8:00pm doors / 8:30pm show
$15 general admission / $10 members
Reserve seats: member login or guest registration
Over the last decade Makoto Kawashima has emerged as one of the most original improvisers in a new generation of Japanese players. His releases on his own Homosacer label as well as on what would be the final album released by P.S.F. Records reveal a haunting and intense style of playing, bursting with a brutality and virtue that reflect the deepest foundations of Japanese free jazz. Kawashima was born in 1981 in Saitama, a prefecture of the Greater Tokyo Area, but it wasn’t until 2008 that he first picked up the alto saxophone, electing to perform primarily in a solo configuration since 2010. Following the tradition of alto forebears Kaoru Abe and Masayoshi Urabe, he recorded his 2015 record Homo Sacer for P.S.F. Records. Its publication and recent reissue by Black Editions have represented something of a passing of the free improvisation torch, with the session boasting an impassioned performance by Kawashima using one of Kaoru Abe’s reeds given to him by the latter’s mother. Leaping between subdued lyrical lamentations and insistent trills, Kawashima sculpts negative space as counterpoint for his dizzying screeches into the void. This will be Kawashima's first ever performance in California.
Grammy winner Henry Kaiser is widely recognized as one of the most creative and innovative guitarists, improvisers, and producers in the fields of rock, jazz, world, and contemporary experimental musics. The California-based musician is one of the most extensively recorded as well, having appeared on more than 330 different albums and contributed to countless television and film soundtracks. Mr. Kaiser not only produces and contributes to a staggering number of recorded projects, he performs frequently throughout the USA, Canada, Europe and Japan, with several regular groupings as well as solo guitar concerts and concerts of freely improvised music with a host of diverse instrumentalists. He is also a longtime research diver in the US Antarctic Program. He has shot more footage under Antarctic ice than any other videographer/cinematographer. Kaiser was nominated for an academy award for his film with Werner Herzog “Encounters at the End of the World.”
Soo Yeon Lyuh is a haegeum (Korean two-string bowed instrument) player, composer, and improviser currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rigorously trained in court and folk repertories from a young age, Lyuh is known for her masterful performances of new compositions for the haegeum. Deeply invested in exploring new musical possibilities via improvisation, Lyuh has collaborated with the Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Fred Frith, and numerous other diverse international performers and composers. She has performed renowned contemporary and experimental concerts in festivals and venues all over the world including India, Turkey, Spain and at the Isang Yun Music Festival in North Korea. Lyuh has recorded multiple CDs of Korean court music, Jazz, and improvisation, as well as being featured on an improvisational recording with Henry Kaiser, Bill Laswell, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Simon Barker