Rob Price Quartet
Seeland, 1999
Bob Ostertag/sampler
Justin Bond/voice
Otomo Yoshihide/turntables, guitar
with guests
Jon Rose/violin
Trevor Dunn/bass
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Most definately the weirdest CD on this page.
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Rob Sudduth
Buzz, 1999
Rob Sudduth/tenor sax
Marty Wehner/trombone
Steve Cardenas/guitar
Trevor Dunn/bass
Kenny Wollesen/drums
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"...Ultimately, I find Sinatra's greatest gift was his
ability to serve the song while making it his own. With
this recording we have taken the moods and feelings created
by Frank as a starting point for our own interpretation
of these great songs."
—Rob Sudduth
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Jess Jones Quartet
Nine Winds, 1997
Jess Jones/tenor sax
Tony Jones/tenor sax
Trevor Dunn/bass
Elliot Kavee/drums
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....recalls the gorgeous eloquence of Henry Threadgill...
echoes the cosmic cool of Sun Ra. This is the best
kind of new jazz: inside enough to lock on a groove,
and outward-bound with ears wide open.
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Jeff Chan
Asian Improv Records, 1997
Jeff Chan/tenor saxophone
Trevor Dunn/bass
Elliot Humberto Kavee/drums
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"The company Jeff Chan keeps on 'Winds Shifting', his debut
on the Asian Improv label, underscores his status as
one of the rising twenty-something tenor saxophonists
on the local jazz scene. Francis Wong, leading saxophonist
of the Bay Area's Asian American Creative Music community,
guests on a couple of tracks, and the album as a whole
is bolstered by arguably THE heaviest rhythm section
in contemporary improv - Trevor Dunn (bass) and Elliot
Humberto Kavee (drums/cello). The moment to moment
surprises stirred up by the Dunn-Kavee duo provide
Chan with limitless foundation upon which to develop
his meditative, deeply melodic statements."
—Sam Prestianni
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Secret Chiefs 3
Amarillo, 1996
Trevor Dunn/bass, vocals
Danny Heifetz/Drums, trombone, percussion
Trey Spruance/Organs, guitar, synths,
tape electronics, samples, vocals, and bass
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Jon Hassell and Bluescreen
Warner Bros, 1993
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Back in my early days in SF, through the scene that
Mr. Bungle was "in", I met Brain and Pete Scaturro
from a band called The Limbomaniacs. They asked me to
come into the studio and play my upright on some
tracks they had previously laid down with "fourth
world" trumpeter/composer Hassell. This record is out
of print so I decided to include the two tracks in
their entirety here. I'd say this is an early
proto-type of trip-hop or illbient, but I don't really
know what those are, so I won't say it. Joe Gore
and Blk Lion are also on these tracks.
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Sour Note Seven
Evander, 2001
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Three CD set!
Disc one: live tracks of Grahams classic SF septet recorded live at Brunos '98-'99.
Personnel: Jewlia Eisenberg-vocals;Ben Goldberg-clarinets; Rob Sudduth-saxophones;
Marty Wehner-trombone; Trevor Dunn-bass;Smith Dobson jr-drums; GC-piano, sythn.
Disc two and three: Jettison Slinky studio recording 2000.
Disc two personnel: Scott Amendola-drums; Dan Seamans-bass; Alex Candelaria-guitar; Ben Goldberg-clarinets; Steve Adams-sax, flute; Rob Sudduth-sax; Marty Wehner-trombone; Nancy Clarke-vocals: GC-keyboards. (tracks 8 & 9: Smith Dobson jr-drums; Trevor Dunn and Lee Alexander-bass)
Disc three personnel: Ches Smith-drums; Devin Hoff-bass; Alex Candelaria-gtr; Ben Goldberg-clarinet; Rob Sudduth-sax; Marty Wehner-trombone; Jewlia Eisenberg-voice; Nancy Clarke-voice; Paul Hanson-bassoon; Noel Jewkes-flute; GC-keyboards
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Jettison Slinky
Evander, 1998
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"It's a kind of music lots of people like to hate, namely......."jazz-rock" for
lack of a more accurate description. The "rock" that influenced
me (I am 38) happened before punk or metal existed, so those
tendencies are absent from my electric music. There are moments
on the album that are borrowed directly from people like
Frank zappa, and Sun ra. This will drive people away also,
but hey I was just trying to have some fun. The first tune
is a power ballad very much in the manner of FZ, for example,
and the tune called "atop the bloat cushion" is sun-ra-esque
at times.
There are tidbits of free improv........there are more than a few minutes of guitar solos..........there is one somewhat ambient textural jam at the end of the album........there are dumb derivative lyrics about space travel.
It bears noting that T. D. plays on only three tracks: Atop the BC/reprise. Sparkly, and After the Belphegor. (there may be one more I am forgetting). He is also mentioned in the lyrics of one song.
