Sunday, July 20, beginning at 3 pm, within Oakland's Joaquin Miller Park, we're excited to present three performances which utilize unique takes on acoustic instrumentation/sound in relation to place.
Karen Stackpole
Jacob Felix Heule
Lisa Mezzacappa + Crystal Pascucci-Clifford
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Drummer/percussionist Karen Stackpole has a long-standing passion for gongs. In her exploration of metals, she has cultivated some distinctive techniques for drawing harmonics out of tam tams with various implements. She specializes in dynamic soundscapes and textures and has contributed gong sounds to more conventional musical genres as well as contributing source material for film soundtracks. In addition to solo work, she has performed and recorded with various projects including Machine Shop: Live Amplified Gong Experience (a duo with electronics master, Drew Webster), Sabbaticus Rex, Ghost in the House, Vorticella, the Francis Wong Unit, and the rock band Steel Hotcakes. Most recently her work has focused on duo performances and recordings with experimental instrument builder Krys Bobrowski (Gliss Glass & Gongs), contrabassist Bill Noertker (Talking Frog), and guitarist extraordinaire, Fred Frith.
Jacob Felix Heule is an improvising percussionist with a special interest in friction techniques. His music is shaped by intuition, listening, and following where the sounds lead. He embraces limited instrumentation - usually playing just a single drum - as a commitment to exploring the depth of his instruments. He uses a wide array of found objects and extended techniques to create a unique and idiosyncratic sound vocabulary. He also plays drum set and electronics. Heule has been active in the San Francisco Bay Area music scene since the early 2000s, and has played hundreds of shows in basements, warehouses, and squats around the world, with groups such as Ettrick, Basshaters, Sult, and Voicehandler. Heule frequently collaborates with Danishta Rivero, Kanoko Nishi-Smith, Guro Moe, Håvard Skaset, Matt Chandler, Chris Cooper, and Kevin Corcoran. He has long been active as an organizer, and since 2015 has been facilitating a monthly improvisation workshop, Doors That Only Open in Silence. Heule's practice is unified with his work as an audio engineer. His playing explores nuances of sound with the same obsessive attention to detail as an engineer perfecting a mix (and vice versa). He does live sound full-time for Bay Area arts organizations large and small, and has also worked on albums by artists such as Keiji Haino, Marshall Trammell, and Burmese. For more on Jacob Felix Huele's work, visit
https://heule.us
Berkeley-based composer, bassist and producer Lisa Mezzacappa has been active in the Bay Area music community for more than 20 years. Her activities as a composer and ensemble leader include ethereal chamber music, electro-acoustic works, avant-garde jazz, music for groups from duo to large ensemble, and collaborations with film, dance, and visual art. Her most recent project is the 9-episode serial audio opera The Electronic Lover, with writer Beth Lisick. She is a recipient of the Pauline Oliveros New Genres Prize from the International Alliance for Women in Music (IAWM), and has been commissioned by the San Francisco Girls Chorus and Del Sol Quartet. This year, she is releasing 12 records by Bay Area creative musicians in 12 months on her micro label QueenBee Records. To learn more about Lisa Mezzacappa's work, go to
https://lisamezzacappa.com
Crystal Pascucci-Clifford is a cellist, composer, and improviser whose work challenges the cultural exclusivity deeply ingrained in Western Classical music. Harnessing clangor for lyricism and embracing the harmony of resonance, she creates sonic landscapes that explore beyond the limits of conventional defined timbres and rhythms. Based in Oakland, she’s an active member of the experimental and new music scenes and collaborates with world-renowned artists that define the Bay Area as a bastion of musical innovation and experimentation. For more on Crystal Pascucci-Clifford's work, visit
https://crystalpascucci.com
Emergent Sound Practices is an outdoor sound performance series which offers an unconventional circumstance for artists to share emergent and experimental works in conversation with place. With an intent to tread lightly, all presented sound is generated either acoustically or through small, portable amplification. Through the assertion of process, and by embracing the unpredictable nature of outdoor environments, the artists of this series depict, in real time, how music is more than simply putting notes and sounds together – it is placing oneself in a specific moment and context, preparing mind and body to shape sound, in community with observers, players, and one’s surroundings. It’s a relationship.
For more on Emergent Sound Practices or to join our mailing list, check out
https://emergentsound.org
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