John-Carlos Perea's Intertribal Ensemble: Improvising Home

Improvising Home
Composed by John-Carlos Perea
I. First Mountain
Perdenal, New Mexico
II. Second Mountain
24th and Folsom, San Francisco
III. Third Mountain
Circular Reflections
IV. Fourth Mountain
Lullaby for JR
Performed by the Intertribal Ensemble:
Jimmy Biala: drum set and percussion
Karl Evangelista: guitar
Lewis Jordan: alto saxophone
Masaru Koga: soprano and tenor saxophones
Bill Noertker: contrabass
John-Carlos Perea: Native American flutes, sound design, vocals
Karen Stackpole: gongs and percussion
This all started when I met my wife. As we got to know each other and went around San Francisco together I wanted to show her the places I remember as important in my life. Over the past nine years we have thought and talked about the places we can and cannot go and how things have and will continue to change. As our daughter gets older she has started to ask more questions, where are we from? I have found myself answering with songs that sing the relationships we have to our family homes. Where we are from is both a place and a sound, a landscape and a soundscape. My son will be asking his own questions soon.
Improvising Home takes these thoughts, talks, and songs and plays them, creatively sonnifying elements of life and family history in a form that I hope will be useful to my children as they begin to map out the important places in their lives. This work is dedicated with love to my family.
Improvising Home is funded by a commissioning grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission and supported by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, the College of Ethnic Studies, the School of Music and Dance, the Sound and Social Justice Commons, and Asian Improv aRts.