A NoNet performance, featuring:
Mike Bullock, upright bass, electronics, Boston MA
Gust Burns, tapes, Seattle WA
Tucker Dulin, trombone, electronics, San Diego CA
Chris Forsyth, guitar, Brooklyn NY
David Gross, saxophone, Boston MA
Andrew Lafkas, upright bass, Queens NY
Catherine Pancake, dry ice/cymbal percussion, Baltimore MD
Nate Wooley, trumpet, Jersey City NJ
Jack Wright, soprano and alto saxophone, Easton PA
The Gate to Moonbase Alpha series of monthly concerts at the Rotunda in West Phila. will be presenting an entire evening of improvisational music by some of the finest players, drawn from around the country. In the spirit of free improvisation, many of us will be meeting and playing together for the first time:
1. A vital part of Boston’s free improvising community, bassist MIKE BULLOCK has performed throughout the United States and in Europe. He plays in a wide variety of settings from solo concerts to the large improvising ensemble the BSC; frequent collaborators include Greg Kelley, Vic Rawlings and Bhob Rainey among others. Whether on acoustic upright or electric bass, Bullock takes the bass with full hand to make it sound violently or listen to it whistle and squeak delicately (Metamkine). He also plays bass feedback like an instrument, modulating it with tone generators and tuning forks. Bullock appears on more than a dozen recordings, on labels as diverse as Tautology, CIMP, GROB and others. He started his own label, Chlo, in 2002.
2. GUST BURNS is a pianist, improviser, and composer who lives in Seattle, and is heavily involved with the improvised music community there. He has performed at the Earshot Jazz Festival, Northwest New Works at On the Boards, Seattle Improvised Music Festival, Composer/Choreographer, Center on Contemporary Art, Consolidated Works, Polestar Music Gallery, and frequently at gallery 1412. Gust also is an active teacher, conducting frequent workshops on improvised music in addition to his private piano teaching. Outside of Seattle, Gust is a frequent collaborator with numerous noteworthy improvisers and musicians. Music partners include and have included Frank Gratkowski(Germany), John Edwards(London), Lori Freedman(Montreal), Ron Samworth, Coat Cooke(Vancouver B.C.), Phillip Greenlief, Damon Smith(Bay Area), Bryan Eubanks, Leif Erik Sundstrom, Tim Duroche, Kelvin Pittman(Portland), Andrew Lafkas, Reuben Radding, Daniel Carter(NYC), and Jack Wright(Pennsylvania). Gust plays improvised/composed new music from a perspective influenced by both jazz and "classical"/avant-garde traditions as well as the rap and hip-hop music he grew up with. He has a keen interest in how these and other issues such as intent, comodification, community, and musical content effect the role music plays in the socio-political-economic reality. Before moving back to the Seattle area, Gust attended Western Washington University, where he studied philosophy, focusing on Heidegger, metaphysics, and Existentialism. During this time, he also studied improvisation and composition with Canadian virtuoso pianist Paul Plimley. Since being an artist in the States implies being almost completely self-reliant, Gust has been very involved as an organizer and presenter of new music in Seattle. He has been co-director of the Seattle Improvised Music Festival since 2002, and co-director of gallery 1412 since November 2004. He organizes the annual AfterEars music festival, and has presented numerous concerts at the Center on Contemporary Art, including the City-funded Prospettiva Plural monthly solo series, which ran for almost two years. Gust is also the president of Seattle Improvised Music, a new non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and developing the improvised music community in Seattle.
3. Improviser, trombonist and noise artist TUCKER DULIN has made performances in the US and Europe in many contexts including the Boston Philharmonic, SONOR, Klaresque Ensemble, Callithumpian Consort, Mass Eye and Ear, and the Masashi Harada Ensemble, Ensemble Resonanz. Soon to finish his DMA in contemporary music at UCSD, Dulin is studying with Miller Puckette, Ed Harkins, and Charles Curtis and is specializing in post-war solo and chamber repertoire for the trombone. Premieres include Homiski, Finnissy, Malfatti and, among many others has performed with Jerome Rothenberg, George Lewis, Bertram Turetzky, Steve Roden, Nick Hennies, Bhob Rainey, Nathaniel Clark, and German flutist Sabine Vogel. Current projects include: a commission by San Diego New Music for an interactive installation for computer and ambience, an 18-hour performance of unconventionally-notated scores, and a Linux cluster sound war installation at NWEAMO.
4. Guitarist CHRIS FORSYTH lives in Brooklyn, New York USA. His work is concerned with exploring the limits and usage of sound as music and the guitar as sound-generating device in both his compositions and improvisations. He is a founding member of the minimalist noise trio psi. Other activities include a duo with multi-reed/analog synthesist Chris Heenan; the "small speakers" project Wrasses; a long running collaboration with San Francisco-based guitarist/pianist Ernesto Diaz-Infante; and the mysterious and rarely spotted quartet Phantom Limb & Bison. He has performed in many corners of the United States and Europe, in all manner of venue. Aside from making music, he is a founder and co-organizer of Improvised and Otherwise, a three-day festival of music, dance, and performance which will be presented for the fourth consecutive year in May 2005 in Brooklyn. He also runs Evolving Ear, a recording label that has been releasing challenging music to the world since 1998.
