It's been too hot here for the last week and a half in St. Louis to spend much time outside physically, so today we've got some videos for you that go outside in a musical sense. This sampling of live performance clips from area musicians whose work might be called experimental, free-form, or avant-garde includes:
- Electronic musician Eric Hall, seen up above in a solo set recorded at Washington University's Steinberg Auditorium in December 2010;
- Flautist and composer Fred Tompkins and keyboardist/composer Jim Hegarty, seen in the first clip down below joining forces to perform Tompkins' piece My Changes." The performance, recorded in January 2011 at the St. Charles Coffee House, starts with what Tompkins calls certain points of reference - tonalities, a general idea of style and overall form" while leaving the exact note choices and length of each section open;
- An excerpt from one of the Drum Line" concerts presented in 2011 by the Nu-Art Series, featuring drummers Charles Bobo" Shaw, Gary Sykes, Jerome Scrooge" Harris and Johnny Johnson;
- Part of an electronic music performance from Joe Raglani and Jeremy Kannapell, recorded last year at the music and art venue Floating Laboratories;
- An improvisation by percussionists Thomas Zirkle and Matt Henry, who sometimes perform together under the name HaZmaT;
- More improv from the Off-Topic Collective, a project that included Hegarty, bassist Willem von Hombracht, percussionist Henry Claude, and saxophonist Dave Stone. The clip was shot in February 2009 at the Kranzberg Arts Center;
- And finally, yet another live improv featuring Stone and friends (the clip is too dark to identify most of the players) recorded last August at El Leñador.