Nathan Clevenger +
Jordan Glenn +
Kasey Knudsen + SAFA SHOKRAI +
Cory WrightUSUFRUCT (POLLY MOLLER SPRINGHORN +
Tim Walters)
USUFRUCT (YOO-zoo-fruckt) is the right of the people to harvest the fruits of common property. The duo Usufruct, consisting of flutist, composer, vocalist/improviser
POLLY MOLLER SPRINGHORN and computer musician
Tim Walters, deconstructs, lovingly reassembles, and improvises around found texts and musical materials in the public domain.
Both of us are veterans of the Transbay creative music scene and equally at home in contemporary classical, rock, and freely improvised musics. In founding Usufruct we set out to bring sounds from our free-improvisation vocabularies into a more compositional framework, and set up a creative process where both our minds can wander and come together sonically over sounds and words embedded in Western consciousness. We find them ripe for slicing, dicing, tenderizing, pickling, caramelization, maceration, marinading, and presentation with special sauces.
Nathan Clevenger TRIO
(Oakland musicians
Nathan Clevenger,
Jordan Glenn, and
Cory Wright) share a long and entwined history of collaboration across various projects, including Wiener Kids, Ashen Cleric, and Fellow Hominids. Formed in 2021, the trio has released 2 albums -- Late Arcade and Sunken Reliquary, and recently initiated a series of collaborations with guests, including
Kasey Knudsen, Crystal Pascucci, and
SAFA SHOKRAI. Working from, between, and against Clevenger’s compositional frames and utilizing the multi-instrumental flexibility of each player, the trio (and guests) weaves between non-idiomatic improvisation and often gnomic composed material, with focus on spaciousness and timbral detail.
Nathan Clevenger is an Oakland born composer and multi-instrumentalist, working on the margins of modern composition, jazz, and improvisation. In 2022, Clevenger released ‘i had a dream about amnesia’, an album compiling 2 suites for solo, duo, and trio configurations, composed and recorded during the Covid-19 lockdown. The eight-piece
Nathan Clevenger Group has released three albums, including ‘Stateless’ (2019, Slow & Steady Records). Current projects include a trio with
Jordan Glenn &
Cory Wright and the improvising chamber ensemble, Ashen Cleric. Notable recent performances include the premieres of extended compositions at the SF Contemporary Jewish Museum (‘for david berman’, performed by Ashen Cleric) and the Exploratorium (‘Ice Hours’, a multimedia collaboration with violinist/composer Kristina Dutton and artist Kim Miskowicz).
Jordan Glenn spent his formative years in Oregon and in 2006 relocated to the Bay Area where he received an MFA from Mills College. Since then he has been most closely associated with Fred Frith (FF Trio, Gravity Band), William Winant, Zeena Parkins (The Adorables), Roscoe Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, John Schott, Lisa Mezzacappa (avantNOIR, Glorious Ravage, Lisa Mezzacappa Six), Motoko Honda, Dominique Leone, Michael Coleman and the bands Jack O’ The Clock, Kyle Bruckmann’s Degradient, tUnE-yArDs, and the Oakland Active Orchestra. He has also worked with Rhys Chatham, Secret Chiefs 3, The Rova Sax Quartet, composer/bagpiper Matthew Welch and has been commissioned to create scores for evening-length dance pieces by Sharp & Fine and Liss Fain Dance. As a leader he has composed and conducted the trio Wiener Kids, Mindless Thing (a collaboration with poet Jim Ryan) and the percussion heavy large ensemble BEAK.
Reeds player and composer
Cory Wright studied music at Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Southern California and has been involved in both the jazz and creative music worlds for the past 20 years, including time spent in New York, Los Angeles and his current home in the San Francisco Bay Area. His recent projects reflect his interest in blurring the distinction between composed and improvised music, and in combining the harmonious with the atonal, the grooving with the arrhythmic. Wright has performed in ensembles led by Anthony Braxton, Vinny Golia, Todd Sickafoose, Adam Rudolph and Yusef Lateef. He is currently a member of Bristle, the
Nathan Clevenger Group, and Goggle (saxophone quartet) and leads his own projects Fellow Hominids and The Green Mitchell Trio.
Kasey Knudsen is a San Francisco-based saxophonist, composer & educator. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Jazz Composition from Berklee College of Music in 2002. She has been dubbed “one of the region’s most esteemed saxophonists” (Andrew Gilbert, San Francisco Classical Voice, 2018) and has “quietly become one of the essential voices in the Bay Area jazz scene” (Andrew Gilbert, East Bay Express, 2014). In addition to leading a number of her own projects, as a co-leader, she is involved in several groups including the Schimscheimer Family Trio, the Holly Martins, and the Klaxon Mutant Allstars. Knudsen collaborates frequently with many of the most unique musical voices in the Bay Area including multiple performances across the US and Europe with Tune-Yards, Fred Frith and the Gravity Band, the Charlie Hunter Quartet, Erik Jekabson, the Ian Carey Quintet + 1, Ben Goldberg, the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, Beth Schenck, and many more.
SAFA SHOKRAI is inspired by solid objects and abstract concepts. He strives to create the soundtrack for the film we all live in. Based in the Bay Area, Safa Shokrai has performed in many bands as both a freelancer and band leader in his 25 years as a professional musician. He has had the opportunity to study with jazz legend Ray Brown, the late great Jeff Chambers, and local stalwart Marcus Shelby. Safa has had the opportunity to travel around the world making music and brings all the music styles he has absorbed into his practice, from Tuareg to South Indian to European Romani. Currently he is working on composing new music for several bands he is involved with, including The Lost Shapes and Levitator, and is looking forward to recording some albums this year.
Cost: $10-$25 sliding scale