Space Exchange February 2016

Space Exchange keeps rolling along in 2016. I'm on two of these days. Of course, SE stalwarts Thoth Trio are on the 9th. On the 23rd, the Throckmorton 4 is the improvisation group with David Throckmorton (drums), Paul Thompson (electric and possibly acoustic bass), me (laptop, saxophones and electronics) with John Shannon filling the guitar seat this time. Both funky and abstract, we've had some great performances in the past and look forward to working with John.

A film about my Dad

Sound/Unsound Trio excerpts

January 2016

You can see below what we have cooked up for January at Space Exchange:

January 5 will be a particularly intense night for me. I'll first be playing at the Backstage Bar (first time in several years) with Thoth Trio, that's 5-8pm. Then I pack up head over to the Thunderbird Cafe to blow out the night with Sound/Unsound Trio, my group with Josh Wulff on guitar and David Throckmorton on drums. And of course, Thoth Trio the following week at the TBird. We premiered a couple of pieces on our last gig and I hope to have a few more pulled together for that one.

And it's all free.

As noted on the bottom of the image, this starts our fifth year of Space Exchange concerts. What a time it's been! I'd hardly have any work at all were it not for this. That makes me a little concerned that I'm being too complacent in locating more performance opportunities, but on the other hand it's been a great place to develop ideas and work with new people. We believe we've maintained a pretty high standard for our concerts and we intend to continue that for as long as we can.

Looking to the future, I have another performance of my Concerto for Orkestra planned for April 12 at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater. I want to first of all get it performed at least once more, but also hopefully record an even sharper performance for possible release. Mark your calendars (or whatever the digital version of that action might be) because, who knows if I'll ever get it played again?

December Space Exchange

December 2015 will see the end of four years of Space Exchange concerts. (Not that we're stopping!) I'm sure many would be surprised we've lasted this long. If you attend these shows, first of all thank you for your patronage. I'm happy that we can bring you this series and hope to keep it fresh and interesting. Many many thanks to John Pergal and the Thunderbird Cafe for supporting this idea. And not to lecture, but if you do come to the shows, remember that the Thunderbird is there to sell you food and drinks. It goes a long way if everyone attending buys at least one thing. The shows are free, after all.

December will see more appearances by me than usual. On the 1td, I'll be in the saxophone seat with Blink; we'll also be playing Friday at the James Street Speakeasy & Gastropub. The 8th is Space Exchange standard bearer Thoth Trio, me with Paul Thompson and David Throckmorton. I'll be sitting in on a few things with Ian Gordon on the 15th, and playing here and there on Chris Parker's 2nd annual Chrisparkermas show.

Apart from that, not a lot of things for me to mention for the time being.

November part 1

I'm just on Nov. 17 but check out everything if you can.

In case anyone is paying attention...

Here's the Space Exchange schedule for October. I'll be playing the first two, and happy to have Matt and Chris back in town again. It'll be the last time for Matt for a while, Chris will be returning at least by December. I gave up my leader night to Lina Allemano. This group is her more Ornette-ish combo.

I'll also be playing with Matt and Chris in Silk Sound. We're playing a free concert at Bellefield Hall in Oakland on Oct. 9, 7pm.