8pm Ara Anderson - trumpet
9pm Kurt Heyl (trombone) and Ben Wright (bass)
ARA ANDERSON has been performing and composing in San Francisco since 1995 and has worked with folk singer Victoria Williams, the avant-groove craftsmen known as Transmission Trio, local art band Shimmering Leaves, and the New Orleans-style Brass Monkey Brass Band. His composition credits include scores for three Killing My Lobster sketch comedy shows (2001-2002) and an off-kilter musical tapestry for the New Pickle Circus' winter 2002 show Circumstance. Currently he leads two bands: Iron and the Albatross (featuring vocalist Jolie Holland) and Boostamonte. He can also be heard on the latest two Tom Waits recordings Blood Money and Alice (Boostamonte's Colin Stetson and Eric Perney are also on these recordings).
KURT HEYL, born in 1942 on the Southside of Chicago, now living near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over the last eight years, he’s have worked at extending the sound qualities of the trombone and my voice. He also associates his playing with his painting, thinking of it in terms of gestures, open-arm gestures that can transfer from action painting to trombone. At the same time, his tastes in music have brought him to experimental 20th Century classical music and the improvised music from Europe and the States, away from the tonal centers towards micro-tonal playing. Textures have become very important to his music, as they have in his paintings, which can be viewed at:
http://www.labisagra.com/
More than gestures and textures, the interaction of being present while creating music with other players is what draws him most to improvised music, living in the instantaneousness of art.
BEN WRIGHT lives in Questa New Mexico and plays acoustic bass, baritone, musical saw, and various invented instruments. He plays in a folk-noise band, Art of Flying, and Questa Liberation Marching Band. The Questites collaborate on additional concurrent projects, including free improvisation and experimentation with homemade instruments. His roots are in Philadelphia in punk rock, with a tendency towards screwing up the rhythm, rendering it undanceable, except for the double-jointed. This naturally leads to breakdowns. Improvising music has been the center for him, from which other structured forms radiate. He has only incidental classical training. The rest is brute force. "I play improvised music for the sheer bliss of that instant when I lose consciousness of my instrument, my training, and myself. There is only music."
Cost: $6-10