The 2006 EDGETONE MUSIC SUMIT
Saxophonists [Who Play Other Things], an exploration of multi-instrumentalism with:
Jason Robinson (San Diego)
& The S[wpot] Ensemble, growing to include
Ralph Carney,
David Slusser,
Phillip Greenlief, Jeff Hobbs,
Dan Plonsey, Joshua Smith, Elizabeth Torres, Ettrick (
Jacob Felix Heule, Jay Korber)
Reedist/improviser/composer
Jason Robinson leads a life of fractured multiplicity, dividing his time between a dynamic performance and recording career, teaching activities, organizing efforts, ethno/musicological research, and general rabble-rousing. He's a mainstay of the improvised and popular music scene(s) of the West Coast (U.S.) - leading his own "jazz" groups, collaborating in a variety of improvised and experimental contexts, and touring as a sideman with a number of groups. Robinson has performed/recorded with Peter Kowald, George Lewis, Anthony Davis, Muhal Richard Abrams, Eek a Mouse, Bertram Turetzky, Mel Graves, Marco Eneidi, Mike Wofford, Philip Gelb, Hans Fjellestad, Dana Reason, J.D. Parran, Gerry Hemingway, Marcelo Radulovich, Michael Dessen, Sonor and others; and has toured with theater-oriented groups such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the New Pickle Circus.
Performing in a series of solo, duo, trio (etc to the point of a very large ensemble) improvised pieces that will be variously created with nothing but saxophones, or with saxophones and the (at last count) fourteen instruments that these saxophonists also play, or with no saxophones at all... just fourteen other instruments.
Allen Ginsberg said: “
Ralph Carney's Circle of Fifths continuously evolves in horns’ circular breathing (like Australian Aborigines’ Didgerey Doo) matching voice-text power to make the most perfect poetry music recording I’ve done.”
He has spent the better part of the last 2 decades criss-crossing the world, on stage and in studios with the likes of Tom Waits, Jonathan Richman, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, B-52’s, Marc Ribot, Bill Laswell, David Thomas, Hal Wilner, Elvis Costello, Tipsy, Galaxie 500, Daevid Allen, Mushroom, Oranj Symphonette and The Black Keys, to name a few. More Information...click here
David Slusser was born in Akron, Ohio in 1952. He began playing tenor saxophone at age 10, around the same time he started experimenting with reel to reel tape recorders. Getting his first film sound job in 1975, he continued his career with a move to the San Francisco Bay area in 1977, where he joined Lucasfilm in 1984, and received an Emmy award for sound editing in 1993. He has worked often as a music editor for directors Francis Coppola, George Lucas and David Lynch, with whom he has co-composed music for his films. On his own he has composed for documentaries and public radio, as well as his jazz group Rubber City. His sound design is in the collections of both the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contempory Art in Los Angeles, though far more people have heard it in some of the more imaginative commercials on television. He began an association with John Zorn in the mid eighties. Received two prizes in the 1999 Julius Hemphill Composition Awards, including first for jazz orchestra.
Since 1982,
Phillip Greenlief has performed internationally in a variety of settings. In addition to club dates and tours across North America and Europe, he has performed at the 1st Annual John Coltrane Festival in Los Angeles, Seattle Improvised Music Festival; North Sea Festival in Den Hague; Freiburg Zelt Muzik Festival in Germany; Big Sur Sound Shift; Olympia Experimental Music Festival; Du Maurier Jazz Festival - Vancouver, B.C.; Werkstatt fur Improvisierte Musik in Zurich; the Ulrichsburg Festival and the Konfrontation Festival in Nickelsdorf, Austria; the Isole Che Parlano Festival in Sardinia and the 2003 Biennale in Venice Italy; and the International Festival of Arts in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1998 he lived in St. Petersburg (Russia) where in addition to playing solo he performed and recorded with several jazz groups, singer-songwriter Yelena Kolokolnikova, and the Russian folk ensemble Dubinushka.
Jeff Hobbs is a well-known San Francisco Bay Area musician who plays nearly everything. Since the Summer of 2002, Jeff has played saxophone, cornet, and both electric and acoustic vioilins with the Night Watchmen. And, Jeff will match three and four part vocal harmonies in a flash.
He is a musician known for his esoteric and quiet personality, and he's a strong musical leader with this spiritual presence. And he really digs the minor keys, a musician after my own heart.
Dan Plonsey was born September 1, 1958 in Cleveland, Ohio, grew up in Cleveland Heights, and graduated from Cleveland Heights High School in 1976. He earned a BA in math and music from Yale University (1980) and an MA in composition from Mills College (1988). He has studied composition with Martin Bresnick, David Lewin, Anthony Braxton, and more briefly, Roscoe Mitchell and Terry Riley. He has written more than 200 works for large and small ensembles. Recent commissions have come from Bang on a Can People's Commissioning Fund, the Berkeley Symphony ("The Dolphins in the Forest" for a series of concerts for children), and New Music Works in Santa Cruz.
Plonsey's music is characterized by a dogged determination to be as un-abstract as possible. Each work is populated by characters rather than by ideas; the ideas are obliged to loiter about in nearby alleys. Most of his music is extremely simple but by no means minimal, rather, it results from the presentation of "those melodies and structural ideas that I find most obvious and inescapable."
More Information...click here
Saxophonist Joshua Smith was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. After sporting an adolescent obsession with jazz and playing in the trio of Cleveland improvisation guru Scott Davis, Joshua formed with the band "birth" which has toured the country for the past several years and recently expanded it's tour niche to include several European nations as well. Throughout this time period, Joshua has also toured and performed with many other groups: The Cleveland Creative Orchestra and Amitosis featuring Chris Jonas, performances and touring with Joe Maneri (a luminary of improvisation); collaborations with Trevor Dunn of Mr. Bungle,
Dan Plonsey, Howie Smith, Scott Amendola; has been highlighted by playing with Nels Cline, Carla Kihlstedt of the Tin Hat Trio, Assif Tsahar, Tim Berne, Chris Speed, Cuong Vu of the "Pat Metheny Group"; Smith is also the keyboardist for "Superbabies"and one half of the low-fi tape/electro-acoustic duo, "Last Chance for the Loneliest Kitty."
An outstanding technician, he articulates very clearly even when playing at blistering speed, and his improvisations are consistently rich in content.
-Jazziz Magazine
Jacob Felix Heule from Ettrick is an improvising musician living in San Francisco. Jacob plays drum set, alto saxophone and whatever else fits the situation (including electronics and bowed saw). After putting in a decade or so playing drums for punk and indie rock bands in Wisconsin, Jacob moved to San Francisco and settled into playing improvised music inspired by free improv, noise, free jazz, black metal and gamelan. Jacob is currently a member of the free jazz/black metal duo, Ettrick, and the doom noise duo, Hodag, as well as a frequent participant in ad hoc Bay Area improv ensembles such as the Moekestra. Jacob currently studies percussion with Gino Robair. In addition to playing instruments, Jacob plays CDs and records on KUSF.
Cost: $10-15