Downbeast - music blog

CRYPTONIGHT and MONA present ONIBABA

Daren Burns - fretless bass/compositions
Ulrich Krieger - saxes/woodwinds
George McMullen - trombone
Eric Klerks - guitar
Craig Bunch - drumset

Live Video by: Kio Griffith

Daren Burns, fretted and fretless electric bass player, composer, and improviser has been playing and composing music for over twenty years. Much of his musical interest lies in the area of improvisation and how to make new systems for developing improvisation in new ways. In the last few years he has also become interested in Indian rhythmic and melodic systems.

His ensemble, Onibaba exists between composition and improvisation and is described as being somewhere between the light and the dark, the ethereal and the earthly - Creative Music. Created by Daren Burns in 2006, the band synthesizes its sound by using elements of the Chicago avant-garde, jazz, rock, world, techno, noise, and classical, to create a new type of fusion that is definitely not the smooth, funky jazz of the 80's and 90's, but a new living music.

In live performance, the band is also committed to the use of live video images to expand the ensemble from sound to sight. The video doesn't act as a narrative or as a background, but as a sixth element and contributor to the performance.

Friday November 6th - 8PM
Museum of Neon Art
136 W. 4th St., LA 90013
Tel. (213) 489-9918
Tickets are $10 at the Door
Parking available on the street or in two ADJACENT paid lots 1/2 block away.
For more information and a map, please go to: www.neonmona.org

ANNOUNCEMENT: Friday's segment of World Stage Stories [see last blog entry], featuring Louis Van Taylor on November 6th, has been CANCELLED! He is currently in Russia and will not return in time for the interview. Louis will be booked again, soon. Meanwhile, don't forget that Rose Gales will appear on November 20th at 8:00 p.m.

In his 75th year, the amazing Bobby Bradford -- who besides his partner in crime Ornette Coleman is the last original link to the birth of free jazz in Los Angeles -- is interviewed by All About Jazz's Clifford Allen. Read the profile here.

Coinciding with this renewed attention is the 2-CD re-release of Bobby Bradford with John Stevens and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Bradford's meeting of minds with a group of British improvisers [pictured below]. Check out reviews of the CD from Squid's Ear and All About Jazz,

Greg Burk's Live Picks (Nov. 6-12)
Don Heckman's Live Picks (Nov. 2-8)
Brick Wahl's Live Picks (Nov. 4-11)

Trumpeter and extended Crypto family member Stacey Rowles [pictured below with her father Jimmy] passed away on 10/27/09 at her home in Burbank from complications after a car accident.

Los Angeles jazz has lost not only a terrific player but another link to our glorious -- if hidden -- jazz past. Read her obit from the L.A. Times here.

Stacy cuts it up at Charlie O's (Van Nuys, CA)

Stacy Rowles: A Celebration in Photos

When we ran into Sir Nels Cline last June at the Sky Saxon Tribute Show, he informed us that not only was he battling a pesky toe fungus but that he and the boys from Das Vilco has just completed their installment of Beck Hansen's Record Club ("an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day"). The record chosen this time was Oar, the spooky, whacked-out solo project from Moby Grape's troubled genius Alexander "Skip" Spence.

From Mr. Beck himself: "This one took place last June when Wilco was in town for the release of their new eponymous album. They came by after a long day filming a TV appearance and still managed to put down 8 songs with us. Jamie Liddell was in the studio with me working on his new record. Leslie Feist happened to be in town editing her documentary and heard we were all getting together. Recording took place at Sunset Sound Studios in the room where the Stones did a lot of Exile On Main Street (and looking at the records on the walls it appeared that the Doobie Brothers recorded most of their output there too). Sitting in on drums, we had James Gadson, who's played on most of the Bill Withers records and on songs like 'Express Yourself' and 'I Will Survive.' Jeff Tweedy's son Spencer played played additional drums. Also, Brian Lebarton, from the last two Record Club sessions is back. Running sequentially, the first song up is "Little Hands". Our friend Danny Kalb engineered."

Record Club: Skip Spence "Little Hands" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

UPDATE (11/18/09): Goodness gracious Mr. Beckie has been a bizzy beave lately. He's put up an insane 10-minute ode (if one can call it that) to the great Cali composer/
hobo/iconoclast Harry Partch on his website. According to Beck's site, the track is "a tribute to the composer and his desire to make the body and music unified into what he termed 'Corporeality.' The song employs Partch's 43 tone scale, which expands conventional tonality into a broader variation of frequencies and resonances."

Could this make Mr. Partch a topic of hipster conversations at Cafe Stella or Bordello? As Asia once opined: "Only time will tell...."

Greg Burk's Live Picks (Nov. 13-19)
Don Heckman's Live Picks (Nov. 9-15)
Brick Wahl's Live Picks (Nov. 11-19)

Ah, the lost pieces of the puzzle keep falling into place: John "Drumbo" French, one of the key players in the classic 1966-1972 lineup of Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band, has finally completed his epic tome on making music with The Captain. It's called Through the Eyes of Magic and it's nearly 1000 pages long....good god, in just writing this our salivary glands have gone into overdrive. Check out more info on the book (drop date: January 2010) from the Radar Station blog.

BOO!

In related BH news: Josh Lieb, executive producer of The Daily Show with John Stewart, has written I Am A Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want To Be Your Class President, perhaps the only young adult novel (that we know of) where the 12-year old protagonist is a Beefheart obsessive. Here's Mr. Lieb's take on the Captain:

Captain Beefheart, perhaps the greatest Rock & Roll musician of all time. And a sort of...evil genius in his own right. He and his Magic Band produced some of the most amazing music of the '60s, '70s and '80s. It's a kind of thing where it's in the book, I suspect zero percent of...the children reading it will have any idea who Captain Beefheart is. But it's a funny name. And so I think they'll enjoy that. And then maybe they'll...look him up, they'll listen to some music and they'll be horribly disappointed.

Listen to the rest of the interview here.

Greg Burk's Live Picks (Nov. 20-26)
Don Heckman's Live Picks (Nov. 16-22)
Brick Wahl's Live Picks (Nov. 18-25)

Are we dreaming? Could HBO actually be running a jazz documentary?

Yes! This Wednesday, Nov. 25, the network that brought us depressed mobsters, flesh-eating pigs and harried bigamists will be airing The Jazz Baroness, Hannah Rothschild's new film about her great-aunt Pannonica "Nica" Rothschild, perhaps the most famous (and controversial) jazz enthusiast/financial angel/patron/sexpot. Go here to read more about the film.

Mark Weber, photo documentarian of L.A.'s free jazz world, posted an essential guide to the scene's early releases, which features interviews with poo-bahs Bobby Bradford and Vinny Golia. (Note the notables who left comments at the bottom!) Check it out here. View Mr. Weber's boss photo collection here.

Greg Burk's Live Picks of the Week (Nov. 27-Dec. 3)
Don Heckman's Live Picks of the Week (Nov. 30-Dec. 6)
Brick Wahl's Live Picks of the Week (Nov. 25-Dec 2)

REST IN TEMPO
Bagatellen
Norton Buffalo
Avery Clayton
Jeff Clyne
Jack Cooke
Art D’Lugoff
Bess Lomax Hawes
Tommy Jacquette
Billy James
Dick Katz
Bob Keane
Eddie Locke
Jaap Ludeke
Morris Nanton
Jack Rose
Aaron Schroeder
Hale Smith
Elisabeth Soderstrom
Joseph F. Wheeler
Eric Woolfson