Celebrating the release of Grex's debut album, Live At Home, as well as (belatedly) my dog's birthday:
GrexKarl Evangelista-guitar, vox, etc.
Rei Scampavia-keys, vox, winds, etc.
(Playing selections from Live at Home as well as new compositions) Running the gamut from afrocentric post-bop, early minimalism, EAI, folk rock, and free jazz, Grex has evolved a form of duo music that amalgamates contemporary composed music and free improvisation into a fluid whole. The result is weird, genuinely uncategorizable music that meets the challenge of Bay Area eclecticism with love and strangeness. (Something like an Andrew Hill/MF-Doom dinner party.)
Ava Mendoza Trio
Ava Mendoza-guitar
John Shiurba-bassSam Ospovat-drumsI am a guitar player/composer in Oakland, CA. I have played in a wide variety of groups-- heavy rock/avant jazz/improvised music/contemporary classical. My solo work draws a lot from early country and blues tunes, reworked (mangled?) in my own way. In any context I tend to tread a wobbly line between melodicism, atonality and sonic abstraction. Both solo and in groups I like to develop specific tunes/riffs/compositional ideas, and then throw musical monkey wrenches into them live, forcing them to self-destruct and collide with free improvisation. I am an extremely curious person and love a lot of very different sorts of music.
Jim Kaiser/Angela Hsu Duo
Jim Kaiser-electronics, etc.
Angela Hsu-violin, etc.
Angela Hsu's violin playing, featured in recordings and performances with Arturo Sandoval, Quartet San Francisco, Dean Santomieri, Sean Smith, Moe!Kestra!, the Shotgun Players, and recently in the SF premiere of Radiohead player Jonny Greenwood's "Popcorn Superhet Receiver"; continues to challenge traditional norms of the instrument. Jim Kaiser's past involvement in dronerock groups shifted in recent years to improv performance trios, ensembles and solo works. His tape manipulation and bowed metal, presented under the solo moniker Petit Mal and with the groups French Radio and NF Orchest along with Hsu, continues to be a primary focus. Hsu and Kaiser's combination of bowed metal, strings and magnetic tape provides a layered soundscape of varied tonality to accompany usually invisible films.
Cost: $5-10 suggested donation