Ernesto Rodrigues/ Manuel Mota Duo

viola, electric guitar
Lisbon, Portugal

Ernesto Rodrigues and Manuel Mota may be standing on top of a very strong tradition in what concerns the relations between an arco string instrument and a guitar: the one introduced before the Second World War in improvisation by Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt with the Quintet of the Hot Club de France. They certainly come from that heritage, even if aesthetically we can’t find any other common point besides the same naturalness in terms of sound and interaction. Like what happened with those two great figures, the extraordinary thing is that Rodrigues’ and Mota’s backgrounds couldn’t be more different. The violist had classical training and went through free jazz before arriving to the non-idiomatic music he now embraces, and the guitarrist learned to pluck his ax by himself, moving his path from a minimalist-like drone work and re-discovered fingerstyle in the Delta blues based music.

And that’s what characterizes this duo: even if free in form, even if innovative in terms of vocabulary and the technical procedures used, the music they play has a strong sense of history. Elements of post-serialism and of the trademark conceptions of Xenakis and Lachenmann melt in some way with echoes of Robert Johnson’s playing, and jazz stylings connect with references coming from the written European music of the two last centuries. This meeting of cultures could seem bizarre, but it’s so interiorized by both Ernesto Rodrigues and Manuel Mota that it’s not a matter of fusion or collage. It’s like this music always existed, ready to be performed, as something that is only the result of a continuity and a simultaneity of musical data. Hybrids are the natural cultural objects in this beginning of the 21st century.

- Rui Eduardo Paes
(music critic and writer)

Ernesto Rodrigues

He has been playing the violin for 20 years and in that time has played all genres of music ranging from contemporary music to free jazz and improvised music, live and in the studio.

His main interest shifted towards contemporary improvised and composed music. The relationship with his instruments is focused in sonic and textural elements. Electronic music was an early influence on his approach to violin playing, which challenges traditional romantic concepts of the violin/viola through use of preparations and micro tuning.

Active in different settings on the Portuguese scene for free improvised music, both as a collaborator and in leading his own groups. Music for Dance, Cinema, Video and Performance

Has created the record label Creative Sources Recordings in 1999, wich mainly concentrates on releasing experimental and electro-acoustic music.
Ernesto Rodrigues webpage

Manuel Mota

Public activity since 1989. Has performed in Europe and U.S.A. Between 1989 and 1997 he studies and experiments with prepared guitar, mainly acoustic. Since then his interests shifted to the development of a language for fingerstyle electric guitar.

Works in a regular basis with bassist Margarida Garcia and trumpeter Sei Miguel (both collaborations since 1997). Funds the record label ‘Headlights’ in 1998.
Manuel Mota webpage

Phillip Greenlief / Theresa Wong Duo

reeds, voice; cello, voice
Bay Area

Phillip Greenlief (saxophones, clarinet, voice) and Theresa Wong (cello, voice) present a wide array of new composition and improvisation in their performance. Their music explores the expressive range of their instruments and how the human voice, text and graphic scores inform their original compositions. With rich backgrounds in literature (Greenlief) and graphic design (Wong), these composers have a wealth of material upon which to draw. The duo performs compositions that Greenlief and Wong have created individually and collectively and also feature works by other Bay Area musicians. Ever in awe by the mysteries of improvisation, they come together to create a sound world that reflects their diverse experiences in classical, jazz and electro-acoustic music.

Theresa Wong

Cellist Theresa Wong is an improviser and composer who brings together her interests in the visual arts, design and music. Currently, her work involves an exploration of the cello, voice and amplified bicycle and the integration of these elements with visual media. Based in Oakland California, she has collaborated with many Bay Area improvisers as well as musicians in Italy and France.

