As 2018 draws to a close, we look back a recent show we saw at VAMP (vintage – art and music – for the people) in Oakland. It was the subject of our most recent CatSynth TV.
As one can see at the start of the video, it was pouring rain that night. And it did not let up for the entire evening. But that did not stop an intrepid collection of music lovers from settling into VAMP’s small and quirky space to hear two great ensembles.
The venerable Rova Saxophone Quartet have been performing together for 40 years, so it’s not surprising that they have coalesced into a sound all their own. Each of the four members, Bruce Ackley, Steve Adams, Larry Ochs, and Jon Raskin, have their own character, but as a group they function as one instrument. This is true even during fast runs, as they did in the latter half of the set, and when various members drop out or “solo” for a section.
Rounding out the evening was the Life’s Blood Trio, led by Rent Romus (saxophones) and featuring Safa Shokrai on upright bass and Timothy Orr on drums. This is a version of the larger Life’s Blood Ensemble pared down to its essentials. But there is still a rich and full sound in the spartan setting, with the three members filling the full harmonic and textural space. Romus’ performance is always expressive and frenetic, filled with emotion. Shokrai played an amazing extended bass solo. Orr kept things grounded, including during a solo of his own.
VAMP is a bit of a performance in an of itself, with its odd collection of items for sale and a record collection that requires one to sift through and look for surprises. They’ve been holding on, even as Oakland changes in myriad ways. We look forward to seeing more music there – and perhaps playing there again – in 2019
California is on fire. To our south, the area northwest of Los Angeles that I remember fondly from past visits in on fire, including Malibu and Thousand Oaks. To our north, the devastating Camp Fire has laid waste to much of the town of Paradise, is threatening Chico, and is among the smokiest I have ever experienced. If anything the air quality in San Francisco is even worse than it was during last year’s wine-country fires, which were much closer.
We’re mostly hiding indoors during this time, at least as much as we can. Even just opening the patio door for a minute left my eyes watering and nose as if I was just breathing straight out of a charcoal grill. Yesterday, Sam Sam seemed quite distressed as the particulates seeped into HQ (mostly from the main hallway). Today is slightly better, and she is more like her normal goofy self, including showing off her scratch’n’roll.
But she still is finding places to hide – if I can smell the smoke, I can only imagine it’s much more intense for her. Yesterday, before I left for work, she jumped up on my chest and snuggled in, wanting me to stay and be close. I had to go, but came home as soon as I could after my in-office responsibilities were done.
We do also worry about our pal Marlon in Oakland, who spends much of his time outside.
The light from the smoky skies is stunningly beautiful. It’s amazing how such beauty can arise from something as awful as this.
But in all, we need to put our challenges in perspective. I can’t imagine the horror and pain people in the fire zones are going through, losing their homes, fearing for their loved ones, and of course their companion animals. The messages I see from people searching for their missing cats, or the heartbreak of not being able to rush home to rescue them, is painful and our hearts go out to them. Other animals, too, of course, as we hear about horses, dogs, and birds.
Both north and south zones have evacuation shelters for those who have small or large animals. In the north, Butte County has set up a line for those who either find and are searching for lost pets in coordination with North Valley Animal Disaster Group.
Reporting Lost Pets: Please contact the North Valley Animal Disaster Group at 530.895.0000 to report lost pets in evacuated areas. #CampFire@NVADG@BC_PubHealth
NVADG is active both in trying to locate and rescue lost pets, as well as running multiple shelters for those with animals. From their website:
NVADG is providing emergency animal sheltering and where and when allowed will evacuate and/or care for animals in evacuation areas. Animal shelters will be established at:
Small Animal Shelter: 2279 Del Oro Avenue, Oroville. Off Nelson near the County Center and Highway 70.
Small Animal Shelter 150 Airpark Dr, Chico at the Chico Airport Large Animals should be taken to the Rolling Hills Casino Equestrian Center off Highway 5 in Corning
If you want to donate to NVADG, please consider a cash donation. It gives us the flexibility we need and we will definitely need it! Donate on our website or send a check to NVADG, PO Box 441, Chico, CA 95927.
