2003 EDGETONE NEW MUSIC SUMMIT
July 17-20 2003
$8 Advanced sales before July
14th. $10.00 at the door
$24.00 Festival Pass sold in advance
and on the first night.
A wide variety of adventurous
modern music: experimental, improvised free music, from the Bay Area
July 17th
Luggage Store Gallery 8:00pm
1007 Market St, @ 6th SF
HEAVY GUERRILLA
Dina Emerson/Bob
Marsh/Joseph Zitt/Ian Yeager/Rent Romus/Phillip
Everett/Matt Davignon
O’RORKE/EUBANKS/SHIURBA
Brian Eubanks (Portland), soprano
sax/John Shiurba, guitar/Simon O'Rorke (New Zealand), perc
RECURSIVE
HERETICS
Scott Looney/Aaron
Bennett
July 18th
Community Music Center 8:00 pm
544 Capp St. SAN FRANCISCO,
CA
IMPROVISING PIANO SUMMIT
MATTHEW GOODHEART
SCOTT LOONEY with
guest Tim DuRouche, drums
GUST BURNS (Seattle)
July 19th
Music Union Hall 8:30 pm
116 9th St. SAN FRANCISCO, CA
MRLECTRONIC (San Diego)
Robert
Montoya/Lisle Ellis - electronics
BURNS/SMITH/DUROUCHE trio (Seattle)
Gust Burns - piano / Damon Smith
- double bass / Tim DuRouche - drums
July 20th
Music Union Hall 7:30 pm
116 9th St. @ Mission, SF
KliP
TRIO
Garth Powell,
Elliot Kallen, John Lauffenburger
TRI-CORNERED
TENT SHOW, LEGION OF DAGON
CD Release performance of music inspired
by H.P. Lovecraft’s The Fungi of Yuggoth
Ray Scheaffer/Andre Custodio/Phillip
Everett/Jeff Hobbs/Rent Romus
ABOUT EDGETONE RECORDS
Founded by saxophonist/composer/producer
Rent Romus, Edgetone Records originally began in 1991 to support modern
jazz. In 2000 the label expanded to support the many unsung or under appreciated
artists of the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond by encompassing experimental,
avant guard, new sonic, and postmodern jazz.
Unlike many music corporate structures
that mimic a parasite, Edgetone is dedicated to a symbiotic relationship
between artist and company by releasing music by musicians who are “self-producers”,
with a mind for business, and not just looking for the enslavement of the
“deal”. Musicians who do not want to compromise their music to fit into
a narrow definition of "commercially viable”, and those that double their
efforts to support their ideas and dreams define what we are all about.
Although there are many artists that need the administrative strong hold
of a major label to run their lives, there are many like the artists of
Edgetone that have what it takes to stand on their own.
It is the desire of Edgetone to make
available recordings and creative products that act to support diverse
creative music and art that is otherwise being pushed aside, misunderstood
or, under represented by standard media. Aside from modern jazz, the new
sonic series is the flagship and guiding light of Edgetone including the
new Razor series pushing the envelope into the new century.
ARTISTS
Heavy Guerrilla is a collective
entity loosely slammed together by Rent Romus to explore sound qualities
and deep underbrush. The group originally began as 500lb Guerrilla
soon finding itself waxing and waning in size heavier than 500 pounds.
Thus Heavy Guerrilla was born mixing free form improv, freejazz, and everything
else inbetween stopping for no one leaving no tracks, invisible to the
naked ear.
Spontaneous smoke signals, coded
slight of eye, take no prisoners
Recursive Heretics explores the concept of feedback at all levels between a performer and a processor in a live improvisational setting. Together they explore the concept of feedback in live performance as the saxophone sound is transformed by live, automated and manipulated signal processing using a customized Max/MSP setup. The results of this processing vary from subtle shifts in the original sound to a completely unique and distinct voice. The processed sound is then fed back to the player, who alters his playing to react to the processed reaction, which is then reacted upon by the processor, and so on, achieving a conversation of ever widening scope and depth, larger than either player or processor could create alone.
