san francisco bay area monthly publication for experimental/improvised/ January 3002 noise/electronic/freejazz/ st 1502 8th Street, Oakland, CA 94607 outrock/21 century music and sonic art http://sfsound.org/transbay.html [email protected]

The Transbay Creative Music Calendar is a volun- January 2003 teer-produced free monthly journal for non-commercial creative new music in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2002 Top Ten Concerts 10/23 [KZSU 90.1fm] addition to our comprehensive listing of upcoming Day of Noise: Morgan Or, what weeks of being cooped up inside on account of events, we publish articles and reviews about local Guberman, solo voice music and the people who create it. We talk about a El Niño will do to an obsessive-compulsive type... Great combination of abstract wide range of modern music, including: experimental, ma++ timbre and psychological drama. improvised, noise, electronic, free-jazz, outrock, 21st Watch out for those Pacifica century compositions, and sonic art. Each month, 1000 1/11-12 [Transparent Theater] words... copies of the transbay are mailed to individuals and Transparent Tape Music Festival I hand delivered to over 45 performance venues and Good compositions with great sound over 16 11/8 [ACME @ CMC] public locations throughout the Bay Area. Pick one up loudspeakers. Saturday was packed – Bran (...) Pos Very rare to hear at the next show you attend! people had to sit behind speakers! live laptop/electronics with such Your kind donations help keep the Transbay alive and musical depth, and the Bran can pull it off! His stuff still sounds like growing. Please send checks [payable to “Transbay 1/27 [ACME] a classical symphony to me. Music Calendar”] to: Transbay Accounting, 545 Valle Jane Rigler, flute Equally virtuosic in Vista #4, Oakland, CA 94610. sponsored in part by AMOEBA improv and composed music. Check her out Please visit our web site or contact us directly for more when she is in town in 2003. Honorable Mentions: information about getting your FREE subscription, Music 1/22 [strictly Ballroom] Mark submitting content, listing an event, advertising, viewing 2455 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley 3/21 [GLENN SPEARMAN FESTIVAL] Menzies, solo violin archives, or volunteering. 1855 Haight Street, San Francisco Peter Brötzmann, Marco Eneidi, 2/8 [New Langton Arts] John Jackson Krall Sometimes you just gotta (Photos in this issue: Michael Paine, Tim Perkis, Tim Duff, Submission deadline for the February 2003 issue is January 15th. Shiurba’s “30 Interjections” and Kristin Miltner and her upside-down apple, New Futures,11/14. and Kathy Gresham-Lancaster) blow, and these guys did continuously for “TRIPLICATE” Please send Quick Calendar events separately in the proper format. over an hour - the smile never left my face... 4/28 [The LAB] ’s The Transbay Calendar COBRA & Brown Bunny protected under the Freedom of Inflammation Act 4/21 [ACME] Ensemble Matt Ingalls Rubber O Cement and Hans Grüsel’s 5/6 [UC Berkeley] Russell Rent Romus Krankenkabinett The best of the Bay Greenberg, solo percussion Tom Djll Area’s ‘High-Speed’ electronic noise with May [SFALT Festival] Scott Looney elaborate cardboard sets and costumes. If May [Pauline Oliveros Festival] John Lee you haven’t checked out this scene yet you 5/23 [strictly Ballroom] Chris David Slusser should. It’s like ‘Art-Music’ turned inside out. Jones, piano Jim Ryan 6/2 [Presidio Chapel] Worn Ernesto Diaz-Infante 5/16 [strictly Ballroom] Ensemble plays Xenakis Roaratoreyhough Brian Ferneyhough reading his poetry: Weird! Actually gave a 6/28 [Olympia Experimental You asked for ‘em — and we deliver! The sartorial Music Festival] The Abstractions sybarites of Fuzzybunny in stunning evening wear: Tim lot of insight into his music. Perkis Bunny, Chris Nutbrown Hare, and Scot 7/19-21 [Goat Hall] Hugh Gresham-LancastEars. Caught at the Post-Glamour 6/23 & 9/1 [ACME] Livingston’s New Opera Summit 2002, New Langton Arts, 9/28. David Bithell, Mark Chung and Hugh Livingston of sfSound perform “Centering,” by Earle Brown, ACME,12/14. TriaxiumWest plays Anthony Braxton 7/14 [ACME] 2nd Annual Above: Bitter Pie & D. Slusser, New Futures @ Tenderloft, 11/14. Complete synthesis of improvisation and com- Transbay Skronkathon BBQ Below: George Cremaschi, Larry Ochs, and position - all from stupidly simple compositions. 