| Santa Barbara New Music Series |
The Santa Barbara New Music Series was started in the fall of 2006 by like-minded improvising musicians who recognized the lack of performance space for non-mainstream, creative music in Santa Barbara. It is a monthly event featuring many creative musicians from across the US and has become known in Santa Barbara as a music event for music's sake, a place where creative music is supported and encouraged, and a place where the listener can always hear fresh, new music.
The series happens every 2nd Thursday at 8:00 pm in downtown Santa Barbara. Unless otherwise noted, all shows are at Muddy Waters Cafe, 508 E. Haley St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101. Muddy Waters is an excellent cafe with beer, wine, food, and open ears. Each event usually features two groups, please see the schedule below for details.
Colter Frazier is the curator for this event. If you are interested in performing please contact him!
Enter your email address below to be added to the mailing list. Your address will not be used for any purposes other than a monthly reminder about upcoming shows.
|
|
Date/Time/Cost
|
Performers |
Comments
|
February 9, 2012
8:00 pm
$8
|
Anna Abbey/Jim Connolly/Colter Frazier
PLOTZ!
|
Anna Abbey/Jim Connolly/Colter Frazier is a band that is yet nameless. Tunes that are created for this performance
and never played again using the Mini Piano, Bass, Voices, Banjo, Bibber
box, musical saw. Free Pop designed for the compost bin . The musicians
are Anna Abbey, Colter Frazier, Jim Connolly.
***
One of Southern California's most exciting up-and-coming bands, PLOTZ!
blends the sounds of Eastern European folk music with progressive rock
and creative jazz improvisation. The six members of PLOTZ! have
backgrounds in many different styles of music, including jazz,
world-percussion, classical, rock, metal, experimental, and many others.
Dedicated to a unified and harmonized world-view, PLOTZ! draws
inspiration for original compositions from styles, stories, and
experiences from all over the world, from ancient Greek mythology and
Iceni history to the experience of modern city life and surfing.
Bringing rock-god energy and intensity to every performance, PLOTZ!
explodes off the stage in a jubilant musical celebration of life!
With Daniel Rosenboom on trumpets, Gavin Templeton on
saxophones, Brian Walsh on clarinets and saxophones, Jake Vossler on
guitars, Orest Balaban on bass, and Austin Wrinkle on drums, PLOTZ! is
made up of some of California's most accomplished and innovative young
musicians. Each member of PLOTZ! is a composer in his own right, and
each has been trained at some of America's most respected musical
institutions, including the Eastman School of Music and California
Institute of the Arts.
|
March 8, 2012
8:00 pm
$8
|
Dick Wood
Bonnie Barnett Group
|
Alto Saxophonist and Flutist Dick Wood and his band present improvisations that are built out of the blues, Bach, New Orleans,
and information from Ornette, Art Tatum, Tito Puente, John Cage, Louis
Armstrong, Harry Partch, Big Joe Turner, Sun Ra, Charles Ives, Lester Bowie,
simultaneous voices in space, pre-vocabulary language in time definite
and infinite, mambo, raga, gagaku, and the natural silences in the
sounds of earth and sky.
His band features Dick Wood (alto sax/flute/whistle/boom box), Dan Clucas (cornet/flute/octokoto), Hal Onserud (bass), Mark Trayle (live electronics), Marty Mansour (drums/percussion), Dan Ostermann (trombone), and Chuck Manning (tenor sax).
***
Improvising vocalist Bonnie Barnett has worked with a number of ensembles since the early 1990's. She is a pioneer in the area of experimental vocal multiphonics, and has a great interest in texts and improvising faux texts. Barnett
has worked with bassist Ken Filiano (Trio For Two, on Nine Winds
Records) and composer and woodwind player Hermann Bűhler (Earth Bound,
which he wrote for her voice, out on For 4 Ears) in addition to a number
of ensembles and musicians in the U.S. and Europe. Her
various releases of improvised music are dotted with works that
incorporate texts by Gertrude Stein, Donald Barthelme and Jean-Paul
Sartre.
