Reviews – Page 2 – Sax & Stories by Henry Kuntz

November 21, 2007February 4, 2024

healing force: the songs of albert ayler

HEALING FORCE: THE SONGS OF ALBERT AYLER Cunieform 255

Vinny Golia / reeds, Aurora Josephson / voice, Henry Kaiser / guitar (and producer), Mike Keneally / piano, guitar and voice, Joe Morris / guitar and double bass, Damon Smith / double bass, Weasel Walter / drums. Aurora Josephson / art work.
Recorded: May 3, 2006

Healing Force revisits and reclaims songs of the late Albert Ayler and lyricist/vocalist Mary Maria Parks.

The CD includes songs from Ayler’s final Impulse LPs – Love Cry, New Grass, Music is the Healing Force of the Universe – and demo tapes for New Grass that appeared on the recently released Holy Ghost box set (Revenant).

This is an inspired collection of work that references not only Ayler’s songs but the spiritual force behind them. This force drove a whole period of music. Players felt that by harnessing the transcendent power of free jazz, they (and listeners) might attain spiritual union and oneness with the Divine and All That Is.

This association of free jazz with spiritual awakening gained wide acceptance with the release of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme (recorded December 1964). But Ayler, with his strong religious and musical background, had made the connection earlier. In February 1964, at the same session that produced Witches and Devils (Polydor) he recorded a number of “free” spirituals. The titles of his tunes on Witches and Devils had broadly spiritual overtones as well.

The recently released New Grass demo material suggests that, whatever one thinks about the music of late-period Albert Ayler (and the behind-the-scenes record company machinations that produced it), that material was a logical outgrowth of Ayler’s evolving musical aesthetic. The demo material suggests Ayler’s attempt to return to the roots of the spiritual with an end toward creating something new.

“Let the Spirit move you through the path of life.
“Don’t forget the Holy Ghost.”

The word “spiritual” is revelatory as it is likely a contraction of “spirit ritual,” which is what all of Ayler’s music is about. For Ayler, however anguished his playing could sometimes be, music is (always was) the healing force of the universe.

The opening of Healing Force mirrors the opening of New Grass, but with Golia on molten baritone in place of Ayler on tenor, and with a surprisingly effective and felt group rendering of “Message from Albert.” With that as a keynote, the players allow the music to “play itself” through them, as producer Henry Kaiser puts it. The songs that follow appear in varied stylistic contexts.

“Music is the Healing Force” is remindful of the liquidity of Coltrane’s Expression, but with electric guitar interpolations by Kaiser and Joe Morris. On other songs, there are rock, punk, and psychedelic references along with jazz.

The upbeat “Thank God for Women” brings to mind Monk’s “Friday the 13th,” but with a New Orleans clarinet twist, courtesy of Vinny Golia. Elsewhere, Golia’s reed work draws from Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders as well as from Ayler, and he surprises with some wonderful Roland Kirk-inspired flute on “Heart Love.” The collective dirge-like opening of “Heart Love” might be a gothic version of “Wild Thing!”

The psychedelia reaches a fever pitch on “A Man is Like a Tree” and “Oh! Love of Life” with the three guitarists Kaiser, Morris, and Mike Keneally levitating to spaceland. When Keneally switches to piano, as on “Japan,” “Thank God for Women,” or “New Generation,” the music is harmonically enchanting and enticing. Keneally also provides vocal doubling on “Thank God for Women” and vocal shading on “A Man is Like a Tree.” The lone voice on “Universal Indians” is that of Weasel Walter.

Much in evidence throughout is the richness and versatility of Damon Smith’s bass playing. He and Joe Morris in tandem get into Gary Peacock territory on “New New Grass” and “New Message.”

At its edges, the music is held together by Weasel Walters’ expressive but chameleon-like percussion. At its gravitational center is the voice of Aurora Josephson.

In tones like smoked silk, Josephson slows down time in her approach to Mary Parks’ lyrics. In deliberately understating Parks’ words, she invests them with a prescient meaning one might not have guessed was there.

In a sense, she stands Ayler’s aesthetic on its head. Only occasionally, while improvising, does she venture possessed-like into Ayler’s super-falsetto saxophone range. Rather than attempting to find Oneness through transcendence, she goes inward, finding the Universal Oneness of Self in the stillness of the here and now.

