Lisa Mezzacappa 5(ISH)
GEORGE ROGERS + Lorin Benedict

Bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa (acoustic bass) brings her newest ensemble to the WEST OAKLAND SOUND SERIES in advance of its NYC debut at The Stone later this month. Mezzacappa's previous works have drawn inspiration from Dashiell Hammett and Paul Auster's lean noir crime novels and Italo Calvino's hilarious and poignant Cosmicomics stories. Now she's exploring the concept of worldbuilding in the otherwrldly cycle, a suite of music inspired her fascination with the speculative fiction of Ursula Le Guin, Haruki Murakami, Samuel R. Delany, and David Mitchell— as a way to envision new kinds of musical interaction, storytelling, structure and play.

Lisa Mezzacappa 5(ISH)
Aaron Bennett, tenor saxophone
Kyle Bruckmann, oboes/modular synth
MARK PASCUCCI-CLIFFORD, vibraphone
Brett Carson, keyboard
Lisa Mezzacappa, acoustic bass
Jordan Glenn, drums


Grand Prize winner of the 2025 Vandoren Emerging Artist competition, GEORGE ROGERS is a saxophonist, improviser, composer, teacher, and facilitator from the San Francisco Bay Area, currently based in Oberlin, Ohio. Rogers—a mentee of saxophone legends Gary Bartz, Justin Robinson, and Dann Zinn—has performed at venues across the nation, including Dizzy’s Club, SFJAZZ, LIBRETTO, the Concord Jazz Festival, the Vail Jazz Party, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Drawing inspiration from a diverse array of genres, Rogers's playing and composing styles blend elements of traditional, modern, and avant-garde jazz, while also embracing influences from popular, experimental, and singer-songwriter music. For WEST OAKLAND SOUND SERIES, Rogers joins Lorin Benedict, an improvising vocalist (scat singer, essentially) living in Emeryville, California. Most of Lorin's work in this area is centered loosely in the jazz idiom. Lorin has co-led small groups (duos, trios) in which the roles of the musicians are somewhat mutable even in contexts where highly structured forms are being played. Examples include Bleeding Vector with Emeryville guitarist Eric Vogler, and another duo project with east bay saxophonist Kasey Knudsen. Together, these three musicians jointly lead the trio project, The Holly Martins. He has also co-led duo projects with Helsinki-based drummer Sam Ospovat and LA-based musician Logan Kane.
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ERNST KAREL: ATMOSPHERIC RIVERS
THE GLITCH BLOOM
SADA

ERNST KAREL presents his multichannel, ongoing iterative work, "Atmospheric Rivers." This piece’s subject is a key component of the global water cycle: the enormous streams of concentrated water vapor which flow through the sky from the tropics towards the poles, releasing heavy rain in high wind, particularly in the western U.S, and anticipated to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change. Performed in surround sound, the piece consists of unprocessed stereo and multichannel location recordings of atmospheric rivers, made over the past few years, as they pass by our house at the rocky northern California coast.


THE GLITCH BLOOM (Eda Er & DANNIEL RIBEIRO) operates in an indefinable musical territory where the lines between composed work, improvisation, and multimedia blur into a distinctive sonic fusion. Their artistic practice combines vocals, electronic elements, electric guitar, and video with transducers, unconventional playing techniques, and sculptural objects, establishing a fluid relationship between planned structure and spontaneous creation. Founded on mutual investigation of sound possibilities, collaborative processes, and multimedia integration, Glitch Bloom embraces unexpected outcomes—where harsh sounds intermingle with melodic elements, acoustic manipulations transform through electronic processing, and sound manifests as both physical and transient. Their performances create immersive environments that explore the convergence of music, physical movement, and visual components to deliver an experience that defies traditional classification.


SADA is a vocal duo between Sarah Grace Graves and Eda Er, both singers and composers who each stumbled upon experimental music somewhat unexpectedly: Graves began her artistic path as a choral singer, Er as an actor. In combining Graves’ innocent virtuosity with Er’s disarming honesty, the two hope to build a narrative, aesthetic, and technical habitat for stories only they can tell.
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