be joined by violinst & composer Niko Omar Durr performing music by Saariaho and Corigliano.

For the past 25 years, Paul Kogut has been steadily building an international reputation as a jazz guitarist and composer. His latest CD, “Turn of Phrase” features the legendary rhythm section of George Mraz and Lewis Nash. It’s release in August 2012 on the Chicago-based Blujazz label was met with heavy airplay and critical acclaim, with Grammy-winning journalist Neil Tesser saying “Here’s the main thing to know: you won’t hear a better guitar-trio album this year.” Hiro Yamanaka of Jazz Guitar Book Japan calls Paul “a great player with a contemporary style” and The Chicago Tribune says “There's no question that Kogut stands as a serious player with a sophisticated sense of harmony and a penchant for meticulously honed motifs.” Paul has worked with artists Charles Earland, Clark Terry and J.R. Monterose; current appearances put him in the company of George Mraz, Lewis Nash, Drew Gress, Vinnie Sperrazza, Francois Moutin, Ari Hoenig, Kelly Sill, Carlton Holmes, and Sheryl Bailey. In addition he has led his own trio at numerous venues, including Manhattan’s renowned 55 Bar, Chicago’s Jazz Showcase , Nighttown Cleveland, Chris’ Jazz Cafe Philadelphia, Austin's Elephant Room, Porgy & Bess Vienna, Inntone Fest Austria, Brucknerhaus Concert Hall, Cafe Museum Passau, Chingusa Yokohama, Montgomeryland Tokyo, Planet Arts Jazz One2One, and the Red Hook Jazz Festival. He was featured at the Jazz and Colors Fare Thee Well celebration of the Grateful Dead at Chicago’s Field Museum.

Niko Umar Durr (b.1995) is a composer and violinist who has been active in the music/composition community in the San Francisco/Oakland area for 22 years. Living in the Bay Area has offered them many opportunities to learn and hone their skills as a composer.
Niko was a student at The Crowden School and during this time they became a student of composer Molly Axtmann. Soon after Niko joined the inaugural class of the John Adams Young Composers Program and eventually became a student of John Adams himself. Niko has had works performed by Left Coast Chamber Ensemble as well as various faculty and students associated with The Crowden School and Oakland School for the Arts from 2009-2013. Niko was also director of music at Harmonikos, a young composer/performer’s forum organized by fellow Crowden students from 2009-2013.
Niko has performed with Young People’s Symphony Orchestra (YPSO) in Berkeley, CA, Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (BARS), in San Francisco, CA, Berklee Contemporary Symphony Orchestra (BCSO) at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, Oakland Civic Orchestra (OCO), in Oakland CA, and the recently established International Pride Orchestra (IPO) in San Francisco, CA. In 2021, Oakland Civic Orchestra announced Niko as Composer-in-Residence. Since then the community based orchestra has premiered several works including most recently “Zephyr in Gemini” and “Renegade”.
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Fire at the Plantation House (FatPH) celebrates the release of their debut album “Southampton Insurrection”. An afternoon of memorable melodies and mosh-inducing riffs!
Fire at the Plantation House is a one-person project based on occupied Ohlone land (otherwise known as San Francisco) FatPH lyrically wrestles with the injustices that shape our world and pushes the musical boundaries of its sole member, John Angel. Weaving together eclectic genres such as death metal, bluegrass, neo-soul, and sacred choir, Angel creates vast musical journeys that manage to stay rooted in memorable melodies and mosh-inducing riffs. FatPH’s debut album, Southampton Insurrection, explores how systems of oppression in the past project themselves into our present and future and confronts what it is to be a person of privilege who wants to change the world for the better.

fatph.com
fatph.bandcamp.com
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Composers from SFSU will present a variety of music, newly composed and improvised.
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Gachapon features players Nancy Beckman, Cindy Webster, Tom Bickley and Dean Santomieri. For this performance featuring dancer Christina Braun. Photo of Christina by Tim Walters.

