Myra Melford, Oguri, Mark Dresser at the Other Minds Festival, San Francisco April 2, 2020

Mark DresserOnTour

Venue
Taube Atrium Theater
401 Van Ness Avenue, 4th floor
San Francisco, CA 94102 United States + Google Map
Phone:
4159348134
Website:
https://sfopera.com/about-us/diane-b.-wilsey-center-for-opera/
Other Minds marks its milestone 25th festival with 4 nights honoring the art of improvisation, presenting an astonishing convergence of the world’s leading contributors to the history of creative music.

Concert 1 Program
Myra Melford, piano
Mark Dresser, bass
Oguri, dance
Improv Set

William Winant, percussion
Zeena Parkins, harp
Ikue Mori, vocals and electronics
Improv Set

William Parker, bass flutes and brass;
Hamid Drake, percussion and voice;
Patricia Nicolson, dance and voice
The Sky is Trembling

Concert 1 Bios
Myra Melford‘s skillful, impassioned musicianship weaves subtle silken thread through histories, cultures, and idioms as numerous as they are diverse. World-renowned as a pianist, educator, composer and curator, Melford’s ambition is to integrate pedigree with nascence in music-making environments which rely on trust and spontaneity. She’s received honors from the Guggenheim and Doris Duke organizations and has ranked in multiple DownBeat polls. In addition to teaching as Professor of Composition and Improvisational Practices at UC Berkeley, Myra regularly performs with Snowy Egret (her quintet featuring Ron Miles, Liberty Ellman, Stomu Takeishi and Tyshawn Sorey) as well as in ensembles with Nicole Mitchell, Joelle Leandre, Ben Goldberg, Miya Masaoka, and Zeena Parkins.

Mark Dresser‘s self-proclaimed “obsession” is, happily enough, also his instrument of choice: he does not merely “play” the double-bass so much as speak it, expressing its every discernible nuance through use of extended technique and inventive amplification. His impressive oeuvre as an instrumentalist and bandleader boasts over one hundred forty recordings, highlights of which include projects with Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell, Gerry Hemmingway, John Zorn, Tim Berne, Myra Melford, Matt Wilson, Nicole Mitchell, Bob Ostertag, and Joe Lovano. In addition to being a board member of the International Society of Bassists and the International Society of Improvised Music, Dresser is also amongst the foremost scholars of the contrabass, having been selected by the Fulbright Fellowship to study the instrument in Italy, and since holding numerous teaching positions at universities in the U.S., including his current appointment at the the University of California, San Diego.

Our bodies, the organic rhythm of daily life, and the inexorable momentum of the natural world are integrated into an ever-emergent symbiotic ecosystem in the works and life of the utterly singular dancer, Oguri. A co-founder of the Body Weather Laboratory (alongside Roxanne Steinberg), Oguri has worked to involve his Butoh-inspired somatic vocabulary in cross-disciplinary pursuits which suggest an artistic vision untroubled by matters of scale (to any extreme). He is artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice, has served on the faculty at Bennington College, and has been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, The Getty Center, the Japan Foundation, and the Doris Duke Fellowship.