BEN RICHTERTHE OAKLAND REDUCTIONIST ORCHESTRA
In its West Coast premiere, composer-accordionist BEN RICHTER'S just-intonation accordion solo "Laramidia" creates an alien tonal landscape alternating among timbral fluctuations, melody and drone, and gradual resolution of shimmering, pulsing microtonal intervals. Inspired by nonhuman consciousness, Ben’s music orients toward new orders of magnitude in musical parameters to auralize the vast and infinitesimal timescales we do not experience in everyday life. Portions of Laramidia are featured on new 2CD Aurogeny (December 2023, Infrequent Seams), the follow-up to 2017’s Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean, hailed by Stephen Smoliar (The Rehearsal Studio) as “likely to offer a profound impact on the very nature of listening.” Ben is also the Artistic & Executive Director of Ghost Ensemble and music/sound curator of UMass-Amherst’s Futuring Lab, holds a Performer-Composer DMA from CalArts, and has collaborated with Loadbang, Middle Ear Project, SEM Ensemble, Nomi Epstein, Carmina Escobar, Jeonghyeon Joo, Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Michael Pisaro, and David Rothenberg.
The concert also features the OAKLAND REDUCTIONIST ORCHESTRA, a supergroup of local musicians with a predilection for lowercase/fricative/reductionist acoustic improvisation that often sounds more electronic than acoustic. This ensemble grows out of a rich tradition of "American reductionist" music that emerged (re-emerged?) in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Previous projects like
Tom Djll's "Grosse Abfahrt" and The Jack Wright Large Ensemble "Eight By Nine" document the Bay Area's contribution to the genre.
PERFORMERS
Kanoko Nishi-Smith, koto
Cody Putman, bassoon
Lisa Mezzacappa, bass
Kevin CK Lo, piano, etc
Cheryl E. Leonard, objects, electronics
Brendan Lai-Tong, trombone
Matt Ingalls, clarinets
Ron Heglin, tuba
Diane Grubbe, flutes
Sarah Grace Graves, voice
Tom Djll, trumpet
Kevin Corcoran, percussion
Chris Cooper, objects, electronics
Kyle Bruckmann, oboe
Cost: $10-$25 sliding scale
Videos featuring musicians playing at this event
avantNOIR, a suite of compositions for jazz quartet plus guests, is a musical companion to the crime novels of Dashiell Hammett and Paul Auster. All music by Lisa Mezzacappa.
The premiere, at the 2013 Outsound New Music Summit, of Wrack ...Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire (made possible by the Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commissioning program).
Tender Buttons at Second Act, SF, 2016; live video processing by Bill Thibault