Phillip Greenlief

Since his emergence on the west coast in the late 1970’s, Evander Music Founder Phillip Greenlief has worked internationally with many of the great improvisers and composers in the post-jazz continuum, as well prominent new music innovators and master improvisers. His performances and recordings have received radio broadcasts and rave reviews from around the world; and his ever-evolving relationship with the saxophone continues to unfold with its expansive sound vocabulary and extreme dynamic range, deep regard for melody and form, and humor and wit not dissimilar to the Native American Coyote tales.
Phillip Greenlief webpage
evandermusic.com

Andrew Lafkas / Leif Sundstrom Duo

bass; percussion, turntable
NYC, Portland

"This group does not have much of a history; we have never performed or worked together as a duo. We have worked together in various groups over the last few years (I remember one trio being quite magical) and conducted a series of performances throughout the west coast this last September as part of a five-piece electronics group. The week of the Seattle Improvised Music Festival will enable us, musicians who reside on opposite sides of this large body of land, the opportunity to develop a music over a few days and then present this music in a public context. We thank you for your trust in attending this concert, and hope that you have a nice experience."

Andrew Lafkas

I was born in 1980 and began studying the violin in 1985. In 1994 I began working with a bass. In the process of making and being a part of music I am attempting to construct/develop something that I find to be beautiful. I am pleased to be a part of this year’s festival.

Lief Sundstrom

Leif Sundstrom is a performer and musician based out of Portland, Oregon. Since arriving in Portland in 2002, Leif has continually developed an improvisatory approach to music that maintains a symbiotic relationship with his environment and company. Using drums and percussion to explore sound Leif remains sensitive to the resonant qualities of his instrument. Most recently, Leif has focused heavily on different qualities of friction and sustain in his acoustic performance.

In addition to percussion Leif also maintains an ethereal sensibility using old record players, equalizers, and preparations to produce modulated feedback and gestural sounds.

Besides organizing and performing music throughout the west coast over the past three years Leif Sundstrom has had the fortune of sharing music and time with Bob Marsh, Gust Burns, Jack Wright, Toshi Makihara, Doug Theriault, Andrew Lafkas, Joe Foster, Chris Cogburn, among countless valuable others. In Portland Leif continues to explore longstanding collaborations with Jean-Paul Jenkins (in the group Super Unity, etc) and Bryan Eubanks, whom he collaborates in many different forms including the electronics duo GOD.

Influences for Leif's sounds range from metaphysics and ethics to solo walks and Oregon clouds. However, the relationships to others that have come, gone, and remain -- good, bad, or otherwise -- remain the most influential to his reasons for making music at all.

JP Carter Solo Trumpet / Electronics

trumpet/electronics
Vancouver, British Columbia

An integral member of bands like the Tony Wilson Sextet, Inhabitants, Aeroplane Trio, Carsick, Great Aunt Ida and Fond of Tigers, trumpeter/composer JP Carter is dynamic force in Vancouver's vibrant and eclectic music community. Called "an intrepid sound sound explorer" by La Scena Musicale, JP has performed with some of the best including Dave Douglas, Steve Beresford, Wolfgang Fuchs, Dylan Van Der Schyff and Francois Houle.

Gust Burns Solo Piano

piano, inside piano
Seattle

“In my current solo piano work, I am focused on bridging two different areas I have developed somewhat separately in my music over the past five years. First, a rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic approach, searching for new and personal ground in each of these areas. This is heavily influenced by the exceptionally musical voices of the post-jazz improvising piano tradition, as well as composers gyorgy ligeti and conlon nancarrow.

Second, a unique and developing voice utilizing new techniques for inside the piano, that often arrives at very stark and spacious areas. The emphasis is placed on timbre, texture, and the beauty of each sound, joined or followed by the next.

New and interesting approaches to form continue to be a priority for me, as I continue to integrate these two musical worlds into a provocative and personal solo language.”

Vic Rawlings/ Mike Bullock Duo

bass, feedback systems; prepared amplified cello, surface electronics
Boston

The Mike Bullock/ Vic Rawlings Duo combines classical string instruments and electronics in ways that reveal the core elements of each. Rawlings plays amplified cello and an electronic instrument he built out of exposed circuit boards and speaker cones. Bullock plays amplified contrabass, test oscillators, and feedback.

The result is a stark sound world utterly alienated from the glib fluidity commonly associated with bowed strings. The sounds are by turns deep-frozen and blisteringly hot. The rhythms are those of hands moving over a workbench or methodically slashing tires.

