Monday, July 26, 2021

The Bleeding Edge: 7/26/2021

Last week this site discussed two “bleeding edge” options, both taking place over the weekend and on different days. This week there are four events of interest, none of which have been previously reported. The first of them will take place tomorrow evening. Unfortunately, the remaining three will all take place this coming Saturday evening. The good news is that, thanks to streaming, readers will not have to agonize about choosing. Each will be available for viewing for at least two days. Specifics are as follows:

Tuesday, July 27, 8:30 p.m., Palace of Fine Arts: This one is a bit of a wild card. The BayImproviser Calendar has an event page for a duo performance by saxophonists Phillip Greenlief and Nora Stanley taking place at the Palace of the Fine Arts. Unfortunately, the earliest event to appear on that venue’s schedule of events is for September 9; and, as of this writing, it has been cancelled. Greenlief’s own calendar page currently does not list any upcoming performances. Readers should probably wait until tomorrow before deciding whether to make any plans!

Saturday, July 31, 6 p.m., Oaktown Jazz Workshops: On the evening of this past July 17, I was fortunate enough to be one of the invited guests at the video recording session for guitarist Karl Evangelista’s Apura!. The title is the Tagalog word for “very urgent;” and the music was conceived to explore the relationship between jazz-based improvisation and social transformation in an era of worldwide political upheaval. Its first realization took place in recording sessions on October 14 and 15 in 2018 at the Fish Factory Studios in London. Evangelista partnered with drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo, the sole surviving member of the Blue Notes, a mixed-race group of South Africans exiled in London. They were joined by Alexander Hawkins on piano and Trevor Watts on saxophones; and the resulting recording now has a Bandcamp Web page.

However, only the opening track of that recording, also entitled “Apura!,” was performed at this month’s session, whose other performers were Francis Wong on saxophone and Lisa Mezzacappa on bass, with a special “guest appearance” by Andrew Cyrille on drums. The video will be available for screening for two days after its premiere. Admission will be $15 with a $10 student rate, managed through a Brown Paper Tickets event page. After the payment has been processed, Brown Paper Tickets will provide instructions for viewing the video.

Saturday, July 31, 7 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA): BAMPFA is hosting a residence by the Thingamajigs Performance Group, which will include a series of online performances. One of those performances will be by Ensemble PHASE, which will be streaming from Seoul in Korea. The group will perform excerpts from Edward Schocker’s Self_Less, which incorporates live musical performance along with projected and pre-recorded audio of stories of people who have unique neuropsychological experiences. The livestream of this performance will be available at no charge through a BAMPFA event page. Readers should be aware, however, that the platform will be Zoom, which, as far as I can tell, has not yet resolved its problems with security leaks.

Saturday, 7:30 p.m., Bird & Beckett Books and Records: This will be another event that will be available for both live performance and streaming. The music will be provided by the Darren Johnston Trio, led by Johnston on trumpet. The trio is more than a little out of the ordinary, since the other two members are Kasey Knudsen on saxophone and Jon Arkin on drums. However, as the event page for this concert says, these are “musicians well equipped to explore uncharted territory in the music.”

This performance is part of the jazz club series. There will be a cover charge of between $10 and $20, payable at the door, which will open at 7:20 p.m. Seating will be limited, so those planning to attend are advised to phone in a reservation at 415-586-3733. The live stream will be available for $10, payable through a Web page created for donations. Bird & Beckett will live-stream the performance through both its YouTube channel and its Facebook page. Any further information will be available on the Web page for this performance.

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