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Past Events: 2015 | |||
| Flying
Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society
present: Battle Trance Amanda Cagle/Bob Stagner Duo Saturday, January 31, 2015, 8:00 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $7-10 door (sliding scale) BATTLE TRANCE had an auspicious inception. One morning, Travis Laplante (Little Women and a trio with bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Ches Smith) literally awoke with the crystal clear vision that he needed to start an ensemble with three specific individuals: Matthew Nelson, Jeremy Viner, and Patrick Breiner. Laplante was actually unfamiliar with their work as musicians and had only a minimal relationship with them as individuals. He was also aware that a band of four tenor saxophones could be the worst idea ever. In spite of this, Laplante followed through and contacted Nelson, Viner, and Breiner. He gave them very little information beyond his morning experience But no one hesitated - the ensemble formed that evening. Since many of the techniques used in Battle Trance's piece "Palace of Wind" are nearly impossible to notate in traditional form, it was transmitted via the oral tradition. The rehearsals were much like martial arts training: intricate sounds were rigorously copied and repeated by the ensemble members until they perfected the techniques. Many hours were spent building the sheer strength required to sustain continuous circular breathing for extended periods. Likewise, a steady focus on physicality was required to repeat rapid note patterns for long periods without sacrificing speed. "Palace of Wind" is such a demanding composition that there is a high risk of physically burning out before the piece concludes, as once it begins there is no opportunity for rest or even a quick drink of water. There was also extensive training in dissolving the distinct individual identities of the players into the greater collective sound: The band did various long-tone exercises, similar to group meditation, the purpose being to blend together into one sound, so that the origin of the collective sound's components is completely impossible to discern - even by the members of the ensemble. "Palace of Wind" does embrace both the cerebral nature of composition and the visceral act of performance, but immediately locates itself, the musicians and the audience in a purely spiritual space. It is a new kind of music and therefore modern, and yet it's absolutely primordial, the transformative act of human beings blowing air through tubes and producing something timeless. Members of Battle Trance have also performed with: tUnE-yArDs, Little Women, Tim Berne, Gerald Cleaver, Michael Formanek, Trevor Dunn, Ingrid Laubrock, Rafiq Bhatia, Ches Smith, Steve Lehman, Weasel Walter, Mat Maneri, John Hollenbeck, Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Evans and many others. "[Battle Trance] uses hocketing patterns, furry multiphonics, and drones fueled by circular breathing to create a constantly changing piece that wends from the parade-ground precision of Philip Glass’s small-group music to the emotionally extravagant expressionism of storefront gospel." - Chicago Reader Bob Stagner is a percussionist, teacher, speaker and leader in arts advocacy for over 25 years. He co-founded the free improvisation duo, The Shaking Ray Levis, and the Shaking Ray Levi Society, an arts education organization that supports emerging artists in performance, art and film. He is the Southeast director of The Rhythmic Arts Project that provides music workshops for people with physical and mental disabilities. He has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists, including Derek Bailey, Rev. Howard Finster, Wayne White, Bob Dorough, Fred Frith, Min Tanaka, Amy Denio, Shelley Hirsch, and John Zorn. Amanda Rose Cagle studied Baroque strings and woodwinds at Case Western University and piano, double bass and clarinet at Hiram College. Returning to Chattanooga she began a study of modern improvisation with The Shaking Ray Levis. She has performed with the big band Sweet Georgia Sound, psychedelic jug band Big Kitty, poet-prophet Jack Rentfro and the Apocalypso Quartet, Ghanian drum and dance group Mawre & Co., polka partiers The Wurstbrats, rococo-horror trio Trigger Mortis, and speakeasy chanteuse Christabel. Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Hypercolor Buffalo Princess Thursday, March 5, 2015, 7:30 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 door A wild NYC-based collaborative jazz-rock unit out of the new generation of Downtown improvisers, Hypercolor is a bizarre trio that blends Captain Beefheart, Sonny Sharrock and ’80s punk and No-Wave with contemporary classical orchestral textures, spastic world music rhythms and noise improvisation. The group’s sonic madness features the twisted guitar of Eyal Maoz (“Maoz is in an exclusive club of post-Jimi Hendrix guitarists” – All Music Guide), the deep toned bass of composer and educator James Ilgenfritz and the grooving drums of African music aficionado Lukas Ligeti (son of the groundbreaking classical composer György Ligeti) who transcends the boundaries of genre with a style that benefits from international cultural exchanges. Hypercolor’s ridiculous artsong craftsmanship alternately revels in complexity or brazen simplicity, favoring entropy and near-disaster over order or tidiness. Hypercolor’s brand new self-titled album was released on John Zorn’s Tzadik label to critical acclaim. “Hypercolor specializes in loopily unhinged punk-minded fusion...[with] extensive experience in the avant-jazz and contemporary-classical realms” - Time Out New York The Chattanooga sax/guitar/bass/drums quartet Buffalo Princess performs what they call “ambient thrash metal,” confounding expectations with a potent, earth-shaking combination of twisted electric jazz and hard rock, with influences as diverse as Black Sabbath, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Sun Ra and Joni Mitchell. “There are some bands that you simply have to see live to fully appreciate. Buffalo Princess falls squarely into that category.” - Nooga.com
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Col. Bruce Hampton Friday, March 13, 2015, 8:00 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $15 advance/door "Bruce is the 8th Wonder of the World" - Billy Bob Thornton The surrealist American musician Bruce Hampton began his career with an unprecedented six figure record deal in 1970. The Hampton Grease Band's first album, Music to Eat, is said to have been the second worst selling album in the history of Columbia Records (A yoga record was the worst selling album.) He made a brave decision and continued his musical career, devoting himself to creating pure art rather than attempt any commercial success. The result has been an amazing, influential 50 year catalog of music and philosophy, including acclaimed bodies of work with The Late Bronze Age, Aquarium Rescue Unit, Fiji Mariners, The Codetalkers and The Quark Alliance. On Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Hampton was the voice of a potted shrubbery named Warren, and in the film Sling Blade, he played the role of the band manager Morris. In 2012, the documentary Basically Frightened: The Musical Madness of Col. Bruce Hampton, Ret. was released. Dubbed the father of the Jam Band music scene, he is a guru to many a celeb, with many ardent fans, including Billy Bob Thornton, Peter Buck, Derek Trucks and Phish. Featured with Bruce will be the superb guitarist Jimmy Dormire and the always exciting percussionistics of Bob Stagner.
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Matthew Shipp / Michael Bisio Duo
Michael Bisio has been a bassist for the Matthew Shipp Trio since 2009, invariably astounding audiences with the beauty of his tone and the intensity of his very personal musical language. His music has garnered 4 1/2 stars from DownBeat, and Jazz Times states his music "resonates with intelligence, emotional depth and probing virtuosity." Journalist Paul DeBarros in Signal to Noise notes: "For years free improvisers have explored the tactile aspect of performance, in which the nature of the encounter between the player and the instrument becomes the subject of the music itself. Bisio is one of the few musicians that has managed to meld this high-concept sense of physicality with the soulful charge of jazz. His fiddle-high, scraped overtones create a tangled choir that is impossible to resist; his expressiveness with the bow is unmatched. Having whirled the listener into a transportive state, he gently shows them the way out..."
