Thursday, March 1, 8pm
OutSound presents the Luggage Store New Music Series, this week featuring T.D. Skatchit & Company, with the “Skatch Surveillance” CD release show. Tom Nunn and David Michalak (skatchboxes) will perform with guests, in various formations, with Tom Bickley, Tom Djll, Phillip Greenlief, Aurora Josephson, and Polly Moller.
Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market St. (@ 6th St.), San Francisco | $6-10 sliding
Thursday, March 1, 8pm
Edgetone Records celebrates the CD release of “The Green Mitchell Trio”, featuring Cory Wright (reeds), Lisa Mezzacappa (bass), and Jason Levis (drums). Cory Wright will also perform a solo opening set.
Maybeck Studio, (contact cowrig@gmail.com for address/directions), Berkeley | $10-20 sliding
Thursday, March 1, 8pm concert, 7pm Panel Discussion
The palindromic Norwegian ensemble asamisimasa kicks off three nights of Other Minds concerts at the JCCSF with a full program of works by young mavericks Øyvind Torvund and Simon Steen-Andersen. Torvund’s virtuosically quirky Neon Forest Space combines influences from Purcell to Black Flag in seven sections, making use of radios, aerosol cans, bird whistles and an electric milk steamer. Audiences will also be treated to the world premiere of his new work, Willibald Motor Landscape, composed especially for asamisimasa. Where Torvund’s work harnesses an incredibly disparate collection of sounds, Steen-Andersen focuses on a kind of micro-world, amplifying barely audible instrumental gestures in both sound and video. In his words, he is “trying to approach the human being behind the instrument, because then music can suddenly be about everything that is most important: communication, being, fragility and intimacy.” His set of four recent works concludes with a haunting piece for cello with a “video-shadow,” bringing the concept of amplification into a multimedia context.
Jewish Community Center SF, Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St. (@ Presidio Ave.), San Francisco | $25-35
Friday, March 2, 7pm
the Explorist International Records & Books presents Free Jazz Friday, featuring a set by Michael Whitaker (reeds & brass)(solo improvisations) and a set by El Topo (Sutherland/ LaBreche, sax/drums).
Explorist International Records & Books, 3174 24th St., San Francisco | Free
Friday, March 2, 8pm concert, 7pm Panel Discussion
The second night at the JCCSF of Other Minds 17 features Harold Budd, Ikue Mori, and Gloria Coates, with performances by Del Sol String Quartet, Tyshawn Sorey and Ken Ueno. Esteemed expat Gloria Coates (b. 1938) and the ambient/avant-garde legend Harold Budd (b. 1936) are joined by Japanese-American innovator Ikue Mori on this eclectic program. A prolific composer and declared “the greatest woman symphonist” by Kyle Gann, Gloria Coates has remained outside of the mainstream of American classical music, having lived in Europe since 1969. Born in Wisconsin, she began experimenting with overtones and clusters at age nine, and has continued to explore the outer limits of expressive tools in her deep catalog of 15 symphonies, nine string quartets, and numerous other works. San Francisco’s Del Sol String Quartet tackles her String Quartet No. 5, an emotive masterpiece whose first movement is a double canon with the first violin and viola tuned a quarter-tone sharp. Budd brings his trademark atmospheric piano style to the Other Minds stage in collaboration with Seattle bassist Keith Lowe. After a purported retirement in 2004, Budd has in recent years re-emerged, producing new works that blur the line between minimalism and his better-known ambient music collaborations with Brian Eno. The evening concludes with a special set of improvisations led by Japanese punk drummer-turned electronics composer-performer Ikue Mori. Equally at home as a soloist or collaborator, Mori brings a drummer’s sense of propulsion and invention to her laptop-based improv. She’ll perform solo, and also together with Tyshawn Sorey (drums) and Ken Ueno (voice / throat-singing).
Jewish Community Center SF, Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St. (@ Presidio Ave.), San Francisco | $25-35
Saturday, March 3, 7:30pm
The Alameda Public Library presents Sssshhhh Live Music Series , with Thomas Dimuzio and Cloud Shepherd. Thomas Dimuzio is a true sonic alchemist moving from electro-acoustic and noise to glitch, dark ambient, improv and drone. He’ll be playing solo electric guitar. Cloud Shepherd are an East Bay improv group specializing in the pasturing of ever-changing, nonlinear cumulations of sound. Their instrumentation includes Theremin, bass/tapes, flutes/reeds, and percussion.