After playing in various bands together since 1997, Rawlings and Bullock first played as a duo in summer 2000. They toured France in October 2003 in support of “Fall of Song” [Chloë]. They returned to France in 2004, and in fall 2005 they toured throughout the eastern U.S. as a trio with Lebanese trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj.
Mike Bulloc / Vic Rawlings webpage

Mike Bullock

Michael Bullock (contrabass, feedback systems, video) is an improviser, composer, and multimedia artist based in Somerville, MA. He has performed in an eleventh century stone chapel, a Czech monastery, and on the side of mountain.

As a soloist, Bullock’s performances are permeated by a precarious sense of timing reminiscent of Samuel Beckett and Buster Keaton. His performances incorporate and exploit amplified contrabass feedback, sweeping the bass through the air to change the tone, and modulating it with test oscillators, tuning forks, and electronics.

As a duo with cellist Vic Rawlings, and with electronic duo rise set twilight (with Linda Aubry), Mike has performed across the US and in France and Czech Republic. He has collaborated with Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley (of nmperign), Christian Wolff, Lę Quan Ninh, Daniel Carter, Mazen Kerbaj, and Theodore Bikel.

Mike is a member of the BSC, a large ensemble of Massachusetts improvisers, which has collaborated with musicians and composers from all over the world, and was the Composer’s Ensemble-in-residence at Princeton University in December 2005. His short video “In/At Tension” has appeared at the 2:13 festival and Sync Festival, both in Athens, Greece. A series of short video synthesis pieces was installed at the online art gallery Tuba Exotica.

His recordings appear on such diverse labels as Grob, Intransitive, CIMP, Emanem, Kissy, Fargone, Rounder and Naxos. In 2002 he founded Chloë, a label dedicated to electro-acoustic music. Plus One Events, an experimental music series, was founded in 2005 in collaboration with Linda Aubry.
Mike Bullock website
chloechloe.cc

Vic Rawlings

Vic Rawlings (prepared amplified cello, surface electronics) is active in the Boston improvised music community. His performances focus on the metamusical potential of unstable sounds and silences. He is an instrument builder specializing in modifications of existing instruments. In addition to his extensive cello preparations, he continually develops an electronic instrument from extant analog circuitry, producing, in effect, an analog synthesizer with a highly unstable interface.

He performs regularly as a soloist and as a member of undr quartet, The BSC, and in duo and trio ensembles with Michael Bullock, Greg Kelley, Bhob Rainey, Sean Meehan, Jason Lescalleet, James Coleman, Tatsuya Nakatani, and Howard Stelzer. Collaborators have included Eddie Prevost (AMM), Donald Miller (Borbetomagus), Daniel Carter (Other Dimensions in Music), Laurence Cook, Jaap Blonk, Masashi Harada, and Stephen Drury.

Rawlings appears on the record labels Audio Dispatch, Grob, Sedimental, Emanem, Boxmedia, Chloe, Absurd, and Rykodisc. He has performed as a soloist/ composer with Nicola Hawkins Dance Company and has composed scores for films by Alla Kovgan and Jeff Silva. He has toured throughout the US and in France.

* Improvised Music Workshop

Open To All, Led by Vic Rawlings

ALL musicians are welcome, at any technical level, including people who do not consider themselves musicians. If you have no experience with improvising, you are welcome. If you have experience with improvising, you are welcome.

We will explore free improvisation in a large group context. This will be done by using exercises. Strategies for making music in this context will be discussed, presented, and explored. The workshops will be structured around the development of a flexible aesthetic practice. We will be working beyond the standard conceptions of rhythm and melody towards a presentation of sound itself as music.

ALL musicians are welcome, at any technical level, including people who do not consider themselves musicians.

ANY instrument is welcome, including voice. Anything that makes sound will be considered an instrument. Conventional instruments as well as objects not often thought of as instruments are welcome. You must bring your own amplifier if you will need one.

Please feel welcome to attend!

The Tights Band

Jessica Catron, David Rothbaum, David Kendall
cello, laptop, analog synthesizer
Los Angeles

Picture this: Mid-80s San Fernando Valley, black leather couch in the living room and above-ground pool out back. Ofer owns the place and needs help paying the mortgage, rents two empty bedrooms to a single mom and her girls.