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Bill Orcutt Bob Stagner Monday, March 30, 2015, 7:30 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 advance/door "No one is playing acoustic guitar like Bill Orcutt right now. No one." - NPR (Lars Gotrich) Born in Miami in the year of Cuban missile crisis and educated in Florida's finest institutions, Bill Orcutt is usually recognized as the co-founder of the band Harry Pussy. Formed in 1991 and featuring Orcutt on 4-string guitar—a practice carried over, developed, and refined from circumstantial adolescent experiments in working around absent strings—and Adris Hoyos on drums and vocals, with a second auxiliary guitarist added in in later years, the group's sound centered on its completely unhinged ferociousness. Within those furious eruptions, Harry Pussy drafted the blueprint—combining hardcore punk's brutish speed blended with the art school caterwaul of No Wave—for the next two decades of noise-rock. In five years, they toured of the US and Canada with the likes of Sonic Youth, Dead C, Charalambides and Pelt and produced over twenty different releases on record labels of varying degrees of accessibility, most regularly for the Philadelphia-based experimental music imprint, Siltbreeze. Twenty years later, Bill Orcutt still only plays four strings, but now they are attached to a vintage acoustic Kay that has withstood enough damage and repair that it requires custom tuning to stay in one piece. Sometimes clanging and ominous, other times mournful and slight, strangely alienating, but simultaneously vulnerable and cathartic, his music is compared with equal frequency to avant-garde composers and rural bluesman. In 2009, Bill's newly established Palilalia imprint released the "High Waisted" b/w "Big Ass Nails" single followed quickly by the first major statement of his resurgence, A New Way To Pay Old Debts. These initial transmissions provided the aesthetic foundation—unapologetically improvised, bare bones and situational—from which Orcutt's Kay's evolving sonic narrative continues to reveal itself in audible real-time. 2011 saw the release of Bill's most intense and varied full-length suite of music to date, How The Thing Sings (Edition Mego). The album maintains a clear connection to the guitarist's signature interrogation of his instrument up to this point, but also signals a new phase of cautiously employed conventional melody and song structure. With each recording and individual performance, Bill Orcutt continues to discover and invent a wholly unique sonic vernacular built around raw and tortured tone, ragged minimalism, and seemingly inexhaustible improvisational stamina. "Quite awe-inspiring, and unlike anything else I can think of." - The Wire (Byron Coley) "Anyone can admire the raw soul of his playing and the way he shoots out ideas in real-time, reacting so quickly it's as if he's creating a new language as he speaks it." - Pitchfork (Marc Masters) Bob Stagner is the only artist to have ever performed with both Dolly Parton and Derek Bailey. A founding member of the Shaking Ray Levi Society and one half of the legendary duo the Shaking Ray Levis, Stagner has been an undeniable force for radical thought, perpetual creativity, and total improvisation. Percussionist, educator, and community leader, evidence of Stagner's indelible impact can be found throughout Chattanooga, the Mid-South, and beyond.
J. Zagers Red Okra King All Girl Chorus Line Sunday, April 5, 2015, 8:00 PM Mercy Junction at St. Andrews Center 1918 Union Ave, 2nd Floor Chattanooga, TN 37404 $7 door Performing at sundown, the magic kid JEFF ZAGERS smoothly navigates his full-length mazes with introverted determination, leading us by lantern through endless sectionals and segues; through the gateway points and ports of call. Sequenced surfaces are complicated by polished ravels of melody, harmony, noise, syncopation, plot-driven chord progressions, tone expression and color, electronic nerve, crime jazz scenery, mainstream minimalism, and a humble, vulnerable lyricism influenced by folk tradition and the Romantics. Sunset spectrum of sympathetic themes, ancient meditative innocence, mortal and supernatural, alienation, compassion, health and restlessness, crisp beauty and confinement. The Red Okra King is everyone's favorite oracular and elusive geodesic gnome. An astral being and protector of the Southern Appalachian dream world-- bridging the gap between the opposing forces of Santa Claus and Cthulhu. Last year, with the simultaneous aging/shrinking of Curly Shoulders, we have seen the emergence of Lovey Dovey; the latest proxy and ambassador of the Red Okra King. As any witness can attest to, each and every Red Okra King appearance is one that will not soon be forgotten. Step up to the rainbow wall and prepare yourself for a world of tattooed werewolves, baby-eating robots, and anthroposophical fairy-tales. All Girl Chorus Line is a raconteur and sorceress of the highest order. Upon spinning a web of fractured guitar loops and drum machines, she delivers a jocular, mystifying, and inspired dance - frothing up personal tales of pain, pleasure, struggle, confusion and transcendence.
