Day 1

With an auspicious starting date of Friday the 13th, the first night of Line Space Line Festival of Improvised Music 2004 got underway. This year, the LSL masterminds brought improvising musicians together from around the continent and had them play together for the first time the night of the show. Several introduced themselves to each other while setting up for the night’s performance.

While LSL’s base, the Salvation Theater, grew hot and stuffy during last year’s SRO event, this year Silverlake’s 4016 Gallery generously donated a larger room to house the crowd. An occasional performance space, the Gallery provided ample seating, off showroom lounge, and a reasonable dressing area for musicians. Line Space Line’s brain trust Jeremy Drake, David Rothbaum, and Chris Heenan provided a core group of 35 hired guns and quick draw artists in configurations ranging from trios to septets.

Scott Looney, electronics; Alicia Mangan, tenor sax; Kevin Uehlinger, piano; Rich West, drum set; Ben Wright, double bass.

Wright got the party started with sly bass, and West began dropping beats. Mangan introduced her raw unique tone in a steady stream of ideas. Uehlinger caught the fever Wright and Mangan laid out while Looney and West got acquainted. West brought an array of small household items available at any SavOn, a collection of fine gongs and bells, towels, pie pans, a basic drum kit, and wicked imagination and technique. Looney created electronic sounds and tones, West swept through bells. Wright bounced between pluck and bow. West used the stick end of his mallets on a Glockenspiel, while Looney played humming atmospherics. Mangan returned, Uehlinger plucked the piano’s strings and muted them with his hand. Mangan and Looney got their exchange, with Wright and West creating spontaneous foundation. Mangan blew short statements, Looney’s electric wave took them out.

Uehlinger and Wright dove in first for the second performance. West joined with sticks on rims, and Looney played diminishing whoops. Mangan squawked and ran, West danced on cymbal rims, then the glockenspiel. Uehlinger invoked high end shimmer, and the rising intensity found all four musicians fully engaged. West muted with a blanket his mallet struck drums, and Looney washed the players in electric buzz.

Jeremy Drake, amplified acoustic guitar; Tucker Dulin, trombone; Hendrik Greidanus; David Rothbaum, Bb & contralto clarinets.

This quartet boasting two of the three LSL organizers started out playing many small sounds. Greidanus popped his dampened bass, Rothbaum and Dulin blew tonelessly, Drake mimicked the high sounds. After a long pause, the horns blew tonelessly, dropping to low rumbles and back. Greidanus played fast and soft, and Drake’s manipulations came faster, as Dulin and Rothbaum played ambiance.

Rothbaum used circular breathing on the Bb to begin the second piece. Dulin also held a tone and Drake maintained a feedback hum that grew louder. Eric Barber, tenor & soprano saxophone; John Berndt, reed, electronics; Bryan Eubanks, reeds; Sam Hoyt, trumpet; Eric Sbar, euphonium.

Traveling all the way from Baltimore, John Berndt opened the quintet’s set with his altered guitar. Local Eric Sbar played deep pulses on the euphonium, while Millbrook’s Sam Hoyt gave out pops and bursts. Berndt rode feedback noise while Sbar, Barber, and Hoyt played staccato. Berndt created metallic creaks with Portland’s Bryan Eubanks humming on soprano sax. With Berndt bowing and bending strings, Sbar took off. Eubanks held multiphonic tones on his soprano, joined by Berndt likewise engaged on alto.

Kyle Bruckmann, oboe, English horn, shenai; Tucker Dulin, trombone; Chris Forsyth, electric guitar; Hendrik Greidanus, double bass; Chris Heenan, reeds; Jonathan Zorn, analog synthesizer, harmonicas.

Brooklyn’s Chris Forsyth works with noise and sound in his collaborations with Ernesto Diaz-Infante and the psi trio. The noise of his cable crackling on his strings started this sextet’s performance. Greidanus scraped his bow, Bruckmann played small sounds, and Anthony Braxton protégé Jonathan Zorn played low growls on his analog synthesizer. Heenan blew pops and multiphonics, and Forsyth sustained feedback, while Bruckmann teased high squeaky tones out of his oboe. Bruckmann blew and sucked the English horn with no mouthpiece, and before Heenan took off on contra bass clarinet, Zorn played airy chromatic harmonica.

John Berndt, electronics; Mitchell Brown, electronics; Joseph Hammer, tape loops; David Kendall, electronics; Scott Looney, piano; DJ Ultraviolet, turntables.

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