Some things about me:
I am a jazz artist. I play the drums and write about jazz , sound , culture, and the year 1959. I am in Portland, Oregon. I’ve created performances with Beijing Opera musicians, Russian circus clowns, silent film, dance, spoken word, and with installation-performance artists. Ragtime to no time. I make conceptual work with a poet. I embrace the push-me-pull-you momentum of history and innovation. That’s why I have a website and a typewriter too.
I’ve appeared at the following festivals:
20th Seattle Improvised Music Festival, 9th & 10th Olympia Experimental Music Fests, Richard Foreman Festival (2003, 2004, 2005), 2003 Edgetone New Music Summit, Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, Spare Room Collaborative Poetics Festival , 2003 Portland Experimental Music Festival, Open Music Workshop’s AfterEars Festival. I like the edges and the center. Beauty is avant-garde. Word and music are both breath—pneuma. The creation of joyous sound and movement is one of the reflexes that occurs when you tickle freedom.
Like George Oppen once wrote, “If one steps into nothing, the fact is tremendous.â€
Some people I’ve been lucky to perform with: Paul Plimley-Lisle Ellis, Wally Shoup, Bert Wilson, Perry Robinson, Alan Tomlinson, Frank Gratkowski, Phillip Greenlief, Jack Wright, Mark Whitecage, Toshi Makihara, Gust Burns, Bob Marsh, Ron Heglin, Bill Horist, John Gross, Michael Bisio, André St. James, Rob Blakeslee/Glen Moore, Jim Knodle, Rich Halley, Michael Vlatkovich, Doug Theriault, Torsten Müller, Scott R. Looney, Damon Smith, Jon Jang/James Newton, Butch Thompson, Cap’n Jack McDuff, blues legend Otis “Big Smokey†Smothers, Douglas Ewart and Carei Thomas of the AACM, George Cartwright, poet Tracie Morris, James Samuel “Cornbread†Harris, Sr., and late performance artist Stuart Sherman on his 5-minute Hamlet, Oedipus, and Fausts.
Riffs—Metaphors that occupy me:
Notions of combustion and ignition; Things/sounds that are
circumambient
The word "Urgent"; Thermal disturbance. . . what does that
sound like?
The alternating current into and out of nothing;
Caretaking/menacing silence
