Asian Improv aRts in association with the Sound and Social Justice Commons and San Francisco State University Creative Music Studies
Present
ImprovisAsians! 2017
March 13 - March 17, 2017
San Francisco State University
Creative Arts Building
1600 Holloway Ave.
San Francisco, CA
ImprovisAsians! is an annual series of performances and discussions exploring the connection between the performing arts and community-building. All events are free!
March 13, 2017
Improvising Home
1:10 pm to 2 pm
Knuth Hall, SFSU Creative Arts Building
Admission Free and Open to the Public
What does home sound like? Improvising Home is a multi-movement musical composition for Native American flute and large ensemble that utilizes creative improvised music to explore questions relating to identity and acoustic ecology in the San Francisco Bay Area. The work is grounded in urban American Indian lived experiences and cultural productions brought into dialogue with the intercultural musical lives of the Intertribal Ensemble members. Utilizing improvisation as a framework, an ensemble performance is not simply the presentation of an aesthetic object but a unique realtime discussion conducted in the moment through sound. FMI: https://faculty.sfsu.edu/~johnc/content/improvising-home
Performers:
Jimmy Biala: drums, percussion
Karl Evangelista: guitar
Lewis Jordan: saxophone
Masaru Koga: saxophone
Bill Noertker: bass
John-Carlos Perea: flute, voice, percussion, electronics
Karen Stackpole: gongs, percussion
March 15, 2017
"Resolution of the Soul"
1:10 pm to 2 pm
Knuth Hall, SFSU Creative Arts Building
Admission Free and Open to the Public
Danongan “Danny” Kalanduyan, a consummate master of Southern Filipino music/dance responsible for introducing the traditional kulintang (bronze gong) ensemble music of his Maguindanaon culture to the U.S., passed away on September 28, 2016. A National Endowment Heritage Fellow, Danny taught at SF State, directed and performed with his own Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble (PKE), as well as organized community with a non-profit arts collective, Mindanao Lilang-Lilang (MLL). Generations of bay area students and colleagues are now paying tribute to Danny by performing selections of pieces learned from him, with added cross-cultural inspiration.
- Members of Kalanduyan's Palabuniyan Kulintang Ensemble, joined by:
- royal hartigan, drums
- Jimmy Biala, percussion
- John-Carlos Perea, bass/vocals
- Hafez Modirzadeh, saxophone
- Masaru Koga, saxophone
- Francis Wong, saxophone
and special guests
March 17, 2017
Mapping the Asian Improv Nation
10:15 am to 11:30 am
Room 152, SFSU Creative Arts Building
Admission Free and Open to the Public
A conversation with co-founders Francis Wong and Jon Jang in celebration of the Asian Improv aRts 30 years of work to to produce, present and document artistic works that represent the Asian American experience.
About Asian Improv aRts: As a non-profit multidisciplinary arts presenter it has produced high quality arts and cultural events for 24 years in the San Francisco Bay Area in community based and major venues such as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (with Dohee Lee’s FLUX), Great American Music Hall (with SFJazz), and Zellerbach Playhouse (Cal Performances) as well as various venues outside the Bay Area including the Museum of Contemporary Arts (Chicago), Flynn Center (Vermont), Library of Congress (Washington DC) and Banlieues Bleus Festival (Paris, France).
AIR pursues a strategy of collaboration between artists, community resources and mainstream institutions to create cultural and educational programming that brings together diverse sectors across generational, cultural and social experiences.
For more info, visit: www.asianimprov.org