Barnett's
current group puts her with woodwind player Richard Wood (founder of
the And Now Ensemble with an upcoming pfMentum release, "Not Far From
Here"), bassist Hal Onserud (originally New York-based, now in Santa Barbara, CA,
worked with many luminaries including Cecil Taylor, William Parker,
Bill Dixon, Vinny Golia, Jackson Krall) and percussionist Garth Powell
(based in the San Francisco Bay Area,
collaborates with untold musicians worldwide - Jaap Blonk, John
Butcher, Bert Turetsky and Nels Cline, to name a few - has releases on
countless labels including RastaScan, Road Cone, Nine Winds, Evander
among others). The Group delights in creating
structures in real time, and developing timbres and sonorities that are
greater than the sum of their component parts. |
April 12, 2012
8:00 pm
$8
|
Ishtah
Vintage Modernists
|
Ishtah, in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, refers
to the luscious cream that rises to the top when milk is heated, as well as to
anything considered dope, swank, bomb, cool, golden, or fly.
A
local Santa Barbara group, Ishtah invites you to partake in the creme de la creme of Near Eastern
improvisation; a deviation from playing within traditions and into a delectable
improvisational expression of the repertoire.
Eric
Ederer - oud, cumbuş.
Lillie
Gordon - violin.
Jim
Grippo - qanun.
Eric Ederer is a composer and instrumentalist
specializing in plucked strings; he has happily spent the last ten years
learning Middle Eastern maqam music
and earned his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at UCSB on the art of taksim (solo improvisation) in Turkey,
following a year's research in Istanbul as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow.
Lillie Gordon is a violinist and 'ud player focusing on the music of the
Eastern Arab world. A Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at the University
of California Santa Barbara, she is currently working on a dissertation on
Egyptian violinists and the violin's changing role in Egyptian music. She has
studied Arab violin and Arab music for ten years with various teachers in the
US and Egypt (Tahya Masr!), including Mr. Sa'd Muhammad Hassan and Dr. Scott
Marcus. Past performances range from local Santa Barbara elementary
schools to the famed Cairo Opera House.
Jim Grippo has been an avid performer of Near
Eastern music on the 'ud and the qanun for over sixteen years. He is a
passionate teacher of technique, improvisation, and maqam (Arab modal theory) and is the qanun player for the UCSB Middle East Ensemble, and plays with
Souren Baronian (NY), Georges & Elias Lammam (SF), Yuval Ron (LA) and, recently,
with the Gorillaz. In addition to teaching and performing, Jim is a Ph.D.
candidate in ethnomusicology, focusing on Egyptian Popular music, at the
University of California, Santa Barbara.
***
The Vintage Modernists are Daniel Weidlein (saxophones, EWI, effects), Erik Miron (guitar, effects), and Cameron Hicks (drums). Based in Los Angeles, but all hailing from the Rocky Mountain West, this eclectic group combines post-modern jazz with elements of the avant-garde, funk, and post-rock music. The band has performed regularly around the Los Angeles area and is finishing up its debut album. For more information on the group, please visit www.reverbnation.com/vintagemodernists.
|
May 10, 2012
8:00 pm
$8
|
Cenozoic
The Transhumans
|
Cenozoic is
a Santa Barbara trio composed of Charlie Roberts (keyboard), Colter
Frazier (bass), and Angus Forbes (drums). They perform post-mesozoic
instrumental jazz rock. Collectively, they have been members of many Santa
Barbara bands over the years including Thunderdrop, Hero and the Victor,
Heat Death, the Colter Frazier Quartet, the Rob Wallace Memorial Band,
and the Colter Frazier/Rob Wallace Duo.
***
The Transhumans have been playing locally since 2005. Their
particular brand of improvisational music might best be described as
dysharmonic, dysrhythmic mayhem: that is, a must for those who have lost
the desire, at least temporarily, for show tunes, R and B or
"experimental." Although their albums have been well received, they are a
must-see live for the full impact of moving air.
"I could not just [listen to them] any time of the day, but that
can be said of a lot of the challenging music I treasure: Schoenberg, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman."
The Transhumans are:
Bob Sterling: acoustic and electric drums, percussion, effects
Patrick Rodriguez: electronics, effects
Justin Cassidy: electronics, effects
|
June 14, 2012
8:00 pm
$8
|
Chobraty
tba.
|
Veteran brass players of the L.A. improvising scene, Michael
Vlatkovich (trombone) and William Roper (tuba), have finally done what
everyone has been telling them to do for years - document their zany
antics. "Chobraty" is a co-led project with compositions by Vlatkovich.
The written material provides a jump-off point for the duo to
have their way with each other. No matter how far afield they go, home
is never forgotten. At times it is difficult to determine which parts
are written and which are improvised. The duo masterfully blurs the
line.
***
Second band to be announced.
|
|
|