7/27 [New Langton Arts] Dan Saadet Türköz at the Noe Valley Ministry, 11/9. Very inspiring. Kudos to John Shiurba for Plonsey’s New Opera organizing these concerts! 8/16-18 [Transparent Theater] Transparent Tape Music Festival II 9/22 [Berkeley Art Center] 9/30 [SFCMP] Chris Burns’ The Duo Contour Contemporary music per- Location of Six Geometric Figures formers [tpt & perc] from Germany. Very Oct [SF Opera] Messiaen’s “St. nice to hear new music played with clean Francis of Assisi” virtuosity and emotional power. 10/15 [ACME] MicroFest of Vocal Performances 10/12 [ACME] 12/7 [ACME] Fluxus Frank Gratkowski & Gino Robair Performances Although not as good as the Art Rattan show 12/14 [ACME] 50th a few years back, this still was one of the Anniversary of Earle Brown’s best new music/improv shows of the year. ‘December 1952’ Caroliner Rainbow Unalloyed sounds like somebody playing with the tip of a live Cremaschi on Caroliner cont’d from p. 2 a lovely, open-skies constellation of aural Self–Propelled Snake Tail guitar cable. Crunch. Crunch crunch crunch. Crunch I went out to the bar, and came back in to The Artship mysteries. On the other hand, the obsessive crunch crunch crunch crunch. Crunch. Later, I see one Jerome Bryerton (one of the selected extra- Wax Walker Thomas Dimuzio’s Ha Ha Holster, which was just of them walking around with a very young baby – Thomas Dimuzio and all of his gear. Interesting Recordings Bay Area players featured) gets crammed into the claustrophobic Deck Gear Closet, (Brutal Sound Effects #20: A Tribute to Country) WITHOUT EARPLUGS. The baby, that is. Or, at least, sounds, uninteresting structure. Note to laptop/ Hugh Livingston, producer along with some broken light bulbs, buckets December 14. 5lowershop, San Francisco I couldn’t see them. The earplugs, that is. Let’s hope noise people: IT”S CALLED COMPOSITION. The and dual vacuum cleaners, and disgorges a they were there, or else: child abuse. Another act – Bran(…)Pos was next. What can I say? One of 50 mini-cd releases since August cavalcade of junken perversity. Laptoppers George Cremaschi two people with cowboy sorta looking outfits making the Bay Area’s best; only the uncertain ending 2001 kept it from being PURE genius, instead it was Tim Perkis and John Bischoff (both of the late noise (there was a cowboy theme to the evening), computer-network group The Hub) take A post–storm night in San Francisco. A big art pretty run of the mill except for the guy on the vocal PRETTY MUCH genius. Tom Djll Next up, the Big Event: Caroliner Rainbow, opposing tacks to their solos. Bischoff, in student warehouse. Drop cloths for walls. Lots of sounds who SUCKED. cont’d on p. 5 newly resurrected these days from the dustbins The Artship series began when cel- ‘Tween-Deck Cargo Access Shaft Two, plots junk art . A pool of piss in the bathroom. A guy with magisterial cadences with dense polytonal face tattoos behind the bar. You get the picture. I of Legendary–ness. Led by the infamous Noartoots, list/producer Hugh Livingston was given Pied Piper to a new generation of noisemakers access to a decaying pre-WW2 clusterbombs and hissing roars; Perkis, walk in for LoVid – nice distorted videos with what and costume–wearers. Hidden all evening cargo/troop ship anchored at Oakland’s abovedecks, allows wind and seabirds and behind a curtain (or was it a giant sheet?), the Pier 10. He invited some improvisors aboard passing boats to camouflage his raspy, bur- amazing Day–Glo–with–many–blacklights set to record some solos, and, before you could bling comings and goings. Soprano saxist mesmerized me right from the start: Noartoots say “shiver me timbres,” the Artship Phillip Greenlief pipes a keening ramble in