We certainly hope all the fires around our home state are brought under control soon, and the air returns to normal as well. Then the hard work of rebuilding begins…
As we busily prepare for the next Vacuum Tree Head show this coming Tuesday, I find myself looking back at my last show with a very different band, Manul Override earlier this month at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco. It was the subject of a recent CatSynth TV episode.
The evening began with an improvised set featuring saxophonist David Pate with keyboardist Steve Cohn.
Then it was time for Manul Override’s debut show. This was a new group I put together with my friend and collaborator Serena Toxicat on voice and former Surplus-1980 bandmate Melne on guitar.
We had a lot of fun on stage, and the energy spread to the audience, with dancing and meowing all around (all of our tunes had at least some connection to cats). I was particularly happy with the opening incantation, which featured a French rendition of Serena’s ode to the goddess Bast, and our 1980s-pop-style tune “Goodnigobbles”, which also featured Serena seductively delivering lyrics and spoken words in French. Melne had a chance to show her versatility throughout the set, including our extended funky jam in the middle of the set. As with all new musical projects, this is a work in progress, figuring out what works for us and what doesn’t, and how to make each show better than the previous one. But it was also fun visually, with our fashion statements, cat ears, and Melne’s lighting.
The final set featured Ornettology, a project led by guitarist and composer Myles Boisen. As the name suggests, the group is inspired by the music of Ornette Coleman, and reimagines many of his compositions. He was joined by a stellar cast of local musicians including Steve Adams and Phillip Greenlief on saxophones, John Haines on drums, Safa Shokrai on bass, and JohnFinkbeiner.
The band delivered a truly dynamic performance that featured some of Ornette Coleman’s more familiar tunes, including “Ramblin'” and “Mob Job” There were some great solos from each of the members of the group as well. You can hear some of Philip Greenlief and Myles Boisen soloing in our video.
The last few shows I have played at the Make-Out room always have a great audience – full houses that seem to appreciate having live music, whether they came to hear the specific artists or just happened to drop by. A few in the latter category seemed to quite enjoy our Manul-Override set, signing Serena’s leg cast (she had an unfortunate accident a couple of weeks before the show) and taking selfies with us. It was a fun night of music all aroundl.
We at CatSynth have been extraordinarily busy since the start of summer with work, music, and other obligations. As a result, our explorations of visual art have suffered a bit. But we start correcting that today with a report from the blockbuster René Magritte: The FifthSeason exhibition at SFMOMA. I’m glad I was able to get in to see it before it closes in two weeks!
The exhibition focuses on his later works, from World War II through the late 1960s. It is billed as “If you think you know Magritte (1898–1967), think again.” Yet, this period includes many of his most iconic works – other than perhaps his most famous La Trahison des images (aka “this is not a pipe”), including many of my favorites from the broader Magritte retrospective I had seen at SFMOMA in the early 2000s.
Les valeurs personnelles (1952)
The work depicted above, Les valeurs personnelles, is perhaps my favorite of all. I find myself drawn to it not just because of the stark juxtaposition of larger-than-human-sized objects in a smaller-than-human-sized space, but for the various textures that defy painting. The objects themselves have the hyperrealistic sheen of graphics from the 1990s (we were all proud of our ability to render glass) with the more pedestrian room space and strangely realistic sky on the wall. These are the characteristics of many of Magritte’s pieces during his Hypertrophy period in the 1950s. It’s taken to an extreme in a piece that features one of his iconic green apples swelling to gargantuan proportions and pushing against the walls of a modest room.
The Listening Room (1952)
And of course, there were many bowler-hatted gentlemen, some with green apples, some without.
The Son of Man (1964)
The image of the bowler hat and the bowler-hatted man has appeared throughout Magritte’s career, but it was more closely associated with the artist himself in his later works, a form of self-portraiture.
