I just got a short note from director Christopher Burris, who has been teaching and workshopping and producing at a university in North Carolina and I admit I don’t know Greensboro from Winston-Salem other than it is not Asheville or Chapel Hill.
He sent some photos of “Passing Strange” the Broadway show about types of Black people, for instance middle class Blacks passing for, or being mistaken for, more street types or proletariat or precariat — a word I saw in The Economist for working class types who are in precarious situations economically or socially.
There have been versions this year of “Passing Strange” in Berkeley – -Shot Gun Players — and near Minneapolis – -directed by Austene Van — and in North Carolina.
I saw “Passing Strange” workshop at Stanford and several times in its formative run at Berkeley Rep, before Broadway or Public Theatre of New York.
I saw Stew and Heidi at Brooklyn Academy of Music in February, 2001 and then shortly thereafter but for a short term, truncated as it were, was his or their manager. Mostly for the marketing of “Something Deeper Than These Changes” cd. But we also worked together on successful live tours in the midwest –like Chicago, where I was born, in fact my father flew out for Stew’s show at Martyr’s his 80th birthday weekend — and East Coast like Great Woods near Boston, opening for Counting Crows and John Mayer.
I heard from Stew by email for the first time in a while, this spring, apropos of all this.
And also, I am doing a show or perhaps two shows with DaShawn and Wendy Hickman husband and wife from those same parts, near Winston Salem or Greensboro. My shows are June 5 in Palo Alto, free and outdoors at Mitchell Park Bowl, and also in Santa Cruz, the Kuumbwa center, Friday June 3. (They also are part of the Little Village Mother Fucker – that’s what its actually called, shibboleth — at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, across the street from Berkley Rep, on Thursday, June 2 but only 25 minutes set, with four other acts). I talked to DaShawn about trying to get to the “Passing Strange” show and we briefly discussed maybe a sacred steel version of some of those tunes, breaking out the church roots.
Yes, ’tis strange. (And that’s a reference or shout out to Shakespeare and Othello. Shout out to Shakespeare, Othello, Christopher Burris, Charlie Hunter, DaShawn Hickman, Spike Lee and my former client Stew (everybody knows that he’s really Daddy Feel Good, Yeah, Yeah Yeah, Yeaaah whatever that means…)
coda:
Hi Mark,
Hope this email finds you well.
I just wanted to pass along the program and some photos from our production of Passing Strangeat UNCSA. It was incredibly successful, having a real impact on the students here.
This is from 1993 and featured John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Joey Baron, Wayne Horvitz; I had never seen it until 10 minutes ago; I admit I had it confused with “Spy VS Spy” which I borrowed from the library once, but does not feature Wayne Horvitz. I am thinking of this because Wayne is coming here in three weeks, with Sara Schoenbeck, bassoon; very different then his younger, New York days. Yet because I added twenty other musicians and several other genres, it came to mind (in the liner notes to Spy VS Spy, it lists about 50 influences including film noir and Ornette Coleman).
I do not know much about the screaming Japanese fellow.
Meanwhile, back in the current times, albeit a few days ago now, mONday, we had Or Bareket, who has a new album coming out next month – like in the twilight between his Palo Alto appearance and Wayne’s Palo Alto show, called “Sahar”. Is that a reference to Africa or the desert? Or to something deeper that informs both Or’s music and the naming of the large open space?
