In the month of May, I am curating four nights at The Loft in La Jolla. The Loft is a venue run by the University of California San Diego and is described as a "performance lounge and social crossroads where emerging art and pop culture collide."
These are the four evenings not to miss if you are anywhere near Southern California:
Sunday, May 3, 2009 / 8:00 PM: Bird by Snow
I was first introduced to the world of Bird by Snow in May of 2007. I was sitting on a piece of plastic patio furniture in a Swedish cave that occasionally doubles as an underground sex dungeon. Fletcher Tucker took the stage, introduced himself as Bird by Snow and proceeded to fill the dark cave with the curious form of Californian romanticism that I since have come to associate his work with.
Without getting too deep into references and namedropping I would say that his style – his song writing, production style and overall aesthetic – has roots dating back to the opening stanzas of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”. To me the musical output of Bird by Snow seem to be devoted to the investigation of everything that surrounds Fletcher Tucker, whether it’d be going for a beautiful walk through dark woods or breathing long and deep on a the top of a cliff.
Others described Bird by Snow as “trancendental beach-grunge” or “psychic mountain-dub” and while that might be partly true, I urge you to examine this for yourself. In the last couple of years Bird by Snow is one of the very few new artists that have really managed to wow me. I am eagerly awaiting his next step and I am very happy to be able to bring him to The Loft.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 / 8:00 PM: William Basinski
Among other qualities, William Basinski possesses the rare ability to isolate and extend a carefully selected moment, thereby creating eternal beauty. I first learned about this don of patient melancholy in January 2004, when a dear friend introduced me to The Disintegration Loops, a series of four compact discs containing recordings of twenty year old tape loops slowly falling apart. William Basinski:
"In the process of archiving and digitizing analog tape loops from work I had done in 1982, I discovered some wonderful sweeping pastoral pieces I had forgotten about. Beautiful, lush cinematic truly American pastoral landscapes swept before my ears and eyes. Tied up in these melodies were my youth, my paradise lost, the American pastoral landscape, all dying gently, gracefully, beautifully. Life and death were being recorded here as a whole: death as simply a part of life: a cosmic change, a transformation."
William Basinski is an extremely important artist. His way of searching out the beauty that otherwise would go unnoticed is unparalleled. I owe him some of my most memorable listening experiences and I am very proud to present an opportunity for his work to be enjoyed.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 / 8:00 PM: V. Sjöberg New Jazz Ensemble
Since late 2004 I have been working with an ever changing group of musicians around my home country of Sweden. In 2005 I named this constellation the V. Sjöberg New Jazz Ensemble. In a conversation that I once had with Douglas Holmquist, one of the original members of the V. Sjöberg New Jazz Ensemble, he reflected on the fact that “free jazz” in the Ornette Coleman-sense was sort of followed by an implicit exclamation mark and that this exclamation mark seem to have evaporated as the phrase went from being a call to arms into being a description of something formulaic and institutionalized.
The reasons behind forming this group, the V. Sjöberg New Jazz Ensemble, and calling it a New Jazz Ensemble isn’t really about something as catchphrase-friendly as “bringing that exclamation mark back!” It is just a humble comment on the sad fact that a lot of the time the word jazz is very limiting, both in the mind of the consumer and from the point of view of the musician/producer. It shouldn’t have to be, you know?
Tonight we shall study the concept of freedom. Is it really all that free?
For this performance the New Jazz Ensemble will consist of players from the UCSD Music Department along with local jazz musicians. It’ll be great, I’m sure.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 / 8:00 PM: Jens Lekman
Yeah, it'll be a good party.
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