Cloud Shepherd will play Meridian Gallery in SF!

Next Saturday, Cloud Shepherd will have the pleasure and honor of playing with two great artists, India Cooke and Will Alexander. The show will happen at the Meridian Gallery in SF.
Press release here:

CLOUD SHEPHERD
with special guests India Cooke and Will Alexander

An evening of improvised music, with Bay Area poets' band Cloud Shepherd featuring very special guests India Cooke on violin and Will Alexander, piano and poetry

Saturday MAY 4, 7:00 pm @ Meridian Gallery
535 Powell Street (above Stockton), $10/$5

free for SFSU students, Poetry Center members
no one turned away for lack of funds

Cloud Shepherd is a San Francisco Bay Area quartet that performs improvised music which intersects with, echoes, breaks from, and slides between a number of various musics: drone, ambient, free improv, free jazz, electronica, new music, avant-garde, 21th Century classical, tribal....

Highly recommended! Visit Cloud Shepherd's Bandcamp site to hear the band's recordings: http://cloud-shepherd.bandcamp.com/

Cloud Shepherd is:
Andrew Joron: theremin
Brian Lucas: bass and electronics
Joseph Noble: flutes, saxophones, and keyboard
Mark Pino: cloud kit percussion

The quartet will be joined by virtuoso jazz violinist India Cooke, a veteran of Bay Area and international improvised, classical, and popular music stages. As one of California’s most respected contract artists, she has performed as featured soloist with Joe Williams and the Louie Bellson Orchestra, and has played with Tony Bennett, K. D. Lang, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Stevie Wonder, Barry White, Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Patti La Belle, Gladys Knight and many others. Her continuing jazz and improvisational experiences include performances with Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, George Lewis, Pharoah Sanders, John Zorn, Julius Hemphill, Reggie Workman, Abdul Wadud, Fred Frith, Joëlle Léandre, Peter Kowald, John Lindberg, James Emery, Lisle Ellis, Eddie Marshall, John Tchicai, Michael White, Bobby Bradford, Mary Watkins, Pauline Oliveros, Roscoe Mitchell, and Amiri Baraka. She teaches composition and African American Music at Mills College, and gives private lessons.

For an historic 1984 videotaped performance featuring India Cooke with George Sams' Middle Passage (Sams, trumpet; Cooke, violin; Kash Killion, cello; Anthony Brown, drums) go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rARSDE9ZQ8o

Will Alexander, celebrated poet and deep agent in Surrealist expression, will also be joining Cloud Shepherd, doubling on piano. Born in 1948, Alexander is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, visual artist and pianist. He was the recipient of a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry in 2001 and a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2002. He was also the subject of a colloquium published in the prestigious African American cultural journal Callaloo in 1999, and is author of ten books -- most recently, Singing in Magnetic Hoofbeat: Essays, Prose Texts, Interviews and a Lecture 1991-2007 (Essay Press, 2013). He has taught in multiple institutions, in addition to being associated with the nonprofit organization Theatre of Hearts/Youth First, serving at-risk youth. He is a lifelong resident of Los Angeles.

View Will Alexander,

"Vibrations from the Coast of India" here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpCR1eTBr6w

"Water on New Mars" here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHyCp7Y7vh8

November 2, 2006 reading in UC Berkeley's Lunch Poems series, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd6QvaXGfPk


http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry

https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter

 

Not to be missed! 

Crow Crash Radio-Live at Terminal 2, Oakland International Airport, 4/21/13

Thankfully, none of the weird vibes that I felt at the Ear Spray gig of the previous Thursday were with me yesterday, as Crow Crash Radio set up inside Terminal 2 of Oakland Airport and proceeded to jam.
Jam, we did, playing three long sets, in which we stretched our tunes out into the furthest reaches that we could find.
It was really fun to see how people from any and all walks of life, at all stages of life, responded to, reacted to, or ignored our music. A fine time!

Above: Andrew and Brian confer re: set list
Below: Brian jams

Below: Andrew on theremin..."what is that thing?"

Crow Crash has upcoming gigs at Jupiter in Berkeley, Brainwash in SF, and the Uptown in Oakland!

Very last minute gig annoucement!

Today, Crow Crash Radio will play at Terminal 2 of the Oakland International Airport, Oakland, CA.
We play 12-4. If you're nearby, or flying in, stop by and say hello!

Ear Spray-Luggage Store Gallery, 4/18/13, with Subnaught

In performance, one must either sink or swim, and, I fear that during last night's Ear Spray gig at the Luggage Store, I sank.
Things started well: we had sketched out a three part piece, and the playing on the first part seemed fine and interactive.
After that, though, it was as if some veil came down over my perceptions, and I did not really "play", put just started doing random stuff. Weird.
I guess I'll chalk it up to the proverbial "off night"! Ah, well.
Still, it was fun to hang with Ann and Carlos.

Above: Ann shares her vision
Below: bongos

PS-Subnaught was pretty great.

Ear Spray will play the Luggage Store Gallery!

This Thursday evening, April 18th, I will have the pleasure of performing with Ann O'Rourke's Ear Spray. My first appearance with her and Carlos Jennings was quite fun, so I'm looking forward to getting more time to play with them.
Here's the press release:

8pm: Subnaught
9pm: Ear Spray - synthesizing electronics, acoustic percussion, and voice into dynamic and strange aural landscapes and improvisations Carlos Jennings - electronics, Ann O'Rourke and Mark Pino - electronicized cymbals and Nunnish steel plate, found objects

subnaught seeks to probe the ever-shifting boundaries between sound and music, employing the techniques of sampling, field recording, granular synthesis, and stochastic composition. music from subnaught has been released on the futuresequence and 3m33s netlabels. a small selection of physical objects is available at the artist site... http://subnaught.org/

Carlos Jennings is very intrigued by sound as a way of expanding consciousness and healing. He has been interested in "weird" music for a long time and played bass and keyboards in an original rock band during the 1990s. Now he is totally obsessed by the science and art of synthesis. In Ear Spray, he will be twiddling the knobs on his little electronic boxes.

Ann O'Rourke plays with electronicized cymbals, Nunnish steel plates, and found objects. She also does strange vocals. Her first performing was in her high school church choir and regularly performs with the Corneilius Cardew Choir. She was trained in drumset (jazz and rock) but became obsessed with cymbals and metal found objects. She still jams with her brothers a few times a year playing classic rock late into the night.

Mark Pino began playing drums at the age of 13, after having been inspired by seeing his middle school band play. He has played publicly in the SF Bay Area and other parts of the country since the early 1990's. Mark has shared stages and playing situations with many talented individuals, and is grateful to all of them, most of all those who have shared their insights with him. He considers himself a band player, first and foremost. He also plays percussion with Cloud Shepherd.

Come on down, and support your local scene! 

New Mountain vs. Building digital recording!

Fresh off of our last show, we convened at Sheila's jam pad and laid down these vibes.
Enjoy!

Desmond Superfluous recordings

My old band mate Dan Laks contacted me in late February of this year, and asked if I'd be willing to add drum tracks to some tunes that he'd cooked up. My immediate response was "most definitely!"
I set up a session at engineer Daniel Humphry's Montclair, CA studio, and spent a day tracking. Dan was pretty quick about getting these tracks up at Bandcamp!

Above: tracking, 3/30/13, Montclair, CA

Above: Mark drums, Daniel engineers

Crow Crash Radio-Imaginary Companion

This track is from our December of 2012 session at Daniel Humphrey's Montclair, CA studio.
Enjoy!