I was impressed by the young band featuring Or Bareket, bass, composition and band leadership; Tivon Pennicott, who played tenor sax — he is not on the recording but learned the work quickly, and we used a music stand donated by Brian who hangs out at the plaza a lot and does various creative things himself; not many people get a music credit or are mentioned in a concert review just for having a music stand in his trunk; Tivon also plays with Gregory Porter including perhaps such a show this week in Belgium; Savannah Harris on drums who also ran the table after the show, with a post game feast at Reposado then in the back room of the Wine Room here on Ramona — the former Gaylord’s Ice Cream Parlor or Double Rainbow, perhaps. Excuse the digression but Hershel Yatovitz told me that in 1983 he was a janitor by day sweeping up at the nursery school at the church behind the Varsity, then he’d play all night for tips at that same place, the ice cream parlor, maybe within 10 feet of where Savannah, Terry and I were sitting and sipping, then would go to the alley behind the Varsity and get high with Michael Hedges, who typically held court in the courtyard of The Varsity; he said his fingers bled, then he got very sick and tired but emerged as a musician — people don’t realize the difficulty of just becoming world class I mean working class — or that “World class” and “working class” are about the same in the arts in Late Capital America. Jeremy Corren on keyboards – -who said he too, like H and I is a Jew, but also a Mexican; From LA, son of two physicians and went to Columbia. Great young band, maybe the youngest I’ve worked with. I mean, I booked Taylor Eigsti when he was 15, but I was 35. Now I am 58, and these band members are like 28, 29, et cetera. (Although, despite making that pronouncement, i worked with Carmen Rothwell in the Dave Douglas band, Engage, and I don’t think she’s much older, though Dave is.
Are you following this?
Savannah also plays with Melanie Charles, who came thru SF but I missed it. I met her manager Charyn Harris, no relation to Savannah Harris, who is also Macy Gray’s tour manager. Charyn Harris is first cousin of Eugene S. Robinson, who sings like the guy above, the Japanes guy. Also, Japanese Breakfast is on the cover of Pollstar, I’m about to read. So is Remi Wolf. Big world, big ears, stay tuned.
Savannah Harris of Oakland and New York, drums; Or Bareket of Israel and New York, bass; Jeremy Corren, of LA and New York, keys — at Lytton Plaza, April 18, 2022 by Earthwise
Tivon Pennicott of Jamaica, Atlanta, Miami and New York; he told Terry Acebo Davis my wife that he slept in his car in NYC until his gigs caught up to his vision and talent
MC Lars, aka Stanford grad Andrew Nielson, 39, with the kids
Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered
I’m producing an Earth Day concert Sunday 2 p.m. at Mitchell Park Bowl. I’m writing early Wednesday morning, or Tuesday night, depending how you look at it. So there’s four days, 4 times 24, plus 14 more hours to prepare, or a total of 110 hours to make this show a success. [Today is 4-20 — I’m high on concert-organizing — Ed]
What makes a concert, on Earth Day or any day, a success? Good question. At the very least, if the musicians come and play and then leave without obviously showing anger or disappointment at me, or the world, that is a point in favor. If people come to said concert, and have a reasonable time, that helps. The more the merrier, I would think, although I admit to rationalizing how good a show is even when I am (sometimes) disappointed with the turnout.
I’m not going to commit in print – -or here at Plastic Alto, on the world wide and forever web — to the idea that 100 people at Mitchell Park at 2 pm. Sunday is a good show, whereas only 20 people is not. I’d like to see 1,000 people. Is there any thing I can do to bring 1,000 people? (Besides hiring a more popular band or act: I really like Matt the Electrician and MC Lars — they both have played in my series, for Earthwise – – I know a fair amount of their respective song books – -they have more than 10 albums between them). In comparison, the Or Bareket – Jeremy Corren – Tivon Pennicott-Savannah Harris jazz show Monday at Lytton Plaza had, by my count, 80 people who stopped to watch, came on purpose, pulled out their cells or lingered more than they normally do, say, checking out the fountain.
I hope there is sun on Sunday, naturally enough, but I’m okay if it rains. We will tent the muscians, from sun or rain – and so far there are only two musicians. They are both one-man-bands. Matt plays a guitar and sings, Lars raps and pushes buttons on his computer. There’s a third solar-powered person who might just sing one or two songs, a capella.
