SIMM Series @ The Musicians Union Hall
116 9th St @ Mission SF
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7:30 pm Ends Meat' Catastrophe Jazz Ensemble
Erika Oba - piano/flute, Chris Bastian - bass, Eli Maliwan - tenor saxophone, Rachel Austin - vocals
8:30 PM Trouble Ensemble
Rent Romus, Joshua Marshall: saxophones, Jakob Pek: guitar, Tim DeCillis: vibraphone,
Andrew Jamieson: piano, Chris Lauf: drums, Ernest Larkins: voice

Drawing on their shared influences rooted in jazz, electronic, and experimental new music, the members of Ends Meat’ Catastrophe Jazz Ensemble compose and improvise new works centered on ritual, deep listening, and liberation.
Erika Oba is a composer, pianist/flutist, and educator based in the SF Bay Area. As a composer she has written works for big band, small jazz ensembles, chamber groups, dance and theater. As a performer she is a member of the Montclair Women’s Big Band, Ends Meat’ Catastrophe Jazz Ensemble, electro-jazz duo Rice Kings, and The Sl(e)ight Ensemble. She is currently on faculty with the Jazzschool Community Music School’s youth program, and is a resident music director for Berkeley Playhouse’s youth program. She received her BM in Jazz Piano Performance from Oberlin Conservatory and her MA in Music Composition from Mills College.


The spirituals illuminate the spiritual force that troubles the waters of injustice and oppression using the power of African and African American music and spirituality. Originally songs of black American slaves, they are rooted in song, dance and drumming of West Africa, the experience of oppression of an uprooted people, and the teachings of a transformative faith. They troubled the dominant narratives, and their message and tradition continue to trouble unjust systems today. Composers and experimenters (like Sun Ra, Charles Ives and Pauline Oliveros) troubled the musical establishment and its conventions as they envisioned radical new ways of making and listening to sound. Their traditions are a separate musical “voice” from African American spirituality and the two voices cannot merge into one. Instead, they must converse. Listen to one another. Learn from one another. Discover harmony. Enjoy dissonance. Each with our own distinct voices, we create, listen to, revere and question, the melody, rhythm and text derived from spirituals, and other songs they inspired, we revel in our own ways of enjoying, discovering and making
trouble.


Cost: sliding scale $10-20

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