Lisle Ellis has been an active
performer on acoustic bass, and a composer, conductor, curator and director
of orchestras, and small ensembles for more than twenty-five years. The
force and beauty of his art, both visual and musical, is apparent in all
that he creates. Ellis began playing bass in 1963, and in 1973,he enrolled
in the music Department at Douglas College, Vancouver, where he studied
with Milan Hurt of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
From 1975-1979, Ellis studied in
New York at the renowned Creative Music Studio (CMS) with many of the luminaries
of creative music. The most developmentally influential of these musicians
was Cecil Taylor. Since that time, Ellis has worked with many players associated
with Taylor including Andrew Cyrille, Raphe Malik, as well as the late
Jimmy Lyons and Glenn Spearman.
The current direction of his music
is highly experimental integrating the bass with electronics. Presently
he divides his time between San Diego and San Francisco.
Gust Burns Plays improvised/composed new music from a perspective influenced by both jazz and “classical”/avant-garde traditions. He also sees the rap and hip-hop music he grew up with as having an influence on his musical sensibility.The pool of musicians and artists with whom Gust works is ever growing and expanding; he has worked with improvisers such as Jack Wright, Damon Smith, Wally Shoup, Mike Bisio, Jacob Lindsay, Greg Campbell, Reuben Radding, Travis Baker, Garth Powell, Bob Marsh, Ilyas Ahmed, and many others, as well as dancer/choreographer Heather Gibbons.
Damon Smith has Collaborated
with dancers, actors and poets including Poet Jack Brewer, scoring actor
William Whaley's adaptation of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Capricorn" for
actor and double bass and the west coast premier of the final collaboration
of Merce Cunningham and John Cage; "Ocean," Highly Influenced By modern
visual arts, Damon studied painting for a short time with Tom Schultz (see
cover of bpa 002) This has resulted in a notation system called "Color
Architecture," dedicated to him.
Damon has performed with; Peter Brötzmann,
Cecil Taylor, the "Deep Space Posse" (led by Tyrone Hill & Marshall
Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra), Peter Kowald, Glenn Spearman, Frank Gratkowski,
Joëlle léandre, Jeb Bishop, John Tchicai, Andrew Voit, Douglas
Ewart, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Eugene Chadbourne, Joe Biaza, Biggi Vinkeloe,
Elliot Sharp, Wolfgang Fuchs, Luc Houtkamp, Peter Van Bergen, Mike Watt,
Chris Cutler, William Hooker, Miya Masaoka, J.A. Deane, J.D. Parran, Sebi
Tramantana, Mathew Goodheart, Gino Robair, Carla Khilstead, Tony Bevan,
Alan Silva, Boris Hauf, Tim Perkis, Jackson Krall, Eddie Gale, Gianni Gebbia,
Fred Frith, Jaap Blonk, Jon Raskin, Phill Gelb, Marco Eneidi, Donald Robinson,
J.D. Parran, Oluyemi Thomas, Prince Lasha, Henry Kaiser, John Butcher,
Collin Stetson, Hugh, Livingston.
The musicians who make up the KLiP trio have worked together off and on in various configurations for more than twelve years and have performed in a wide variety of venues, from concert stages to college campuses and nightclubs throughout California. Their backgrounds are as eclectic as their music, reflecting their involvement in western classical music, avant-garde jazz, industrial, electronic music, as well as funk, bebop, rock, and world music. Individually, they have recorded and/or performed with Marshall Allen, John Butcher, Eugene Chadbourne, Bill Champlin, Gianni Gebbia, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Kowald, Milcho Leviev, Eddie Moore, Jimmy Rowles, Wadada Leo Smith, Glenn Spearman, Saadet Turkos, Phil Upchurch, and Bennie Wallace.
Tri-Cornered Tent Show is an
Urban, Electro-Acoustic Folk Improv. Free improvisation and orchestrated
sound sculpture.
Philip M. Everett began playing
Drums and Percussion at the age of 13, and has studied with George Marsh
and Eddie Moore. His main musical influences are Sun Ra, Harry Partch,
Karlheinz Stockhausen,Sunny Murray, Anthony Braxton.
Ray Schaeffer currently performs on fretless 6 string , fretted 4 and 8 string basses using a host of electronic effects that are incorporated to be part of the instrument. After studying music theory and upright bass in high school and junior college, Ray has performed in a diverse array of ensembles from full orchestra to folk rock bands, and experimental improv groups going back to the 70s.
