My last few shows of 2017 include a first meeting with cellist TJ Borden
and clarinetist Madison Greenstone, and the completion of a 3rd year of
my monthly free improvisation workshop.
Thu 12/14 8:15: The Blues 8:45pm: Gabby Fluke-Mogul - violin Matt Robidoux - guitar 9:15pm: Tyler J. Borden (from San Diego) - cello Madison Greenstone - clarinets Jacob Felix Heule - percussion $6-15 Luggage Store Creative Music Series [1007 Market Street SF] https://www.bayimproviser.com/EventView.aspx?e=15379
Tue 12/12 Active Music Series Presents: Song & Dance Trio (Evangelista/Wright/Glenn) Wong/Nishi/McCowen/Fei Adria Otte 9 PM, $5-15 Uptown Nightclub (1928 Telegraph Ave, Oakland) https://www.facebook.com/events/130514481026438/
Tue 12/17 Doors That Only Open in Silence (open participation workshop in free improvisation) 7:30 PM Temescal Arts Center [511 48th Street Oakland] https://www.facebook.com/events/1507388969337662/
Some exciting shows coming up in the next couple weeks starting this Sunday with a first-time trio with Marshall Trammell and Danishta Rivero. Then continuing with an insane improvised percussion sextet with Tatsuya Nakatani, Kevin Corcoran, Robert Lopez, Karen Stackpole, and Trammell. And finally a performance by my sporadic trio with John McCowen and Aurora Josephson at the last Godwaffle Noise Pancakes for the foreseeable future.
Sun 10/08 Marshall Trammell, Danishta Rivero, and Jacob Felix Heule perform "Simultaneous Multi-Dimensionality" Doors: 6 PM. Performance: 6:30-8:15 PM. Prelinger Library (301 8th St, Ste 215, SF) https://www.facebook.com/events/325213944609493/
Tue 10/10 Active Music Series presents: - Tatsuya Nakatani, Kevin Corcoran, Jacob Felix Heule, Robert Lopez, Marshall Trammell, and Karen Stackpole percussion sextet - Kevin CK Lo - Aurora Josephson + Kim Nucci duo 9 PM, $5-15 Uptown Nightclub (1928 Telegraph Ave, Oakland) https://www.facebook.com/events/130514481026438/
Sat 10/14 G|O|D|W|A|F|F|L|E||N|O|I|S|E||P|A|N|C|A|K|E|S- Forest Management (OH) - Felisha Lelidisma (OR) - Mama Buries - McCowen/Josephson/Heule - Sea Moss (OR) Noisebridge Hackerspace [2169 Mission St SF] Noon until 2pm SHARP! https://www.facebook.com/events/897474577083027/
Tue 10/15 Doors That Only Open in Silence (open participation workshop in free improvisation) 7:30 PM Temescal Arts Center [511 48th Street Oakland] https://www.facebook.com/events/802508346587473/
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After
all this, Voicehandler will be in residence at the Headlands Center for
the Arts for a month. One opportunity to see us there will be a sound
hike on November 12th, starting at 12 noon. The program is called Desire
Trails and you can see the web listing here:
http://www.headlands.org/event/desire-trails-4/
Two Voicehandler shows coming up in the next week, one on each side of the bay. Voicehandler is also working on a new live cinema piece with Kerry Laitala to be presented in a former funeral home, and Danishta and I are collaborating with Kyle Bruckmann and Kanoko Nishi-Smith on a new metal-inflected piece. And at the end of the month, an Elf Ass reunion show — our first since 2010?!
Wed 9/6 Full: Ritual Programmed by Land and Sea Local author Cedar Sigo performs a reading among altars, colored lights, and descending tones. Voicehandler
(Jacob Heule and Danishta Rivero) play intuitive, incantatory music
grounded in the human voice and percussion, but juxtaposed with
contemporary, disembodied electronics. And New York–based performance
artist Frank Haines brings us his trademark magical musical montage. 7 PM. Included with admission. BAMPFA (2155 Center Street Berkeley) http://bampfa.org/event/full-ritual
Fri 9/22 - Kerry Laitala + Voicehandler - John Davis + Joshua Churchill - Zen Cohen + Wayne Grim Mosswood Chapel (3630 Telegraph Ave, Oakland) http://darkseacinema.com
Tue 9/12 Active Music Series presents: - Sung Kim/Brian Pedersen duo - Robert Lopez (percussion) w/ Deborah Karp and Megan Nicely (dance) - Robin Hiroko Walsh
Sun 9/17 Doors That Only Open in Silence (open participation workshop in free improvisation) 7:30 PM Temescal Arts Center [511 48th Street Oakland] https://www.facebook.com/events/1630867653610769
Two shows in the next few days, from my two main bands.