Twenty years later no one remembers how or why the younger girl, doll in hand, put a pair of pink tights on Ofer's stocky legs, but there's a photo to prove it.

As The Tights Band (aka Joey Put Tights on Ofer), Jessica Catron (cello), David Kendall (laptop) and Rothbaum (analog synth) make sounds for lost stories, searching for brilliance beyond the plot.

Jessica Catron

Jessica catron is a freelance musician living in Los Angeles. Her career as a cellist involves work in recording sessions, film scoring, experimental improvisation, live performance, touring, and education. She has been featured as a solo artist, ensemble performer, and workshop presenter at festivals and events worldwide including the CEAIT Festival, The Getty Center, .sound series at the Schindler House, and the Line Space Line Festival of Improvised Music in Los Angeles; the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors in New York City; the Lotus Festival in Bloomington, Indiana; the Sonic Boom Festival in Vancouver, BC; and La Festival de Musica Contemporeana in Bogota, Colombia.

David Rothbaum

David Rothbaum is a los angeles based improviser and composer who performs on a modular analog synthesizer, contralto clarinet & 4-track cassette.
He also runs a small record label: experimental musical research and loves Satan.
David Rothbaum webpage
www.experimentalmusicalresearch.com

David Kendall

David Kendall is from Southern California. David Kendall began by experimenting with multitrack audio and degraded sound sources in the early nineties. David Kendall’s practice explores the essential, monadic aspects of music-making materials. Improvisation, pattern distortion, amplification, the self-referential, recursion, and resonance form the basis for much of David Kendall’s music. Collaboration has been a central focus of the live performance of David Kendall. Groups include or have included the invisible Music Production Ensemble, Improvisatyrs, Honeycomb Wheels, Others, The Kentucky Knobs, and many others. Collaborators include or have included Jeremy Drake, Jessica Catron, Sandor Finta, Doug Russell, Andre Vida, Albert Ortega, Bob Bellerue, Bryan Eubanks, David Rothbaum, Jonathan Zorn, Akihiro Shimizu and many others. David Kendall has recordings released on the EMR, P-Tapes, Bastardised, Alienation, Helicopter, and Anarchymoon labels. David Kendall earned his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2003.

David Hirvonen / Jonathan Sielaff Duo

guitar, electronics; clarinets, electronics
Portland

David Hirvonen and Jonathan Sielaff have been working together in Various formations since 2002. As a duo, their music seeks to explore physical objects and acoustic spaces ranging from the smallest reverberations to violent saturation. They are interested in the perception of a sound’s placement, location, and movement in an environment. Taking the guitar and clarinet as starting points, they then use a variety of tools to amplify, process, sample, and regenerate the given vibrations melding them with room feedback and environmental sounds.

David Hirvonen

Since moving to Portland, OR in 2002, David Hirvonen has explored numerous approaches to the electric guitar in primarily improvised contexts with musicians in the Pacific Northwest.

Jonathan Sielaff

Jonathan Sielaff, composer/performer Born in Miami, FL, grew up in a musical family (his father and grandfather were both professional reed players). He began his studies with the piano, then picked up guitar and electronics in his teens, and has now been focusing on the clarinets. In composing and performing, he draws heavily from his experiences traveling and living in the South Pacific and Asia as well as participating in a wide array of musical settings and genres. He has lived in Portland since 2000 where he regularly collaborates with a variety of musicians, poets, dancers, and film-makers.
Jonathan Sielaff webpage

Doublends Vert

Adam Diller, Annie lewandowski, Tom Swafford
clarinet, accordian, violin
Bay Area, Seattle

Doublends vert formed in 2003 through a common interest in creating restrained, acoustic music exploring the timbre blending possibilities of the violin, accordion, and clarinet.

Doublends vert has two recordings available; “doublends vert” on present sounds and “cistern” on line.