This may be the real “New Message” of this updated rendition of Albert Ayler’s songs. In delivering the message, Healing Force brings Albert Ayler’s late-period music firmly into the present.

Henry Kuntz, November 2007

(Thanks to Martha Winneker for editorial assistance.)

September 26, 2007February 4, 2024

john gruntfest | the free music festival orchestra

THE FREE MUSIC FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA Void Leaper Productions vl 1376

Composed and Conducted By John Gruntfest. Live at the Fourth Annual Free Music Festival, Metropolitan Art Center, San Francisco, March 24. 1979.

“Dedicated to the Great SF Free Players of the ‘70s”

Musicians (A Partially Reconstructed Listing): Saxophones / John Gruntfest, Larry Ochs, Bruce Ackley, Andrew Voigt, Robert Bluewater Haven, Kersti Arbams, Genevieve Boulet de Monrel, Harvey Varga, Steve Deutdch, Jim Warshour, Hal Richards, Alfonso Texidor, Jim Schwartz, Henry Kuntz, Asil Lasi, Phillip Friend, Niel Barkley, Ben Bossi, Henry Peters, Kirk Allen, Weldon McCarty, Dennis Saputelli; Flutes/Clarinets / Albert Kovitz, Patrick Wallace, Edward Ache, Richard Dworkin, Gail Edwards, Tim Lambert, Eugene Cash, Marcia Smith, France Fortier; Brass / Bobby Bueghler, Ron Heglin, Hal Hughes, Lea Merrick, Loren Means. And many others for now and forever Mystery Guests.

Cover: Dori Seda’s playful drawing, elephants roaring and raging above the orchestra, was made immediately following the performance. An artist of many talents, Dori left this planet some years ago at age 38. The whereabouts of her various paintings are unknown.

In a time before this time, in our same physical space, there was a musical era connected to our own but of another character and dimension. In calendar time, it was about 25 years ago. In musical time, it was like the day before yesterday; but it could also have been tomorrow, because its sound was the sound of tomorrow.

The music of this era strove to be larger than itself. Its musical freedom was no mere technical achievement but an open-ended exploration that had to do with the very fabric and freedom of life. This freedom was both invigorating and frightening: invigorating in its realization, frightening in its practical implications. For the logic of liberation is such that the established ground of being of every single orthodoxy, musical or not, must fundamentally be called into question.

There was, as well, an inherently spiritual dimension to this new music: spiritual in the broadest sense of the word, nothing to do with religion. Music was not only music; it was a spiritual journey, a spiritual quest. And though it may seem amazing now, a wide spectrum of players of this period more or less accepted a vision such as this as a starting point for what their music was about. Many quite willingly and openly gave utterance to this vision, a vision most pointedly personified in the music and writings of John Gruntfest.

As a musician, on alto saxophone, John was the wildest sounding, hardest blowing, and yet one of the most disciplined players around. The weight of his music lent weight to his words.

Nurtured in the free jazz lofts of New York’s lower east side in the 1960s, John’s experience provided a direct link to concepts which infused this new music at its inception. Drawing, as did many players, on Coltrane’s later work, groundbreaking flights like Ascension and OM, Gruntfest’s vision was of a music that could generate magic through its very intensity and focus, whose freedom would suggest a greater total individual and social freedom. What was important, John wrote (EAR, July-Aug 1979), is “that the music in some sense has got to transcend the limitations of its own existence… which also I think (can) help the individual to transcend the limitations of his or her own existence.”

Further, that which seemed to John to be of “absolute necessity” (reflectively viewed as the one concept unifying and tying together virtually all of the area’s free music trajectories) “is the idea that through the various energies being produced a direct effect on the universe itself is being made: the transformation of individuals, community, world, and universe; transformation as a state of being whereby unity, harmony, ecstasy, God are allowed to exist in a world which sorely lacks these qualities.” (EAR, May-June 1980)

Free music, then, while it may happen to take place in a performance space (or not!) or to provide entertainment to those hearing it (or not!), contained within itself a deeper ritual necessity and impulse which was the essence and truth of its being.

Such was the context in which John’s grandiose “Piece for Forty Horns” (four versions of which appear on this CD), the amazing centerpiece of the 1979 Fourth Annual San Francisco Free Music Festival, took place. A review I wrote of it at the time noted the instrumentation as John Gruntfest, alto saxophone, composer and conductor; plus 23 saxophones, 4 clarinets, 4 trombones, 3 trumpets, 2 flutes, 1 oboe, sackbut, and tuba. This may well have been only the publicized or projected instrumentation, however, as John informs me that, in fact, between 50 and 70 musicians participated.