understands the theater of performance. Recordings were launched. Now, a year The Dance Theatre; David Slusser, on tenor Bona–fide INSTALLATION ART. Brilliant, man, and fifty discs later, the Bay Area-based and soprano, cracks some jaunty Popeyed pass the sunglasses – and I promise not to make series is charting new waters with duo asides. some lame 70’s/blacklight/Pink Floyd refer- recordings of /Kazuhisa Uchi- Livingston’s own disk (in the Art Deco ence. (WATCH OUT! Don’t spill the bongwater!) hashi, Alvin Curran/Cenk Ergun, and more. Salon) is a suite which slips from medieval The show: Drumbo shuffle, Trout Mask “The Although one could say all the solo hurdy-gurdy to the far reaches of Nomos Blimp” vocals, improv (who’s that fiddle player?), discs have really been duos. The ship itself is Alpha and ambient soundscrapes. Bassist another “song”, more frantic singing, more noisy a formidable partner in each improvisor’s Matthew Sperry gets hijacked by his infant improv (who’s that slide guitar player?), drummer excursion, and it offers an astonishing range daughter’s gurgles and cries (actually, it’s and keyboard people switch, more “songs”, of ambiences. Each player is given a ship- one of the best bass solos I’ve ever heard), more noise, bass player “sings” (Blimp again), board tour, then s/he selects the spot where and saxist Henry Kuntz saws his Mexican giant motorized mannequin things gyrate, banjo they’d like to record. The mics are set up and log violin in a torturous dronefest with a song (nice), drummer playing with chains, obnox- the player gets one take of twenty-one min- giant electrical transformer. (Hurts good.) ious girl in audience can’t stop hippie dancing, utes or less. The collected results reflect the With fifty artists to choose from, the and I mean CAN NOT, (wasn’t there a scene in wide artistic range and high standards of Artship series makes an excellent primer for a movie like that?) Noartoots beats on audience Bay Area musicians. Bay Area improvised music. They’re avail- with costume part (soft), more instrument So it’s a measure of the omnivorous able locally at Amoeba Records. switching, more “songs”, more noise, the end. musicality of Gino Robair that his turn in the And did I mention the fabulous costumes? booming Cargo Hold Number Nine is such Fluxus 2002: At left, Los Cinco Fluxereños del Mas Grande Sabor en Todo El Mundo perform extreme invasive massage Evander Music Winter Festival on a beam of supine pine. Robair, Guberman, ingalls, Paolo Angeli (from Italy) Greg Goodman Trio Shiurba, Duff on acoustic hammers. Below, before- squiggle Three Wheeler and-after: John Shiurba Saturday, January 25th Sunday, January 26th saws a lady in half, and, 21 Grand Capp Street Music Center metaphorically, 1000 years Sound on 449 23rd Street, Oakland 20th & Capp Street, San Francisco of Western Civilization. Survival 9 pm - Paolo Angeli 8 pm - Greg Goodman Trio Solo prepared Sardinian guitar marco eneidi, alto saxophone Greg Goodman - piano lisle ellis, contrabass Cross an acoustic/electric guitar with a cello and a sitar, Bruce Ackley - saxophones peter valsamis, drums and you might have an idea of what a Sardinian guitar is like. Not only is this evening an essential listening experi- George Cremaschi - bass ence to hear such an instrument, Paolo Angeli is a virtuoso friday nite January 10 performer in the best possible sense of the word. Nels the hemlock tavern Cline, Fred Frith and Derek Bailey all have something in common with Angeli: virtuosic control, reckless abandon, 9 pm - Three Wheeler 10pm and the highest level of improvisational skills combined in an utterly individualistic style. Don’t miss this concert! Phillip Greenlief - woodwinds Shoko Hikage - koto 1131 Polk St., San Francisco 10 pm - squiggle Dana Reason - piano 415 923 0923 Tom Djll: trumpet, prepared trumpet Phillip Greenlief: woodwinds For more info: (510) 652-7914 www.marcoeneidi.com Tim Perkis: electronics www.evandermusic.com

Transbay Creative Music Calendar • Jan 2003 • 2 Transbay Creative Music Calendar • Jan 2003 • 5 January Quick Calendar

