Kurt Heyl and the Ad-hoc Microtonal String Quartet
Kurt Heyl, soprano and alto trombones, voice, etc.
Ben Wright, bass
Bob Marsh, cello
Jonathan Segel, viola
Jeff Hobbs, violin
8pm
Bob Marsh - cello
Now a resident of the Bay Area in San Francisco, Bob Marsh performs regularly on violin, cello, piano, vibraphone, flute, and uses extended vocal techniques. He is a composer/improvisor with an extrodinary range and humanity to his playing. Whatever the medium of his music, it carriers a distinctive charge of gibberish from the ID, a kind of subliminal fragmenting of voices which recalls states of consciousness on the verge of sleep. He is the founder of the Quintessentials, Opera Viva with Carol Genetti, the Emergency String Quartet and the Emergency Piano Quintet. He is also a long-time improvisation partner of Jack Wright.
Ben Wright (New Mexico) - acoustic bass
Wright lives in Questa New Mexico and plays acoustic bass, baritone, musical saw, and various invented instruments. He plays in a folk-noise band, Art of Flying, and Questa Liberation Marching Band. The Questites collaborate on additional concurrent projects, including free improvisation and experimentation with homemade instruments. His roots are in Philadelphia in punk rock, with a tendency towards screwing up the rhythm, rendering it undanceable, except for the double-jointed. This naturally leads to breakdowns. Improvising music has been the center for him, from which other structured forms radiate. He has only incidental classical training. The rest is brute force. "I play improvised music for the sheer bliss of that instant when I lose consciousness of my instrument, my training, and myself. There is only music."
Kurt Heyl (New Mexico) - soprano/tenor trombone/voice
born in 1942 on the Southside of Chicago, now living near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over the last eight years, Kurt Heyl has worked at extending the sound qualities of the trombone and voice. He also associates his playing with his painting, thinking of it in terms of gestures, open-arm gestures that can transfer from action painting to trombone. At the same time, his tastes in music have brought him to experimental 20th Century classical music and the improvised music from Europe and the States, away from the tonal centers towards micro-tonal playing. Textures have become very important to his music, as they have in his paintings, which can be viewed at
www.labisagra.com More than gestures and textures, the interaction of being present while creating music with other players is what draws him most to improvised music, living in the instantaneousness of art.
Cost: $6-10