13th Annual Outsound New Music SummitGuitars a showcase of seven talented and provocative guitarists
Henry KaiserAmy Reed/Ross Hammond DuoJohn Finkbeiner/Noah Phillips DuoSandy Ewen/Jakob Pek DuoAdvance Tickets @ BrownpaperticketsGuitarist
Henry Kaiser is a prolific member of the San Francisco Bay Area music scene, as well as being a globally recognized leader of the "second generation" free improvisers who came of age in the '70s. His initial recordings documented solo projects and spontaneous groupings with other energetic improvisers like Fred Frith, the ROVA Saxophone Quartet, pianist Greg Goodman, and vocalist Diamanda Galas. Kaiser's restless creativity unearthed many new and unconventional electric guitar techniques.
The '90s also saw Kaiser increase his profile through his successful collaborations with David Lindley and local musicians from both Madagascar and Norway. He was also involved with a number of recordings made in Burma, also for the Shanachie label. The late '90s saw another stylistic shift, when Kaiser joined forces with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith for a tribute to the early-'70s sound of the electric Miles Davis bands. The project lasted for several years with a rotating lineup and produced several releases, including 1998's Yo Miles! on Shanachie and a pair of mid-2000s releases on Cuneiform, Sky Garden and Upriver.
In late 2001/early 2002
Henry Kaiser joined a group of scientists for two and a half months in Antarctica, where he became the first musician to record on that continent.
A master of combining these innovations with a strong sense of logic and concise development, often aided by sophisticated sound-processing devices, Kaiser also collaborated on Richard Thompson’s original score to the 2005 Werner Herzog film Grizzly Man. Kaiser is also a noted underwater photographer and his photography has served as an inspiration for Herzog’s own film work, including Encounters at the End of the World (2007) where he co-composed and performed the music of its original score with David Lindley.
Amy Reed/Ross Hammond DuoDrawing from their past/present musical collaboration and friendship, Ross Hammond and
Amy Reed will present a set of improvised music for electric and acoustic guitars.
Amy Reed is a visual artist, songwriter, and composer. Amy lives and works in Sacramento's diverse communities hit hardest by unemployment and recession. She teaches and advocates for free—open to all—art and music programs in public schools and community spaces, building space and materials for students and nurturing relationships with artists and under-served communities. Recently, her students' work was exhibited at Sacramento State University. She is the founder of Ma, a creative music series presenting collaborations and solo performance by women: improvisers, composers, educators, and performing artists.
Ross Hammond started playing guitar – a gift from his mother – at age 12, not long after moving from Lexington, KY, to Sacramento, CA. He wanted to play drums, but his mother advocated for the more portable guitar, a prescient choice given Hammond's extensive touring as an adult. Like many young guitarists, Hammond started playing funk and soul and rock music in high school. Then in college, his horizons expanded. Hammond also gravitated toward free jazz "in the Afro sense. Music that has a really strong blues-rooted groove and the rhythmic thing
is really there and battling horns – a cacophony of sound. He is busy as both a leader and sideman, playing four or five nights a week in Northern California, LA, Seattle and elsewhere on the West Coast. He also travels at least twice a year to the East Coast, usually to New York, Boston and Philadelphia. He's performed with many well-known musicians, including saxophonist Oliver Lake; drummers Calvin Weston and Mike Pride; and bassist Ken Filiano. Hammond plays in a duo with drummer Scott Amendola called Lovely Builders and in a project called Electropoetic Coffee with poet Lawrence Dinkins. Upcoming tours will see him on stage with Dwight Trible and rising saxophone star Catherine Sikora.
John Finkbeiner/Noah Phillips DuoTwo of the Bay Area's most singular and slippery guitarists team up for the first time in an improvised duo configuration that highlights the incredible range of sounds and approaches that inform their individual music making. Phillips, known for dreamy solo improvisations and his work in alt-rock/noise groups like Efft and Date Palms, creates atmospheric blankets of sound, using prepared guitar, alternate tunings and masterful effects to create abstracted tonal worlds and noisy layered landscapes. Finkbeiner’s guitar playing is a compelling and malleable hybrid of garage rock grit (Knights of the New Crusade), avant-garde jazz abandon (Lisa Mezzacappa’s Bait & Switch, Josh Allen’s Deconstruction Orchestra), and adventures in extended techniques tempered by a wickedly rhythmic comping style (Franco Nero, Les Gwan Jupons).
