Diaspora Focii; The Palms Restaurant, Twentynine Palms CA 4/6/2024

 

When Mika Pontecorvo contacted me in January of this year, requesting that I head over to Twentynine Palms to jam with Diaspora Focii at the Wonder Valley Experimental Music Festival, I emphatically replied in the affirmative. Booked my motel room that day in fact. Despite the knowledge that sets at these types of events are generally truncated, I figured that it would be worth making this kind of "Fool's Errand", in order to reconnect with my musical compadres and to possibly make new connections. Let's face it: I am that kind of fool. Having reached out to the festival organizers (lead by Deborah), part of my mission was to help out with set up/logistics/tear down for the day's events. It seemed that if I had a task to do, my time spent there would be of more use. Hopefully my presence as a kind of dorky stage hand was of some help to participants. It's still gratifying to feel as though one is part of some kind of community. 

As for Diaspora Focii's set, it was performed by a slimmed down version of the original group conceived by Mika. Only Eli Pontecorvo and myself from the band were able to get over to the Palms Restaurant. Amanda Chaudhary graciously agreed to fill in as the third tip of our now trio configuration. Mika emailed us a video link, with sound samples and brief instructions as to what type of approach we should take for the performance. Amanda sampled some of those sounds and sent them out from her keyboard. Eli and I keyed our rhythm section uni-brain interactions from those sounds. It's wonderful to realize that, even after a four year break, we are still very much in sync as players and as humans. Love that dude so much. As stated, we didn't get to play for that long, but every moment of our end of night set (played to the desert and about ten heads) was a blessing to me. Such a lovely time seeing some old pals and becoming acquainted with a lot of Noise and Experimental players from the Los Angeles area. Y'all a bunch of freaks, and I loves ya! 

Below: Diaspora Focii in flight, photos by and courtesy of Suraj Patra, thanks Suraj!

Above: Eli Pontecorvo, Mark Pino, Amanda Chaudhary. A lovely reunion!