The guys in the band think there is an overarching narrative concept, something about Vikings and Aliens, breastplates, helmets with horns, and mist-shrouded battlefields.
Also, the sessions yielded another whole album's worth of tunes and jams, which will likely never be released, but they might get put up as MP3 files on the evandermusic website.
Finally my other group the Sour Note Seven has a live album more or less complete,
waiting for me to get off my ass and release it. It is called "watching Paint Dry".
—Graham Connah
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Graham Connah
Self-Released, 1994
GC/piano
Ben Goldberg/clarinet
Rob Sudduth/tenor sax
Kenny Wolleson/drums
TD/bass
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One of the first recordings I did after moving to SF
in 1992. I would not say this is my best playing, nor
the best recording quality. Nonetheless, it's a fine
document one the Bay Areas creative
geniuses, Nacho Hargman aka GC. "Everything That
Oozes Must Congeal", the opening track, was one of
many of Graham's pieces that blew my head off as a
young bass player venturing into new realms of "jazz"
at the sprightly age of twenty-five. Not to mention
this group spawned a lot of important musical
relationships for me.
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Graham Connah's Sour Note Six
Rastascan, 1996
GC/piano
Ben Goldberg/clarinet
Rob Sudduth/tenor sax
Marty Wehner/trombone
Elliot Kavee/drums
TD/bass
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Graham started cracking the whip and calling
rehearsals once a week even when we didn't have an
upcoming gig. He rented the top floor of a house on
S. Van Ness and we rehearsed in the kitchen. Somehow
he got a grand piano up there, too. That's where we
ended up recording this one with the rhythm section in
the kitchen and the horns in the next room.
Visibility was not optimum. I have fond memories of
this time period; eating at the taqueria next door,
sitting on the stoop in the Mission district sunshine
and finding my own voice among some amazing musicians.
The band was in high form and Graham's writing was
getting more unique, bitter and adventurous. A
beautiful amalgamation of the likes of Andrew Hill,
Mingus, Cecil Taylor, Zappa and Monk.
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Graham Connah's Sour Note Seven
Rastascan, 1998
GC/piano & organ
Jewlia Eisenberg
Ben Goldberg/clarinet
Rob Sudduth/tenor sax
Marty Wehner/trombone
Elliot Humberto Kavee/drums
TD/bass
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If I remember correctly, this one was recorded in GC's
living room on San Jose Ave in SF. Again, we were
practicing weekly. Around this time the scene at
Bruno's was really kicking in. This band played every
Wednesday there to progressively fewer and fewer
people. Graham was getting more and more into writing
lyrics which are hilarious to say the least. I can't
over-emphasize the importance this band had on my
development; my reading, my improvising, my focus.
You may know Jewlia from her amazing group Charming
Hostess. This was also Elliot's last recording with
the group. He was one of the first to bail from the
Bay and head East.
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Goldberg / Schott / Dunn
Nuscope
Recordings, 2000
Ben Goldberg/clarinet
John Schott/guitar
Trevor Dunn/bass
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"...a paragon of understated themes and synergistic
interplay as the musicians meld ethereal musings with microscopic
motifs and flowing statements that seem to embark on an
unaffected course."
—Glenn Astarita (All
About Jazz Website)
Features an 8 page booklet with notes by Art Lange
www.nuscoperec.com |
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Shuffle Play
New World Records, 2000
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Ensemble Diglossia: Steve Adams, Beth Custer, Ben Goldberg, Dan Plonsey, Tom Yoder, Carla Kihlstedt, Jenny Scheinman, Tara Flandreau, Matthew Brubeck, Trevor Dunn, Scott Amendola, Gino Robair, Karen Stackpole, Rob Burger, Myles Boisen, John Schott
From the liner notes:
The idea was to develop the material from as many
angles as possible: free improvisation, musique
concrete, post-war composition, AACM-derived
strategies, and pop music, to name a few. Sometimes
these idioms are juxtaposed, more often they are
integrated, in a sort of polylingual counterpoint. I
wanted the tracks to be widely varied as to length,
instrumentation, subject, and/or recorded ambience, so
as to place in the foreground the listener's role in
making it cohere...
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Junk Genius
Songlines, 1999
Ben Goldberg/Clarinet
John Schott/Guitar
Trevor Dunn/Bass
Kenny Wollesen/Drums
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"For our second release, we again wanted to have a unifying
project that would tie the record together. The present CD
is in some measure a commentary on American folk music, a
catch-all label for the many musical traditions that spring
from rural Southern cultures. The raw material for our study
was provided by the field recordings of Alan Lomax, the famous
Folkways anthology of Harry Smith, and the vast archival
project of the Austrian Document label. Artists such as Dock
Boggs, Clarence Ashley, Son House, and the Carter Family,
combined with Sacred Harp singing and work songs, provided
a template for what song might mean. We set ourselves the
challenge of writing music that could take its place among
these recordings, songs that could almost have been passed
along through oral tradition. We wanted to preserve the messy,
knotted and tangled pictures the music presented us, and
not prettify it or put quotation marks around it. We didn't
want to simplify or needlessly complicate."