The spacious (and on this particular evening, well packed) Metropolitan Art Center was a perfect venue for the orchestra’s performance, with its golden wood floors and lively acoustics, around the perimeters of which the players formed a giant circle.

The basic instructions for the piece (as published along with the score in the July-Aug 1979 issue of EAR) were as follows: 1. The idea is to create a physical wave in the space which will hopefully establish a feeling of warmth, unity, and spirituality: SACRED SPACE, SACRED TIME 2. Repetition and speed are two keys to setting up the waves, As is playing with the totality of your whole being. Lots of Heart. 3. Each idea within the repeats should be repeated many times. 4. You may move from idea to idea in any order. 5. Create your own idea within the harmonic-spiritual framework. 6. USE THE HARMONIC SPRINGBOARD TO ACHIEVE ESCAPE VELOCITY AND FREEDOM.

From the review of the piece I published in my newsletter, BELLS (1979):

“The forty-horn orchestra piece, without question the most important happening of this year’s Fourth Annual Free Music Festival, was simple enough in its construction: two sections based on modal centers and a third on a South African Venda duet, alternating rhythmic motifs rooted in the modalities of the first two parts. In the opening sections, certain ideas were written out for those who wanted to play them; those who didn’t could use them as a springboard to work with their suggested harmonic implications and/or overtone series, the idea being to set a wave of sound moving in the large dance-floor space of the Metropolitan Art Center. It was, in a sense, an “Ascension” for the Seventies, but its sheer mass and density — certainly one of the biggest sounds ever heard from an improvising ensemble — propelled it almost immediately beyond itself, transcending and breaking through its own built-in limitations at the same time as they were being adhered to. So rather than a wave of sound, there were waves — of every kind imaginable, each moving against and with and reinforcing all the others. At the same time, there was a definitely established “bottom,” a huge grounding force which both gave way to and set the context for the innumerable high-pitched screams and cries and obligatory shouts for joy and, indeed, the whole spectrum of beautifully mixed-up sounds that emerged. It lasted only ten minutes, but it was a massive force — in truth, an incredible cleansing force — which was a life of its own over and above its individual contributors. The musicians both surrounded and stood among the audience of some 500 people, and the piece was played side-by-side with an athletically demanding exhibition of Shintaido, a Japanese martial art which, from the sounds made by the movements of the participants, added some unexpected percussive underpinnings. There was, too, a tape made of this performance and of three rehearsals of the piece played earlier in the day, with each being considerably different from the others.”

John Gruntfest Photo: Mark Weber

This CD is the first public release of those four versions of the “Piece for Forty Horns,” the fourth being the one from the evening performance and the other three being the “rehearsal” realizations in the order they were played. It’s the first time I’ve heard a recording of this music in its entirety, and the first time I’ve heard any of it in 24 years.

The sheer massiveness of the music is astonishing, even now. Each version of the piece is special, but the first and fourth are classic.

The fourth version, brimming with confidence, sends sparks flying off its edges. It perhaps best balances the boisterous mix of heady freedom and tonal reality. The mix shines bright, with a topping of brass on the reedy surface. The Venda finish spins triumphantly out of the colossal ensemble, most fully calling to mind its African origins. And the Shintaido dancers, in landing their high, leaping jumps, interpolate some occasional, just audible, thumping percussion.

The first, on the other hand — yet to have a precedent for itself — opens like a rocket hurling headlong through space. That rocket is an immense wall of sound whose tonal centers, when contacted, act like smaller booster rockets to propel it even further into the stratosphere. The Venda duet begins to try to assert itself just past the seventh minute, but this spaceship does not really want to ground, and it struggles mightily against the pull of the land dance. Gravity at last asserts itself; and slowly, gradually, the piece fixates on the lights of a runway. It finishes its flight of glory as softly as it began raucously.

The second and third versions are shorter, more ostensibly yin-and-yang in quality. In these renditions there is virtually no transition between the piece’s freer beginnings and the ensuing Venda conclusion; rather they coexist with each other, side by side. Yet while the opening portion of the second version nearly rivals the power of the first, the opening of the third is the slowest in tempo, with its tonal centers the most firmly established. Parts of that version are fantasia-like, rather like giddily floating in space.

