Coolidge/Ackley/Mezzacappa
This newly formed trio will create improvisations alternating with Clark Coolidge reading from recent work. The intention is that each sound source, reader and trio, will influence the other to present a flow of sonic information.
The work of the 3 musicians is informed in a very critical way by writing. And, Coolidge’s long involvement with music and sound has helped to shape a body of work that is at once poetry and music—loping phrases saturated with improvised vitality, and composed verse free of category, urgently ringing them bells.
Clark Coolidge attended Brown University, where his father chaired the music department. After moving to New York City in the early 1960s, Coolidge cultivated links with poets Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer. Often associated with the ‘Language School’, his experience as a jazz drummer and interest in a wide array of subjects (including caves, geology, bebop, weather, Salvador Dalí, Jack Kerouac and movies) informs his writing. Recent works include A Book Beginning What and Ending Away, and 88 Sonnets, Fence Books. Coolidge currently lives in Petaluma.
Lisa Mezzacappa is a bassist, composer, and musical instigator. An active collaborator and curator in the Bay Area music community, she leads her own groups Bait & Switch and Nightshade, and co-leads the ensembles duo B., Cylinder, the Permanent Wave Ensemble, the Mezzacappa-Phillips Duo, and the Caribbean folk band Les Gwan Jupons. Lisa has released her own recordings on the Clean Feed, NoBusiness, Leo, Evander, Odd Shaped Case and Edgetone record labels, and has recorded as a sideperson for the Tzadik, Kadima and Porto Franco labels. She collaborates frequently on cross-disciplinary projects in sound installation, film/video, sculpture and public music/art.
Bruce Ackley is a founding member of Rova Saxophone Quartet and has been active on the improvised music scene for nearly 40 years. Having concentrated exclusively for much of his career on the daunting soprano saxophone, he has diversified to include tenor sax and Bb clarinet in his musical palette. Apart from Rova he has performed in primarily trio settings, including his own Actual Size. Recent work includes performances with Lisa Mezzacappa, and drummer David Mihaly.
Carla Harryman is the author of seventeen books, among them the prose diptych W—/M—forthcoming from Split Level Press in 2013; Adorno’s Noise, a collection of conceptual and experimental essays (Essay Press, 2008); Baby (2005); Gardener of Stars: A Novel (Atelos, 2001); The Wide Road (Belladonna, 2011, with Lyn Hejinian); and a sequence of essays in The Grand Piano, a multi-authored ten volume work about art and culture in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1975-1980, (Mode D, 2011). Her Poets Theater, interdisciplinary, and bi-lingual performances have been presented nationally and internationally. Recent work in performance includes the “re-performance” of Theodore Adorno’s 1959 lecture “Music and New Music” at dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, Germany (with music composition by Jon Raskin) and the publication of Open Box, a music and poetry collaboration with Jon Raskin (Tzadik, 2012). She is co-editor of Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker (2006), and the editor of Non/Narrative a special issue of the Journal of Narrative Theory (2011). She serves on the faculty of and directs the creative writing program at Eastern Michigan University.
Highlights of Rova founding member Jon Raskin’s early career include his ’70s participation in new music ensembles directed by John Adams (San Francisco Conservatory of Music) and Dr. Barney Childs (University of Redlands). Before Rova, Raskin served as music director of the Tumbleweed Dance Company (1974-77), was a founding member of the Blue Dolphin Alternative Music Space and participated in the creation of the Farm- an art project that included a city farm, a community garden, Ecology Center, Dance and Theater companies and organized the creation of a city park. Highlights as a member of Rova include composing a collaborative work for SF Taiko Dojo/Rova, working with Howard Martin on the installation work “Occupancy”, composing music for Mr. Bungle/ Rova, organizing the 30 year Anniversary Concert of John Coltrane’s Ascension, performing the music of Miles Davis at the Fillmore with Yo Miles!, the Glass Head Project with Inkboat and the ongoing Electric Ascension Project. Raskin has received numerous grants and commissions to work on a variety of creative projects: NEA composer grant for Poison Hotel, a theater production by Soon 3 (1988); Reader’s Digest/Meet the Composer (1992 & 2000); Berkeley Symphony commission (1995) and Headland Center for the Arts Residency 2009. Learn more at www.jonraskin.com.