GOAL!!!!

Yes!  The Kickstarter appeal for the December 18th performers has made it to $1,000 raised!

But don't let that stop you from making a pledge to benefit these great musicians.  The more money we raise for them, the more money can be split among them -- and December 18th will cease to be just another underground gig.

Blood Moon concert this Thursday in SF

How dark can it get and the moon still be full?  Find out this Thursday, October 21 at the Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market Street at 6th Street, San Francisco.  Admission is $6.00 - $10.00 sliding scale, with no one turned away for lack of funds.

8PM: Forms of Things Unknown
9PM: Big City Orchestra

Forms of Things Unknown will attempt to measure the pulse of the Blood Moon using a meter-long cylinder of grenadilla wood paired off with a triangular spruce resonant chamber, piped through a Lexicon MX200 fitted with a handblown telescoping pocket compass of pure fucking titanium.

Big City Orchestra makes sound on the moon: Melody mainly pressure wave moving through a series of conditions. Thus, we often hear at the sky. As the transfer of so-called "Kaleidoscope." After back and forth nature of the lie, if you go back. This means that it is in our vibration of the eardrum ear. Thus, you will not sound when the vacuum of space, but you can hear the air or cooling, or semen. How it all, especially at a distance, or as audio, high-frequency or low frequency current evaporation depends on the media publishing projects or clothing.

Forms of Things Unknown was launched as a solo studio project in 2002 and continues to serve as the primary creative vehicle for the music of Ferrara Brain Pan. Utilizing various woodwinds as primary sound sources, these and other acoustic instruments are interfaced with signal processors, electronics and sampled sounds to fabricate drone-oriented soundscapes of a dark ambient designation, occasionally veering into neofolk, jazz dirge or art-rock territory. While live performances are infrequent, audience members have sometimes reported odd somatic hallucinations, feeling as though interdimensional portals were spontaneously erupting throughout the abdominal cavity, with tiny glass helicopters entering and exiting these dilating orifices.

Big City Orchestra: Back in 1979 in crappy little towns south of LA such as Torrance and Hawthorne a cassette-trading, noise-embracing, non-musician-friendly band was formed and the darned thing still exists today under the same name.

Kickstarter appeal for artist fees

Time to seek funding for the 22 performers I told you about last week!  Please check out the appeal and back them as generously as you are able.

All performers are now confirmed for December 18th!

Yes, it's an exciting moment in the journey towards this concert.  There are 23 musicians in all, and here is the program as it stands now:

-The Flip Quartet for four improvisers (2006)
Karl Evangelista
Jason Hoopes
Thomas Scandura
Bill Wolter

-Duo No. 1 (premiere, 2009)
Gino Robair, percussion etc.
Krystyna Bobrowski, inventions

-Penelope (premiere, 2010)
commissioned and performed by Amy Likar, piccolo

INTERMISSION

-Three of Swords for a solo improviser (2009)
performed by Sarah Elena Palmer

- Alcyone, a new work for the winter solstice
Laura Malouf-Renning, mezzo-soprano
Phillip Greenlief, Bb clarinet
Cory Wright, bass clarinet
Lisa Mezzacappa, contrabass
Suki O'Kane, percussion


-Genesis for twelve improvisers (2006-2010)
performed by Polly Moller (conductor)
Suki O'Kane, percussion (Universal Time)
Karen Stackpole, gongs
Marianne Tomita MacDonald, harp
Nancy Beckman, shakuhachi
Jayn Petingill, alto saxophone
Adria Otte, violin
Thea Farhadian, violin
Cheryl Leonard, viola
Ann Dentel, cello
Lisa Mezzacappa, contrabass
and Matt Davignon, drum machine (New Universe)

For more information and whens and wheres, please visit Trinity Chamber Concerts.

At the Harvest Moon show

Polly Moller
Originally uploaded by michaelz1

My welcoming remarks were very brief, since this show came with its own Master of Ceremonies in Bernard Meisler from Sensitive Skin magazine. But Michael Zelner was there to photograph it nonetheless. :)

Harvest Moon concert this Thursday in SF

Kids begin school in the autumn because, when most of us subsisted through agriculture in the Northern Hemisphere, kids were needed to help gather in the harvest.  Once they were done with that, they could go to school.  September is therefore steeped in harvest and learning lore.

Dan Plonsey, Steve Horowitz, and Bernard Meisner have all of that in mind, plus the special knowledge that September 23rd is the birthday of the late great John Coltrane. Their Harvest Moon concert at the Luggage Store Gallery (1007 Market Street, near 6th Street, San Francisco) will serve up all they have harvested and learned from him as musicians.

Here are the particulars:

Music by:
Dan Plonsey
Steve Horowitz
Vinny Golia
Plus other special guests TBA

Readings by:
Craig Clevenger - novelist
Nicole Henares – poet
D. Scott Miller – afro-surrealist

Master of ceremonies: Bernard Meisler (publisher, Sensitive Skin Magazine)

Admission is $6.00 - $10.00 sliding scale, with no one turned away for lack of funds.

PERFORMER BIOS:

Dan Plonsey was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He studied composition with Martin Bresnick and David Lewin at Yale, with Roscoe Mitchell at the Creative Music Studio, and with Anthony Braxton at Mills College. Since 1978, he has written several hundred works, mostly for his own ensembles, but recent commissions have come from The Jewish Music Festival (Berkeley), Real Time Opera (New Hampshire), the Bang on a Can People's Commissioning Fund (New York), Theatre of Yugen (San Francisco), the Museum of Children's Art (Oakland), Milkbar International Film Festival (Oakland), the Berkeley Symphony Children's Concert Series, and New Music Works (Santa Cruz). Plonsey was awarded several "Meet the Composer" grants, and an American Composers Forum "Subito" grant for the work with Theatre Yugen. Plonsey was one of just seven musicians nationwide to win a United States Artist Broad Fellowship in 2009. Much of Plonsey's music has been documented on more than 20 CDs. As a saxophonist, clarinetist, and oboist, he has recorded the music many others, including Anthony Braxton, Eugene Chadbourne, and Tom Waits. Plonsey is profiled in Tim Perkis's documentary film, Noisy People.

Steve Horowitz is a creator of odd but highly accessible sounds and a diverse and prolific musician. He has released 15 albums of original music ranging from classical to funk and back again. He penned the score to the indi-film sensation Super Size Me as well as other high profile TV and Video Game projects. Mr. Horowitz is a bass player and the founder of The Code International. Steve studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts with Morton Subotnik, Mel Powell, Steven Mosko, and Mike Fink, and has received performance underwriting and commissions from numerous organizations. For more information on Steve Horowitz, visit www.thecodeinternational.com.