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present:
Trevor Watts and Veryan Weston
"Two giants of the improv scene...highly recommended" – All About Jazz Riverbend and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Annie Sellick and the Hot Club of Nashville Friday, June 12, 2014, 7:45 PM Riverbend Festival TVFCU Stage 200 Riverfront Pkwy Chattanooga, TN 37402  Annie Sellick and the Hot Club of Nashville -- initially inspired by the Hot Club genre (Django-Reinhardt gypsy-swing) -- bring fiery guitar and violin soloing on repertoire from the 1930s and 40s such as "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Sweet Georgia Brown"…and to top it off, the perky storyteller and hard-swinging singer, Annie. Annie Sellick is a jazz vocalist known for her captivating stage presence. She sings the standards but always gives them her own twist, either musically or vocally. Her artistry lies in her "personal touch", which reaches non-jazz audiences, people of all ages and jazz audiences alike. CoPAC and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Party Knüllers: Fred Lonberg-Holm & Stxl Liavik Sunday, June 21, 2015, 7:30 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 advance/door Party Knüllers is the experimental garage jazz duo of Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, guitar, electronics) and Stxl Liavik (drums). The group's low-fidelity approach to improvising and recording and their influences of dance music, garage rock, free jazz and European Free Improvised lends itself to a raw simplicity of composition, arrangement, and performance. Before setting out as a duo, they played together in VCDC (with reed player Frode Gjerstadt and vocalist Stine Janvin-Motland), Gorilla Ass Piano (with bassist Per Zanussi) as well as a number of other ad hoc groupings including sax/clarinet player Keefe Jackson. Since forming the Party Knüllers, they have also recorded and performed with analog synth wizard Jim Baker. Independently they have worked with a who's who of underground (and mainstream) musics from Steve Beresford to Wilco, from John Russell to Peter Brötzmann. "...an intimate meeting of the two restless and adventurous musicians...[with an] obsessive and playful need to explore and invent new sounds and new forms of musical communication" - Eyal Hareuveni, All About Jazz "[The] sound and phrasing of [Lonberg-Holm's] cello frequently resemble guitarists such as Thurston Moore, rich in fragmented overtones, and can sound like a Harrier Jump Jet - taking off and landing...[Liavik's] fractured percussive playing intensifies the tension." - Colin Greene "...combining together into an integrated entity, characterized by empathy, selflessness and absence of ego...In a nutshell, both these releases elicit the same response: More, soon, please." - John Eyles, All About Jazz CoPAC
and
the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: In the fifties Jack Wright was a soprano choir boy and marching band saxophonist, in the early sixties a washtub bassist and college kid, in the late sixties and seventies a university lecturer in history, a revolutionist and community organizer. Since then he has been playing freely improvised saxophone, touring the US and Europe, and has been dubbed "the Johnny Appleseed of Improvised Music". He is accused of impersonating pigs, ducks and human blowhards, but lately has been remembering the proper use of the saxophone - to support the tottering universe. His roots are in Philly, where he owns a house for wayward improvisers. Jack plays with everyone but performs and tours only with the finest, which usually means the most obscure, from Europe and the US. He and his partners are among the few true believers in absolutely free, unrestrained, unstructured, unselfconscious improvisation, played at soberingly high levels of musicianship. “In the
rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation,
saxophonist Jack Wright is king” - Washington
Post
“Raw, visceral, urgent, his music demands to be heard” - The Wire, on Jack Wright Davey Williams is one of the most unique musical figures to have ever come from the state of Alabama. Considered one of the "three founding fathers of American free improvisational guitar" (along with Henry Kaiser and Eugene Chadbourne), he is the only person to ever successfully - and honestly - bridge the gap between the disparate worlds of Robert Johnson and Sun Ra. As a 19-year-old protege of the late Delta and Chicago blues master Johnny Shines (himself a protege of Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf), Davey mastered the slide steel stylings of his teacher and expounded on the form by taking the blues in directions few knew it could go or dare try. Dubbing his style "convulsive blues," he has quietly blown minds around the world through his unique deployment of old-school form and new school technique. Williams was a key member of the Raudelunas art collective, a co-founder of independent record label Trans Museq, and an important architect of the unholy sound of Alabama's Rev. Fred Lane. Along with his longtime musical partner/foil LaDonna Smith, he has played on stages around the globe and collaborated with the likes of John Zorn, Ikue Mori, Andrea Centazzo, Tom Cora, Jim