E. Doctor Smith's Blog

Plus Lords of the Outland As a composer Vinny Golia fuses the rich heritage of Jazz, contemporary classical and world music into his own unique compositions. Also a bandleader, Golia has presented his music to concert audiences in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United States in ensembles varying dramatically in size and instrumentation. Mr. Golia has won numerous awards as a composer, including grants from The National Endowment of the Arts, The Lila Wallace Commissioning Program, The California Arts Council, Meet the Composer,Clausen Foundation of the Arts, Funds for U.S. Artists and the American Composers Forum. In 1982 he created the on-going 50 piece Vinny Golia Large Ensemble to perform his compositions for chamber orchestra and jazz ensembles. The Saturday night, Golia and his trio, featuring Garth Powell on drums/percussion and Matthew Goodheart piano perform at the CMC on Capp Street, as well as the Lords of the Outland. A multi-woodw...

The Old Friends Festival (OFF) highlights the best of the 1990's Bay Area creative music scene with a power packed line-up featuring: the Rova Saxophone Quartet playing a Tribute to Bay Area tenor saxophone great Glenn Spearman, local legend Ralph Carney, Pluto, Pamela Z, Gino Robair's Improvcore Orchestra 3000, Dan Plonsey’s New Monsters, and a re-union of the avant jazz group The Manufacturing of Humidifiers, all in two action-packed nights. Curated by Steve Horowitz ("Super Size Me" and so much more) & part of the Berkeley Arts Festival, the OFF takes place on Friday, December 9th, and Saturday, December 10th, 8pm both nights. Admission is sliding scale, suggested donation $10-20. The Berkeley Arts Festival space is located at 2133 University Avenue, just of f the corner of Shattuck, in beautiful Downtown Berkeley. The OFF features a wide array of musicians and bands from the heyday of the Bay Area creative music scene of the 1990's. For those of you who we...

Plus John Moremen's "Flotation Device" Producer, singer and songwriter Allen Clapp, the resident genius behind the pop enclave known as Mystery Lawn Records in Sunnyvale, is back, perhaps with his greatest effort to date. Clapp and his lovely partner in crime, bassist Jill Pries have culled the very best minds and musicians in the Mystery Lawn garden shed to flesh out Clapp's latest pop opus, "Mixed Greens". Armed with members of his own "Orange Peels", "The Corner Laughers", William Clere and a host of others to harvest and grow some of the best crops to ever spring from the mind of Clapp, and a very rich and verdant mind it is. Readers of Beyond Chron will know that I have shown a predilection towards instrumental music, so when Clapp sent me Mixed Greens, I was blown away by the opening cut, "Picnic at the Hermitage", a gorgeous pop dirge that was frankly like nothing I'd ever heard from him before. Reminiscent of Clapp...