Monday, January 05, 2009

Cold Moon concert on Thursday in SF

I'm curating a monthly series for Outsound Presents and the Luggage Store Gallery. The shows will take place on the Thursday nights closest to each full moon in 2009. Different styles of experimental music will sonically represent the traditional lore and energy of each full moon, and the series kicks off on Thursday with the Cold Moon concert.

The composers and performers of Cold Blue Music, a label in Los Angeles, are traveling up to San Francisco to share their music for the Cold Moon. Here's the program:

The Absence . . . . . Chas Smith
Chas Smith, "extended steel guitar," with the small ensemble of Rick Cox, Marty Walker, Michael Jon Fink, and Read Miller

Objects in the River (of Time) . . . . . Miichael Jon Fink

Adorned with Lightning . . . . . Miichael Jon Fink

Cox and Walker, woodwinds; Fink, electric guitar; Smith, pedal steel guitar; Miller, percussion

Waiting for Anything . . . . . Rick Cox (text by Read Miller)

Cox, prepared electric guitar; Miller, voice; Smith, pedal steel guitar; Walker, clarinet; Fink: electric bass guitar

Last Things . . . . . Jim Fox

Walker, bass clarinet; Cox, electric guitar and samples; Smith, pedal steel guitar; Fink, electric guitar

All works are San Francisco premieres.

The Luggage Store Gallery is located at 1007 Market Street near Sixth Street in San Francisco. The show is from 8-10 pm and admission is $6 - $10 sliding scale.

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Bios of composers/performers

Chas Smith is a Los Angeles-based composer, performer, and instrument designer and builder who, in the spirit of Harry Partch, creates much of his music for his own exotic instruments. His compositions, which always display his dualistic fascination with the scientific and the sensual, might owe their split personalities to the diverse collection of composers he studied with in the 1970s: Morton Subotnick, Mel Powell, James Tenney, and Harold Budd.

Michael Jon Fink’s instrumental and electronic music has been presented at numerous concerts and festivals throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. He has composed concertos for soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, violin, and cello, as well as incidental music for two plays by Wajdi Mouawad: "Forets" (2006) and "Seuls" (2008). As a composer/improviser with experimental and new music groups, he has toured here and abroad and recorded with The Negative Band, Musica Veneris Nocturnus, Stillife, Ghost Duo, Gods of Rain and Pickaxe. In recent years, he has increasingly focused on performing in solo and small group situations, exploring new sounds and forms on the electric guitar.

Rick Cox is a composer and skilled multi-instrumentalist whom guitarist/composer Ry Cooder called "the hidden master of the crepuscular and the diaphanous." Cox was an early explorer/developer of "prepared electric guitar" techniques His concert pieces, which often employ himself (electric guitar, woodwinds, and/or electronics) in the company of other instrumentalists, have been performed throughout the U.S. The British music publication The Wire wrote pf Cox's often lush and beautiful soundscapes for electric guitar and other instruments: "his enveloping harmonies are less innocent than they first appear. Prettiness with a tough core."

Read Miller is a poet, percussionist/drummer, and composer. After spending many years in the Los Angeles area, where he performed as a drummer in a number of jazz-based ensembles and a number of avant-pop groups, including the Dwindle Family Orchestra, the Improvisors’ Orchestra, Colin Gorman, Snakepit, the Red Poppies, Stillife, and many others, he moved to rural Virginia in the late 1990s. His poems have been published in various poetry periodicals. His musical and text-sound compositions have been recorded on the Advance and Cold Blue labels.

Marty Walker is a clarinetist who specializes in the performance of new music. (He has premiered nearly 100 works written especially for him.) Walker has toured and recorded with various new-music ensembles, including the California E.A.R. Unit, the Robin Cox Ensemble, Some Over History, eXindigo, Viklarbo, and Ghost Duo. As a soloist, he has presented live radio concerts on NPR, Pacifica, and other radio venues and has performed at numerous new music festivals, including New Music America, the International Festival of New Music, and New Music International, and various new music venues, including Real Art Ways, FaultLines, the Monday Evening Concerts, Knitting Factory, Podewil, and Wires.

Jim Fox’s music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles and soloists throughout the U.S. and presented at the Monday Evening Concerts, New Music America, Real Art Ways, Wires, the SCREAM Festival, the Ventura Chamber Music Festival, the CalArts Contemporary Music Festival, Podewil (Berlin), the Schindler House/SASSAS, REDCAT, the Ear Inn, L.A.C.E., and many similar venues. He has also scored feature films. His website is www.jimfoxmusic.com.

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