Fri 1/3 8p $10/5 Meridian Sat 1/18 8p $8/$6 New Langton [545 Sutter, San Francisco] Arts [1246 Folsom, San Francisco] Philip Gelb: shakuhachi compositions by Wadada Leo Smith Yuji Takahashi and Gelb Sat 1/18 8p $10 Jazzschool Sat 1/4 12p Audible Method [2087 Addison, Berkeley] [60 Golf Club Rd, Pleasant Hill] Composer Portraits: Larry Polansky Yehudit, Unwoman, Lx Rudis, Nihil Communication Sun 1/19 7.5p $8/10 SIMM [116 9th, San Francisco] Mon 1/6 8p FREE strictly Ballroom Merlin Coleman & Lisle Ellis/Chris Brown [Stanford] Gartner/Ingalls/Jones play Sun 1/19 3p $20 1st Congr. Church Lachenmann/Xenakis/Ingalls/Debussy [Dana&Durant, Berkeley] Russian School Benefit: Podobedov/ Tue 1/7 9p $3 26Mix Hartigan/Hanson Trio [Mission@26, San Francisco] Sagan, Wobbly, Lance Grabmiller, Mon 1/20 8p Yoshi’s [510 DJ Zygote Embarcadero, Oakland] Nels Cline Singers Wed 1/8 10p Hemlock Tavern [1131 Pol, San Francisco] Thu 1/23 8p $6-10 Luggage Store Young People, Blevin Blectum, and [1007 Market, SF] Ryan Junell Thomas Scandura/Ernesto Diaz-infante/ Jesse Quattro Thu 1/9 8p $6-10 Luggage Store [1007 Market, SF] Sat 1/25 9p 21Grand [449B 23rd Guided Improv Sessions St, Oakland] Thu 1/9 10a+Noon FREE CSU Paolo Angeli & squiggle [Hayward] Sat 1/25 7p The Ramp The Art Lande/Paul McCandless Group [2236 Parker St, Berk] Thu 1/9 9p Bottom of the Hill why? (anticon), wobbly, create! [1233 17th, San Francisco] Toychestra & Mark Growden’s Sun 1/26th 8p CMC Electric Pinata [20th & Capp, SF] Greg Goodman Trio & Three Wheeler Fri 1/10 8p $12 Old First Church [1751 Sacramento, San Francisco] Mon 1/27 8p $18 Theater Phillip Flavin – shamisen, voice; Shoko [Yerba Buena, San Francisco] Hikage – koto; Tamie Kooyenaga – koto; SFContempPlayers: Cage Retrospective with Michiyo Koga – koto; Shirley Muramoto – Frith/Winant/Jeanrenaud/Goff koto; Philip Gelb – shakuhachi; Robin Hartshorne – shakuhachi; Masayuki Koga – Tue 1/28 8p $10 TUVA shakuhachi [3192 Adeline, Berk] Good for Cows, Invocation Trio Fri 1/10 10p Hemlock Tavern [1131 Polk, San Francisco] Thu 1/30 8p $6-10 Luggage Store Marco Eneidi, Lisle Ellis, and Peter Valsamis [1007 Market, SF] Paolo Angeli and Mark Trayle 1/10-11 21Grand [449B 23rd St, Oakland] Thu 1/30 8p FREE strictly Ballroom Sound/Shift: 2 days of continuous [Stanford] improvised music Morris Palte, solo percussion: Stockhausen & Sat 1/11 4p Atlas Cafe Dillon [20th & Alabama, San Francisco] Bruno Pelletier Quartet Fri 1/31 8p $10 [5000 MacArthur, Oakland] Thu 1/16 8p $6-10 Luggage Store Toshimaru Nakamura, Maggi Payne, [1007 Market, SF] John Bischoff Stephen Ruiz/Lance Grabmiller and Lisle Ellis/Chris Brown Fri 1/31 8p Hertz [UC Berkeley] Orchestre National De Lyon: 1/16&18 8p $21-45 Zellerbach Stravinsky/Boulez/Schoenberg [UC Berkeley] Berkeley Symphony: Unsuk Chin Orchestra Fri 1/31 8p $6-10 21Grand + Electronics (Premiere) [449B 23rd St, Oak] Mandell “Flute Concerto” (Premiere) Damon Smith and Invocation Trio Transbay Creative Music Calendar • Jan 2003 • 3 More Best-of-’02 Lists The Djll list 11/12 Earle Brown concert at Black Box A huge advance in musicality beyond the Tom Duff 8/12 Trio Natto + Chris Brown at Feldman concert, both of which were put 3/17 Vorticella at ACME Observatory Headlands Center This show nearly together by ma++ ingalls and performed by One of my favorite small-sounds groups. eclipsed all others of recent years, in my the expanded sfSound group. estimation. Hikage, Gelb and Perkis plus 3/26 sfSound Orchestra performing Brown’s inside-piano playing: soon to be May-June Sounding the Margins: The Feldman box notation pieces at The released on CD so you can argue with me. Pauline Oliveros 70th Birthday Black Box. Another small-sounds night. (Reviewed in our September 2002 issue.) Tribute Concerts International in scope, marathon in design, top-notch in execution. 