(#3) TRIOS: Stevie Richards (Australia) + Jon Bafus + Marc Zollinger / Diaspora Focii Trio
Visiting from Australia, STEVIE RICHARDS performs analog electronics and saxophone with local percussionist JON BAFUS and guitarist MARC ZOLLINGER in a set of trio improvisation.
DIASPORA FOCII (KERSTI ABRAMS, Alto Sax Flute + Kalimba;
Mika Pontecorvo - Guitar + Electronics; JAROBA - Tenor Sax + Bass Clarinet) performs freely improvised electroacoustic atmospheric chamber music.
JON BAFUS is a drummer/percussionist, composer and creator of things based in Sacramento. With interest in both free improvisation and intricate composition, Current projects include his band Gentleman Surfer, percussion duo Invasive Species, and Trio JO(H)NS. Bafus has performed with many great musicians including (but not limited to) Jon Raskin, John Shiurba, Vinny Golia, Steuart Liebig, Ross Hammond, Randy McKean, Kevin Corcoran, Tatsuya Nakatani, Phillip Greenlief, Rent Romus, Nick Reinhart, Stevie Richards, Michael Saalman, Tony Passarell, Clifford Childers, Joshua Marshall, Eli Wallace, and Carson McWhirter.
STEVIE RICHARDS is a woodwind player and DIY Electronics performer currently based in Melbourne, Australia. He has been touring Europe, the United States and South-East Asia regularly for the last 8 years and is an active participant in the avant-garde / improvisation environment of Naarm / Melbourne. He has been the sound engineer, one of several curators and a committee member of Make It Up Club in Melbourne since 2002. He started performing in the alternative music scene in Sydney in the eighties, where he found and appreciation for improvisation and electronic music. As a musician, he has moved through noise, free jazz, ambient and electroacoustic music both as a soloist and through deliberate international collaboration.
Brazillian-born and Oakland-based MARC ZOLLINGER is a guitarist and composer. As a composer, Marc has premiered works for chamber ensembles ranging from large ensemble to solos. As a performer he has played alongside musicians such as Kamasi Washington and William Winant at venues like the Watts Jazz Festival, the San Francisco Jewish Museum, and the ODC Theater. Marc has a BA in Composition from Berklee College of Music and an MA in Composition from Mills College where he studied with Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Frith, and Zeena Parkins.
KERSTI ABRAMS plays alto sax and flute in this ensemble. She also currently performs with the Evidence Trio as well as other experimental groups present and past. Her interest in other cultures and musics has led to living and travelling extensively in Japan, Southeast Asia and elsewhere, and to experiments with mbira and North African reed instruments. Another interest is in the possibilities of improvisation and creative collaboration in addressing our current social/political crisis and creating a liveable future.
JAROBA (JAmes RObert BArnes) hales from upstate New York.He is a multi-instrumentalist, playing saxophones, clarinets, and electronics. This is augmented by his musical instrument inventor/crafter inventing and crafting of musical instruments and solutions. In Diaspora Focii trio he performs primarily on Bass Clarinet and Tenor Sax. He has studied saxophone with Frank Littel and Steve Adams. He has work with brings his innovative inventive nature to the practice of collective improvisation and composition.
Mika Pontecorvo plays electric guitar and designs and codes subtle computer-based realtime electronic process architectures around the acoustic instrumental dynamics of Trio. His life has taken him across a wide area of art. science, and technology. He began as a self-defined experimentalist musician learning his art living isolated in the western U.S. Desert, playing guitar and composing tape and electronic music, later studying composition with electronic music pioneer Vladimir Ussachevsky, He went on to work/research in areas of AI and VR systems. His latest research is on Complex Adaptive Systems and their application to visual art and music. This has brought him back to being an improvising guitarist experimentalist.
Cost: $10-$25 sliding scale