WEST OAKLAND SOUND SERIES

sunday june 2, 2024 sung kim / oakland reductionist orchestra
sunday june 9, 2024 microfestival of surround sound diffusion
sunday june 16, 2024 ruben mattia santorsa (italy) / karen yu (hong kong) + ken ueno
sunday june 23, 2024 goggle / united brassworker's front
sunday june 30, 2024 larry ochs group / ric louchard + tom djll

JUNE 2 2024 7pm

SUNG KIM
OAKLAND REDUCTIONIST ORCHESTRA

Instrument maker SUNG KIM demonstrates a few of his unique instruments and performs improvisations offering a melodic tapestry of healing and triumph.

Sung Kim's emergence in avant-garde sound has become inseparable from a defining moment of adversity: a life-altering accident that saw two of his fingers severed and reattached on his dominant left hand. Yet, from this crucible of challenge, Sung's artistic trajectory found new resonance. His workshop, once a space of routine craftsmanship, became a laboratory of innovation born out of necessity. From more rudimentary forms crafted during the initial stages of recovery to intricately designed instruments as his hand regained strength, each piece tells a story of perseverance and transformation.


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
Monica Scott, cello
Cody Putman, bassoon
Kanoko Nishi-Smith, koto
Joshua Marshall, tenor saxophone
Matt Ingalls, clarinets
Ron Heglin, tuba
Jacob Felix Heule, percussion
Tom Djll, trumpet
Kevin Corcoran, percussion
Chris Cooper, objects, electronics
Kevin CK Lo, violin/flute/piano

JUNE 9 2024 7pm

A MICROFESTIVAL OF SURROUND SOUND DIFFUSION

THE SAN FRANCISCO TAPE MUSIC COLLECTIVE presents a "micro-festival" of fixed media works projected live over Dresher's 16-channel Meyer Sound System. Featuring works by international composers and works by members KRISTIN MILTNER, DOUGLAS MCCAUSLAND MATT INGALLS, CLIFF CARUTHERS, and THOM BLUM

JUNE 16 2024 7pm

RUBEN MATTIA SANTORSA
KAREN YU + KEN UENO

RUBEN MATTIA SANTORSA performs a solo electric guitar journey through diverse sonic landscapes. This concert showcases 5 distinct "planets," starting with the delicate sounds of Laurence Crane's Bobby J and moving through Lisa Illean's Tiding in scordatura tuning to Giulia Lorusso's loop-based composition, Unspoken and her fragile À fleur de peau. Additionally, the premiere of a wake up Siri! by Ying Wang, written for Ruben Mattia's American tour. Finally, Ruben Mattia presents his own composition, Drones II.


KAREN YU and KEN UENO perform Noise Box Cantos and Shadow Mudras, both developed collaboratively as a reaction to their experience being pitted in improvisative situations against a collective of modular synthesizer players. After a critical mass of a few modular synth players is reached, it is hard to discern the individual contributions of each performer. Outnumbered in such a context, Ueno and Yu, felt alienated and determined that such performance contexts were at odds with the core values of their respective performance practices as a vocalist and percussionist. As resistance to the culture of electronic noise performance in which physical gestures are decoupled from sonic output, Noise Box Cantos and Shadow Mudras, for Ueno and Yu, are performative investigations towards foregrounding subtle physical gestures in the generation of noise. The stylized use of the hands is important in both pieces. In Noise Box Cantos, four noise boxes, instruments with contact mics inputs and small speakers, built by Hong Kong-based sound artist, Kin Lam, are likened to tiles (or Kanji characters) that are “read” by the hands – likened also to the way Chinese characters operate in Ezra Pounds’ Cantos. In Shadow Mudras, the hand gestures of both performers on a snare drum subtly nuance the sonic output of contact mic inputs fed into a transducer placed on the snare drum. To further theatricalize the hand gestures, lights cast shadows of their stylized gestures (mudras) on the snare head, an abstract kind of shadow puppetry or sign language.

JUNE 23 2024 7pm

GOGGLE
UNITED BRASSWORKER'S FRONT


GOGGLE is the quartet of saxophonists Chris Jonas, Randy McKean, Dan Plonsey and Cory Wright. Individually they have worked with creative mavericks from Anthony Braxton, Vinny Golia, Yusef Lateef, Roscoe Mitchell, to ROVA, but the group has a brainiac squalling sound all its own, fueled by their original compositions—one part laboratory, the other playground. The nucleus of Goggle was formed in 1987 at Mills College, has recorded as the Great Circle Saxophone Quartet for New World Records, and since 2013, as Goggle, have worked with Taylor Ho Bynum, duo B., Lisa Mezzacappa and the Del Sol String Quartet. Goggle will be joined at this sfSound set of new compositions by special guests percussionist Jordan Glenn and vocalist Mantra Plonsey, whose mesmerizing “Nothing Wrong with Him” was featured on Goggle’s latest release Eeyahdi on Cure-All Records.


The UNITED BRASSWORKER'S FRONT seeks to draw on the broad and diverse experiences and interests of it's members, to blur the lines between composition and improvisation, and between tradition and experimentation, all in the hopes of distilling this recipe into a sound that is unique, soulful, and that reexamines what a brass band can be. After many years in hibernation, this will be the first ever performance for the newest incarnation of the UBF, originally founded in the Bay Area in the early 2000's by trumpeter/composer Darren Johnston. Along with Johnston, the other original member this evening will be trumpeter Henry Hung. Past collaborators include Ches Smith, Devin Hoff, Lisa Mezzacappa, Sameer Gupta, Chris Brown, Adam Theis, Ara Anderson, and many others, including the late John Finkbeiner, who's singular sound and approach on electric guitar was a crucial element to the original band's sound.

Darren Johnston, Henry Hung - trumpet
Danny Lubin-Laden, Alan Williams - trombone
Luke Kirley - tuba
Jordan Glenn - drums