E. Doctor Smith's Blog

For their first "instrumentation-themed evenings" of 2012, the ROOM Series puts "three entities of the low-end reed persuasion in the room together", tonight at the Royce Gallery. ROVA founding member Jon Raskin, LA-based new music clarinetist Marty Walker, and the Bay Area's own bass clarinet duo Sqwonk. Later, the composer/performer and media artist Pamela Z will join them, "adding some real-time Low Reed processing and some fragments of voice and samples here and there throughout the evening, and a grand finale of Low Reeds and Vox & Circuitry to close the evening..." Since 2006, Pamela Z has been presenting an avant chambre music series called ROOM that takes place in the the Royce Gallery, an intimate performance gallery in San Francisco's North East Mission Industrial Zone (NEMIZ), where she hosts evenings featuring a variety of virtuosic, solo artists and chamber groups playing experimental music (including composed music of their own, t...

Coming up on April 7th, The Jazz School in Berkeley will host "A collective trio", featuring alto saxophonist Jacob Zimmerman, bassist Kim Cass, and drummer Sam Ospovat, otherwise known as "Anteater". Over the past two years the group has developed a unique, cold-blooded and loose approach to a diverse repertoire of rhythmically complex original music. This concert celebrates the release of Anteater’s self-titled debut album, which is scheduled to be included as part of NASA’s KEO space time-capsule project. Originally from Seattle, alto saxophonist and composer Zimmerman is an active member of the thriving Bay Area creative-music community. Zimmerman studied music at the renowned Garfield High School in Seattle, the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and Mills College in Oakland. His teachers have included Roscoe Mitchell, Jerry Bergonzi, Joe Morris, Anthony Coleman, James Fei and Allan Chase. In addition to giving local performances with his own groups (...

The Jazz Heritage Center (JHC) will host the first exhibit selected from the book Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club (Indiana University Press) by photographer and writer Kathy Sloane. The exhibit will launch with an opening reception on March 17 from 4-6 PM in JHC's Koret Heritage Lobby, 1330 Fillmore Street in the Yoshi's building. The exhibit will run through April 29. Books will be available for purchase and signing at the opening reception on March 17. The photographs document the eleven-year run of San Francisco's historically significant jazz spot, which ran from 1972 to 1983. At a time when jazz venues were closing under the onslaught of rock and roll and disco, Keystone Korner was one of the few clubs nationally that survived and brought some of the greatest jazz musicians of all times to San Francisco. City Lights Books launched this book in the Fall of 2011, to a crowd of more than 250 people, and New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center host...

Back in 2000, I had the pleasure of working with the legendary guitarist Ronnie Montrose at Northern Virginia's State Theater. I was no stranger to Ronnie's music; from his stint with Van Morrison to his work with the late, great drummer Tony Williams. As the show progressed, I found myself mesmerized by his elegant musicianship, fluid playing and incendiary style. At one point during the show, I was so enthralled that I forgot to turn up one of his guitars between songs. Ronnie whispered into the microphone and said with a smile, "Oh Doc?…" In a flash, I faded him up and once again bathed the theater in his gorgeous tones. Ronnie was a gentleman, an inspiration and one of the greatest guitarists to ever come from San Francisco. Much has been written about Ronnie since his passing; his website informed fans with a brief synopsis of Ronnie's last few months... "A few months ago, we held a surprise party for Ronnie Montrose's 64th birthday. He gave an impro...