SAFEhouse Arts
145 Eddy St. SF
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Big Drama No Drama, DunkelpeK & Jon Raskin

Footloose presents a night of experimental music and performance. Jon Raskin will open the evening with the California premiere of Steve Lacy’s “Practitioners Book P” saxophone solos on baritone saxophone. Daniel Larlham of Big Drama No Drama brings original monologues and songs from his latest avant-rock opera. DunkelpeK is percussionist Nava Dunkelman and guitarist Jakob Pek. This iconoclastic duo creates a progressive, avant-garde music informed by various improvisational and contemporary music practices. Each set of performers opens up the interplay between chaos and order, technique and impulse, simplicity and sophistication.

Jon Raskin: "Steve Lacy, the late great American Jazz Soprano Saxophonist, is an inspiration on many levels for me, as a saxophonist, composer and how he approached being a musical artist. His sound and language on the soprano sax were focused and at the same time malleable so the phrases in his compositions were always revealing more depth and nuance. He advised to 'Play difficult and interesting things. if you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite….' And I’ve taken his advice and challenged myself to learning his 3 books of solo works he called “The Practitioner’s” to keep his music alive and honor his impact on my life." Jon Raskin has been a member of Rova Saxophone Quartet for the last 42 years. He has performed and/or recorded with Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Sam Rivers, Tim Berne, Phillip Johnston, Leo Smith, Frank Gratkowsi, Phillip Greenlief, and Henry Kaiser. www.facebook.com/JonRaskinSaxophone/

Big Drama No Drama is a multi-disciplinary music-theatre collaboration between Daniel Larlham and Liz DeRoche. For this evening’s performance, Daniel will be performing in collaboration with Jakob Pek of DunkelpeK, while Liz is away on a national tour. The project supplies a screwball diagnosis of our culture, with its overdriven materialism, egoic grandiosity, and radical confusion about the basic stakes of a human life. Their debut production, Shock Shock Shakeup, premiered to positive acclaim at the Above Ground festival presented by Footloose in June 2019. www.facebook.com/bigdramanodrama

DunkelpeK's sound transfigures and hybridizes many musics. Nava Dunkelman and Jakob Pek met in the improvisation ensemble at Mills College, and together they have shared the stage with Fred Frith, Theresa Wong, Arrington De Dionyso, among others. They currently reside in Oakland, California, where they perform and teach regularly. www.facebook.com/dunkelpek/

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