Artist bios:

Cindy Webster is a Board Certified Music Therapist/Therapeutic Musician
working in the San Francisco east Bay. She also plays the musical saw, Hurdy-gurdy and other things as well. An admirer of avant-garde music, she creates soundscapes using found objects, found sounds and effects. She has
appeared in San Francisco, Dublin, Zootown and Grass Valley Fringe Festivals; Y2K Loop Festivals in Providence, Santa Cruz and Mexico;
Musical Saw Festivals in Austria, New York and California; trees, phone booths, rooftops, film and recordings. Cindy has been described as, “She can do more with her voice and saw than you can do with anything,”

Nancy Beckman
https://tigergarage.org/nancy-beckman/

Studied Myoan-Ryu shakuhachi honkyoku through Meianji Temple in Kyoto for
five years, receiving the name Fukushin and the license (menkyo Kaiden) to teach from the temple. Later, she studied various types of shakuhachi and
ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University. She also graduated from the Music for Healing and Transition Program, where she played shakuhachi and lyre
for hospice. As a member of ensembles Gusty Winds May Exist (with Tom Bickley), The Cornelius Cardew Choir and Dream Down Duvet, she improvises
and plays experimental music and composes improvisational sound
meditations. She lives in Berkeley and teaches the traditional Myoan
shakuhachi repertoire.

Tom Bickley
https://tigergarage.org/

Composer/performer (EWI, electronics)
Studied Gregorian chant, other medieval music, and African
American sacred music, and recorder. His degrees are in music, liturgy and
library and information science. He is certified by Pauline Oliveros to
teach the meditative improv techniques of Deep Listening. In addition to his work with new music ensembles Gray Code and Comma, he has performed with Pauline Oliveros, Anne LeBaron, Viv Corringham, Philip Gelb, the
Denison Kimball Trio, the Scratch Orchestra and others. He is active in the duo Gusty Winds May Exist, with shakuhachi player Nancy Beckman, co-founded and directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir, and teaches for the
Center for Deep Listening @ RPI and the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training.

Dean Santomieri
http://www.deansantomieri.com

Guitar, Taishogoto and spoken word artist; composing / improvising for guitars in non-standard tunings. He is active in the San Francisco Bay
Area free improvisation music scene and has been associated with the groups, Donkey Boy, Malcolm Mooney and the 10th Planet, The Cornelius Cardew Choir, Ghost in the House, I Franzen, and since 2011,
Santomieri-Farhadian Duo. He has also collaborated with dancers Christina Braun, Dawn McMahan, Kinji Hayashi and others.
CD recordings: Crude Rotation, musique concrète, 3” CD, 2000. The Boy Beneath the Sea, story narration and music, 2001. Facebook, the Opera, for
three singers and piano, 2013. Santomieri-Farhadian Duo, RedBlue, guitar and violin, 2015.

Christina Braun, Movement collaborator.

Christina Braun’s choreography has been presented by the International Butoh Festival Thailand, the West Wave Dance Festival and the Asian Art Museum. Christina has been working in collaboration with composers since 2002, most extensively with instrument inventor Tom Nunn and David Samas of Pet the Tiger. As SF Butoh Lab, Christina has produced Butoh dance symposia, performances and workshops to strengthen a
culture of peace with collaborative art practices.
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Gachapon: A quartet featuring Nancy Beckman, Cindy Webster, Tom Bickley
and Dean Santomieri; playing a variety of instruments including:
shakuhachi, lyre, EWI (electronic wind instrument), bowed, amplified saw,
hurdy-gurdy, guitar, taishogoto, percussion and voice. Collaborating, for
this performance, with dancer Christina Braun. A Gachapon is a Japanese vending machine that dispenses small toys in capsules.

Christina Braun’s choreography has been presented by the International
Butoh Festival Thailand, the West Wave Dance Festival and the Asian Art
Museum. Christina has been working in collaboration with composers since
2002, most extensively with Tom Nunn. As SF Butoh Lab, Christina has
produced Butoh dance symposia, performances and workshops to strengthen a
culture of peace with collaborative art practices.


