Thingamajigs partnered with CuryJ’s Homies 4 Justice program to put on a one off synth building workshop in their community garden. Homies got to build a working synthesizer from scratch that they are able to play with and take home with them.
“So there we all were, me sitting at a beautiful wooden table in front of Hung Liu’s enormous mural, the same musicians improvising on their various instruments (now calling themselves The Thingamajigs Performance Group: Dylan Bowles on hand-built flutes, Edward Schocker playing glass bowls and two different Japanese wooden flutes (Hichiriki and Sho), Suki O’Kane on a big bass drum, Keith Evans projecting video images) along with Shinichi Iova-Koga of InkBoat performing his improvisational dance movements through the gallery.” Exchange on Stephen Ratcliffe’s Poetry and Thinking Part III
Northern California Gagaku Group was formed in 2009 under the direction of Rev. Dr. David Masumoto, resident minister of the Berkeley Buddhist Temple and Director of Contemporary Buddhist Studies at Berkeley’s Institute of Buddhist Studies. The group includes former students of Master Gagaku Musician Togi Sensei and former members of Los Angeles’ Kinnara Gagaku. The group brings together gagaku musicians who have studied the music both in Japan and here in California. NCGG’s mission is to keep the thousand-year old music of gagaku alive via ongoing practice sessions, workshops, and performances of gagaku at public, cultural, and religious events.
Soo Yeon Lyuh is a haegeum (Korean two-string fiddle) player, composer and improviser currently based in the Bay Area. Lyuh is known for her masterful performances of new compositions for the haegeum. Rigorously trained in court and folk repertories, she is also deeply invested in exploring new musical possibilities. She was recently announced as a 2017 composer for Kronos Quartet’s, “50 for the Future” project. In Korea, she served as a member of the National Gugak Center’s new music troupe for 12 years and has performed in festivals and venues all over the world, including Bang on a Can (Mass MoCA), Isang Yun Music Festival (North Korea), Thingamajigs Pacific Exchange (San Francisco), Büyükşehir Belediyesi Sanat ve Kültür Sarayı(Turkey), Siri Fort Auditorium(India) and the Seoul Arts Center. From 2015-2016, she was a visiting scholar at Center for Korean Studies,
UC Berkeley. Currently she is a Scholar-in-Residence at Mills College.
The instrument evolves. It may be split into three instruments, an octave plus of chromatic bells, additional bundt pans, and two racks which can each hold four gongs. These could then be played by a trio.
Leon Schneiderman began building instruments in the 70’s with an aluminum Gamelan and a West African Balafon ensemble for the theater group Mystic Knight of the Oingo Boingo.
In 1984 Willie Winant was at Leon’s studio and noticed an unfinished sound sculpture which became "The Pink Butt", part of Willie’s percussion setup for David Rosenboom’s percussion/ computer piece Zones Of Influence. The "Butt" was recently restored for David’s retrospective at the opening of the new Whitney Museum. Leon built a number of instruments for Willie over the years and has done restorative work on Lou Harrison’s "The American Gamelan" at Mills College and the "Old Grandad Gamelan" at UCSC.
The metallaphone being played started with cutting fire extinguishers long ago. Decades later a collection of bundt pans yielded a group of relatively in-tune notes. The stainless discs, reminiscent of gongs, were originally bought as scrap intended for an outdoor sculpture. They ended up getting tuned, and resonators were added to amplify the fundamental.
Piece: "Sounding Monterey Canyon"
Euphotic’s three soundmakers unite as one vibrational bathysphere to transport listeners to these unfathomable depths. Sounding Monterey Canyon proceeds from the natural world of Cheryl’s sounds, crafts a vehicle for exploration with Bryan’s instruments that marry human ingenuity and physical forces, eventually plunging into the abyss, via Tom’s electronic imagineering.
Elegy for the Victims of Gun Violence :
I Alarm
II Dirge
III Wake
Bardo (Sound Between Lives)
I The Heavenly Garden
II The River of Terror
III The War Against Death
IV The Victory of Breath