Guitarist
John Finkbeiner has performed and recorded with the best and brightest in the Bay Area music scene as a member of Darren Johnston's United Brassworkers Front, the Smith Dobson V Quartet, Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait & Switch, Aaron Bennett's Go-Go Fightmaster, Sheldon Brown's Distant Intervals, Scott Larson's Franco Nero, and the Vijay Anderson Quartet, among many others. He co-leads the Caribbean folk ensemble Les Gwan Jupons. As recording engineer and co-founder of New, Improved Recording in Oakland, John has helped shape the sound of West Coast creative music, working with ROVA Saxophone Quartet, John Schott, Jewlia Eisenberg, Tango No. 9, Aaron Novik, and Devin Hoff.
Guitarist
Noah Phillips was born in 1976 in Santa Monica, and was exposed to everything from disco to reggae at a very early age. Emulating the works of many innovative guitar players, composers, and rock bands of the twentieth century, Phillips' early and lifelong influences include Bob Marley, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmore, and Jimi Hendrix. While living in a boarding school on the Big Island of Hawaii, Phillips began to explore music of the African-African diaspora, including the early works of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and John Lee Hooker. After completing music studies at USC, Phillips formed the Grasshopper Quartet with reed player and composer Cory Wright, eventually producing Phillips' first recorded works. Phillips became very interested in the music coming out of the Los Angeles "New and Improvised" music community, and has performed or recorded with Jeremy Drake, Lynn Johnston, Chris Heenan, Harris Eisenstadt, Sara Schoenbeck, Nels and Alex Cline, Vinny Golia, Steuart Leibig, Dan Clucas,Fred Frith, Tim Perkis, and Stephen Flynn, just to name a few.
Sandy Ewen/Jakob Pek DuoSandy Ewen is an avant-garde guitar player based in Houston, Texas. She began developing her unique guitar techniques in high school by attending semiweekly improvised music workshops. Upon enrollment in the University of Texas Austin's School of Architecture & moving to Austin, Texas, Ewen began Spiderwebs, a duo with guitarist Tom Carter, releasing their first album in 2004, followed by 2012's Brighton Beach LP. Ewen joined experimental rock band Weird Weeds in 2004, performing, recording and touring with the group until 2013. Ewen returned to Houston upon graduating architecture school in 2008, where she began an improvisational collaboration with belly dancer Y. E. Torres and musician/filmmaker Chris Nelson. Ewen also has a close collaboration with bassist Damon Smith and drummer Weasel Walter, recently performing in a quartet with Roscoe Mitchell in Oakland in April, 2014. Ewen also leads an all-female large performance/music ensemble, which recently performed an evening of original text-based scores at Diverse Works. Other notable past performances by that ensemble include a collaboration with filmmaker Rebecca Carlisle-Healy at Austin Texas’ New Media Art and Sound Summit (NMASS), and a performance of Scratch Orchestra pieces in collaboration with Keith Rowe. In addition to these many projects, Ewen has performed in groups with many notable musicians including
Henry Kaiser, Keith Rowe, Tatsuya Nakatani, John Butcher, Michael Zerang, Jason Lescalleet, Roger Turner, Maria Chavez, Jim Sauter (Borbetomagus) and many others. A quartet recording with Jaap Blonk, Damon Smith and Chris Cogburn was released in March of 2014, and other albums lined up for release this year include a duo with
Henry Kaiser, a trio with Keith Rowe and Damon Smith, a quartet with
Henry Kaiser, Damon Smith and Ryan Edwards; a new Spiderwebs (Tom Carter/Sandy Ewen) album, and a trio with guitarist Ryan Edwards and communist Ronnie Yates. Ewen is scheduled to appear on Elliot Sharp's guitar compilation album Meta Guitar 3.
Jakob Pek is a musical artist based on the West Coast of North America. A multi-instrumentalist, improviser, composer, and poet; a son, brother, lover, grandchild, and friend; born in B.C., Canada, raised in Las Vegas, Nevada and based in Oakland. Jakob’s deepest musical influences come from diverse realms of the musical world. On the one hand, the great finger-style guitarists of the last century have deeply inspired and guided his musical direction (Lenny Breau, Ted Green). On the other, musical artists who have pushed to the frontiers of musical exploration—the outer limits of musical perception—have also had a profound impact on Jakob’s musical life (Pauline Oliveros, Karlheinz Stockhausen). Jakob’s creative work interweaves and synthesizes diverse realms of culture, music, language and experience so as to give life to art that expands and deepens our current capacity for imaginal perception. He has toured the West Coast extensively, is a part of numerous ensembles based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is active in curating concerts in both California and Nevada. He is co-founder of the Jam at the Barn Music Festival in Blue Diamond, Nevada.
Cost: $15 general $12 students/seniors