Excerpt from last month's premiere

Clyde was there to record the Genesis premiere at the Luggage Store Gallery on Feb. 25th.  Now you can listen to (and download for free!) a 4:35 excerpt from that performance.  Click here!

Guest DJ hour archive

Here it is, for your listening delectation and delight.

Deep conducting

Thanks so much to Tom for coming to the Genesis premiere with his ears and his camera. 

The orchestra was marvelous, Matt played great solos, and we had a full house for the performance.  Everything a composer could want!

Guest DJing today on KUSF

So I will be on KUSF this afternoon, from 3:00 to 4:00 PM Pacific.

You can tune me in at 90.3 FM if you're in San Francisco or nearby there, or you can go to www.kusf.org and listen to their live audio stream.

I'm finishing up the playlist now, so I can't list tracks for you, but I do know the following artists will be in the mix:

Lackadaisy
Dresden
archy
Rose Chronicles
Wild Strawberries
Bel Canto
Joy Division
Virgin Prunes
The Cure
Guerrilla Hi-Fi
Jon Raskin Quartet
Ronnie Cramer
Lida Husik

... and a bunch more; tune in and find out who!

Quickening Moon 2010 this Thursday in SF

It's only a matter of time before a curator curates him or herself onto his or her own series -- it's a tradition among my people.  So, coming up on Thursday, Feb. 25th, there will be a premiere of my new piece, Genesis, for twelve improvisers, plus an opening set by my bandmate Amar Chaudhary, featuring (in some way yet to be revealed) his wonder-cat Luna. Our theme is "new music springing to life".

Genesis is a musical experiment in which the M-theory of the 11-dimensional universe combines with the inward and outward spiral of the Western magical tradition.   The performers are:

Polly Moller – conductor, wind chimes
Suki O'Kane - percussion (Universal Time)
Karen Stackpole – gongs (Space)
Marianne MacDonald – harp (Space)
Sangita Moskow – tamboura (Space)
Nancy Beckman - shakuhachi
Jayn Petingill - alto saxophone
Marielle Jakobsons - violin
Cheryl Leonard - viola
Agnes Szelag - cello
Lisa Mezzacappa - bass
Matt Davignon – drum machine (New Universe)

I'm the conductor this time around, and instead of standing on the podium keeping a beat, I'll be walking an inward and outward spiral around the rest of the performers, cuing them as I go. The 11-member ensemble sonically portrays the process of bringing a new universe into being -- and then the new universe gets going by playing a solo. The 11 parent dimensions join in the music one by one, and fade away leaving the new universe to perform his "solo of life".

It will all happen as always at the Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market Street at 6th Street, San Francisco. The opening set is at 8:00 PM. Admission is $6.00 - $10.00 sliding scale, with no one turned away for lack of funds.

June 21, 2009

Here's a clip from the Garden of Memory performance I was in last year.  I am in a quartet premiering the Divination Section of Gino Robair's opera "I, Norton".  You can hear me playing bass flute multiphonics off-camera.  I'm interpreting the objects which Emperor Norton (Tom Duff) placed on his desk according to the directions in the Divination Book.