Mosswood Sound Series :: Presented by sfSound

MOSSWOOD SOUND SERIES
a weekly new music and experimental sound series presented by sfSound

mosswood chapel :: 3630 telegraph oakland ca :: enter 2nd door on 37th st
$10-$25 sliding scale (cash & venmo accepted at door)
click here to purchase advance tickets ($20) online on eventbrite

sun oct 1, 4pm james ilgenfritz (nyc) + jean carla rodea + lisa mezzacappa / reductionist orchestra
sunday oct 15, 2023 7pm dorothea schürch (bern) / gachapon with christna braun
sunday oct 22, 2023 7pm chris jonas: music from the deserts (santa fe) / headboggle / hallie smith
sunday oct 29, 2023 7pm oceans roar 1000 drums (berlin) / matthew goodheart (troy)

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uma gallery (the art on the walls!)

SUNDAY OCTOBER 1 2023 4:00pm $10-$25

ILGENFRITZ BASS TRIO
(JAMES ILGENFRITZ + JEAN CARLA RODEA + LISA MEZZACAPPA)
THE OAKLAND REDUCTIONIST ORCHESTRA

Visiting from New York, bassist JAMES ILGENFRITZ assembles a trio with locals JEAN CARLA RODEA and LISA MEZZACAPPA. Ilgenfritz is recognized in The New Yorker for his “characteristic magnanimity” and his “invaluable contributions to New York’s new-music community.” James has performed around the US, Europe, and in Asia with his bands Hypercolor and 4tet2duos. He has composed for the Ghost Ensemble, the New Thread saxophone quartet, HUB New Music, Hypercube, baritone Thomas Buckner, and the Ostravska Banda in the Czech Republic. Recent albums include Altamirage, featuring duets with and compositions by Pauline Oliveros, and Aging, with Czech-born composer/performer Lucie Vítková. This follows two solo albums: Origami Cosmos and Compositions (Braxton) 2011 (featuring music by Annie Gosfield, Miya Masaoka, Elliott Sharp, JG Thirlwell, and Anthony Braxton). He holds degrees from University of Michigan and University of California San Diego, and received his PhD at University of California, Irvine in June 2023. James had two residencies at John Zorn’s The Stone in 2015 and 2018, and has composed two operas, The Ticket That Exploded (2011, using text by William S. Burroughs) and I Looked At The Eclipse (2019, with librettist Sarah Krasnow). His current projects include solo and ensemble performance situations with his Autonomous Mechanical Instrument Array (AMIA) and his Alien Generator alternate tuning system.

The concert also features the OAKLAND REDUCTIONIST ORCHESTRA, a supergroup of local musicians with a predilection for lowercase/fricative/reductionist acoustic improvisation that often sounds more electronic than acoustic. This ensemble grows out of a rich tradition of "American reductionist" music that emerged (re-emerged?) in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Previous projects like Tom Djll's Grosse Abfahrt and The Jack Wright Large Ensemble Eight By Nine document the Bay Area's contribution to the genre.

PERFORMERS
Danishta Rivero, voice
Cody Putman, bassoon
Kevin CK Lo, piano, etc
Lisa Mezzacappa, bass
Matt Ingalls, clarinets
James Ilgenfritz, bass
Ron Heglin, tuba
Phillip Greenlief, saxophone
Tom Djll, trumpet
Kevin Corcoran, percussion
Chris Cooper, electronics

SUNDAY OCTOBER 15 2023 7:00pm $10-$25

DOROTHEA SCHÜRCH
GACHAPON
(NANCY BECKMAN, CINDY WEBSTER, TOM BICKLEY, and DEAN SANTOMIERI)
with
CHRISTINA BRAUN

photo credit: tim walters

DOROTHEA SCHÜRCH presents a solo for colored breath inspired by the voices of the Ultra-Lettrist. Schürch is internationally active as a singer and performer. She has worked interdisciplinary in the fields of improvisation, music, theater, and performance for 40 years. The emancipatory and anarchistic approaches of the 80s have shaped her work focusing on the voice as a respiratory-physiological soundscape on one hand and as an experimental research tool on the other. Schürch's performances have taken her to festivals such as the Workshop Free Music Berlin, Taktlos Zurich, Festival de la Bâtie Genève, Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon, Jazz Festival Willisau, After Yodel New York, High Zero Festival Baltimore, Total Music Meeting Berlin, Wien Modern, Donaueschinger Musiktage, festival de la musique actuelle Victoriaville, Western Front Vancouver. She wrote a doctoral thesis on avant-garde vocal practices of the Ultra-Lettrist movement in the 1960s in Paris.

