Berkeley Finnish Hall
1970 Chestnut St. Berkeley
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MOE STAIANO ENSEMBLE
NORMAL (Fred Frith & Sudhu Tewari)

Doors 7:00 | Q&A 7:30 | Music 8:15 Tickets
Moe Staiano Ensemble - LP Release performance Away Towards the Light
Moe Staiano is a musician and composer of new music works and angular rock music. Since 1995, he has been at the forefront of the Bay Area creative music scene, playing drums and percussion through innovative solo shows that can feature prepared drum kit, found objects, audio looping and the inventive use of a "percussion guitar." All this is woven in with a performance art aspect that gets the audience involved and wondering what might happen next. He will play (or smash into pieces) just about anything he can get his hands on, and somehow make a compelling musical statement out of it. Moe's compositional work has included music for large ensembles, a piece for two bass clarinets, and a work for percussion quartet. As conductor and composer for the Moe Staiano Ensemble, (formerly Moekestra!), he has composed pieces that can include over 30 musicians playing instruments ranging from violins, clarinets and cellos to drum kits, wine glasses, sirens, oscillators and electric guitars. Moe Staiano Ensemble performances are high-energy, electrifying experiences that create unique and intriguing soundscapes. He has composed two guitar piece ensembles, Away Towards the Light, and Music for 48 Guitars, which has yet to be premiered.
Personnel:
Suki O'Kane - Conductor
Guitarists: John Angel, Lorenzo Arreguin, Blake Daniels, David James, Brent Miller, Melne Murphy, Josh Pollock, John Schott, Jas Stade, Robin Walsh, Drew Wheeler, Bill Wolter
Bass: Jason Hoopes
Drums: Moe Staiano


Normal
Normal is Fred Frith and Sudhu Tewari, playing manually & electronically manipulated home-made instruments. Not really instruments in the sense of beautifully crafted art objects requiring Extended Techniques, so much as de-constructions and re- constructions using the simplest of means, and requiring only minimal exertion to produce sound. Fred's "planks of wood with strings" were almost all built in the early 1980s, when for a period of several years he abandoned the guitar as his primary vehicle for improvising. The birth of this duo in 2001 marked the first time he had performed with them in many years. The fact that he is doing so again is the responsibility of Sudhu, a tinkerer of genius who plunders garages and junkshops and the street outside for the sources of his sound world, turning the smallest spring into a potential orchestra. In 2020 Sudhu and Fred were invited to create a collection of new instruments to be presented at the Center for New Music in San Francisco. This gave rise to a number of new creations including the Portable Street Piano, the Post Hole Tone Music Box, the No Strings Guitar, Sudhu’s Infernal Spring Thing and the Superstrut Bandsaw Bass. Having taken some time to learn to play the new instruments, the first Normal CD, Moving Parts, was released on the Foc’s’le label in May 2023.

Personnel:
Fred Frith, Sudhu Tewari - home-made instruments


Cost: 17/25