For a couple days I sat at Lytton Plaza; ok, for a couple hours, on two or three days, and tried to hand out t-shirts and sign up volunteers for my Earth Day show. Not sure if the two or three people I met those days will come (or if they are wearing their shirts in the meanwhile; the shirts are black, I bought them at Nordstroms — they are vaguely environmental and say “Save the Planet” or “Hear the Silent Scream” or “Go SOLAR” or something that seemed to fit. “Why did you buy black t-shirts?”, asks my wife. “Are those dirty or clean?” she asks about the dishes. But I digress.
I have 12 other shows on sale and a half-dozen shows in progress in various ways, but I am going to punt all that until Monday after Earth Day. I have plans to see three baseball games but will cut that back too, now that I think about it. (Paly, A’s, Paly-SF).
Can I get 1,000 people out to Mitchell Park on Sunday, because they love music, the planet or our community? Is it enough of a gift that I can work these next 100 hours — ok, let’s say 40 hours — plus 40 hours of sleep — towards this goal, or these ideals? Right livelihood, baby. Maybe the difference-making factor influencing how I feel about my Earthwise Productions’ Earth Day featuring Matt The Electrician and MC Lars is how I use those other 20 spare hours I reference here, in my own calculus. How well can I focus? How well can I use my time? Is this box on my lap a help or a hinder?
More: there’s a poster by Evri Kwong, a North Bay artist I met at Smith Andersen several years ago – his art was featuring in the Chronicle and at The DeYoung in 2020, a show that opened right after the shutdown. Actually, it’s art by Evri Kwong and typography by Terry Acebo Davis. There are about a dozen of them around town and maybe I can put up another 100 or so. (There was a young person handing out a similar flyer at Earth Day for another event, Saturday; maybe I should follow her lead and just stand around passing out flyers).
Here is a link to the EventBrite page for Earthwise Welcomes Earth Day with Matt The Electrician and MC Lars. You don’t have to sign up to attend, but many people do. I should mention here that I worked on Bay Area Action Earth Day at Stanford (BAAEDAS — “bad ass”) in 1993, though not the concert part. The concert featured Michelle Shocked and Peter Apfelbaum. I remember it drizzled. Earthwise Traditions was a themed section of the event that featured indigenous views on the environment, the planet. I worked on that part of Earth Day, an activity that became my founding Earthwise Productions in 1994, pretty much my fulltime employment these 28 years.
Here is a link to a song MC Lars recorded and wrote at my suggestion, something about the indigenous people of Arcata and Humboldt – based partly on an essay written by my classmate at Dartmouth Andre Cramblit. Maybe Lars will perform the song Sunday – -it has likely never been played live, just in the studio.
Here’s his first verse; earthwise because it mentions trout, eel, grass hopper, trees and the river:
And you can go north, away from the traffic Where time slows down and the world’s less frantic The Land of the Grasshopper Song I’ve heard it called South of Oregon and Klamath Falls There’s the Trinity River, Mad and Siskiyou The Eel and the Smith, and Van Duzen too Doing back flips I saw a rainbow trout In the clear cold water I forgot about the drought Where the mountains keep on going, I would be a liar If I said I wasn’t scared by the Slater Fire I took two photos, before and after I met a park ranger there was zero laughter When I asked about the scope of the blaze Paradise was lost and it burned for days But you can still go swimming where the waters run deep And big foot might be hiding watching in the redwood trees
and1: This is the poster for the famous Blink-182 show at Cubberley, Earth Day 1997 — I forgot that, as the poster shows, it was a two-show promotion called “Earth Day Rock N Bike” — we gave away a bike as a door prize:
Blink poster by Bruce Meyers; there’s a bootleg poster of the same show by someone named Murph; that Blink 182 went on to sell 20 million records raises an interesting question: is it more environmental or more green if they had continued to play for only 500 people per show and not at Shoreline and the like? Are all Mitchell Park or Earthwise shows more environmental or green than all shows at Shoreline, with its traffic and, in many cases, complicity with big media, which is inherently anti-environmental? See “small is beautiful”. E.F. Schumacher, the book. I’m also going to re-read Wallace Stegner’s essay on Earth Day and the history of environmentalism. He spoke at Earth Day Palo Alto, 1990 and was scheduled to speak again at our 1993 Bay Area Action Earth Day but died in Santa Fe instead, two weeks before Earth Day.