This is stupendous music from another dimension, a dimension not so far away from ours, and yet light years away. The CD is a fundamental and essential document of the history of improvised music in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Henry Kuntz, December 2003

(This article originally appeared in the February 2004 SF TransBay Creative Music Calendar)

Available online from CD Baby or directly from WAVEMAN, 2156 Encinal Ave; Alameda, CA 94501.

September 26, 2007February 4, 2024

noisy people | improvising a musical life – a film by tim perkis ( dvd)

NOISY PEOPLE: Improvising a Musical Life – A Film by Tim Perkis ( DVD)
Featuring: George Cremaschi, Tom Djll, Greg Goodman, Phillip Greenlief, Cheryl Leonard, Dan Plonsey, Gino Robair, Damon Smith; also Kenneth Atchley, Laetitia Sonami.

Noisy People is a new feature length video documentary, presenting portraits of eight sound artists and musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tim Perkis says about his film: “At first I thought I was simply stepping in to do a job I wished someone else had done, documenting a little-known musical scene with an interesting story. But it soon became clear that the film also touched upon a more basic question: what is the nature of a creative life, and how can one live it?”

Tim takes his camera and gets up close and personal. He follows each artist into their world. The age-old question of how one fashions a creative life is answered not only through the musicians’ words but in the way they choose to live their lives.

The musicians profiled are, interestingly, neither professionals – in the sense of making a living from playing music; nor amateurs – in the sense that they are only just learning to play their instruments, or playing music as a sideline. Indeed, several of the players – Robair, Plonsey, Djll, Leonard, Greenlief; as well as Atchley & Sonami (whose portraits are included in two separate short films on the Noisy People DVD) – have undergone professional music training, but have used it as a stepping stone to their own craft and creativity rather than as a tool to build careers with.

Some tried taking jobs as professional musicians, but couldn’t stand it. Saxophonist and composer Phillip Greenlief relates how he took a job for a time – making $600 to $700 a day – formulating music for an exercise video. He says “I hated the music!” And he tells us that all the people he knew who were professional musicians “hated music,” that the last thing any of them wanted to talk about in any meaningful way at the end of the day was music.

To Phillip – who makes reference to his Seminole heritage – music is a “sacred thing,” something to be offered and shared with people around you. That touches on one of the central themes that the players in this film articulate, namely that music, as Dan Plonsey puts it, is “a high calling;” Gino Robair says it is “a spiritual matter that informs your whole life.” George Cremaschi, who divides his time between Oakland and Tábor, Czech Republic (where he is an artist in residence), is emphatic in stating that his music serves a greater purpose than simply being the next fill-in-the-space “channel change.”

Other players speak of the music in more political terms. Staunchly outspoken bassist Damon Smith quotes legendary bassist Red Mitchell as saying that all improvisation is a political negotiation, that one cannot be too “selfish” or too “groupish” in playing but must find a balance between the two. Tom Djll’s orchestral music reflects his belief that it is the process of music and not its structure that is politically important; his orchestra is made up of pre-existing groups who may independently shape and set the music’s course as it is played. What these players’ music reflects is the type of democratically and consensually governed society they (and we) would like to live in.

While none of the players’ music is well known by big media, the inherently communal aspect of playing it and presenting it is fundamental to the musicians’ own appraisal of its cultural importance. You quickly glimpse that communal feeling when you see Tom Djll’s orchestra performing his ‘Mockracy, or see Gino Robair’s 40-piece ensemble playing and improvising his “opera in real time,” I, Norton.

Although not featured in Noisy People, equally important to the Bay Area community has been Moe Staiano’s Moe!kestra. Moe!’s gargantuan orchestral events have amounted to amazingly cohesive urban rituals that work, like the film’s highlighted gatherings, to cement ties between musicians who might otherwise never play together, and between them and the community they live in.

Dan Plonsey, in speaking of the aesthetic bent of his own occasional large ensemble, the singularly tuned Daniel Popsicle, relates that for him creating music is “more to encourage other people to create than it is about making things to listen to.” That, I would imagine, is as about as community oriented as one could get; to continually expand the grand circle of creativity until we are all finally standing in it together.

There is also a strong exploratory and experimental bent to each of the players’ work. For some, that starts right at the level of instrumentation. We see Tom Djll, for example, reinventing his trumpet to simulate electronic feedback; Gino Robair deconstructing and reconstructing everything he has ever learned about percussion; and Cheryl Leonard approaching the organic materials (like pine cones) she uses as “instruments” with the detached demeanor of an occult scientist.