Alameda Public Library, 1550 Oak St., Alameda | Free
Saturday, March 3, 8pm concert, 7pm Panel Discussion
Other Minds 17 concludes with a newly commissioned work by Ken Ueno for Del Sol String Quartet and interactive video by Johnny DeKam; plus Magik*Magik Orchestra performs music by John Kennedy and Finland’s Lotta Wennäkoski. John Kennedy and Finland’s Lotta Wennäkoski offer new takes on the chamber ensemble: Kennedy, who each spring conducts the Spoleto Festival’s contemporary music programs, presents the world premiere of a new work for mixed chamber quartet, plus a percussion duo for recycled materials. He also appears onstage conducting the Bay Area’s collective Magik*Magik Orchestra in Wennäkoski’s touching Nosztalgiaim for chamber orchestra. Tyshawn Sorey returns to the stage for a solo set on both drumset and percussion. His skills as both a composer and performer have led to collaborations with Steve Coleman, Muhal Richard Abrams, Joey Baron, Butch Morris, Vijay Iyer, Dave Douglas, and Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, all by the age of 30, to studies with Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan, and now to the PhD program at Columbia University in New York. Recent Rome Prize and Berlin Prize winner and UC Berkeley professor Ken Ueno presents the premiere of Peradam, a new work for Del Sol String Quartet with video, commissioned by Other Minds. Ueno’s stated mission is “to champion sounds that have been overlooked or denied so that audiences reevaluate their musical potential.” His remarkable vocabulary of beatings and overtones combines here with scratches, whispering bow scrapes, and vocalizations by the quartet members, to evoke the eponymous stone—first used in the French Surrealist novel Mount Analogue, a curved crystal so clear that it is only revealed to those who seek it “with sincere desire and true need.”
Jewish Community Center SF, Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St. (@ Presidio Ave.), San Francisco | $25-35
Saturday, March 3, 8pm
The Temescal Arts Center brings THE UNCOMFORTABLE ZONES OF FUN. Frank Moore, world-known shaman performance artist, will conduct improvised passions of musicians, actors, dancers, and audience members in a laboratory setting to create altered realities of fusion beyond taboos. Bring your passions and musical instruments and your senses of adventure and humor.
Temescal Arts Center, 511 48th St., Oakland | Free, donations encouraged
Sunday, March 4, 7:30pm
OutSound presents the SIMM series At Musicians Union Hall. Featured at 7:30 is Pacific Sticks Ensemble performing 8 Trios For Percussion by Oszkar Balazs. At 8:30pm, Noertker’s Moxie Quintet will perform, featuring Annelise Zamula (tenor saxophone, flute), Amber Lamprecht (oboe, flute), John Vaughn (baritone sax, flute), Bill Noertker (contrabass), and Dax Compise (drums).
Musicians Union Hall, 116 9th St. (@ Mission), San Francisco | $8-10
Sunday, March 4, 8pm
San Francisco Community Music Center, in association with San Francisco Cinematheque, presents virtuoso Dutch vocalist Jaap Blonk, performing solo and with sfSound, including John Cage’s “Aria” with “Fontana Mix”. On the program will be: Jaap Blonk – Dr Voxoid’s Next Move (2011); John Cage – Aria (1958 – featuring Jaap Blonk) with Fontana Mix (1958 – sfSound’s new realization); Jaap Blonk/sfSoundGroup – Improvisation (2012); John Cage – Composition for 3 Voices (1934); Matt Ingalls – False Awakening (2008) amplified instruments and electronics. The performers include Jaap Blonk (voice), Kyle Bruckmann (oboe), Tom Dambly (trumpet), Matt Ingalls (clarinet), John Ingle (saxophone), Ben Kreith (violin), Michelle Lou (guitar), Hadley McCarroll (piano), Monica Scott (cello), Andy Strain (trombone).
Community Music Center, 544 Capp St., San Francisco | $15 [$8 underemployed]
Sunday, March 4, 8pm
As part of the Jewish Music Festival, the Freight & Salvage brings the world premiere of “Orphic Machine,” primarily commissioned by Chamber Music America, clarinetist and composer Ben Goldberg leads an amazing ensemble in a song-cycle based on the poetical writings of Allen Grossman. Internationally renowned musicians help Ben bring this extraordinary project to life, including vocalist and violinist Carla Kihlstedt (of Tin Hat), guitarist Jeff Parker (of Tortoise), saxophonist Rob Sudduth, percussionist Ches Smith (of Secret Chiefs 3), pianist Myra Melford, trumpeter Ron Miles, percussionist Kenny Wollesen, and bassist Greg Cohen (of Masada).
Freight & Salvage, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley | tickets $23 advance / $26 at the door, advance tickets available via the Jewish Music Festival Box Office, at 866-558-4253
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