5. Described as "one of Boston's steadfast explorers," by Bob Blumenthal of the Boston Globe, saxophonist DAVID GROSS has beenan integral part of Boston's seminal free improving community for nearly a decade. He has performed with Le Quan Ninh, Eddie Prevost, Steve Roden, Gino Robair, Martin Tetreault, Kaffe Matthews, the late Glenn Spearman, Raphe Malik and many members of the Boston free-improv scene including Bhob Rainey, Greg Kelley, and Laurence Cook. Currently, Gross is transforming the saxophone into exactly what it is: a metal tube with keys, mouthpiece, and a reed. Reviews of his recordings have been as varied as "The range of textured noise that he cajoles from his instrument is impressive" to "lengthy episodes of fingernails ripping at a blackboard". Gross has performed throughout the US including at festivals as diverse as The KNOB (Wichita, KS), Big Sur Festival of Experimental Music (CA), High Zero (Baltimore, MD), Improvised and Otherwise (NYC), the no fun fest (NYC) and Autumn Uprising (MA) which he created in 1997.
6. ANDREW LAFKAS: "i was born in 1980 and began studying music on the violin in 1985. in 1994, i began working with a bass. in the process of being a part of/making music, i am attempting to develop/construct something that i find to be beautiful. thank you for listening."
7. CATHERINE PANCAKE is a percussionist, sound artist and film-maker from Baltimore MD. Her inventive and inspired percussion style includes creative improvisation using a traditional trap set and experimentation with subtle and precise tone production using dry ice. She has also worked in collaboration with Andrew Hayleck using hydrophones to combine water and electronics with quite original effect. Collaborations in 2004/2005 included Le Quan Ninh, Jaap Blank, Sabir Mateen, Carolyne Kraabel, Audrey Chen, Andrew Hayleck, Dan Breen and Paul Neidhardt. 2003-05 venues included Knitting Factory (NYC) Taipei National School for the Arts (Taiwan) Shanghai Conservatory (Shanghai, ROC) International House (Tokyo) Soundlab (Buffalo, NY) Princeton University (Princeton, NJ) Flywheel (Easthampton, MA.) Her films have been shown across the US in venues such as Philadelphia International Film Festival, AFI Silver Theater (Silver Springs, MD), Contemporary Museum (Baltimore, MD,) and the Millenium Theater (NYC.)
8. NATE WOOLEY (b. 1974) grew up in a finnish-american fishing village in Oregon. He has spent the rest of his life trying musically to find a way back to the peace and quiet of that time by whole-heartedly embracing the space between complete absorption in sound and relative absence of the same. He began playing trumpet professionally at age 13 with his father, and after studying he moved to Colorado where he studied more with Ron Miles, Art Lande, Fred Hess, and improvisation master Jack Wright. Nate currently resides in Jersey City, NJ and performs solo trumpet improvisations as well as with his trio Blue Collar with Steve Swell and Tatsuya Nakatani. He has also performed with Anthony Braxton, Bhob Rainey, Alessandro Bosetti, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Joe Morris, Fritz Welch, Herb Robertson, Kevin Norton, Tony Malaby, Randy Peterson, Tim Barnes, Okkyung Lee, Assif Tsahar, and other improvisation luminaries. "New Yorker Nate Wooley belongs to a growing school of improvising trumpeters who're radicalizing their technique to focus on unpitched streams of air and thread-thin, whistlelike tones. But those are far from the only weapons in his arsenal. On "_____ Isan Apparition" (Rossbin), the new album by his trio Blue Collar, he uses puckered curlicues, vocalizations distorted by the horn's tubing, sputtery stammers, quiethalf-valved passages that turn his sound into a fluid whisper, and even some clear, straightforward long tones." Chicago Weekly Reader
9. JACK WRIGHT has been a bold, even outrageous saxophonist, as well as an influential musical personality over the past twenty years. Continuously on tour, or organizing the next one, he has been called the Johnny Appleseed of free improvisation. As a musical explorer as well, his music passes through radical shifts of style and approach from one year to the next, yet always somehow identifiable as his own. The Washington Post says, "In the rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is king". He plays alto, tenor, and soprano saxes, contra-alto clarinet, and piano, in every possible direction, but rarely what is recognizable. Now, after fifteen years living in Boulder CO, he has returned to his native Pennsylvania and resides in Easton, which enables him once again to become active in the New York and East Coast music scene.
A recent review in a German publication, Bad Alchemy, had this to say of his solo: "Wright does not make music, he embodies it, he transforms it with a naivete of another order. It grows into a sound river, he is part of the diaphragm through which the heterogeneous whispers." Jack has over sixty partners around the US and in Europe with whom he plays on his travels and records. His most recent tours in the US have been with French soprano sax player Michel Doneda and NYC percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani; cellist Bob Marsh of the Bay area; Michael Griener percussion and Sabine Vogel flute of Berlin; Reuben Radding, NYC bassist; Phil Durrant, English laptop musician; trumpet player Tom Djll from Oakland and soprano sax player Bhob Rainey.
Feature article in Signal to Noise Magazine
2001 interview with John Berndt