Laetitia Sonami, in one of the separate short films that accompany Noisy People, relates how, out of an innate sense of curiosity, she is constantly reformulating everything. For her, it is working with a self-created black Lycra lady’s glove embedded with sensors that connect to a computer that generates sounds; the glove allows her a modicum of physical relation to the sounds she is making (approaching dance) rather than simply working motionless at a keyboard. Her goal is to use sound to create what she refers to as an “anti-space” that the audience may fill according to their own wishes and possibilities.

But one person’s “anti-space” is another’s physical space. That would be Greg Goodman’s (“Woody Woodman’s”) Finger Palace, the Bay Area’s longest running (since 1978) presenter of avant-garde music and theatre, where $25 might get you a banana for a “ticket” and a “something-close-to-tinker-bell” down-the-rabbit-hole experience. You might also catch the brilliant Goodman playing “unprepared” piano!

The pursuit of artistic originality rather than a defined musical career might be considered either “passion or pathology,” as sound, video, and installation artist Kenneth Atchley puts it. But whether or not most people have any empathy for or awareness of this type of activity, Sonami flatly states that it is “what is keeping society breathing.”

Noisy People, as well as being the “love letter to the Bay Area music community” that Tim Perkis envisioned, is an uplifting tribute to musicians and sound artists everywhere who are intently exploring the edges of sonic reality.

Henry Kuntz, June 2007

(Thanks to Martha Winneker for editorial assistance.)

Also available are DVD copies of the film, a CD of music and sound clips from the film, digital images and an essay on the filmmaker here… or click below on the Noisy People banner.

Musicians profiled in Noisy People:

George Cremaschi was born in New York City, and studied jazz at Jazzmobile in Harlem, composition at Greenwich House Music School in Greenwich Village, and improvisation at countless Downtown dives. Recent years have seen many performances and collaborations in the US and Europe with such renowned musicians as Evan Parker, Marshall Allen, Andrea Parkins, Gert-Jan Prins, Mats Gustafsson, Paul Lovens, Nels Cline and Saadet Türköz among others. As a composer, he has written nearly 100 pieces for chamber groups, small ensembles, solo contrabass, electronics, cinema, spoken word, dance and theater. He divides his time between Oakland and Tábor, Czech Republic, where he is an artist in residence, curator and administrator at Cesta, an international arts and cultural residency center.

Tom Djll, born Indiana, 1957. Studied music at Berklee School of Music, the Colorado College, the Creative Music Studio, and Mills College with Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Karl Berger, Lester Bowie, Leo Smith, George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran, and many others. Tom has spent over twenty years (ab)using the trumpet as an analog flesh synthesizer. He has made a lifelong study of the art of improvised music, and has been performing since age seventeen. He has performed with Natsuki Tamura, Andrew Voigt, Biggi Vinkeloe, Chris Brown, Gianni Gebbia, Steve Adams, Fred Frith, and many many others. Tom Djll also writes about music for The Wire, Signal To Noise and other publications. Please visit Tom Djll’s web site here…

Greg Goodman is one of America’s most distinguished improvising pianists. He is just as distinguished when he is in Europe. He was also very distinguished when he was in the Soviet Union in 1989, but it is still not clear whether or not Russia is part of Europe, or if it should be. This ordinarily would not affect Greg Goodman, or his distinguished career; at least, not in his opinion. For the purposes of this biography, Greg Goodman has worked with many of the world’s leading improvisers, including John Cage, Nicolas Slonimsky, and his Mother; he has also worked with many who did not lead. When not working, he is the proprietor of Woody Woodman’s Finger Palace, the San Francisco Bay Area’s longest running (since 1978) presenter of avant-garde music and theater. He also runs (from) the famous Beak Doctor Records. Currently, he is writing this sentence. Please visit Greg Goodman’s web site here…

Phillip Greenlief, since 1982, Saxophonist/Composer. He has performed internationally in a variety of settings. Greenlief’s recordings and performances have received critical acclaim in many national jazz publications (Down Beat, Jazz Times, 5/4, Cadence, Modern Saxophone, All About Jazz, The Los Angeles Times, etc.), as well as residing on many Critics Top 10 lists. His duo recordings of improvised music with bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Scott Amendola received 5 stars in the 1999 Music Hound Jazz Essential Album Guide. Phillip is the founder of Evander Music, an independent record label that presents original composition, improvised music and new jazz. Please visit Phillip Greenlief’s web site here…

