21 Grand
416 25th St @Broadway Near 19th Street BART Oakland
Click for Venue page

Bay Area Supergroup The Acme House Band welcomes guest artists from France Mathieu Werchowski (violin) and David Chiesa (contrabass) for another incarnation of Grosse Abfahrt, or the Art of Gigantic International Improvisations Carried Out With Extreme Sensitivity. The Acme House Band is: Gino Robair, Kyle Bruckmann, Theresa Wong, Matt Ingalls, John Shiurba, Tim Perkis, and Tom Djll.

Grosse Abfahrt is the name I gave the project on the occasion of its first recording in October 2004, when Boris Baltschun and Serge Baghdassarians played at the Acme Observatory. In German, the name means 'great departure'. The project is to take a core group of Bay Area musicians and put them together with out of town guests, usually Europeans. Always free improvisation. This concert marks the fourth iteration of the project.

For the April 23 concert at 21 Grand, I bring French improvisers Mathieu Werchowski and David Chiesa together with the best San Francisco Bay Area improvising musicians in a larger context, consisting of the ‘Acme House Band’ players heard on SUPERMODEL SUPERMODEL (Emanem 4126), SIX FUCHS (Rastascan BRD 052) and ERSTES LUFTSCHIFF ZU KALIFORNIEN (Creative Sources CS 065) – Gino Robair, John Shiurba, and Tim Perkis – plus Matt Ingalls,Theresa Wong, Kyle Bruckmann and myself (Tom Djll), for a total of nine. The music strives toward long structures, charged silences, and extreme attention to detail.

The critics rave:
Grosse Abfahrt (Creative Sources 065) is a fine summit meeting between European electronics whizzes (Serge Baghdassarians and Boris Baltschun) with six of the Bay Area’s finest: Chris Brown (piano and electronics), Tom Djll (trumpet), Matt Ingalls (clarinet), Tim Perkis (electronics), Gino Robair (analog synth), and John Shiurba (guitar). They produce a thick, rich brew that’s heavy on percussive sounds and styles – burbles from Robair, rough scrapings from the excellent Shiurba, and extended pulse play from Baltschun and Baghdassarians. The disc gets off to a somewhat slow and muffled start with the opening “am anfang Zerstorung.” But it seems to find its voice in the nearly 20-minute “interkontinentale luftschiffahrt,” which opens with Ingalls and Djll popping away like the bastard cousin of nmperign, blanketed in sonar pings and a canopy of noise. Chris Brown is central to the piece’s success, with his jabs springing loose a middle section for creaking, wheezing electronics. “Morrell remained hopeful” is a tasty bagatelle, while “riesenflugzeugabteilung” covers your head with a thick electronic sheen. (Jason Bivins, Dusted Magazine)

Several fine bridges have been built in recent years between the improv worlds of California and Germany. Wolfgang Fuchs has been a frequent visitor to the West Coast, and has popped up on a number of fine outings (Mount Washington on Reify and Six Fuchs on Rastascan), and the electronics duo of Serge Baghdassarians and Boris Baltschun had already cut a fine disc with Fuchs, Jacob Lindsay and Damon Smith (The Happy Makers on Balance Point Acoustics) before teaming up in October 2004 with a host of Bay Area notables – Chris Brown (piano and electronics), Tom Djll (trumpet), Matt Ingalls (clarinet), Tim Perkis (electronics), Gino Robair (analog synth) and John Shiurba (guitar) – to record these five spare but remarkably tense collective improvisations, intriguingly titled erstes Luftschiff zu Kalifornien, a reference to the ill-fated maiden voyage of John A. Morrell's hydrogen-filled airship on May 23rd 1908. Quite what this music has to do with that fateful story isn't exactly made clear, but unlike Morrell's doomed craft, which plummeted to ground seriously injuring all its passengers, it stays aloft beautifully. Eight improvisers, even without electronics, can make a hell of an unseemly racket, but there's a sense of restraint and purpose to these five pieces that's rarely achieved in ensemble improv, either live or on disc. The only other medium-sized improv ensembles capable of such magic are the Boston-based BSC and the Berlin-based Phosphor collective, but even the latter's eponymous debut album on Potlatch wasn't as good as this. The Germans, if left to their own devices, are quite at home wandering in the drizzle under the leaden skies of EAI, but here they're evidently enjoying the California sunshine. Perkis, Brown and Robair have always been colourful performers, and the additional timbral richness of trumpet, clarinet and guitar is a joy. The immensely talented (and criminally under-recorded) Ingalls is on magnificent form, sketching delicate melodic lines between the luminous clusters and buzzing clouds, and guitarist Shiurba proves he's as good at the gentle stuff as he is at tearing up those Ghost Trance charts with Braxton. They're all having so much fun that Djll can't resist letting rip a good blast or two in "interkontinentale luftschiffahrt", the album's longest and most impressive track. It's a shame that Creative Sources releases have tended to go largely ignored in recent times – proof perhaps that you can have too much of a good thing? – because this is one of the best discs you're likely to hear all year. Überwältigend, as they say in Berkeley. (Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic.com)

For more info, call Tom Djll, 831-320-1489

Cost: $10-$75 sliding

Audio samples in which musicians at this event play:

Videos featuring musicians playing at this event