Sat Aug 12 - Ahleuchatistas - IMA - Voicehandler 8 PM Pro Arts (150 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland) https://www.facebook.com/events/112232516098474 Mon Aug 14 - Beauty School - FootSos 9:30 PM Studio Grand (3234 Grand Ave, Oakland) https://www.facebook.com/events/1958927711058628/
and the usual 3rd Sunday series:
Sun 8/20 Doors That Only Open in Silence (open participation workshop in free improvisation) 7:30 PM Temescal Arts Center [511 48th Street Oakland] https://www.facebook.com/events/1447373988689696/
Danishta and I just returned from a Voicehandler tour in Mexico,
and we’re looking forward to bringing our well-oiled machine to two
shows in Oakland in the next week. This Thursday a weirdo punk show at
the White Horse, and next Tuesday at Active Music Series with distinguished guests from Oslo and New York.
Thu 7/6 ~* Adventures Close to Home Vol. 3 *~ “the cream of the local avant/punk-vanguard”
and the usual 3rd Sunday series: Sun 7/16 Doors That Only Open in Silence (open participation workshop in free improvisation) 7:30 PM Temescal Arts Center [511 48th Street Oakland] https://www.facebook.com/events/1883094418579797/
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Two shows this week, and more later in the month. Voicehandler
rips it up at an early show in SF on Sunday along with tarot readings,
lectures, video, and more. Thursday night my large group dance/music
improvisation experiment with Christine Bonansea — started in 2014 — will perform at Center for New Music.
Thu 5/4 SONIC BODY SERIES #10 - Improv Lab Group (music + dance) — musicians: Tom Djll, Jacob Felix Heule, Kanoko Nishi-Smith, Suki O’Kane, Tim Perkis, & Danishta Rivero. dancers: Christine Bonansea, Marina Fukushima, Rosemary Hannon, & Kathleen Hermesdorf. - Jorge Bachmann + Kevin Corcoran duet (music) - Isak Emmanuel (dance) + multimedia
Center for New Music (55 Taylor St. SF) $10 General, $5 Members 8:00 PM
Sun 5/7 Strange Thoughts Salon Night female fronted medicine folk drone / Samashti experimental music performance / Voicehandler spoken word / Scott Hawkins & Travis Davis video installation & art talk / Jesus Aguilar & Amy Ho screening & lecture on the dark realm of the american gothic / Courtney Coulson tarot readings / Della Watson
SAFEhouse Arts [1 Grove St. SF] tickets sliding scale $7-$10 5:00-9:00 pm
FLOWERS ON LOAN teams up San Francisco-based guitarist Owen Stewart-Robertson
with Los Angeles-based musicians Logan Hone and Jesse Quebbeman-Turley
for a 2 week tour across the Western US. In store is a series of
kinetic, sing-song, unpredictable, vibrant, and imaginative performances
that will form, crystallize, and shatter over the course of the tour.
VERTEBRATE is a new project from percussionist/composer Tim DeCillis and features Steven Lugerner on clarinets and Max Judelson on cello.
D.E.J.J. is the collective spontaneous energies of Danishta Rivero, Evelyn Davis, Jacob Felix Heule, and Jordan Glenn.
Temescal Arts Center [511 48th St. Oakland] Doors 7:30pm / Show 8pm SHARP $10 (NOTAFLOF)
and my two monthly series: Tue 5/9 Active Music Series presents: - LURK/CREEPS (Costuros/Pittman/Sutherland) - Bonansea/Bachmann/Corcoran - The Deconstruction Of What You Know (Allen/Kaiser/Orr/Winant)
"a kind of musical block universe devoid of time’s beginning/middle/end arrow. Its existence seems oddly necessary - as if this sound had to exist, always existed, a part of the universe the group is discovering rather than inventing."
"The instruments explicate the harsh voice of their viscera, pretty much abused by the handlers in between smells of burnt metal and corroded wood. ... We just have to separate what we accept as acoustically plausible for our own health from what causes disdain or repulsion, and let it play forever if so needed." https://touchingextremes.wordpress.com/2017/04/17/sult-marhaug-harpoon/
"As the harpoon rends the flesh of animals and provokes the backlash of nervous systems, the musicians grind their instruments and materials to dust in a process that unleashes a similarly noisy response, a cruelty that oscillates between the impassioned and the neutral, or in other words, the kind of violence that seemingly only nature is capable of."
This Sunday at CNMAT, Danishta Rivero and I are joining Scott Rubin and Tamara Chu for a first-time collaboration involving improvised music, diffused sound, dance, and paint. Read on for details, and a couple other April events.
