Point Richmond Jazz, continues their exciting and eclectic concert series highlighting the best in violin-based jazz and improvisational music. On Friday, April 24, 2015 Point Richmond Jazz will present Peabody Conservatory trained 5-string violinist, Enion Pelta-Tiller and her guitarist and mandolinist husband, David Pelta-Tiller’s unique group, TAARKA, described by Synthesis Magazine as a combination of “Roma, Klezmer and jazz, infusing their rousing and exciting tunes with breakneck Zappa-esque breakdowns and insurmountable gusto. Regardless of your particular musical tastes, Taarka is a band that simply must be witnessed.”
TAARKA has just released a new CD “Making Tracks Home.” Their home is in Lyon, Colorado, a small town that was almost wiped out in 2013 with a well-publicized flood that destroyed their home. Left homeless, they headed for David’s childhood home in Virginia, where, (according to Colorado Public Radio https://www.cpr.org/news/story/lyons-flood-devastated-folk-band-taarka-also-fed-its-creativity) they began writing songs inspired by the flood and its aftermath. Enion was inspired by older flood songs, like Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues” about the 1927 Mississippi River flood. “I took that as sort of a model,” says Enion, who wrote her own flood song, “River’s Eddy Blues,” for the album.
This concert is the 7th in the 2014-15 Point Richmond Jazz Series, and takes place at Point Richmond’s United Methodist Church, a century-old historic building at 201 Martina St. In Point Richmond, that has what many musicians have called a hall with “the best acoustics for music listening in the Bay Area.” Tickets are $15 on line (http://prjazztaarka.bpt.me) and $20 at the door.
Point Richmond Jazz concerts focus on jazz violinists and ‘cellists, and the line up of concerts on the 4th Friday of every month, October to May. The remaining concerts in the series with Enion Pelta-Tiller on April 24 and Danish violinist, Mads Tolling on May 29, all speak to the amazing new prominence of violinists in the improvisational music we call “jazz.”
All Point Richmond Jazz concerts highlight the many roles of the violin in jazz, and are followed by a jazz violin workshop at 11 am on the morning following each concert at the same venue. More information at prjazz.org
Cost: $15 online; $20 at the door
Videos featuring musicians playing at this event
Bruce Ackley and Eugene Chadbourne
BREATHING is a movement from Carbon Song Cycle (a inter-media chamber work by composer/performer Pamela Z and visual artist Christina McPhee). The work was originally written for voice & electronics, bassoon, viola, cello, percussion, and tape. This is a solo version performed by the composer (with just voice, processing, and tape), recorded at a 3/13/2014 duo concert with Joan La Barbara as part of the 2014 ROOM Series. Pamela Z is using a gesture controller (designed and built by Donald Swearingen). © 2013 Last Letter Music (ASCAP)
Myra Melford and Satoko Fujii
Green Alembic at Berkeley Arts 5-17-14
Biggi Vinkeloe - alto saxophone, flute
Donald Robinson - drums
Joe Lasqo - piano, laptop, percussion
Teddy Rankin-Parker - cello
Lisle Ellis - contrabass, acoustic bass guitar
April 19, 2014, The Emerald Tablet, San Francisco, CA
Video by Charles Smith
Fred Frith and Nava Dunkelman
Ken Filiano/ Steve Adams Duo at the Stone
Ear Spray live @Life Changing Ministries in Oakland CA 1-26-2014 full set. Video by Kevin Hobbs, a Most Excellent Videographer!!! See more of his videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/roseman127
Gino Robair and John Butcher, 2008
Pauline Oliveros, Susie Ibarra and Thollem McDonas at The Stone, NY, NY Aug. 21, 2012
avantNOIR, a suite of compositions for jazz quartet plus guests, is a musical companion to the crime novels of Dashiell Hammett and Paul Auster. All music by Lisa Mezzacappa.
Something nice and weird hot off the reals.
CRASH & BURN at THE HEMLOCK
Invented Instruments , at the High Zero festival September 22nd 2012 , Baltimore Maryland
Interview with Jenny Maybee & Nick Phillips about the concepts behind the album HAIKU.
Jacob Felix Heule, Clarke Robinson, Matt Ingalls
The premiere, at the 2013 Outsound New Music Summit, of Wrack ...Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire (made possible by the Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commissioning program).
Tender Buttons at Second Act, SF, 2016; live video processing by Bill Thibault
Nihil Communication (Andre Custodio). Videotaped by M. Trucco at the Musician's Union Local 6 in San Francisco.
Fred Frith, Guitar; Jordan Glenn, Drums; Jason Hoopes, bass
Scott R. Looney, Lisa Mezzacapa, and Donald Robinson at Berkeley Arts Fest space - May 31, 2014
Bjll Dingalls (Tom Djll/Bill Hsu/Matt Ingalls) live at Center for New Music, 11/5/2021, Set #1
A montage of the free music group the Lords of Outland from their live presented as part of The Tenderloin Museum’s Sounds of the Tenderloin live music series at the Tenderloin National Forest in San Francisco July of 2022
Featuring Rent Romus on alto/soprano saxophones, Ray Schaeffer on bass, Anthony Flores on drums, and Philip Everett on
Open Ended by Michael Cooke is a very versatile work that is composed live before your eyes and ears. Based on Rova‘s Radar techniques, Open Ended is less of a composition and more of a color or tool palette. It is an ever-growing collection of rules and games for the performers that are triggered by hand signals by the conductor/composer. The conductor/composer then composes the piece live using these hand signals to guide the performers. The ability to compose with what happens in the moment, in real time, is what is required to produce this piece. This similar to the “Soundpainting” language was created by Walter Thompson in Woodstock, New York in 1974. Open Ended has no set instrumentation and can be played by any number of performers. It also has no set length; the piece could last 5 minutes or 24 hours.
Ernesto Diaz-Infante (bajo sexto) playing at the John Cage/CalArts event at the Walt Disney Museum in San Francisco on January 28th, 2012.