The Happy Donor (1966)
In addition to the green apple, we see many objects and concepts that appear in other works from this period applied to the bowler-hatted man, such as the small round stone, birds, and negative spaces.
In both sets of works, we see the discrete juxtaposition of elements that may or may not fit with real-life experience. I see this is as “quintessentially Magritte” and consistent throughout most of his career. In that sense, I disagree a bit with the thesis of the exhibition that this later period was a break with surrealism, but rather a reimagining of it with different subjects and techniques and without the heaviness of the movement’s manifesto. If there was one section of the exhibit that truly represented a break from what I know of the artist, it was the first section that featured his vache period immediately following World War II.
Lyricism (Le Lyrisme) 1947
I would never have guessed these grotesque parodies of van-Gogh-style impressionism were his work if they were not presented and explained. At the same time, it is not surprising that the experience of the war (Magritte remained in his native Belgium during the Nazi occupation). It feels like his weakest and least memorable work, but one theory suggests that his retrograde style during this period helped avoid Nazi attention and persecution. We are certainly glad he returned to form in his later years.
One of late series, collectively called The Dominion ofLight, brings together a nighttime city streetscape with a daytime sky.
The Dominion of Light
It takes a moment of adjustment to realize the confounding of night and day in the image, as our eyes are so used to assumptions about the passing of time and light. The series is at once playful, but also a bit melancholy, pointing to the later years of a life and life’s work. Fortunately, there was one more chapter to come that was both more curious and more uplifting.
A Sense of Reality (1963)
This bizarre series of boulders floating in space or sitting isolated on an apartment terrace is a return to form, but also an exploration of time and gravity and even more fundamental assumptions that we make in everyday life. Their lightness and starkness also make an interesting statement at the end of a career that spanned several decades and saw the massive changes of the 20th century. We should note that the bowler-hat portraits featured in this article were done during the same late period, and are stronger both as works in themselves and as a career-spanning statement.
The exhibit was overall a delight to experience. It was hung in a minimalist but also warm style without too much crowding or overwhelm, and it weaved a narrative even as I took in the works as individuals. It also marked a return a place of solace, the museum, after a long period of intensity and focus on other practices. I won’t stay away as long again.
If you are in San Francisco over the next couple of weeks, I strongly recommend checking this exhibition out before it closes on October 28. For more information, please visit https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/rene-magritte/.
Even as Septembers and Octobers go in San Francisco, this one has been crazy, careening between rehearsals and performances for various projects, growing in a new job, and dreading whatever new political development occurs. So our recent outing to hear SF Symphony perform the music of Igor Stravinsky was a bit of a respite. It was part of a two week-festival celebrating the music of Stravinsky that included not only the “big three” (The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring) but other less-frequently performed works. We were there for the night featuring The Firebird and enjoyed the bar’s special Firebird martini in celebration.
The Firebird, the first the “big three,” premiered in 1910 and while was considered avant-garde by some in Paris, it’s a very accessible work that draws more from 19th-century romanticism than from the innovations of the time. For us at CatSynth, this is about as conservative as our live music gets. But it is nonetheless an adventurous piece and very richly textured, especially in its focus on brass and wind instruments. As it was performed without staging, it was easier to concentrate entirely on the music. The early “Prince Ivan” sections had phrases and idioms that foreshadowed L’Histoire du soldat(The Soldier’sTale); then there is that iconic ending with the slow big chords.
If anything, it was the opening performance of Perséphone that was more unique an exciting. It far less often that Stravinsky’s other large-scale works, and it is complex to stage. For this performance, the symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas was joined by the great Leslie Caron as the narrator and Persephone, Nicholas Phan on tenor as Eumolpus and other characters, as well as San Francisco Symphony Chorus, San Francisco GirlsChorus, and the Pacific Boychoir.