Staley, Gustavo Matamoros, Roger Turner, Anne LeBaron, The Shaking Ray Levis, Col. Bruce Hampton, Oteil Burbridge, Gunter Christmann, and Mark Kramer. As a member of the trailblazing avant-jazz/funk band Curlew, he was one of the most respected players on the "Downtown" music scene that revolved around the Knitting Factory in New York City in the late-80's and early-90's, and added insanely inventive guitar lines to that band's impressive body of work. Evan Lipson has operated as a musician since adolescence—intuitively seeking the liminal zones in which intellect and instinct, history and myth, and creative and destructive force intersect. Drawn towards aberrant perspectives at an early age, his formative experiences were primarily rooted in extreme and often discordant forms of rock, improvised music, modernist composition, jazz, outsider pop, soundtracks, and noise. Lipson is currently active with Normal Love and WREST. Recently, he has written music for several films as well as a new collaboration with David Greenberger, Amanda Cagle, and Bob Stagner of the Shaking Ray Levis. Past units include Satanized, Dynamite Club, Psychotic Quartet, Femme Tops and the Weasel Walter Trio. Lipson has performed throughout North America, as well as Brazil, Taiwan and Japan. His music has been released on several imprints including SKiN GRAFT, UgEXPLODE, High Two, Public Eyesore, Badmaster, Caminante, New Atlantis and Damage Rituals. Bob Stagner is the only artist to have ever performed with both Dolly Parton and Derek Bailey. He is a percussionist, teacher, speaker and leader in arts advocacy for over 25 years. He co-founded the free improvisation duo, The Shaking Ray Levis, and the Shaking Ray Levi Society, an arts education organization that supports emerging artists in performance, art and film. He is the Southeast director of The Rhythmic Arts Project that provides music workshops for people with physical and mental disabilities. He has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists, including Derek Bailey, Rev. Howard Finster, Wayne White, Bob Dorough, Fred Frith, Min Tanaka, Amy Denio, Shelley Hirsch, and John Zorn. Flandrew Fleisenberg Amanda Cagle Polly Curtis Evan Lipson Elizabeth Longphre Wednesday, July 22, 2015, 7:30 PM Mark Making 2510 North Chamberlain Ave. Chattanooga, TN 37406 $5-10 door (sliding scale) Flandrew Fleisenberg plays percussion on an ever changing assortment of ephemera and modified drum parts coaxing texture and tone both familiar and bizarre. Attentive to room resonance, ambience and collaborator, Fleisenberg playfully utilizes sound and presence to explore space, time, and relationships. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) with a focus in conceptual art, he is musically self-taught and has developed a cadre of idiosyncratic techniques that are all his own. flandrew has been involved in the improvised and creative music community since 2001 performing solo, in ad-hoc improv groupings, and in set projects. A recent migrant to Philadelphia, Fleisenberg is an active producer and advocate of improvised and experimental music and dance across the region. Recent and favored implement: Cannon ball, 10' ball chain, catering platter, doors, loose cymbals, sticky sticks, soup pans, glass window, steel spring, floors, walls, air, sand, paper, rope, ping ping balls, a couple glasses of wine, some luck, and good fortune. Current collaborations: Skinny Vinny (duo with Josh Jefferson), Vervet Dance (Loren Groenendaal), fleature (duo with Neil Feather), duo with Audrey Chen. "Marcel Duchamp: funny phony. Flandrew Fleisenberg: Einstein of drums." - Gordon Marshall, poet laureate of the Boston improv scene Amanda Rose Cagle studied Baroque strings and woodwinds at Case Western University and piano, double bass and clarinet at Hiram College. She has performed with the big band Sweet Georgia Sound, psychedelic jug band Big Kitty, poet-prophet Jack Rentfro and the Apocalypso Quartet, Ghanian drum and dance group Mawre & Co., polka partiers The Wurstbrats, rococo-horror trio Trigger Mortis and speakeasy chanteuse Christabel. Evan Lipson has operated as a musician since adolescence—intuitively seeking the liminal zones in which intellect and instinct, history and myth, and creative and destructive force intersect. Drawn towards aberrant perspectives at an early age, his formative experiences were primarily rooted in extreme and often discordant forms of rock, improvised music, modernist composition, jazz, outsider pop, soundtracks, and noise. Lipson is currently active with Normal Love and WREST. Recently, he has written music for several films as well as a new collaboration with David Greenberger, Amanda Cagle, and Bob Stagner of the Shaking Ray Levis. Past units include Satanized, Dynamite Club, Psychotic Quartet, Femme Tops and the Weasel Walter Trio. Lipson has performed throughout North America, as well as Brazil, Taiwan and Japan. His music has been released on several imprints including SKiN GRAFT, UgEXPLODE, High Two, Public Eyesore, Badmaster, Caminante, New Atlantis and Damage Rituals. Elizabeth Longphre has a BA and MFA in Dance from Mt. Holyoke College and UNCG respectively and has performed and choreographed in some cities. She enjoys teaching, and