7:30 PM
*A Benefit for Outsound*
Come join us and experience the powerful sounds of this stellar gathering...
Thollem Mcdonas, piano
Masaru Koga, woodwinds & shakuhachi
Jim Kassis, percussion
Theresa Wong, cello
Scott Rosenberg, reeds
and more guests TBA"My favourite moments doing my reviewer's job are like this, the very instant when you come across a genius and are among the first ones to realize and tell the world." - Massimo Ricci, TouchingExtremes
Thollem's travels as a performer and teacher have covered much of the North American continent and Europe (he often leads listening and group improvisation workshops as well as master-classes). He has performed extensively as a soloist as well with groups. He is a founding member of several innovative ensembles, and is responsible, in full or in part, for many albums of original music on several different vanguard labels from several different countries. His music is diverse, with each album and every concert exploring a variety of approaches and paths, resulting in dramatically different outcomes.
Thollem is a recent recipient of a Meet The Composer grant. He was commissioned by The Limon Dance Company for a large-scale piece in commemoration of their 50th year anniversary. Last Autumn he spent 15 weeks playing 65 concerts circumnavigating the U.S. This September 2008 he marked history by being invited to perform the late works of Claude Debussy on the piano on which they were written, as well as his own comprovisations with Stefano Scodanibbio. The recording to be titled “They're Seen From Other Places” which was the first music ever recorded on Debussy's piano.
Thollem has performed in theaters, art galleries, universities, elementary schools, concert halls, jazz clubs, rock clubs, festivals, warehouses, house concerts, streets, forests, riots and on television and radio. He has performed piano concertos with symphonies, played in West African drumming troupes, Javanese gamelan ensembles, an afro-punk band, with hundreds of free improv groups, and as an accompanist and a composer for opera and modern dance. His music appeals to a wide variety of audiences because of these rich and wildly disparate experiences. Currently Thollem primarily plays his own comprovisations he calls “Eccentriclect Music, for people and everyone else”.
"With each song McDonas creates a universe of its own...very original... a fresh voice" - Dolf Mulder, VitalWeekly
" Thollem dives headlong into fascinating unforeseen and bold musical adventures that make him one of the most interesting pianists of the current improvised music genre." - Eduardo Chagas, Tomajazz
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One might call saxophonist and flutist Masaru Koga a product of the internationalization of corporate Japan in the 70's. He was born in Chiba, Japan, but spent most of his childhood moving with his family from and to different parts of the world. By the time he was in high school, he had already lived in three different countries; namely Japan, the U.S. and what was West Germany at the time. His latest and also the longest relocation has been in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has been a member of its musical community for the past eleven years.
He has traveled and performed with artists such as Hafez Modirzadeh, Anthony Brown, Mark Izu, Royal Hartigan, and Fred Ho.
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One might call saxophonist and flutist Masaru Koga a product of the internationalization of corporate Japan in the 70's. He was born in Chiba, Japan, but spent most of his childhood moving with his family from and to different parts of the world. By the time he was in high school, he had already lived in three different countries; namely Japan, the U.S. and what was West Germany at the time. His latest and also the longest relocation has been in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has been a member of its musical community for the past eleven years.
He has traveled and performed with artists such as Hafez Modirzadeh, Anthony Brown, Mark Izu, Royal Hartigan, and Fred Ho.
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Theresa Wong is an improviser and composer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her current work spans the areas of improvisation, composition, video, performance art and large scale performance pieces. After studying design, she became interested in an art form which would unite the visual arts with sound and performance. Current and recent projects include solo songs for cello, voice and piano, Call It Culture, a cello duo written for and performed with Joan Jeanrenaud, collaborations with Ellen Fullman and Kanoko Nishi, and Necessary Monsters, a theater set song cycle led by violinist Carla Kihlstedt. In 2006 she wrote, directed and performed an improvised opera, L( )VE, which was presented at Mills College in Oakland California. In 2005 she gave a solo show of improvisations on cello and amplified bicycle as well as a video piece at the Fondation Cartier in Paris as a part of the J'en rêve exhibition.
Her performances have been included in the Unlimited 21 Festival in Wels, Austria, the Other Minds Brink series in San Francisco, the Radio France broadcast, A L'improviste, the Seattle Improvised Music Festival and at The Stone in New York City. She has collaborated and performed with such artists as Fred Frith, Tatsuya Nakatani, Joelle Leandre, Gianni Gebbia, Luciano Chessa, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, MaryClare Brzytwa and June Watanabe. Theresa completed an MFA in performance at Mills College in 2006 where she studied with Fred Frith, Alvin Curran, Annie Gosfield and cello with Gianna Abondolo and Joan Jeanrenaud.
http://www.theresawong.org/
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Chicago-based saxophonist, flutist and clarinetist Scott Rosenberg (1972), a student of Anthony Braxton, has expanded the vocabulary of jazz music with a repertory of cacophonous sounds that show no respect for logic or rhythm. Belonging to the same generation of reed revolutionaries Greg Kelley, Bhob Rainey and Axel Dorner, Rosenberg has applied his anarchic techniques in different settings, ranging from free-form solos to chamber music, from big bands to orchestras.
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Cost: $10-100 donation