Schürch is currently in Oakland as a postdoctoral research fellow working on tape-recorded compositions of the 1950s and 1960s as part of the Bern Academy of the Arts project "Schreiben mit Stimmen" [Writing with Voices] which is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Her research focuses on tape-recorder compositions from the perspective of studio work including the crafting and experimentation with the machines and sounds. This research is inspired by practice-based musicology addressing questions of re-enactment, redoing, re-considering, and the exploration of learning and understanding versus appropriation. She is also interested in theoretical approaches to the questions arising from composing with recordings. Her work has received numerous awards.

GACHAPON is an improvising quartet of local musicians NANCY BECKMAN (shakuhachi), CINDY WEBSTER (voice, amplified bowed saw, hurdy-gurdy), TOM BICKLEY (EWI and electronics), and DEAN SANTOMIERI (guitar, taishogoto). For this performance, they will be collaborating with San Francisco dancer CHRISTINA BRAUN.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 22 2023 7:00pm $10-$25

CHRIS JONAS: MUSIC FROM THE DESERTS
(CHRIS JONAS + CORY WRIGHT + LISA MEZZACAPPA + JASON LEVIS)
HEADBOGGLE
HALLIE SMITH

Visiting from Santa Fe, New Mexico, composer and saxophone player CHRIS JONAS presents MUSIC FROM THE DESERTS with three musicians central to the creative music world of the Bay Area: reedist CORY WRIGHT on baritone sax and clarinets, with long-standing rhythm section LISA MEZZACAPPA on bass, and JASON LEVIS on drums.

Music from the Deserts explores the music and video created by Chris Jonas has created over the past two years winter camping alone for weeks in very remote Sonora Desert places, including Arizona's Barry Goldwater Missile Range and at Trump's Border Wall that cuts across the granite Tinajas Altas. This collection of music and videos are in the midst of touring worldwide in 2023 with shows in Chicago, Berkeley, Santa Fe, Tel Aviv, Rome, Bologna and Siena.

HEADBOGGLE explores the lower octaves on the 92-key Bösendorfer piano live to a new Headboggle synth / electronic pop backing. A special performance prepared and mixed for the evening's event over the past few months.

HALLIE SMITH presents Akerselva, a drone based solo violin improvisation that uses an audio responsive laser level performance tool to diffract light. The work takes as a starting point icy and fragile harmonics which use bow pressure, bow speed, and pow placement for control.

SUNDAY OCTOBER 29 2023 7:00pm $10-$25

OCEANS ROAR 1000 DRUMS
MATTHEW GOODHEART

The international music group OCEANS ROAR 1000 DRUMS (with members in Berlin, NYC, and Norway), on tour for the first time in California to support a new release on the Sacred Realism label. Building on their musical language developed over the past 15 years of playing spontaneous music together, Todd Capp and Bryan Eubanks will work in an electro-acoustic formation of drums, saxtronics, and modular synthesizer for these concerts.

With his work described as “An exacting and fascinating meeting of art, music and science” (Jazzwise) and “extraordinary listening experiences” (Westdeutsch Zeitung), composer, performer, and sound installation artist MATTHEW GOODHEART interleaves live performance and immersive sound environments in a hybrid world of composition, improvisation, interactive electronics, and spatial sound installation. Utilizing a technique known as “reembodied sound,” in which instruments are actuated via tactile transducers so that they appear to sound autonomously, he investigates the interrelationship between acoustics, space, sound production, and technology. In this concert, he will present a set of recent solo works combining transducer-actuated metal percussion and piano in an evolving series of eclectic and ethereal soundscapes.

PROPOSALS

Our focus is on the bay area experimental and new music community, hopefully encouraging crossover among sub-scenes (composition and improvisation; established and emerging; institutional and underground; etc.) We strongly suggest local musicians attend concerts before requesting to perform on the series. Visiting aritsts are also welcome, ideally splitting a concert with local musicians. We are also seeking compositions (in all forms of notation) to be performed by the sfSoundGroup.

There is a "hall-like" reverberation in the space. Extremely dense or heavily amplified music isn't a great match for the acoustics, although it is possible to use drum kits and electronic music with some sensitivity. We have a 92-key (down to a Low F!) 1953 Bösendorfer 7’4” Model 225 Piano (no sostenuto pedal; inside/prepared is OK). There is a basic sound system with a mixer and two QSC K12 loudspeakers.

50% of ticket sales is given to the performers.

If you are interested in performing on the series, please send an email to series@sfsound.org.