Gachapon:

Cindy Webster

Cindy Webster is a Board Certified Music Therapist/Therapeutic Musician
working in the San Francisco east Bay. She also plays the musical saw,
Hurdy-gurdy and other things as well. An admirer of avant-garde music, she
creates soundscapes using found objects, found sounds and effects. She has
appeared in San Francisco, Dublin, Zootown and Grass Valley fringe
Festivals; Y2K Loop Festivals in Providence, Santa Cruz and Mexico;
Musical Saw Festivals in Austria, New York and California; trees, phone
booths, rooftops, film and recordings. Cindy has been described as, “She
can do more with her voice and saw than you can do with anything,”

Nancy Beckman
https://tigergarage.org/nancy-beckman/

Studied Myoan-Ryu shakuhachi honkyoku through Meianji Temple in Kyoto for
five years, receiving the name Fukushin and the license (menkyo Kaiden) to
teach from the temple. Later, she studied various types of shakuhachi and
ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University. She also graduated from the Music
for Healing and Transition Program, where she played shakuhachi and lyre
for hospice. As a member of ensembles Gusty Winds May Exist (with Tom
Bickley), The Cornelius Cardew Choir and Dream Down Duvet, she improvises
and plays experimental music and composes improvisational sound
meditations. She lives in Berkeley and teaches the traditional Myoan
shakuhachi repertoire.

Tom Bickley
https://tigergarage.org/

Composer/performer (EWI, electronics)
Studied Gregorian chant, other medieval music, and African
American sacred music, and recorder. His degrees are in music, liturgy and
library and information science. He is certified by Pauline Oliveros to
teach the meditative improv techniques of Deep Listening. In addition to
his work with new music ensembles Gray Code and Comma, he has performed
with Pauline Oliveros, Anne LeBaron, Viv Corringham, Philip Gelb, the
Denison Kimball Trio, the Scratch Orchestra and others. He is active in
the duo Gusty Winds May Exist, with shakuhachi player Nancy Beckman,
co-founded and directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir, and teaches for the
Center for Deep Listening @ RPI and the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training.

Dean Santomieri
http://www.deansantomieri.com

Guitar, Taishogoto and spoken word artist; composing / improvising for
guitars in non-standard tunings. He is active in the San Francisco Bay
Area free improvisation music scene and has been associated with the
groups, Donkey Boy, Malcolm Mooney and the 10th Planet, The Cornelius
Cardew Choir, Ghost In The House, I Franzen, and since 2011,
Santomieri-Farhadian Duo. He has also accompanied dancers Christina Braun,
Dawn McMahan, Kinji Hayashi and others.
CD recordings: Crude Rotation, musique concrète, 3” CD, 2000. The Boy
Beneath the Sea, story narration and music, 2001. Facebook, the Opera, for
three singers and piano, 2013. Santomieri-Farhadian Duo, RedBlue, guitar
and violin, 2015.
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Join us for the opening reception for Peter Whitehead’s “Difficult Listening for Beginners” the latest Window Gallery Exhibit! Peter will give a demonstration of his invented instruments. Reception with light refreshments at 6pm followed by artist talk/demo at 7pm. RSVP for this FREE event!!

Artist Statement:

Two of my earliest memories are of listening to Hank Williams on the radio and playing with the odd electronic sounds produced by poor radio reception when moving the dial up and down. Since then my musical tastes have always been moving somewhere between these two extremes.

Having experimented with the sonic possibilities of found objects, kitchenware and electric guitars for several years I made my first musical instruments while traveling in Northern Thailand in 1989, using available local materials such as bamboo, bicycle spokes, tin cans and rice.



Instrument building became an excellent way for me to combine my interests in sculpture and music and early on I set about creating my own mini orchestra of original instruments and unique sounds. Soon I was invited to compose scores for live dance and films, which lead to live performance and songwriting. Along the way I met many of the Northern California instrument builders community often playing together with them in various combinations.

I have derived many of my instruments from existing folk instruments from around the world, making my own versions using unconventional materials. In most cases I have then had to teach myself how to play whatever I had made.

As time progressed I began incorporating a wider variety of sound sources into the compositions. I have used invented instruments together with electronic keyboards, sampling, looping, toys, vocals and many conventional instruments in various combinations to create both songs and instrumental music.

I grew up on Pop and Rock music in the days when there was a lot of experimentation even in mainstream music, so the influence of this music is never too far away.



