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] John Zorn’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 Fred Frith/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.