ROVA NEWS – October 2007

Singer Dohee Lee Dohee Lee will be featured with Larry Ochs' KIHNOUA at the Noe Valley Ministry on October 20th. photo: Matthew Campbell ♦ Rova's first trip to Poland ♦ Improv:21 ? Henry Kaiser: Improvisation at the End of the World ♦ Upcoming concerts and events ♦ New CD: Larry Ochs sax & drumming core: Up From Under ♦ Bill Horvitz Band Northwest Tour 2007 ♦ Favorite Street ? Steve Adams ♦ RadioOM ? Improv:21 series archived online

Local Rova shows are invaluable for developing both our material and an audience for the work. Touring over the past 30 years has given us an opportunity to play pieces enough to refine them and explore their potential. Looking toward going out on the road (short as the upcoming October trip is) is exciting for us as players, composers and as part of the international community of improvisers. The quartet members always make it our business to interact with, listen to, and sometimes even play with musicians we encounter while we're away from home.

It's with particular excitement that we anticipate two upcoming concerts in Poland. Although Rova's probably been to Europe close to 50 times, we've never made it there. And, we get to close out the trip with a return to Vilnius which we haven't seen since our 1989 tour of the then Soviet Union and Baltic States.

Henry Kaiser (recently pictured in Antarctica) resumes the Improv:21 series October 24.

AT THE BERKELEY HILLSIDE CLUB
2286 Cedar Street
Berkeley
Info: (510) 845-1350

The Berkeley Hillside Club is enraptured to present Antonio Jorge Gonçalves and Gino Robair performing "Improvised Light Painting with Skronky Music". This promises to be be a one-of-a-kind event; don't miss it!

The Performance:
Portuguese multimedia artist Antonio Jorge Gonçalves will improvise with light and drawings throughout the Hillside Club, accompanied by two local musical groups-the Acme House Band and the Jon Raskin Ensemble. Gonçalves creates his visuals using a laptop, a Wacom tablet, and a portable projector, which he pushes around in a cart in order to use the entire performance space as a canvas. He calls his real-time digital drawing "live comics and projection."

The music and visuals will take advantage of the entire performance space, with sound bathing the room from all directions and nearly every surface becoming a canvas. As a special addition acclaimed Butoh dancer, Monique Goldwater, will be a "living screen" for a section of the performance.

The Performers:
Through the '80s and the '90s, Lisbon-based Antonio Jorge Gonçalves published his graphic novels in books, newspapers, and magazines in Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy. He has also designed sets and costumes for several theater productions, and he recently created the Subway Life Project.

The Jon Raskin Ensemble is Liz Allbee (trumpet), Matthew Goodheart (piano), Kjell Nordesen (drums), and Jon Raskin (saxophones).

The Acme House Band is a group of electro-acoustic improvisers including Tom Djll (trumpet), Matt Ingalls (clarinet), John Shiurba (guitar), Tim Perkis (electronics), and Gino Robair (synthesizer).

• Up from Under
• Dragons Fly
• X-10
• and nothing but...
• neoNawi
• Poporfa
• X-09
• Finn Passes Pluto

• Hans Reichel's site, www.daxo.de might be my favorite thing on the Internet. It's clever, involving, evolving and tons of fun. If you only follow one of these links, make it this one.
• Two good e-zines covering jazz and improvised music are Paris Transatlantic www.paristransatlantic.com and Point of Departure www.pointofdeparture.org. All About Jazz, www.allaboutjazz.com, is a good place for reliable reviews of a wide range of music that falls under that heading.
• Grow a Brain is an interesting blog that has a collection of "Unusual Musicians and Their Music" at growabrain.typepad.com. For instance, there's a link to the giant string instruments of the Yi people of China that's not something I'd ever run across before.
• On the electronic music front, Create Digital Music createdigitalmusic.com is a blog that covers the more interesting developments in the field well, and has lots of quirky humor. Check out the video of Keepon the dancing robot, powered by Max/MSP.
• For woodwind instruments, you can find some odd and entertaining things at www.contrabass.com and lots of useful fingering information at www.wfg.woodwind.org.
• And for checking out what's happening in the Bay Area scene, it's the Bay Improviser at www.bayimproviser.com.