currently works in the OR. CoPAC and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Susan Alcorn - pedal steel guitar innovator Evan Lipson Bob Stagner Thursday, October 1, 2015, 7:30 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 door One of the world’s premiere musical innovators on her instrument, Baltimore-based Susan Alcorn has taken the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country and western swing music. Known among steel guitarists for her virtuosity and authenticity in a traditional context, Alcorn first paid her dues in Texas country & western bands. Soon she began to expand the vocabulary of her instrument through her study of modern classical music (Messiaen, Varèse, Penderecki), the deep listening of Pauline Oliveros, free jazz and world musics (Indian ragas, South American songs and gamelan orchestra). Alcorn’s pieces reveal the complexity of her instrument and her musical experience while never straying from a very direct, intense, and personal musical expression. Her latest critically acclaimed album, Soledad, explores the music of Argentine tango composer Astor Piazzolla. “Beautiful,
glassy and liquid, however far [Alcorn] strays from
pulse and conventional harmony.” - The Guardian
“Employing pedal steel in an experimental-music context might sound like a gimmick, but a performance by Susan Alcorn will easily silence skeptics. Alcorn’s improvisations use the instrument’s uniquely liquid sound to gorgeously poetic effect.” - Time Out New York Evan Lipson has operated as a musician since adolescence—intuitively seeking the liminal zones in which intellect and instinct, history and myth, and creative and destructive force intersect. Drawn towards aberrant perspectives at an early age, his formative experiences were primarily rooted in extreme and often discordant forms of rock, improvised music, modernist composition, jazz, outsider pop, soundtracks, and noise. Lipson is currently active with Normal Love and WREST. Recently, he has written music for several films as well as a new collaboration with David Greenberger, Amanda Cagle, and Bob Stagner of the Shaking Ray Levis. Past units include Satanized, Dynamite Club, Psychotic Quartet, Femme Tops and the Weasel Walter Trio. Lipson has performed throughout North America, as well as Brazil, Taiwan and Japan. His music has been released on several imprints including SKiN GRAFT, UgEXPLODE, High Two, Public Eyesore, Badmaster, Caminante, New Atlantis and Damage Rituals. Bob Stagner is the only artist to have ever performed with both Dolly Parton and Derek Bailey. He is a percussionist, teacher, speaker and leader in arts advocacy for over 25 years. He co-founded the free improvisation duo, The Shaking Ray Levis, and the Shaking Ray Levi Society, an arts education organization that supports emerging artists in performance, art and film. He is the Southeast director of The Rhythmic Arts Project that provides music workshops for people with physical and mental disabilities. He has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists, including Derek Bailey, Rev. Howard Finster, Wayne White, Bob Dorough, Fred Frith, Min Tanaka, Amy Denio, Shelley Hirsch, and John Zorn. The
UTC
Art Department and
the Shaking Ray Levi
Society present: "A Toast to Thirty Years of Shaking Up Art" - arts feature about the exhibition in the Chattanooga Pulse, Oct. 7, 2015 issue.
CoPAC
and
the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: In the fifties Jack Wright was a soprano choir boy and marching band saxophonist, in the early sixties a washtub bassist and college kid, in the late sixties and seventies a university lecturer in history, a revolutionist and community organizer. Since then he has been playing freely improvised saxophone, touring the US and Europe, and has been dubbed "the Johnny Appleseed of Improvised Music". He is accused of impersonating pigs, ducks and human blowhards, but lately has been remembering the proper use of the saxophone - to support the tottering universe. His roots are in Philly, where he owns a house for wayward improvisers. Jack plays with everyone but performs and tours only with the finest, which usually means the most obscure, from Europe and the US. He and his partners are among the few true believers in absolutely free, unrestrained, unstructured, unselfconscious improvisation, played at soberingly high levels of musicianship. “In the
rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation,
saxophonist Jack Wright is king” - Washington
Post