Andre Custodio is a SF bay
area native Percussionist/Sound Designer who studied with Brian Fergus,
Bob Danielson and Carl Perazzo. He has collaborated (in some way) with
Rent Romus, The Splatter Trio, David Slusser, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, LX
Rudis, Fear of Math and Tom Nunn. 'Nihil Communication' is his ongoing
solo project, combining reconfigured samples, digital processing, unique
instruments and additive analog synthesis. He's influenced by Witold Lutoslawksi,
Lustmord, The Splatter Trio, Negativland, AMM, Morbid Life Society, Cecil
Taylor, Curtis Mayfield, Miguel "anga" Diaz, John Coltrane and too many
others to mention.
ABOUT THE FOUNDER
Rent Romus is a force spanning over seventeen years of creative improvised music. The current director and producer of Edgetone Records, the SIMM Music Series at the Studio 6 Musicians Union Hall, and co-curator of the Luggage Store Gallery Series with Ernesto Diaz-Infante in San Francisco, Romus has introduced countless musicians from the world over and multimedia events to the San Francisco Bay Area culture and throughout parts of the world.
During the mid 80’s, Romus enhanced
his studies at the Stanford Jazz Workshop at Stanford University, where
he was blessed with the wisdom and guidance from Stan Getz, guitarist Bruce
Forman, Dizzy Gillespie, Mel Martin, and drummer Eddie Moore. In 1984 at
the age of 16, Romus re-organized directed NAYJE (the North Area Youth
Jazz Ensemble), a seventeen piece big band featuring some of the best young
high school and college bay area musicians at the time. In the fall of
1986, while attending the University of California at Santa Cruz, he formed
the group Jazz On The Line which became the focus for his compositions
and productions. JOTL was an acoustic jazz sextet that fused jazz, blues,
gospel, and hip-hop into original compositions. Romus produced three albums
for this group including his critically acclaimed CD Jazz On the Line with
Chico Freeman, In The Moment on Edgetone Records soon to be reissued. Mid
span the group changed it’s name to 2AM, and was considered one of the
founding bands of the “acid jazz” scene popular in the early nineties parallel
to Charlie Hunter and the like.
In 1993 seeking a more expanded format
to explore, Romus formed the modern music group RKZtet, which featured
ex-ESP recording artist and drum master James Zitro and former Sun Ra Arkestra
cellist Kash Killion, both noted for their contribution to the development
of the “new jazz” of the sixties. Later in 1994 Romus renamed the group,
The Lords of Outland, and brought in soon to be film music composer Vytas
Nagisetty (Brock Lee) on bass, Andrew Borger (currently drummer for Tom
Waits) and Jason Olaine (Jay O), (currently AR director for Verve Records
Universal) on trumpet.
The Lords of Outland recorded their
first album You’ll Never Be The Same, Jazzheads Records JH9493 in 1995,
and were featured on the then fledgling BET Channel National Network Show,
“Jazz Central” as part of the Jazz Discovery program. That same year Romus
self-produced his first overseas national tour of Denmark which featured
many of Copenhagen’s young improvisers discovering such musicians as pianist/trumpet
player Jonas Müller who has recently moved the S.F. Bay Area, and
drummer Stefan Pasborg.
In 1996 Romus returned to Denmark
for his second tour with Jonas as the Rent Romus Sound Cirkus. The group
also included San Francisco basists George Cremanchi and saxophonist Alex
Weiss. After returning to the U.S. they continued on to the Bay Area to
finish the tour. During that year he also assisted bluesman Paris Slim
produce his first major American release with guitarist Joe Lewis Walker
and Sonny Rhodes. In 1997 Romus had the honor of recording with tenor sax
master John Tchicai. Tchicai is best known for his work with the NY Art
Quartet, NY Ear and Eye Control, and his recordings with John Coltrane
and Albert Ayler. The CD of this recording, Adapt…or DIE! was released
at the end of 1997. In 1998 Romus released Blood Motions featuring his
young Danish protégés Stefan Pasborg and bassist Jonas Westergaard.
In 2001 Romus re-opened his avant,
free music lable Edgetone Records, where his current release can be found,
interweaving science fiction, horror literature, improvisation, Finno-Ugric
music traditions, and the inspiration of Albert Ayler.