◉ Set Ø, 8:00pm: Following our Aug experiment in using the large bay windows as go-go cages for avant-dance, we repeat the dance opener format w Metropolitan Butoh (都風舞踏): Ronnie Baker, Molly Barrons, Christina Braun, & Martha Matsuda, a group of veteran Bay Area butoh performers of the Tamano School who've collaborated since 2004.
Butoh came to the United States with the arrival in Berkeley in 1978 of Kōichi & Hiroko Tamano (玉野黄市 & 玉野弘子). Kōichi was the protégé of butoh's co-founder, Tatsumi Hijikata (土方巽), and the Tamanos have maintained Hijikata’s legacy in California via their butoh company, Harupin-Ha (ハルピン派).
Hijikata used a type of layered imagery, much like poetry, that he called “Fu” (譜, a word that can also mean music notation). Metropolitan Butoh, whose members have studied and worked w Harupin-Ha, use this method to generate imagery, creating the movement for their performances.
"Mission Fu (ミッション譜) is the title of our ongoing exploration of images from the urban landscape, in the Mission District, Oakland, Detroit and other cities where have lived. We comment on the breakdown of human contact as society gets increasingly pulled into machines, the perversion of greed and the effects of homelessness, addiction and poverty. We generate work that speaks to social justice issues in a non-narrative way; it is imagery born from the streets we walk. For the Berkeley Arts Festival, we will engage with the local landscape to create time-based art; a Berkeley Fu (バークレー譜)."
◉ Set 1, 8:20pm:
Henry Kuntz & Envision Ensemble (Brian Godchaux, John Kuntz, Esten Lindgren,
Dan Plonsey)
A second rare appearance by a daring pioneer of joyously unbounded, infinitely free jazz. Response was so enthusiastic for Henry's 27 Aug show with the new Envision Ensemble, we had to bring them back fast!
Henry Kuntz has blazed many trails in realizing the intersection of world musics (esp. from Latin America and Indonesia) with a ritualistic & shamanistic quest for joy and sonic freedom in a "festival time" outside of clock time.
The Envision Ensemble (an outgrowth of the earlier OPEYE Orchestra and OPEYE Quintet) moves toward an advanced improvisational archetype, one in which multiple independent events may occur while the musicians simultaneously create an experiential musical whole.
Joining will be
Dan Plonsey, who has made a career out of being mathematically impossible.
Line-up:
—
Henry Kuntz: sax, violins, gamelan, percussion, ringleader
— Brian Godchaux: violin, viola, mandolin
— John Kuntz: ukulele, guitar, mandolin, percussion
— Esten Lindgren: contrabass, pocket trumpet
—
Dan Plonsey: saxes
◉ Set 2, 9:15pm: Viv Corringham & Multimedia Consort (
Nancy Beckman,
Tom Bickley, Nan Busse, Joe Lasqo,
Suki O'Kane, Bill Thibault,
Jennifer Wilsey)
NY-based British vocalist, composer and electronic sound artist Viv Corringham plays Berkeley Arts Festival as part of her Northern California tour, joined by a Transbay multimedia consort of Deep Listening practitioners & neogaku kaiju.
Program may include various types of improv games based on sonic grammars, deviant sample-melting, mnemo-narrative field recording, and intermedia moiré of words, utterance, sound, motion, memory, image & music.
Multimedia Consort:
— Viv Corringham: voice, electronics
— Joe Lasqo: laptop, keyboards, objects
—
Jennifer Wilsey: percussion
— Wind choir:
Nancy Beckman: shakuhachi,
Tom Bickley: EWI wind synthesizer / contrabasss recorder,
Ron Heglin: tuba / trombone
— Video artist: Bill Thibault.
Viv Corringham has worked internationally since the early 80s, creating music performances, audio installations & soundwalks. She's interested in exploring people's special relationship with familiar places and how that links to an interior landscape of personal history, memory and association. Her ongoing project Shadow-walks has been presented in gallery shows from New York to Istanbul to Hong Kong.
Viv's training and awards include an MA in Sonic Art with Distinction from Middlesex University & a BA in Theatre Design from Nottingham Trent University. She's a certified teacher of Deep Listening, having studied with Pauline Oliveros.
Deep Listening colleagues, shakuhachi artist
Nancy Beckman and avant percussionist Jennifer Wilsey, are long-time associates and collaborators of Viv. Also joining will be their fellow student of neogaku, laptopist/pianist Joe Lasqo, whose special interests include application of AI and computational linguistics to music & the intersection of traditional Asian musics with modernism.
Ron Heglin, student of traditional and non-traditional Indian vocal theory, and creator of imaginary song languages, will operate the Low Wind Transport Layer on tuba and trombone.
The final multimedia channel in the mix will be that of video artist and computer scientist Bill Thibault, who is often found constructing the video narrative for the Bay Area's leading electronic musicians.
Cost: $10-$20 sliding scale