Calendar

Thu, Apr 1 2004 8:00 PM

Luggage Store Gallery New Music Series
1007 Market St. @ 6th Street SF
Click for Venue page

8pm: from Philadelphia! Elliott Levin - Sax/Flute/Spoken Word mp3 sample
Spirit - Percussion
Damon Smith - Contrabass

Elliott Levin studied music and creative writing at the University of Oregon. He also studied extensively with Michael Guera (former saxophonist with the Philadelphia Orchestra), Cecil Taylor (pianist/composer/improvisor), and Claire Polin (flutist/composer). Elliott has performed with groups including Cecil Taylor's Ensemble, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Odeon Popes' Sax Choir, Scram!, New Ghost, Atzilut (Fourth World), and Talking Free Bebop. He has collaborated in performance with poets Miguel Algarin, Gloria Tropp, Mbali Umoja, Marty Watt, and Frank Messina & Spoken Motion among many others. Venues have included Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The United Nations, The U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Yale University, The Greek Theater, Watts Towers, Lollapalooza! and scores of galleries, clubs and theaters. In 1999, he performed at the Crossing Borders Festival in the Hague, the Sexial Jazz Festival in Lisbon and Portugal, The Alternative Festival in Prague, and the Sonic Logos Festival in Philadelphia.

Damon Smith's music is rooted in the tradition of "free jazz", with most of his professional experience coming from work with the orchestras and small ensembles of alto saxophonist Marco Eneidi. He is very interested in all the manifestations of free improvised music (jazz rooted or not!) around the world. His live and recorded efforts focus on continuing and expanding the possibilities of the double bass and "instant composition." His instrumental study focuses on classical technique and etudes, while using jazz as reference for pizzicato tone. Damon performs as a soloist and in every imaginable grouping all the way to large orchestra. He also collects recordings, specifically creative music, jazz and double bass music, and feels this is an important influence on his work ("my roots are in my record player"- Evan Parker).

Spirit's thirty year career as a percussionist spans from New York to Berkeley, working with with Julius Hemphill, Alan Shorter and the late bassist Jay Oliver in New York; and Butch and Wilbur Morris, Idris Ackamoor, Rasul Siddik, Prince Lasha, Oluyemi Thomas in the Bay Area.

9pm: from Minneapolis! Andrew Lafkas - Bass
Bob Marsh - Violin/Voice/Tap Shoes

Bassist, Andrew Lafkas is an active member of the Minneapolis/St. Paul improvising community. Lafkas currently organizes a monthly series dedicated to improvised music at Metro State University and a weekly series at Acadia Theater. He has taught a short series of workshops on improvisation in music and dance at the St. Paul Children's Museum and provided musical accompaniment for Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts Frequent collaborators in Minneapolis/St. Paul include Davu Seru, Milo Fine, Charles Gillett, and George Cartwright. In addition to local musicians, he has also formed partnerships with national improvisers such as Jack Wright (Philadelphia), Carol Genetti (Chicago), David Boykin (Chicago), Fred Lonberg-Holm (Chicago), and Bob Marsh (San Francisco).

The legendary master of free improv Bob Marsh originally hails from Detroit MI where he honed his skills as an avid artist. He’s founded dance companies, art galleries, invented public instruments, exhibited as a painter, teacher, multi-instrumentalist, and art therapist, and built award-winning guitars. When ribbed jokingly by a colleague “what instruments do you not play”? He responded dryly, “what I don’t have”. He currently performs regularly on violin, cello, piano, vibraphone, flute, and extended vocal techniques, just to name a few.

Cost: $6-10

Audio samples in which musicians at this event play:

Serving the San Francisco Bay Area New Music Community

Thu, Apr 1 2004 8:00 PM