Cheryl Leonard. Glass shards and pinecones, glaciers, boxspring mattresses, a flock of accordions, circular saw blades, viola, the erhu, hyenas and whales and elk, Cheryl E. Leonard’s works explore subtle textures and intricacies in sounds not generally considered musical. These investigations often include the creation of instruments, primarily from found materials. She has been awarded residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Engine 27, Villa Montalvo, and The Lab (with RK Corral), and has been honored in New Langton Art’s Bay Area Awards Show. Recordings of her music are available from Ubuibi, Great Hoary Marmot Music, Pax Recordings, Apraxia Records, 23 Five Inc, Old Gold Records and The Lab. In addition to her musical endeavours Leonard is a mountaineer, studies aikido and Chinese landscape painting, and collects pinecones with handles. Please visit Cheryl Leonard’s web site here…

Dan Plonsey is known as a composer, saxophonist, concert presenter and teacher of mathematics at Berkeley High School. He has written music for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Toychestra & Fred Frith, Santa Cruz New Music Works and the Berkeley Symphony, but most of his music has been for his own ensembles, as documented on a dozen CDs. He has performed and recorded with Anthony Braxton, Eugene Chadbourne and Tom Waits, but more frequently with local greats John Schott, John Shiurba, Robert Horton and many others. Plonsey is currently at work on an opera, in collaboration with Harvey Pekar (of American Splendor fame.) Please visit Dan Plonsey’s web site here…

Gino Robair is a percussionist, music journalist, and published composer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gino frequently tours North America and Europe as a soloist and often improvises in ad-hoc groups. He has performed and/or recorded with Anthony Braxton, Tom Waits, John Butcher, LaDonna Smith, Otomo Yoshihide, Eugene Chadbourne, John Zorn, Nina Hagen, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Myra Melford, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, The Club Foot Orchestra, and he is a founding member of the Splatter Trio. Please visit Gino Robair’s Rastascan web site here…

Damon Smith, born Damon Jesse Smith on oct. 17th, 1972 in Spokane, WA. Did “freestyle bmx” bicycle riding (a much more dangerous forshadow to “freestyle” music!) from age 13 to 23. Started music in 1991, under the influence of Mike Watt (Firehose & The Minutemen) on fender bass. Lead several punk/art rock combos until 1994. Upon receiving Peter Kowald’s landmark lp “Duos;Europa,” Damon sold the fender bass and concentrated solely on double bass and free music. Damon’s music is rooted in the tradition of “free jazz”, and has worked with many of the leading voices in that idiom, including Cecil Taylor, Peter Brötzmann, Frank Gratkowski and Joëlle Léandre. Please visit Damon Smith’s web site here…

Musicians profiled in DVD bonus films

Kenneth Atchley is a sound, video, and installation artist who fashions and performs works ranging from pure-tone and noise hymns to distortion-studded, richly harmonic, electro-acoustic devotionals. Since 1997, his work has included the use of fountains as sound-sources, objects, environmental and metaphorical elements. His work continues to be informed by and abstract that work and study. Atchley’s music and installations have been featured in venues ranging from U.S. hardcore-noise dungeons and New York dance lofts, to art galleries and performance cellar circuits of Europe. Atchley’s CD of solo, electro-acoustic-noise works Fountains was released by Auscultare Research. His duet with John Bischoff has been released on Bischoff’s 23Five CD “Aperture”. profile of his work was included in the June, 2005 issue of The Wire (#256). Please visit Kenneth Atchley’s web site here…

Laetitia Sonami was born in France and settled in the United States in 1975 to pursue her interest in the emerging field of electronic music. Since 1991 she has developed and adapted new gestural controllers to musical performance and composed works with these materials. Her unique instrument, the lady’s glove , is made out of black lycra and is embedded with sensors which track the slightest motion of each finger, the hand and the arm. The performance thus becomes a small dance where the movements shape the music. he has been performing in numerous festivals across the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan, among which the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, the Bourges Music Festival in France, the Sonambiente Festival in Berlin, and the Interlink festival in Japan. She lives in Oakland, California and is currently guest lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute, and Milton Avery Summer program at Bard college. Please visit Laetitia Sonami’s web site here…