Adam Diller

Reedist Adam Diller's (b. 1980) music deals with the problems of composing for recorded medium, integrating electronic and acoustic sounds, and improvising with social and natural environments. His process draws on experience with jazz, composition, improvisation, and computer-based sound design. Since moving to Seattle in 2002, Adam has performed in many situations and produced ten recordings.

Annie Lewandowski

Annie Lewandowski (b. 1979) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with backgrounds in classical, improvised, and experimental music. She has performed at festivals in the U.S., Canada, and Europe with trio doublends vert (with Tom Swafford and Adam Diller) and duo Emma Zunz (with Cristin Miller). She currently lives in Oakland.

Tom Swafford

Tom Swafford (b. 1972) is violinist and composer active in a wide variety of musical styles. He studied composition in Boston, Berkeley, CA, and The Netherlands (with Louis Andriessen). He is a member of Cipher, Drumolin and doublends vert and also performs classical, bluegrass and rock music. He resides in Seattle, WA.

Angelina Baldoz

trumpet
seattle

Angelina Baldoz's distinctive trumpet playing has been presented in collaboration with many wonderful musicians and lovely dancers, such as Sean Meehan, Deborah Hay, Caroline Kraabel, Jack Wright, Chris Cogburn, Lori Goldston, Ellen Fullman, Paul Hoskin, Mark Collins, Jessie Canterbury, Susie Kozawa, Tari Nelson-Zagar, Kristin Hapke, Margit Galanter, Morgan Thorson, and most recently John Bain and the Mutant Data Orchestra.

She performs in numerous venues and never fails to fully explore the sonic cracks and niches in every room. She has taught and played for dance/music improvisation classes with Margit Galanter and Kristin Hapke. Currently she is working with dancer/chorographer Kristin Hapke as an improv duo. She also is proud to be involved in the "Music/Sound Score" presentation of Deborah Hay's "Music" score adapted by the beautiful dancers Amelia Weeber and Amy Windecker.

Eric Barber

soprano and tenor saxophones
Seattle

Saxophonist Eric Barber (b. 1972) has been recognized as part of a new generation of artists whose voice and scope of interests defy categorization. His unique approach to the saxophone and artistic fearlessness have allowed him to work with an incredibly diverse array of performing artists, including John Bergamo, the California E.A.R. Unit, Alex Cline, Nels Cline, Mark Dresser, Vinny Golia, Art Jarvinen, Steuart Liebig, Denman Maroney, Chitravina Ravikiran, Trichy Sankaran,Wadada Leo Smith, Miroslav Tadic, Saadet Turkoz, Tom Varner, and Glen Velez.

Eric has performed throughout the U.S. and Canada, most notably at the Knitting Factory New York, DuMaurier International Jazz Festival, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Center, and Skirball Cultural Center. Recording credits include the Capitol, Cryptogramophone, Nine Winds, pfMENTUM, Phlogiston, Recondite, and Virgin labels.

Barber has developed a unique approach to the saxophone, integrating influences from jazz, Balkan and Indian music with a personal vocabulary of extended saxophone techniques. Current musical projects include: solo music concerts, Balkana (an electric Bulgarian wedding band), We Are Not Mailmen (duo with Art Jarvinen on analog electronics), The Rain Trio (with contrabassist Scot Walton and percussionist Alex Cline), Jeff Kaiser's Ockodektet, Steuart Liebig's avant-jazz projects Lane Ends Merge Left and Seconda Prattica ensembles, and the Persian crossover group The Azari Ensemble. Barber brings a genre-bending approach to the music and a penchant for risk-taking that invigorates each musical situation he finds himself in.

2004 saw the release of his first commercial release, the solo saxophone CD Maybeck Constructions (pfMENTUM CD 015). Other CD releases have included the DVD of his performance of Bay Area composer Ann Millikan's performance piece House of Mirrors, a CD of solo music from Los Angeles reed players, Passages, a recording featuring the compositions of jazz guitarist Joe LoPiccolo, and two releases on Nine Winds Records: a DVD release of the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble and the CD release of Vinny Golia's Music for Like Instruments: Bb Saxophones.

Eric is currently a freelance performer and educator, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of Oregon and a Master of Fine Arts in Jazz Studies from California Institute of the Arts.