Sun 4/9
CNMAT Users Group Presents:
eudiser is a performance experiment in cross-modal initiations and interactions. Scored for a dancer and three musicians, eudiser interrogates relationships between movement and sound through creating situations of ambiguous influence between the artists using acoustic, electronic, and visual mediums.
Outfitted with motion sensors, the dancer exerts influence over the electronic sound. These sensors stream movement data to a computer, which maps the data to sample, process, and playback shadows of the live acoustic sound.
As the music serves as an audible commentary on the movement, the canvas serves as a visual one. Using the body as a paint brush, the dancer creates a trail of her movement, gestures from the past that contextualize the present, feeding the sound that continues to create it.
Tamara Chu - dance, motion sensors, paint Danishta Rivero - voice, electronics Scott Rubin - viola, electronics Jacob Felix Heule - percussion
featuring Trajectories: live sound diffusion algorithm by Ilya Y. Rostovtsev
Andrew Jamieson's IVES BAND — multiple melodies played simultaneously, usually in contrasting keys and tempi, by Z Hazen, MB D’Augelli, J Marshall, A Jamieson, B Carson, B Zucker, R Kim, A Oppenheim, T DeCillis.
NAKATA is a free-improv duo consisting of Patrick Shiroishi (of Upsilon Acrux) on saxophones & Paco Casanova on keys. The two have been playing improvised music for 5 years as a duo and also in the progressive instrumental quintet Corima. They are releasing their first official record on Jacknife Records exploring different sonic qualities both instruments have to offer. They will be joined by Oakland percussionist Jacob Felix Heule.
Sun 4/16 Doors That Only Open in Silence (open participation workshop in free improvisation)
7:30 PM Temescal Arts Center [511 48th Street Oakland] https://www.facebook.com/events/1428358083852231/
Two times this week I have the rare privilege of playing somebody else’s
music, those somebodies being Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir and Chris Duncan.
Later in the month my main band Voicehandler has the pleasure of
opening for John Chantler.
First, the big one:
Thu 3/23 John Chantler
is a musician and organizer living in Stockholm, Sweden working with
synthesizers, electronics and sometimes pipe organs to explore his own
personalized compositional and improvisational strategies — working with
and against the specific systems inherent in his chosen tools. https://vimeo.com/170416110
Voicehandler plays intuitive,
incantatory music grounded in the most primitive and somatic instruments
-- the voice and percussion -- juxtaposed with contemporary,
disembodied electronics. We situate ourselves in our physical and social
environment through our music. Our improvisations are shaped by their
setting and context, and we use site-specific installations to more
deeply experience spaces. We deconstruct song forms in relation to
mythology and literature to explore our humanity and the shifting
discourse surrounding it.
OMMO
is an electro-acoustic duo comprised of Julie Moon and Adria Otte.
Launched in 2014 with collaborative projects inspired by shared
interests in Korean diasporic identity, ritual and impressionistic
harmonies, the duo seeks opportunities to explore past traditions
through a contemporary and conscious framework, employing varying
configurations of piano, voice, violin and electronics in original
compositions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi7JXtbmEyU
LAND AND SEA, 5428 SAN PABLO, OAKLAND
And the two larger group shows, both this week:
Thu 3/9 Signal Flow at Mills College
- chris wood (Haas Gym)
- Kaori Suzuki (Chapel)
- Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir (Chapel)
- Isaac Otto (Chapel)
I’m playing Bergrún’s piece with Kyle Bruckmann, Marissa Deitz, John McCowen, Crystal Pascucci, and William Winant. https://www.facebook.com/events/248251808956661/ http://www.signal-flow.org Sat 3/11 Chris Duncan’s 12 SYMBOLS 1275 Minnesota St. San Francisco
8pm - 10pm (performance begins at 8:30 sharp)
12 SYMBOLS is an immersive sound performance that metaphorically implicates the energy and patterns of the sun and the moon.
12 SYMBOLS questions how we perceive and experience the passing of time through sound and vision.
12 percussionists stand in a large circle as if they were numbers on a clock.