I have a concert tonight at Lytton Plaza whith Or Barekat Quartet and therefore my next 12 hours revolve around those facts
Yet, I am running a photo of my dog yesterday caught mid conniption by a Stanford student an entrepreneur named SHough rhymes with my headline. Sydney Quoyen Hough, from Saratoga, working on their next billion, yet staying ”fuzzy” by hanging out at Farmers’ Markets, shooting photos with a real camera and talking to strangers. Sydney and friends also calculated that on Aug. 20, 2022 human race will reach 8 billion active members; I am guessing that there’s about 20 billion of us all time people who self identify as Homo sapien sapiens, linguistically conscious naked apes.
Beatrix Stix Brunell at what appears to be a Stanford libraryBeatrix at the George Segal near the Quad
In September at Verve Coffee on University I happened to meet parents of a Stanford freshman. They volunteered the fact that their child was 26 not 18 and the former first soloist of the London Ballet. Stanford and the search engines added her actual name: Beatriz Stix-Brunell.
I checked with Aleta Hayes of Chocolate Heads to confirm that she had not joined a local outfit, even to work on her hip hops. But her social media accounts seem to confirm that indeed she walks among us. Or floats. Seems to float.
I wonder if the Olympic trick skier from San Francisco is here or did she endow her own project with her millions in earnings. Is it Eileen Gu?
Stanford Jazz Workshop just sent out a very impressive brochure about their 50th season as either a camp, a concert series or together a workshop. When I was entering my senior year at Gunn High, I strung for the summer Stanford Daily, and they sent me to talk to Jim Nadel about his 10th anniversary running a camp for children who wanted to learn jazz. He told me that the legendary Stan Getz was hanging out on campus with some of the art teachers and he was hoping to get the sax player to give a lecture, that would fly beneath the radar of his management.
Forty short years later, voila, he’s doing at least 32 hard ticket shows, plus the camps for kids and adults, plus creating teaching jobs part time for various mid-career and emerging musicians, plus some full time staff.
Here are the seven shows I will most likely see:
July 1: Ben Goldberg, Gerald Cleaver, Liberty Ellman (Campbell Recital Hall, i.e their second stage);*
July 11: Terrence Brewer, Howard Wiley (Campbell);*
July 13: Shemekia Copeland billed as Ruth Davies’ Blues Night with special guest Shemekia Copeland (Dinkelspiel);
July 17: Josh Thurston Quintet featuring Dayna Stephens (Dinkelspiel);*
July 21: Dayna Stephens Quartet featuring James Francies (Dinkelspiel);*
July 27: Lisa Fischer with Taylor Eigsti (Dinkelspiel)*
July 30: Dianne Reeves with Quintet and Orchestra (Frost Amphitheatre, which holds 7,000)
Although I am likely doing a weekly presentation at one of three venues in Palo Alto i.e. off campus, I am at least blocking out those seven dates from overlapping with Earthwise (which is in its 28th year, year 50 if you count me singing “Seasons in the Sun” sitting in front of our house in Saratoga when I was nine years old. The shows above marked with asterisk * include people I’ve worked with although giving credit where credit is due, Stanford Jazz Workshop in most cases found them first. (Although I also went to school 7th thru 12 grade with drummer Dan Adams who claims plausibly that he and not Gerald Cleaver or Larry Grenadier was in the original rhythm section that backed every kid doing his solo. Larry Grenadier to my understanding was the first jazz student at Stanford when in the 1980s the university followed Nadel’s lead and made the field an academic priority, and recruited the local legend to transfer.