—John Schott
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Ben Goldberg Sextet
Avant, 1998
Ben Goldberg/clarinet
Rob Sudduth/saxophone
Kenny Wollesen/drums
Miya Masaoka/koto
Carla Kihlstedt/violin
Trevor Dunn/bass
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1. Statement of themes on Contro-alto Clarinet
2. The Horizon Exaggerates the Nearness of the Horizon
3. Twine: Harmony
4. Half Silence
5. Only Saved by Poetry
6. The Assortment
7. Lacuna
8. Goodbye Rosario
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John Schot
Tzadik,
1997
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A virtuoso guitarist and member of both Junk Genius and TJ Kirk, Schott is joined on his first album as leader by metropolitan opera tenor John Horton Murray, Trevor Dunn on bass and Kenny Wolleson on drums. This ambitious song cycle, recalling the exotic precision of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Creatively mixes contemporary classical techniques with improvisation, using Yiddish and German texts by Kafka, Kraus and Glatshteyn.
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Marty Ehrlich and Ben Goldberg
Songlines, 1997
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East coast master clarinetist meets west coast master clarinetist, with Trevor Dunn on bass and Kenny Wolleson on Drums.
Melodic, angular, dark and woody jazz.
Two master clarinetists with roots in jazz and new music, one based in New York
and the other in San Francisco, join forces in a fine and varied program of original
compositions for clarinets and/or bass clarinets. Their swinging quartet is completed
by longtime Goldberg collaborators Trevor Dunn (bass) and Kenny Wollesen (drums).
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Snorkel
Tzadik, 2006
Ben Goldberg/Clarinet
John Schott/Guitar
Trevor Dunn/Bass
Scott Amendola/Drums
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The following is from the sleeve of this CD.
Why We Did This/What This Is
You are holding an imperfect document of a very, very good night. Snorkel has
been playing at the Elbo Room on and off (mostly off) for a couple of years.
During these performances much new material has been developed. Each night has
been a link in the chain. This CD records the first set of our (as of this writing)
last performance there. I feel it is the strongest 50 minutes of music I've ever
been inside. Whether my comrades feel that way, I don't know, but we all agreed
it was an exceptional set. The pacing, the flow of ideas, the harmonic coherence,
and the hearing of the musicians was at a very high level. No real effort was
made to capture the music; Scott was merely trying out his new DAT machine. Even
though we've worked hard to improve the overall sound, the result leaves a lot
to be desired. The clarinet is often off-mike, the bass sometimes hard to distinguish.
But shining through the dim circumstances of the recording, for me, is the music,
radiant and pure. This is not a commercial product; it's a gift. I wanted you
to hear this.
—John Schott
$5.00 U.S.
Email Scott Amendola: hamnsoda@aol.com |
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Junk Genius
Knitting Factory, 1995
Ben Goldberg/Clarinet
John Schott/Guitar
Trevor Dunn/Bass
Kenny Wollesen/Drums
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Anarchist Bebop, these Bay Area residents reinterpret the standards of Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Their pieces are collectively improvised, free and fun. This group of four sounds like the New Klezmer Trio and Mr. Bungle, two of the Knitting Factory's favorite bands.
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Ben Goldberg Trio
Music & Arts, 1997
Ben Goldberg/clarinet, bass clarinet
Trevor Dunn/bass
Elliot Humberto Kavee/drums
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"What you won't hear are screeching solos, long accompanied
passages of instrumental exploration, the ping pong
of conversation - in fact, almost nothing strays from
the exposition of Goldberg's pure tunes in their glory.
And they are glorious, memorable tunes indeed. The
leader's cagey approach here is to simplify in order
to reveal; what is revealed is the complexity already
inherent in the bare act of playing together. When
he and bassist Trevor Dunn convene on their frequent
unison thematic declamations, the nuances of phrasing
and timing make for very exciting listening, as does
Elliot Humberto Kavee's swell drum accompaniment. And
while they're clearly looking to trim the fat, the
ensemble does veer from the melodic material, too,
albeit is an extremely controlled manner, like an especially
terse form of free haiku. But even with all this going
for it, 'Here By now' might seem if Goldberg's composition's
themselves weren't so enticing, so winningly devised
to feature his horn."
—John Corbett, 1997
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Ben Goldberg
Victo, 1998
Trevor Dunn/bass
Lisle Ellis/bass
Larry Ochs/saxophone
Michael Sarin/drums
John Schott/guitar
Ben Goldberg/clarinet
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The music on this CD originated with a commission from John Zorn. That commission ultimately resulted in another composition for sextet (Twelve Minor, Avant Records 1998); support for the completion of this project came from Mr Zorn and Adam Vales. Pauline Oliveros pointed the way toward the shapes that brought this music to life. Kenny Wollesen played an earlier version of this material with us.
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