performed by: Ashley
Bellouin, Nicole Thomas, Christie Yuri Noh, Jen Belleville, Marcella
Gries, Kevin Corcoran, Jacob Heule, Jason Leggiere, Aaron Harbour, James
Cordas, Ben Bracken, and Christopher Duncan
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Of course my two recurring series:
Tue 3/14 9:00 PM Uptown Nightclub [1928 Telegraph Ave Oakland] Active Music Series presents:
- We Buy Gold (Glenn, Hoopes, Lopez, Rivero)
- Lion Creek
- Goldberg/Wong/Trammell/Anderson https://www.facebook.com/events/175162322987226/
Sun 3/19 7:30 PM Temescal Arts Center [511 48th Street Oakland] Doors That Only Open in Silence (open participation workshop in free improvisation) https://www.facebook.com/events/1862994210642946/
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NEW LP! Sult (Guro Moe, Håvard Skaset & me) mixed and chopped up by LASSE MARHAUG. https://sult.bandcamp.com/
A first-time collaborative LP of acoustic improvisers Sult (Håvard Skaset: guitar / Jacob Felix Heule: percussion / Guro Skumsnes Moe: contrabass) and Norwegian sound artist Lasse Marhaug. The source material is performed by Sult, while the album was constructed and produced by Lasse Marhaug. In the hands of Marhaug the already dense and visceral expression of Sult is transformed into a maelstrom of layered sheets of scraping noise, rising and collapsing simultaneously. Some listeners will place “Harpoon” in the proximity of artists like Organum, David Tudor and Ferial Confine, but the music carves its own place in the landscape. A joint release between Pica Disk and Conrad Sound, limited to 200 copies.
Fri 2/3
“Music 9:30 SHARP & over for last BART”
- Bran (...) Pos
- Ava Mendoza
- Lord Tang
- Tainted Pussy
- Voicehandler
- DJ Sarahellco
Sat 2/4 8am KZSU Day of Noise
…
7:00 AM-8:00 AM - Jon Raskin & Kjell Nordeson
8:00 AM-8:30 AM - Aurora Josephson, John McCowen, & Jacob Felix Heule
8:30 AM-9:00 AM - Oa
… http://kzsu.stanford.edu/dayofnoise/2017/
Fri 2/10 Pro Arts, Oakland (150 Frank Ogawa Plaza)
Hybrid Series: Jacob Wick Group *music* + Andrew Choate (poet)
The musicians are Jacob Wick (trumpet), Owen Stewart-Robertson (guitar), Kanoko Nishi-Smith (koto), Sandy Gordon (percussion), and Jacob Felix Heule (percussion). Jacob Wick, formerly of the Bay Area, is visiting from Los Angeles, and Sandy Gordon is visiting from NYC. https://www.facebook.com/events/841853675956631/
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Also my two recurring series:
Tue 2/14 9:00 PM Uptown Nightclub [1928 Telegraph Ave Oakland] Active Music Series presents:
- Elective Infinities
- Larry Ochs/Donald Robinson duo
- Zachary James Watkins https://www.facebook.com/events/1847740152150174/
Sun 2/19 7:30 PM Temescal Arts Center [511 48th Street Oakland] Doors That Only Open in Silence (open participation workshop in free improvisation) https://www.facebook.com/events/377178705972964/
Coming up this month Voicehandler plays a unique show on a boat in the San Francisco Bay, Beauty School celebrates a new cassette release, and Active Music Series pays tribute to Pauline Oliveros.
Sat 1/14. 7:00 and 9:00 PM. Pier 40, San Francisco. Voicehandler will be playing on a yacht launching from Pier 40, San Francisco. Attention! We’ve moved
highlights the ongoing displacement of artists and cultural spaces by
bringing audiences to a floating, itinerant version of an underground
club.
Performances by Dynasty Handbag, Voicehandler, Kevin Blechdom, and International Freakout a Go-Go.
7–8:45pm cruise, tickets $35 each
9–10:45pm cruise, tickets $35 each
details and tickets: http://www.thelab.org/projects/2017/1/12/noiseclub
Tue 1/10 9:00 PM Uptown Nightclub [1928 Telegraph Ave Oakland] Active Music Series Presents:
- I SHOULD HAVE CUT THE EYES DIFFERENT
- Scott Amendola Trio
- Fibers + Kinda Green https://www.facebook.com/events/146565815830651/
Sun 1/15 7:30 PM Temescal Arts Center [511 48th Street Oakland] Doors That Only Open in Silence (open participation workshop in free improvisation) https://www.facebook.com/events/243438456091740/
Large group of Doors That Only Open in Silence participants performing Pauline Oliveros' "From Unknown Silences" (1996).
2016 December 18 at Temescal Arts Center, Oakland.
Danishta Rivero - voice, Tom Djll - trumpet, Mika Pontecorvo - flute, Kersti Abrams - alto saxophone, John Ingle - alto saxophone, Lenny Gonzalez - cello, Andrew Jamieson - keyboard, Robin Hiroko Walsh - guitar, Jacob Felix Heule - percussion, Chris Christensen - electronics, Yacob - guitar, Matt Davignon - electronics, Hugh Behm-Steinberg - electronics
"From Unknown Silences is continuous variation on sounds. Each sound that each player makes is intended to be unique — different from all other sounds in the meditation."
