-Evangelista/Glenn Duo
Karl A.D. Evangelista: guitar
Jordan Glenn: drums
(Evangelista bio) Improviser, composer, and guitarist Karl Alfonso Evangelista was born in Van Nuys, California, USA, on April 28, 1986, the son of two Filipino immigrants. His music explores the intersection between improvisation and composition in a multicultural, transidiomatic social space. Evangelista’s own groups include the collective Host Family and the duo Grex with partner Margaret Rei Scampavia, and he has worked in ensembles under, among others, Fred Frith, Lewis Jordan, John-Carlos Perea, Moe Staiano, Polly Moller, and Francis Wong. He received his BA in Social Transformation and the Development of 20th Century Artforms at UC Berkeley, CA, USA, and has recently completed his Master of Fine Arts in Improvised Music at Mills College, CA, USA.
(Glenn bio) n my home town of Eugene Oregon, I performed with the bands the Visible Men, Scrambled Ape, Mood Area 52, Deke Falcon, and Los Mex Pistols Del Norte, as well as with composer/arranger Maria Schneider, composer John Zorn, and many jazz players including Mike Denny, Greg Goebel, and Joe Manis. I also earned a BA in Jazz Studies from the University of Oregon.
Since moving to the bay area in 2006, I have been lucky enough to work with Fred Frith, William Winant, Zeena Parkins, Roscoe Mitchell, Anantha Krishnan, Josh Allen, Damon Smith and Moe! Staiano. Also, I earned a MFA in performance from Mills College in 2008. Currently I'm playing with Aram Shelton, Kanoko Nishi, Andy Strain, Michael Dale, Dominique Leone, Alee Karim, Efft, Vanessa Beggs, and Jack 'o the Clock.
I lead my own group, a guitar and drum duo called Wiener Kids, and last year recorded an EP with guitarist Gudmundur Steinn Gunnarsson. I am now working on a set of music for the quartet Host Family with Jason Hoopes (bass), Karl Evangelista (guitar), Andrew Conklin (guitar), and myself on drums.
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Sabbaticus Rex
Karen Stackpole: gongs, percussion
Cornelius Boots: shakuhachi, taimu shakuhachi, throat vocals
Sabbaticus Rex is an ensemble rooted in the supremacy of sound over music, the triumph of tone over time and thought. This process uses haunting and beautiful acoustic instruments and methods: overtone gongs, shakuhachi (bamboo Zen flutes), Taimu (bass) shakuhachi, and throat-singing. The group is completely acoustic; no electronics or amplification. This is sound, but not music. It is primordial easy-listening for dinosaurs: slowly shifting elemental improvisations from fat flutes and huge gongs, completely acoustic.
Through spontaneous, sustained sound structuring, these sources combine to form a resonant, expansive and raw environment. Creating music with a majority emphasis on slow-evolving sound and texture, and allowing some aspect of wu wei (action-less action or spontaneous naturalness) to guide the entire process is both behind and at the core of this ensemble: removing or at least side-stepping the egoic-self for most of the creative decisions.
Mostly, we hope the listener enjoys the sounds of the fat flutes and the big gongs talking to each other, all this other stuff is just our mindset and musical perspective.
Walking the razor's edge between the mystical and the scientific, Sabbaticus Rex is dedicated to the creation and performance of ambient, avant-orchestral works utilizing modern, ancient, and invented instruments in non-standard tunings that maximize their harmonic interaction and create layers of overtone resonance. Exploiting the acoustics within different performance spaces is an intrinsic aspect of this acoustic ensemble. There is no narrative, socio-political, or otherwise extra-musical plot or agenda involved with this music. That being said, it takes form and context from some elements that can be written about such as breath, overtone/harmonic resonance, imagination, and simplicity within chaos.
The instruments themselves are treated with reverence and are given as much if not more command over the path that the music takes. Inasmuch as metal particles or stalks of bamboo “want” to become instruments, at the point at which we discover them, the gongs and shakuhachi themselves are approached in a highly collaborative manner, i.e. letting sounds emerge from them, guiding rather than forcing, generally unifying with the instrument as much as possible. This requires a complex skill set that intertwines the rational, problem-solving and skill-acquiring mind with the realm of uncertainty, chaos, and intuition. There is an animistic, primordial perspective at play here; the idea of letting the instruments play what they want to play: guiding sounds from sound sources, building directly upon the intentions of the instrument maker, builder or designer, thus creating a kind of intentional feedback loop of a creative process combining imagination and utility.
Christopher M. SkeboChristopher Michael Skebo (January 6, 1983 - ) received his B.A. in Music (education and composition) from Wayne State University in May 2007. While at Wayne, Skebo was an active member of the Wind Symphony, Concert Band, Orchestra and Jazz Lab. He studied composition with Dr. James Hartway and Jon Anderson; and was recipient of the 2006 Outstanding Compositional Achievement Award for his composition "Das Ratsel von Adolf Hitler." In August 2006, Skebo was awarded an Undergraduate Research Grant by the WSU Honors College to work on his "Music for EWI, Turntables and Percussion." A fragment of this composition was presented at the 2006 WSU Conference on Undergraduate Research. In April of 2007, Skebo and his Ensemble presented the full version of "Music for EWI, Turntables and Percussion" at the 21st Annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research in San Rafael, California. He is currently attending Mills College in Oakland, California, pursuing his M.A. in Music Composition. Skebo currently on staff at St. Anthony - Immaculate Conception School, where he teaches music. Skebo is a member of ASCAP, AMC and ACF.
Cost: Donations