Community Music Center
544 Capp Street Btwn 20th and 21st SF
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The 2007 EDGETONE NEW MUSIC SUMMIT

Pre-Concert Composer Q&A 7:30pm
Fields of Flowers , a night of spontaneous composition

BLOOM [Rent Romus|Thollem Mcdonas|Jon Brumit|Steven Baker] plus guests Liz Allbee & Tatsuya Nakatani(PA),
KIOUKU(NYC), Jim Ryan's FE3 Portland

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BLOOM is a spirited and colossal collaboration between pianist Thollem Mcdonas, multi-saxophonist and electronician Rent Romus, instrument builder Steven Baker, and drummer and found-object player Jon Brumit.
Their music features free group improvisations as well as interpretations of numerous textual and graphical scores offered up by Mcdonas and Brumit. The entire album is an organic construction and expression of solos, duos, and trios combining disparate and divergent stylistic histories with a sense of refreshing immediacy, intensity, and spontaneous inventiveness.

Avant/experimental trumpeter Liz Allbee, or Liz Albee, or Li z Al(l)bee, has been performing in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 6 years in many local groups, as well as solo. Her performances cross free-jazz, noise, improv, and punk boundaries with abandon, and involve dress-ups and all manner of sound-making devices. She has come to view the trumpet as “…more of an interface than an instrument,” and continuously adds more electronics and extended techniques, including the conch shell which has become central to her work. She notes that it eschews any issues of virtuosity (so prevalent in jazz).

Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion) is originally from Osaka, Japan. In 2006 he performed in 80 cities in 7 countries and collaborated with 163 artists worldwide. In the past 10 years he has released nearly 50 recordings on CD. He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. He utilizes drumset, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects, bells, and various sticks and bows to create an intense, organic music that defies category or genre. His music is based in improvised/ experimental music, jazz, free jazz, rock, and noise, yet retains the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music.
In addition to live solo and ensemble performances he works as a sound designer for film and television. He also teaches Masterclasses and Workshops at the University level. He also heads H&H Production, an independent record label and recording studio based in Easton, Pennsylvania. He was selected as a performing artist for the Pennsylvania Performing Artist on Tour (PennPat) roster as well as a Bronx Arts Council Individual Artist grant. New in 2007, Nakatani has created a 9-piece Bowed-Gong performance, which includes 40" and 35" gongs.

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KIOKU (NY) [Wynn Yamami, Christopher Ariza, Ali Sakkal]
Based in New York City, the musical group KIOKU presents traditional Asian folk music within a new context of collaborative experimentation and improvisation. The trio consists of Wynn Yamami (East and Southeast Asian percussion, including Japanese taiko, Korean gongs, and Filipino kulintang), Christopher Ariza (live laptop electronics), and Ali Sakkal (saxophones, percussion). While committed to the preservation of musical traditions, KIOKU (Japanese for "memory") acknowledges the plasticity of tradition and freely adopts musical techniques found within improv-based and new music circles.
They will perform four distinct compositions as well as present an interactive narrative with the attending audience. The first composition Binalig is inspired by the musical tradition Kulintang developed on the Filipino island of Mindanao. The second is Miyake inspired by the remote volcanic island of Miyake-jima of the eastern coast of Japan, a drumming style that mirrors the strenuous physical movement of island fishermen. The third is Pinari based on the Korean prayer song performed by shamans to invoke blessings to the spirits. The fourth is Yatai Bayashi inspired by the Shinto practice of talking to the kami spirits which take on many forms and can be found inhabiting natural and man made objects.

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Jim Ryan's FORWARD ENERGY trio [Jim Ryan, Robert Jones(OR), Andrew Wilshusen(OR)]
Jim Ryan, the Bay Area's grand master of free jazz founded Forward Energy ten years ago playing with various bay area musicians using the free jazz improv style he learned during a year-long participation in Steve Lacy’s weekly open sessions in Paris during the early 1970’s. He has honed his style to a sharp precision and will present his trio performing sound from their new CD FE3.
"...Forceful, immediate, inventive." - Signal to Noise
"The world needs more people like Jim Ryan. This incessantly active poet, musician, conscience agitator and visionary sax player is one of those artists who render subdivisions and classifications meaningless, in the name of a single torrential flood of creativity that mixes exuberance, enthusiasm and meditative portions of extraterritorial improvisation, the whole reinforced by a technical knowledge that only many years of playing at the forefront and on the fringes of convention can develop." - MASSIMO RICCI

Robert Jones learned to play the double bass from Winston Budrow at Michigan State University. He received his BA in contrabass performance and worked as an extra in several Midwest symphonic groups before moving to Portland, Oregon where he works with many improvisational ensembles including The Evolutionary Jass Band, Thee Oregon Artificial Limb Co. and Eternal Tapestry.

Andrew Wilshusen started drumming at ten but it got serious when he heard a Max Roach recording. He then listened intensely to late 40’s & 60’s jazz. He practiced the drums obsessively while obtaining his BA. He played in rock bands but was captured by avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical music. In 2000 he moved from the Midwest and immersed himself in the free jazz & improv music scenes of the San Francisco bay area. In 2005 he relocated to Portland expanding his work to accompany dancers and to cull new sounds from drums and found objects.

Cost: $10/5

Audio samples in which musicians at this event play:

Videos featuring musicians playing at this event