To celebrate their duo album on Setola di Maiale “Trio Music Minus One (For Dennis Palmer)”, Thollem Electric and Gino Robair have invited some local sonic inspirators for a round of trios that will vary dramatically in timbre and character over the course of the concert. The first half the duo will be joined by the insurmountable genius of saxophonist Larry Ochs from the Rova Saxophone Quartet. The 2nd half Gino and Thollem will be joined both by cellist Crystal Pascucci for a trio followed by another trio with violinist Christina Stanley.
“A fresh, disciplined avant-pianist with an attractively extreme viewpoint” (LA Weekly), Thollem is a peripatetic pianist/keyboardist, comproviser, singer-songwriter, and educator and author. His musical compositions and performances range from post-classical, to free jazz, to noise to punk rock. He has been touring perpetually throughout North America and Europe since 2006, performing solo works and collaborating with an array of musicians, dancers, and filmmakers. He is the founding director of Estamos Ensemble, a project bringing together improvisers and composers across the Mexico/U.S. border, as well as groups as diverse as Tsigoti, Bloom Ensemble, Soar Trio, Magimc, Hand To Man Band, and Bad News From Houston. Thollem has been dedicated to the acoustic piano for most of his life with 41 albums to date on 17 different vanguard labels. He has recently leaped into the electric sphere with an array of new releases. “An intense and virtuosic keyboardist” (Time Out New York)
Gino Robair is one of the “25 innovative percussionists” included in the book Percussion Profiles (SoundWorld) and has recorded with Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, John Butcher, Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Otomo Yoshihide, and Eugene Chadbourne, among many others. Robair is a founding member of the Splatter Trio and the prog-rock group, Pink Mountain. In addition, he runs Rastascan Records, a label devoted to creative music. ginorobair.com
Christina Stanley is a Bay Area based violinist, multi instrumentalist, vocalist, electronic musician and songwriter who began piano at 5 and violin studies at the age of 8. She is currently an active performing musician and teacher, working as a solo artist as well as a member of various ensembles. as a studio musician, she has appeared on albums for kill Rockstars, 4AD and Beggars Banquet/rough trade. She has been a featured solo performer for the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, a vocalist for the William Winant percussion ensemble, and has premiered works by George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell under conductor Petr Kotik. Her original painted graphic scores have been featured at the Outsound New Music Summit in San Francisco, Temple Ad Hoc in Los Angeles and Rock Paper Scissors Gallery in Oakland. She is passionate about working with living composers and composing new music.
Crystal Pascucci is a cellist, composer and improviser. An active performer in the Bay Area, she has collaborated with Paul Dresher Ensemble, Roscoe Mitchell, William Winant Ensemble, David Wessel, Ellen Fullman, and David Behrman. She was a featured performer at San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music’s Chamber Music Day, Festival for Contemporary Music, Soundwave Festival, and Switchboard Festival. Crystal is a founding member of the improvisation trio, Opera Wolf, a featured ensemble of the 12th Annual Outsound Summit New Music Festival, 2013. She also writes for and performs with quartet, Wild Hen which recently performed for the Switchboard Presents Series. She’s a performer with Magik*Magik Orchestra, Aaron Bennett’s Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra, Oakland Active Orchestra, and Lisa Mezzacappa’s Interlopers. She also presents artists through the Oakland Active Music Series and Festival, in Oakland, CA.
In his thirty-plus years in Rova, Larry Ochs has created roughly two dozen compositions for saxophone quartet as well as other pieces for Rova in extended ensembles, many of which are recorded, and some of which were commissioned by Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation and Meet the Composer. He has been acting executive director of Rova:Arts since 1987. In addition Ochs currently composes for and leads Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core (with Scott Amendola, Don Robinson, Satoko Fujii, and Natsuki Tamura [Stone Shift, CD]) and Kihnoua with vocalist Dohee Lee, Scott Amendola and special guests [the Sybil’s Whisper, 2012 CD]). He is performing in collective bands: East-West Ensemble (with Didier Petit, Sylvain Kassap, Miya Masaoka, Xu Fengxia), Jones Jones (with Mark Dresser and Vladimir Tarasov), Maybe Monday (with Masaoka and Fred Frith), Shelton-Ochs Quartet (with Aram Shelton, Kjell Nordeson and Scott Walton). Details on tours and recordings, and several interviews at www.ochs.cc.