“Raw, visceral, urgent, his music demands to be heard” - The Wire, on Jack Wright Zachary Darrup is an improvising guitarist currently living in Philadelphia. During his early teenage years in the dismal coal region of Pennsylvania a strange boy appeared like an angel, carrying a large CD booklet of wild musics of all sorts. This chance meeting at a pizza shop, plus tumultuous relationships with his home turf, school teachers, and other agents of law and rule enforcement led Zach to drop out and skip town, devoting himself to following music wherever it would take him -- somewhere else. His techniques are informed by the musical possibilities of film language, jovial mockery and mimicry of plants, animals, and audience members, thoughtful room listening, word play, colors, and culinary experiments. Evan Lipson has operated as a musician since adolescence—intuitively seeking the liminal zones in which intellect and instinct, history and myth, and creative and destructive force intersect. Drawn towards aberrant perspectives at an early age, his formative experiences were primarily rooted in extreme and often discordant forms of rock, improvised music, modernist composition, jazz, outsider pop, soundtracks, and noise. Lipson is currently active with Normal Love and WREST. Recently, he has written music for several films as well as a new collaboration with David Greenberger, Amanda Cagle, and Bob Stagner of the Shaking Ray Levis. Past units include Satanized, Dynamite Club, Psychotic Quartet, Femme Tops and the Weasel Walter Trio. Lipson has performed throughout North America, as well as Brazil, Taiwan and Japan. His music has been released on several imprints including SKiN GRAFT, UgEXPLODE, High Two, Public Eyesore, Badmaster, Caminante, New Atlantis and Damage Rituals. Bob Stagner is the only artist to have ever performed with both Dolly Parton and Derek Bailey. He is a percussionist, teacher, speaker and leader in arts advocacy for over 25 years. He co-founded the free improvisation duo, The Shaking Ray Levis, and the Shaking Ray Levi Society, an arts education organization that supports emerging artists in performance, art and film. He is the Southeast director of The Rhythmic Arts Project that provides music workshops for people with physical and mental disabilities. He has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists, including Derek Bailey, Rev. Howard Finster, Wayne White, Bob Dorough, Fred Frith, Min Tanaka, Amy Denio, Shelley Hirsch, and John Zorn. Woglemut is a timeless trickster, a troublesome traveler, a tragic tantric test dummy and inter dimensional Dionysian dumpster deity who with the help of his ethereal spore-based psychedelic demon crunch choir the Mas Moss Maniacs, would like to pied piper you into the depths of a dark and bewildering underworld inside yourself. Woglemut with Mas Moss Maniacs make chickens dance, demons sing, and mountains crumble. The Red Okra King is everyone's favorite oracular and elusive geodesic gnome. An astral being and protector of the Southern Appalachian dream world-- bridging the gap between the opposing forces of Santa Claus and Cthulhu. Last year, with the simultaneous aging/shrinking of Curly Shoulders, we have seen the emergence of Lovey Dovey; the latest proxy and ambassador of the Red Okra King. As any witness can attest to, each and every Red Okra King appearance is one that will not soon be forgotten. Step up to the rainbow wall and prepare yourself for a world of tattooed werewolves, baby-eating robots, and anthroposophical fairy-tales. TopCon and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Wayne White November 14, 2015 TopCon 2015 Track 29 1400 Market St. Chattanooga, TN 37402 Wayne White is an American artist, art director, illustrator, puppeteer and much, much more. Born and raised in Chattanooga, Wayne has used his memories of the south to create inspired works for film, television and the fine art world. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University Wayne traveled to New York City where he worked as an illustrator for The East Village Eye, New York Times, Raw Magazine and the Village Voice. In 1986, Wayne became a designer for the hit television show Pee Wee’s Playhouse and his work was awarded with three Emmys. After traveling to Los Angeles with his wife, Mimi Pond, Wayne continued to work in television and designed sets and characters for shows such as Shining Time Station, Beakman’s World, Riders In The Sky and Bill & Willis. He also worked in the music video industry winning Billboard and MTV Music Video Awards as an art director for seminal music videos including The Smashing Pumpkins’ "Tonight, Tonight" and Peter Gabriel’s "Big Time." More recently Wayne has had great success as a fine artist and has created paintings and public works that have been shown all over the world. His most successful works have been the world paintings featuring oversized, three dimensional text painstakingly integrated into vintage landscape reproductions. The message of the paintings is often thought provoking and almost always humorous with Wayne pointing a finger at vanity, ego and his memories of the South. Wayne has also received great praise for several public works he has created including a successful show at Rice University where he built the world’s largest George Jones puppet head for a piece called "Big Lectric Fan To Keep Me Cool While I Sleep." In 2009, Wayne’s life and career were chronicled in an incredible 382 page monograph edited by Todd Oldham. The book features hundreds of images from Wayne’s earliest work as an illustrator all the way to his most recent fine art sculptures. Since the book’s release Wayne has been traveling the country delivering an incredibly entertaining hour long talk where he discusses his life and work while making time for a little banjo and harmonica. Wayne is the subject of the acclaimed 2012 documentary Beauty Is Embarrassing directed by Neil Berkeley. |
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