Bio:

Peter Whitehead is a composer, performer, songwriter, instrument builder, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist. He works with both acoustic and electronics sounds. The instruments he builds are often based on folk instruments from around the world, and feature unusual or found materials in place of traditional ones, (e.g. a banjo made from a metal pan). His instruments have appeared in exhibitions at The Oakland Museum (’97), The L.A. Municipal Museum of Art (’97) the Vancouver Museum (’98), The Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, San Francisco (’99) , ODC Theater Gallery S.F.(’00), Gallery 60Six San Francisco (’12), Center for New Music SF (13), Bridge Arts Center, Richmond CA (’19), Ojai Arts Center CA(22), Arc Gallery SF (23), Studio Valencia SF (23)

He creates scores for film and dance and performs solo work using a variety of homemade sound sources, plus an array of more conventional instruments alongside electronic keyboards, toys and sampling.



He is also a member of Closer To Carbon, a trio featuring bass, cello, spike fiddles, sampler, percussion, toys and an array of conventional, invented & found instruments. He was a founder-member of San Francisco’s critically acclaimed Mobius Operandi performance group, known for its spectacular, large-scale, multi-media events. In this ensemble he functioned as musician, actor and musical director. (Exit Vacaville ’95/96, Xibalba, ’97). He is also an original member of the Conspiracy of Beards, a 30-member, all-male, acapella choir which performs exclusively the songs of Leonard Cohen.

For Dance he has composed several full length scores, including Giselle (Underbelly Dance Theater ’94), Come Live With Me and You’ll Know Me (Rachel Kaplan ’97), The Tree of Life ( Michelle Stortz ’97), dear (Maxine Moerman ’96), Red Tuba (Charles Moulton ’98). Anna Halprin Turns 80 (’00), Monk at the Met /Feast of Souls (Sarah Shelton Mann ‘00 – ’03 , with Norman Rutherford), Just Dancing ( Jess Curtis & Gravity ‘06), Frame Dances (Susan Marshall & Company ‘08), Adamantine (Susan Marshall & Company ’09), Quiet to Departure ( Leigh Evans ’10), Botany’s Breath ( Epiphany Dance ’13), Angles of Enchantment ( Garret/Moulton ’14), Shall we go ( 10HL ’18), XO ( Randee Paufve 18)

In 2010 he composed music for a solo by Mikhail Baryshnikov, “For You”, choreographed by Susan Marshall and performed at the Baryshnikov Arts Center NY.

His film scores include Testing the Waters (Elena Konstantinou’10), Bag It (Michelle Hill ’10), Dancing Across Borders (Anne Bass’10), The Key of G (Robert Arnold ‘06), Following Sean (Ralph Arlick ’04), American Dream 2.0 ( Jennifer Thompson ’03), City of Ghosts (Matt Dillon ’02), China Diary & 24 Girls (Eva Brzeski ‘02 & ’97), Shift (Maxine Moerman ’97), the theme music for the San Francisco International Film Festival (’97), Fortune Tell (Robert Strauss ’95).



His recorded music appears on six solo CDs: Three Bags Full (Strange Attractor Records ‘98) Now This, Giselle, Under the Gun, Adamantine, The Brightness of the day is bigger than the bed – (‘01, ‘03, ‘06, ’10, ’12 – Out of Round Records), Angles of Enchantment (’12) with the group Closer To Carbon ( Out Of Round ‘01 & ‘07), with Mobius Operandi on the CD What Were We Thinking (Mobius Music ’98) and in the Ellipsis Arts CD/book of experimental musical instrument builders Orbitones Spoonharps & Bellowphones (’98) and in numerous guest appearances, especially for fellow Out of Round Artists with whom he co-founded the label in 2001.

Since 2017 he has appeared as a guest lead vocalist on four albums with San Francisco Art Rock band The Residents.

He has traveled extensively in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Viet Nam, Malaysia, Indonesia & Morocco collecting music and instruments along the way.

Originally from England he has lived in the US since 1975, mostly in San Francisco and New York.
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Godwaffle Noise Pancakes now in it's 24th year! Join us for noise music paired with gourmet, vegan pancakes!!
Heartworm---------------------
Dominic Cramp--------------
Liver Cancerr------------------
Ava Koohbor-------------------
Brian Day------------------------
Free vegan gourmet pancakes with entry fee!
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