4/21 United Noise Toys Plus at ACME Jan & Aug Transparent Tape Festivals Highlights: For Malcolm Goldstein with Observatory Small-sounds part Trois... What a great format of High Modernism, far Perkis, Brown and Bischoff; Sarah Cahill in from the musty halls of quackademia: Sit in Trio for Piano, Flute, and Page-Turner; trio of 4/28 John Zorn’s Cobra, mediated the dark and get hammered from all sides by Oliveros, Toyoji Tomita and Shoko Hikage. by Willie Winant at The Lab Definitely a chorus of whoops and yibbles. Note: I depart not small sounds. What a load of fun. from Duff in his praise of the Subotnick. 10/1 Emergency String Quartet at Black Box Local group demonstrates how 5/10 sfSound group performing 7/14 Transbay BBQ/Skronkathon is supposed to work. something like Ligeti’s 10 Pieces for Why can’t we all just have a good time and Some of our highly-touted out-of-town visitors Woodwind Quintet at the SF ALT get along? This is a good place to start. No could’ve learn a thing or two at this show. Festival at 21 Grand Hmm. Maybe stars, no agendas, just good playing and small sounds was a theme this year. good eats. 12/6 Greg Goodman, Paul Ruther- ford & Torsten Müller at Finger Palace 6/1 Cardew Choir performing 7/28 Allen/Goodheart/Powell Trio Goodman’s contribution to this heavyweight Pauline Oliveros’s Wind Horse at at SIMM A sterling example of how good duo heisted it into the realms of the ecstatic. Sounding the Margins, the Pauline a group can get if good musicians just play Oliveros festspiel. together for awhile. Garth Powell’s singing saw still echoes haunting refrains in my ear. 6/18 Shoko Hikage shredding out on Sakura Sakura, in response to an audi- 11/1 Frank Gratkowski at Meridian ence request to “give us an idea how regu- This had to be about the most memorable lar music sounds on that thing” at an solo reeds performance I’ve seen since ARTSHIP Recordings release party at the Anthony Braxton’s heyday in the late seven- Oakland Art Gallery. ties. (What a shame I was the only paying audience member...) Frank’s control of 7/14 Joseph Zitt’s solo vocal set at the tonguing and multiphonics was superhuman; 2nd Annual Transbay Skronkathon enfolded in a musical concept that was BBQ at ACME Observatory. Creative rhizomatic yet always graspable and logi- and entertaining. The Bay Area won big when cal. Then, when he played the “clari-hachi” Lexa Walsh, George Cremaschi and long-neck Joe decided to move here from New Jersey. (a clarinet with mouthpiece removed; blown bottles at the Black Box Xmas party, 12/17. like a shakuhachi), all jaws dropped to the 8/18 Morton Subotnick’s Until Spring floor. Especially Philip Gelb’s! Black Box Xmas Party at the 2nd Transparent Tape Music Thanks to John Lee, the master behind Festival at the Transparent Theater. 10/28 Kazuhisa Uchihashi solo at www.bayimproviser.com, for bringing every- This piece is a virtual dissertation on tempo, Songlines, Mills College Ensemble Rm body together for some great food, drink, rhythm and meter. It’s not often that some- Guitar-looper fantasias and daxophone and schmoozing. A shame there were no thing this abstract is this exciting and visceral. excavations. (Reviewed in 12.02 Transbay.) aesthetic fistfights to report.

9/15 Microfestival of Vocal Improvisation at ACME Obser- vatory. Half a dozen solo vocalists Some of Bonban’s did short sets. I organized this show, and was surprised that the for- Memorable mat worked so well. It didn’t hurt that all the performers (Patrick Shows of 2002 Barber, David Bithell, Morgan Guberman, Arjuna, Bob Marsh, Brutal Sound Effects #20 Jesse Quattro) were all first rate. @ 5lowershop We’re going to do this again. Bran (...) Pos @ CMC 11/12 Rolling Stones, Oakland Coliseum Arena Tickets for this Nautical Almanac @ Kimo's show cost more than ACME Toxic Tire Beach in August Observatory’s total take on an aver- age night. The Stones only get better Adobe Books Pancake Show with age. Charlie Watts’s drumming Looney’s laptop looms out of the darkness while Djll makes was unbelievable. pig-grunting sounds. The Sluss-O-Matic looms in foreground. Caroliner @ Great American New Futures Audio Workshop @ Tenderloft,11/14 Transbay Creative Music Calendar • Jan 2003 • 4