Keep on swingin’, y’all.
edit to add: oops: the Shemekia Copeland show is head to head with Old Crow Medicine and Molly Tuttle at Mountain Winery in Saratoga, which I just bought my way into. July 17 have Amendola Vs Blades Duo at Mitchell Park Bowl but at 2 p.m. matinee, a great co-bill with Josh an Dayna at night back on campus. I also have the Waybacks at the Mitch Bowl 2 p.m. on Sunday July 10, which would leave me open to catch Valerie Troutt at Dink that night; I met Valerie at the Ruthie Foster show in 2019 at Stanford and then booked her into the JCC on a bill with Charlie Musselwhite and MC Lars that December. The Guild has Femi Kuti on Thursday June 30 going head to head with Diane Reeves at Frost. It’s $56 standing room, $99 seated mezzanine. I just saw Dianne Reeves at the NEA Jazz Masters Ceremony and concert at SFJazz. The Guild has Kamasi Washington July 27, head to head with the Lisa Fischer Taylor Eigsti show; for a whopping $142 per ticket. What the fuck? Two hundred for the seated mezzanine.
Sara Schoenbeck knew from an early age that she did not want to play bassoon in a symphony, not on a regular basis. Early on, she was much more interested in exploring improvisation and experimental music. She has performed everything from avant-garde jazz to hip-hop and rock to music from India, Ghana and Haiti.
For her self-titled release, Schoenbeck performs duets with nine artists — three free improvisations, three of her originals and three compositions by others.
The opener, “O’Saris,” is a mostly soothing, folkish piece performed with drummer Harris Eisenstadt. “Sand Dune Trilogy” with flutist Nicole Mitchell starts and closes with some energetic interplay, sandwiching a quiet dissonance. “Lullaby” with guitarist Nels Cline becomes a ballad with Schoenbeck’s long tones on bassoon, with a three-note guitar pattern, and background electronics.
The fairly brief “Chordata” is a fiery free improvisation with Roscoe Mitchell on soprano saxophone. It contrasts with pianist Matt Mitchell’s mostly through-composed “Auger Strokes,” which is quietly moody and a bit long. “Absence” with bassist Mark Dresser is a tribute to the late bassoonist Marcuselle Whitfield, alternating between somber and celebration. A fairly peaceful “Anaphoria” with pianist Wayne Horvitz” and a more passionate “Suspend A Bridge” with cellist Peggy Lee are both free improvisations. The intriguing set, generally more peaceful than expected, concludes with the piano and haunting voice of Robin Holcomb on “Sugar.” (Scott Yanow)
Sara Schoenbeck: O’Saris; Sand Dune Trilogy; Lullaby; Chordata; Auger Strokes; Absence; Anaphoria; Suspend A Bridge; Sugar. (58:55) Personnel: Sara Schoenbeck, bassoon; Harris Eisenstadt, drums; Nicole Mitchell, flute; Nels Cline, guitar, bass; Roscoe Mitchell, soprano saxophone; Matt Mitchell, piano; Mark Dresser, bass; Wayne Horvitz, piano, electronics; Peggy Lee, cello; Robin Holcomb, piano, voice.
“oh Henry” is such an old school reference to a candy bar to a TV commercial to hank Aaron of the Braves the Internet doesn’t even have it but I am certain I am correct. Also there is an author named O.Henry Who has a historic landmark in Austin Texas near where Henry Bolte might play baseball next year should he not go pro:
Last: I was happy for my young friend Ari Smolar Eisenberg (“the ASE” — baseball jargon for a sophomore and younger child of Palo Alto city council candidate Rebecca Eisenberg for a pitching a perfect inning in relief including two strikeouts; his dad said that even as a former high school player himself he cannot play catch with his son because the ball has such natural movement.
Paly is outscoring its opponents 144 to 27 aggregate, Is the top team in the metro region in San Francisco according to the Chronicle they play Saint Francis on a Saturday afternoon 4/23 as a preview to the CCS championship
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 