Every Thursday @ The Luggage Store Creative Music Series 8-10pm
$6-10 sliding scale donation,
no one refused for lack of funds.
Thursday, Dec 6 2012 8:00 PM
Disquiet Night with
Cullen Miller
Clarke Robinson
Andrew Weathers
Members of the online community the Disquiet Junto each week respond on SoundCloud to a unique new compositional prompt. Some 260+ musicians have created over 1,500 tracks since the Junto first convened, on the first Thursday of 2012. Live concerts in Chicago, Denver, Manhattan, and, now, San Francisco have provided Junto members with the opportunity to meet up and play together in person. More on the Junto at http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info.
Thursday, Dec 13 2012 8:00 PM
8:00pm Thollem Electric - Rhodes, pedals
André Custodio - drums
9:00pm Instagon - mixer set
LOB, Ryan Tomesello (of Blood into Water), Laurie Amat, others TBA
INSTAGON was started in 1993 as a musical experiment in thee United States, by members ov Thee Temple of Psychick Youth North America (TOPYNA), to becoum counter-part to thee UK TOPY ensamble called Psychick TV (PTV). Shortly there after PTV disbanded and thee networking between thee two groups became fuedal. Members ov thee TOPY North America Access Point called BABYLON ov this era are responsible for thee birth ov thee deamon, Instagon, although artist/creatist LOB tends to be held as the founder or creator ov thee project. At this time Instagon was mostly a NOISE outfit with occasional excursions into tribal percussion. In 1997, Instagon started playing “band” based shows and exploring jazz and chaos theories together..
Thollem McDonas has been traveling perpetually throughout North America and Europe the past six years. Recent collaborators include: Pauline Oliveros, William Parker, Nels Cline, Susie Ibarra. He is the founding director of Estamos Ensemble, a Mexican-American cross border ensemble for musical exchange. About Thollem, Signal to Noise magazine marvels, “It seems beyond the capacity of one human being to contain so much densely-packed creative energy”.
Now traveling with pedals and a vintage Rhodes, he also has five recently-released recordings: The Gowanus Session with William Parker and Nels Cline (Porter Records); The Imagination Liberation Front Thinks Again and Read Between The Lines…Think Outside Them - Tsigoti (Post-Consumer); You Are Always On Our Minds - The Hand to Man Band with Mike Watt, John Dieterich and Tim Barnes (Post-Consumer); Polishing the Mirror with Edoardo Marraffa and Stefano Giust (Amirani) and Ten Thousand Tigers with Arrington de Dionyso (Band Camp).
Andre Custodio is a native San Franciscan drummer, percussionist, and sound designer. His drumming draws from a myriad of influences without genre boundaries.
Thursday, Dec 20 2012 8:00 PM
Guest Curation by Josh Allen
Batterie and Brutality
Aaron Bennett - saxophones / Jason Levis - drums (Berlin)
Josh Allen - tenor saxophone / Miguel Barrera - drums
Saxophonist and composer Aaron Bennett has been an active force in the Bay Area jazz and improvised music communities for more than 15 years. He earned a BA in music (with an emphasis on classical performance) at Cal State Long Beach, and an MFA in jazz performance from California Institute of the Arts. Beyond his studies in composition and performance of western music, Aaron has also studied and played the music of West Africa, Indonesia, India, and Traditional Japanese Gagaku music. He has performed throughout the United States and abroad including performances with Wadada Leo Smith, Peter Kowald, John Butcher, Donald Robinson, Marco Eneidi, Gianni Gebbia, Adam Lane,Larry Ochs, Steve Adams, John Raskin,Victoria Williams, Aphrodesia, Lagos-Roots, The Rova Saxophone Quartet and many others. He leads his own groups Go-Go-Fightmaster, electro-magnetic trans-personal orchestra and performs in the Oakland Active Orchestra , Lisa Mezzacappa’s Bait & Switch, Vijay Anderson Quartet, and Guerilla Hi-Fi. Aaron has composed for large ensembles, chamber groups, plays, films, dance performances, wind quintet, saxophone quartets and trios as well as pieces for solo instruments.
Jason Levis currently studying contemporary composition and performance in Berlin, and touring Germany with anti-folk band Susie Asado, is at once devoted to the intersection between contemporary composition and experimental improvisation, electronic art music and old school roots reggae dub, and abstract soundscape narratives and popular music. His wide-ranging creative efforts are skillfully bound by his innate sense of timbre, sonic space, and rhythmic force. Jason has performed his compositions in the United States with his own new music ensemble the Heftpistole Chamber Ensemble and roots reggae band Joseph’s Bones, with the collaborative project duo B. with contrabassist Lisa Mezzacappa, and with several jazz ensembles such as Married Couple, Blowout, and the Lisa Mezzacappa Trio (featuring world renowned pianist Myra Melford). He has performed his music internationally in Japan with Four Flea Circus and in Canada with Paradigm Brass. Key Note +, The Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players, the Aaron Novik Chamber Ensemble, and the bass clarinet quartet Edmund Welles have premiered his compositions in the San Francisco Bay Area. Levis has performed on drums and percussion extensively throughout the California with his own groups as well as with new music ensembles the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players, sfSound and Aaron Novik’s Crafty Apples, art-pop ensemble Floating World, chamber-klezmer group the Maccabeats, and numerous jazz ensembles. He has toured nationally with 1960′s UK folk-rock star Donovan, the jazz quartet Married Couple, and Citta di Vitti, a jazz trio’s homage to Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni. He is currently touring internationally with German anti-folk band Susie Asado.
Josh Allen has created his own personal language on the tenor saxophone, with an emphasis on polytonal and asymmetrical phrasing, as well as extending the range and sonic ability of the instrument. He does this with constant emphasis and study of the overtone series, and the generation of multiphonics from the application of this process. He is currently teaching Fellowship students at the Brubeck Institute at the University of Pacific. He was born in Berkeley, California in 1972. Like many of today’s prominent musicians, Mr. Allen was a product of the Berkeley public school system, studying saxophone starting at the age of nine under Phil Hardymon. He went on to study with such prominent Bay Area musicians as Bill Aron, Joe Henderson, and Rory Snyder. With his focus squarely on jazz composition and performance, Mr. Allen moved to Southern California in the early nineties to study with Rick Helzer at San Diego State. He became active in the Latin Jazz community, and worked with various musicians such as Dennis Chambers, and Eddie Palmieri. Mr. Allen’s return to the Bay Area in the mid 90s to finish his Bachelors degree at Sonoma State. His association with saxophonist Marco Eneidi led to working relationships with musicians such as Glen Spearmann, Matthew Goodheart, Damon Smith, and eventually Cecil Taylor.
Thursday, Dec 27 2012 8:00 PM
8pm RTD3
Doug Carroll - cello,
Tom Nunn - original percussion
Ron Heglin - vocals/trombone
9pm Joe Lasqo - MSP + Jaroba w/ Warren Stringer’s visual synth
For additional information see : www.bayimproviser.com