Contrabassist James Ilgenfritz is visiting the Bay Area for a few days from New York, and we're glad to be able to have him play at Tom's Place. Ilgenfritz approaches the double bass as an archeologist, examining rarified aspects of the instrument's sonic palette to confound the status quo. His projects include Ensemble NSFW, the Anagram Sextet, and his solo developments of original music and that of various contemporary composers (including a well-regarded recording of the music of Anthony Braxton).
Clarinetist
Ben Goldberg is a key figure in the Bay Area improvisational scene, where he became known in the early 1990s as a member of the New Klezmer Trio.
A few years before that, he'd become friends and studied informally with clarinetist-turned-soprano-saxophonist Steve Lacy.
Over the past decade Sult has created a thrillingly dynamic and visceral sound world, forging a musical unity while also asserting the radically unique languages of its three core members. Their raw acoustic improvisations crackle with an energy that makes indirect communications reverberate on a cosmic level. Their music evokes natural phenomena; storms, landslides, tectonic frictions, lightning splitting forests of trees. Sult exists on the outer edges of free improvisation and the avant-garde, echoing the multi-layered, sonic intensity of AMM's Crypt era as well as Mauricio Kagel's most physical/textural work and the existential force of Helmut Lachenmann's "instrumental musique concrète".
https://sult.bandcamp.com/album/always-i-gnaw
COVID still hasn't gone away, so we have to make some accomodations to it. Seating will be strictly limited -- we may have to turn you away if we fill our (reduced) capacity. You must be vaccinated against COVID, and you must wear a mask while on the premises. We won't have any snacks, because it seems to me like that's incompatible with masking.
Cost: Free, donations accepted
Videos featuring musicians playing at this event
Gino Robair and John Butcher, 2008
Jacob Felix Heule, Clarke Robinson, Matt Ingalls