The Alicia Mangan Quintet Comes to the Berkeley Arts Festival

Alicia Mangan is an amazing musical anomaly; an advanced, free-style and avant-garde tenor saxophonist from Southern California. In high-school, she won state-wide acclaim in classical competitions on alto saxophone. Later, she even played baritone with a Mexican band in SoCal, and traveled with them as far as Australia on tour. In the late '90s she found her true love on tenor sax and broke new ground in the creative sounds of free improv and creative music while living in the Bay Area.

Mangan is back in the Bay Area for a short visit and has gathered some of her colleagues from the time she lived and played here with Jim Ryan's "Forward Energy" group, and Marco Enedi's big bands. She's formed a quintet with Ryan that will play two sets at the Berkeley Arts Festival, next Monday, April 23rd, at 8:00 pm.


Mangan honed her chops in bebop, classical, and Latin based music, but opted for total dedication to the calling of avant-garde jazz. Her music is influenced by the exploratory methods used in the tradition forged by Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, and Charles Gayle. Much of her early straight-ahead experience was gained in southern California with the popular L.A. salsa group "Son Mayor" where she played baritone saxophone and in the music program at San Diego State where she studied jazz with pianist Rick Helzer. Mangan spent the next ten years in the San Francisco Bay area where she performed with Eddie Gale’s Orchestra for World Peace, Ryan’s "Forward Energy", and Eneidi’s "American Jungle Orchestra". Mangan has also worked with the late Peter Kowald, Karen Borca, Donald Robinson, Lisle Ellis, Sabu Toyozumi, Ijeoma Thomas, Bonnie Barnett, Wadada Leo Smith, and Spirit.

Some of her recent projects included tours with Ryan’s Forward Energy to Minneapolis, Chicago, Long Beach, L.A., San Diego, and Santa Barbara; participation as a soloist in a Santa Barbara avant-garde music series; performances Dana Reason-Meyers Parallel 66 series in Claremont CA; performing at Disney Hall’s Red Cat Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles as a duo with Lisle Ellis for EarJam, and performing as one of the six soloists at the Schindler House in a SASSAS presentation of Exquisite Corpse II.

Mangan's recordings include releases with L.A. Reeds, a CD of solos from Los Angeles reed players, as well as three albums with Jim Ryan's Forward Energy: "Configurations" (2002), "Concept" (2003), and "Where Are They?" (2004).

Her band for next Monday's concert will feature Mangan on tenor sax, as well as a stellar ensemble of label-mates from Edgetone Records, including Jim Ryan on sax/flute/trumpet, C.J. Borosque trumpet, and the one and only "Doctor Bob" Marsh on contra bass.

The Alicia Mangan Quintet
Monday 4/23/12 8:00PM
The Berkeley Arts Festival
2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA
Tickets $8-$10

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Building Bill Bruford's Symmetrical Tama Kit

Image
In two of my previous blogs, I wrote about successfully restoring a Tama "Bill Bruford Signature Series Palette" snare drum , and then building a duplicate version wrapped in chrome . Although they looked and sounded great, I thought about completing this project by adding a kit to go with it. Now I suppose I could always could buy a Tama Starclassic kit, and use the snares I built, but where is the fun in that? Bruford's Signature snare drum had all black Tama lugs, just like his Tama kit with King Crimson. That particular kit was a Canary Yellow Tama with deep power toms. Bruford would reappear with a another version of that yellow kit at the 1999 Modern Drummer Festival alongside his all acoustic Earthworks band. That kit also had black lugs, and featured an 18" kick drum, 16", 13", 12" and 10" toms. That kit appeared to be a rarity, perhaps even custom-made for Bruford. I've never seen another Tama kit that matched it. If I could gather
Read more

Building the Phil Collins Gretsch Kit - Part One

Image
Back in 2017, I managed to acquire a dozen of the revolutionary new wireless Versatriggers from Poland; Battery powered drum triggers you can mount inside a drum shell. Replace the acoustic drum head with a mesh head and you have yourself a v-drum. I first tried out the Versatrigger on an old Viking snare I'd converted previously with an internal Pintech trigger, and a Remo Silent Stroke mesh head. After connecting the Versatrigger wireless USB hub to my MacBook Air, I was able to tweak the sensitivity and trigger the drum surprisingly well. I also learned I needed to be able to access the trigger for adjustments and battery replacement, so double headed toms weren't practical. The kick and snare are easy enough to cut out a round hole in the bottom head, but the toms would have to be easy to access as well. A modest kit with concert toms would work perfectly. I didn't want to build just another small v-drum kit of virtually identical trigger pads either, so when
Read more

Building the Bill Bruford Signature Snare - Part One

Image
Bill Bruford's "rimshot" is one of the most unique and exquisite snare drum sounds ever heard. From his earlier days on his 14"x 5.5" Ludwig Supraphonic Super-Sensitive snare with Yes, to his brass 14" x 6.5" Tama Big Beat snare with King Crimson, Bruford's crisp rolls and sticking technique were a thing of beauty and a joy to behold.  In his later years, Bruford moved away from the metal snare drums of rock, to the jazzier sound of the all-maple 14"x 6.5" Tama Starclassic snare drum with his all-acoustic group Earthworks.  It was during that era that Tama offered the "Bill Bruford Signature Palette Series" snare drum, a customized, 6 ply Starclassic; 2 ply Maple, 2 ply Birch and 2 ply Maple. It was also outfitted with all black hardware; lugs, hoops, strainer and a custom "Black Metallic Sand Blasted" finish, with Bill Bruford's personally autographed and numbered decal. Listing for around $650, the snare quic
Read more