Despite the massive number of performers between the orchestra and the choruses, Perséphone has a sparse and more minimal texture than The Firebird or the other big ballets. It also has a very deliberate and punctuated quality, with each note and each syllable of the text standing alone. It does have a joyous, lyrical quality at times – it is a celebration of spring. But it also has dark, unsettling moments, which is keeping with the mythological story of Persephone, the spring goddess and daughter of Ceres being brought to Hades by Pluto. The story is one of balance between light and dark, and between the seasons. But the text in this version is somewhat more ambiguous, emphasizing Persephone’s descending to Hades by choice. It does also celebrate her worldly existence as the bride of Triptolemus and joy of rebirth, and of course the springtime. Musically we are treated to a light touch without leaning too heavily on major/minor emotional tropes, much as the story projects its ambiguity between light and dark. The winds, and piccolos, in particular, were prominent. And as stated above the space within the music leaves ample time to consider each note and word. It was a quietly but powerfully dynamic performance; and orchestra, soloists and chorus were treated to many well-deserved rounds of applause.
It was our first trip back to the Symphony in a while, as their 2017 program was far more conservative and focused on traditional repertoire compared the numerous shows we had enjoyed in 2016. We do look forward to more adventurous and contemporary programming again soon.
Last weekend the Club Foot Orchestra teamed up with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, to perform some of their “greatest hits”, contemporary live performances to silent film classics. A full day of live music by the venerable and indefatigable ensemble!
The Club Foot Orchestra was started 25 years ago in 1983 by Richard Marriott (brass, winds), and still includes original member Beth Custer on woodwinds. They were joined in this performance by Sheldon Brown (woodwinds), Will Bernard (guitar), Chris Grady (trumpet), Gino Robair (percussion), Kymry Esainko (piano/keyboard), Sascha Jacobsen (bass), Deirdre McClure (conductor), and Alisa Rose (violin). They performed some of their most memorable scores, including interpretations of the German expressionist classics Metropolis and Nosferatu. We at CatSynth were not able to attend Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s futurist masterpiece and a personal favorite of mine. But we were on hand for Nosferatu, the iconic and controversial horror film directed by F. W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as the eternally creepy Count Orlock.
The history of Nosferatu is as intriguing as the film itself. It was an unauthorized adaptation from Bram Stoker’s original Dracula, and although the names and some details were changed, in many ways it conforms more closely to both the story and spirit of the original than many later interpretations. Perhaps too closely, as the Stoker estate successfully sued Murnau’s production company and won a judgment that included an order to destroy all copies of the film. Fortunately, some prints had already been distributed internationally and have been used for restorations of the original. The version screened on this occasion was a beautiful restoration from the 2000s that included color tinting for various scenes. The colors added an even more eerie and otherworldly quality to the film. It worked particularly well for the Transylvanian scenes and those in and around Orlock’s castle.
The orchestra delivered a highly dynamic and varied performance paired with the images. There were many sparse sections that fit with the tension of the film, and I particularly liked the spots that featured single lines, such as percussion hits, extended-technique winds, or synthesizer samples. But the sections where the ensemble came together to deliver punchy and sensuous jazz lines were especially fun. It added an element of humor and modernism, which is inevitable for a twenty-first-century viewing of a movie from nearly 100 years ago. The mixture of noises and extended sounds with bits of Eastern European melody and harmony worked especially well for strangely colored Transylvanian scenes.
As a small group, each of the wind players had multiple instruments. Richard Marriott had a quite an arsenal of flutes and lower brass, and both Beth Custer and Sheldon Brown had bass clarinets in addition to their other instruments. Gino Robair also had in an impressive array of percussion instruments (though no electronics on this particular occasion).
It was a delightful evening of music and visuals that worked well together – a more concrete film-centered version of the discipline we had a seen a week earlier in Andy Puls’ abstract set at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. And while I’m sorry to have missed Metropolis on this occasion, Nosferatu was probably even more of an “event” in the space of the Castro Theatre. We look forward to hearing more of Club Foot Orchestra’s scores in the near future.
