SIMM Series
Musicians Union Hall 116 9th St @ Mission SF
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Outsound Presents
7:30 PM The Spirit Moves US
Jim Ryan / Bob Marsh / Spirit
8:30 PM Bloom Project (Thollem McDonas & Rent Romus)CD Release performance of "Sudden Aurora" Edgetone Records

"The Spirit Moves Us" is a recently formed trio of musical veterans who have worked with each other in various groups and on several recordings over the past decade. Spirit, on percussion, is considered to be one of the most versatile and advanced drummers in the Bay Area. Bob Marsh's solidly founded cello work allows him to experiment freely and with ease, and Jim Ryan's "Forward Energy" groups have played and recorded throughout the Bay Area and across the country.

Bloom Project is a Spirited and colossal collaboration between international touring pianist Thollem McDonas, multi-saxophonist producer Rent Romus.
Bloom Project features free improvisations as well as interpretations of numerous textual and graphical scores. The music is an organic construction and expression of combining disparate and divergent stylistic histories with a sense of refreshing immediacy, intensity, and spontaneous inventiveness. Guest recording and performing musicians have include instrument builder Steven Baker, drummer and found-object player Jon Brumit, trumpet and electronics artists Liz Albee, and percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani.

Thollem McDonas, pianist/ composer/improviser, was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area of Irish and Cherokee descent. He is currently touring perpetually, back and forth between Europe and the states, mostly as a soloist but also in collaboration with many other individuals and groups. He began his musical training as a young child rigorously studying the keyboard repertoire from the renaissance to the 20th century. After graduating with degrees in both piano performance and composition he decided to wander and live out of a backpack for
several years rather than pursue a career as a concert pianist with a suit and tie. He has found a unique path that combines his many interests, experiences, concerns, and skills. His travels as a performer have covered much of the North American continent and Europe. 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. He was commissioned by The Limon Dance Company for a large-scale piece in commemoration of their 50th year anniversary. He is a recent recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Meet The Composer grant.
Thollem has performed in theaters, art galleries, universities, elementary schools, concert halls, jazz clubs, rock clubs, festivals, warehouses, house concerts, streets, forests, the Shoshone Desert at the Nevada nuclear test site, on television, radio, in circuses, and riots. He has performed piano concertos with symphonies, played in West African drumming troupes, Javanese gamelan ensembles, and with hundreds of free improv groups all as well as working as an accompanist and a composer for opera and modern dance. It is because of these rich and wildly disparate experiences that his music is so dynamic and appeals to such a wide variety of audiences.
Currently Thollem primarily plays his own comprovisations which he calls eccentriclect music, for people and everyone else. His music whispers/screams, "there are as many worlds in a life as there are lives in the world".

"McDonas welds elements of jazz, blues and classical music into a mighty tower of song, then shatters his construct with the breathless bull-rush of a mystic improviser." -The River Front Times

Rent Romus alto and soprano saxophones,is a force spanning over twenty years of D.I.Y. music production, performance, and curation. He is heavily involved in stretching past the confines of standard music forms performing his original compositions and improvisations in a wide variety of musical settings. He is also focused in presenting and supporting the local experimental and avant-garde community at large with his grass-root philanthropic vision for total artistic self expression and freedom from generic branding.

From his very beginnings as a student of Jazz while being exposed to the twilight tutelage of Stan Getz he found himself drawn to the outer realms of music. From 1986 to present day Rent Romus has recorded and released twenty two explorative albums as a leader featuring a cross section of new up and coming musicians as well as seasoned veterans of the improvised arts that have included Jason Olaine, Steve Rossi, Chico Freeman, John Tchiai, Jonas Müller, Stefan Pasborg, Toyoji Tomita, Dave Mihaly, Bill Noertker, CJ Borosque, Philip Everett, Ray Scheaffer, Paris Slim, Jesse Quattro, Scott R Looney, Bob Marsh, Jim Ryan, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Tobias Fischer, and most recently Thollem McDonas to name a few.

"Romus has been central to the creative music world of the West Coast for a number of years, and he keeps stretching the boundaries of originality with each new release." - Frank Rubolino onefinalnote.com/Cadence

Cost: $10/$8

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