Tag Archives: Freight & Salvage
On Veterans’ Day, a Berkeley concert to support soldiers
Tonight, on Veterans’ Day, a concert at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage, organized by Berkeley resident Nell Robinson, offers the opportunity to enjoy great music while helping a non-profit which provides support for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, service members and their families.
Nell Robinson’s annual Soldier Stories Benefit Concert includes an art/photography exhibit, an art workshop and a live and silent auction.
Nell Robinson will be joined by musicians Jim Nunally, Joe Craven, Keith Little and Chuck Ervin for an evening of Americana string band music reflecting soldier stories from before the American Revolution to the current day, with a guest appearance by the Soldier Band (musician-veterans). … Continue reading »
Out in Berkeley: George Brooks and Global Harmony
Click on this link to listen to “Better Than Coffee” from the album ‘Elements” while you read our review.
Over the past three decades Berkeley tenor saxophonist George Brooks has carved a singular musical niche through his collaborations with the some of classical Indian music’s most celebrated artists. His latest project, Global Harmony, expands on his Indo-jazz vision by incorporating rhythms and cadences from North Africa and the Middle East.
Performing Sunday at Freight & Salvage, Global Harmony is an improvisational supergroup that brings together a far-flung collection of masters. From New York there’s Glen Velez, a pioneering frame drum maestro, and vocalist Lori Cotler, who has honed a jazz-laced approach informed by South Indian vocal percussion (konnakol). Hailing from South India are Toronto-based mridangam virtuoso Trichy Sankaran, a superlative accompanist and scholar steeped in the Pudukkottai school of percussion, and Chennai’s Ravikiran on the 21-string fretless lute, or chitravina.
“It’s one of these situations where people are situated in different parts of the planet, and due to wonders of technology we’re able to share music, email MP3s, and think about what each person has been doing,” says Brooks from his West Berkeley studio. “Two weeks ago, Ravikiran was in the South Bay so we had a rehearsal with just the two of us. He’s a composer who also writes for orchestra, and his sense of composition and form are flexible and adventurous, so when I show him one of my compositions, he can think about it as a baseline for improvisation.” … Continue reading »
The It List: Oakland Gospel Choir, pianist Michael Wolff
In the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, the glorious harmonies on stage flow directly from the harmonious vibe off the bandstand.
Maintaining smooth sailing in any creative endeavor involving 55 people is no easy feat.
After a quarter century, however, the ensemble has learned a little something about coexistence and how to gracefully elide fundamental differences. A shared sense of devotion to the spiritually charged African-American art form is the force that seamlessly melds a multi-generational cast representing an array of races, religions and creeds.
A few ground rules help too.
“We agree to disagree on things. It sounds easy, but it’s not,” says the choir’s founding director, Terrance Kelly, who leads the ensemble Sunday at Freight & Salvage in a concert celebrating release of the “Hear My Prayer,” the OIGC’s fifth album. … Continue reading »
Nell Robinson: A little bit of Berkeley bluegrass
When Hilary Perkins was trying to think of what she could give to her husband as a 5th wedding anniversary present, she was stumped. Her spouse, Skip Battle, was an extremely successful businessman who had almost anything he could want, so no simple trinket would do.
Perkins decided she would sing him a song, even though she was so unsure of her voice she generally only sang out loud in her car. She selected the song “Forever & Ever, Amen,” by Randy Travis and belted it out in front of the group of friends who had gathered for the occasion.
“You have never seen Skip Battle look more shocked and surprised,” said Perkins. “He was floored. He loved it and got up and finished it with me.”
Perkins was even more surprised than Battle. While she had been terrified before her performance began, once she was on stage she found herself having more fun than she had had in years. … Continue reading »
Junius Courtney Big Band: Spirited in the right ways
When an ensemble keeps performing after the death of its namesake leader, it’s known as a ghost band. Though descriptive rather than pejorative, the term often carries a whiff of the dismissive, as if a musical legacy should be interred with its creator (things work differently in the world of dance, where no one seems interested in tossing dirt on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater).
The Junius Courtney Big Band might be a ghost orchestra, but it’s spirited … Continue reading »
Out in Berkeley: Phillip Greenlief’s Lost Trio, and more
Few bands in jazz find musical pay dirt as consistently as Phillip Greenlief’s Lost Trio.
Launched about 17 years ago with bassist Dan Seamans and drummer Tom Hassett, the group brings the same gruff, unfussy eloquence to tunes by Hank Williams and Herbie Nichols, Billy Strayhorn and Nino Rota, Irving Berlin and Joni Mitchell, Beck and Bjork.
While focusing more on original material these days, Greenlief launched the stripped-down ensemble as a vehicle to investigate material outside the standard jazz repertoire, whether the source was Tin Pan Alley, Nashville, or Iceland. It’s a loose-limbed combo marked by an off-the-cuff poetic sensibility, full of earthy humor and soaring lyricism.
“The challenge is how can we arrange these tunes in a way that’s interesting,” Greenlief says. “That’s what we’ve really been trying to work on the last couple of years, to get past convention of head, sax solo, bass solo, out. It seems like because of our repertoire we’ve somehow developed a sound that’s unique, if that’s possible in this music.”
Performing Friday night as part of the Berkeley Arts Festival, the Lost Trio celebrates the release of the group’s fifth album, “Mysterious Toboggan,” on Greenlief’s invaluable label Evander Music. A stellar cast of improvisers will be joining the trio throughout the evening, including Santa Cruz-raised, Brooklyn-based vocalist Sasha Dobson, Nice Guy Trio trumpeter Darren Johnston, Berkeley guitar explorer John Schott, invaluable reed expert Cory Wright, and electronics wizard Tim Perkis. … Continue reading »
Old Freight & Salvage building to become a yoga studio
Citizen reporter and self-described “construction spy” Sandy Friedland sends us this photo of the former Freight & Salvage space at 1111 Addison Street, and says a fencing, yoga and dance studio is on its way. “EDA January, 2012.”
Out in Berkeley: Jessica Jones and Mark Taylor
By Andrew Gilbert
In the mid-1970s, Berkeley High was brimming with so many ambitious and talented jazz musicians that Peter Apfelbaum launched his stylistically expansive 17-piece Hieroglyphics Ensemble by drawing on the ranks of his fellow students.
Saxophonist Jessica Fuchs Jones was part of that ferociously creative scene, and since her start with the Hieroglyphics she’s continued to develop into a staggeringly accomplished improviser. Versed in various free-jazz idioms through her work with jazz giants like Joseph Jarmen, Cecil Taylor and Don Cherry, she’s also fluent in tightly structured postbop styles and various Afro-Caribbean rhythmic systems.
Since the late 1990s Jones has been based in Brooklyn with her husband and co-bandleader, saxophonist and fellow Berkeley High alum Tony Jones. For her appearance Saturday at Freight & Salvage however she’s performing with French horn master Mark Taylor, a longtime collaborator who played on her excellent albums “Nod” and “Word” (both on New Artist Records). … Continue reading »
Julian Lage delights listeners at Freight and Salvage
Julian Lage reacts to a smooth guitar lick the way a father stares at a newborn child. There’s a pleasure and grace about his stage presence that cannot be mistaken. An intimate Friday night jazz show at Berkeley’s Freight and Salvage proved this.
Lage, a former child prodigy who first performed publicly at age 6, has been called a virtuoso. The 23-year-old guitarist displayed his skill that night, moving his hand up and down every fret of his guitar effortlessly.
He was humble and appreciative, pausing between songs to speak softly to the audience, praising them for sharing an evening with the band.
“We’re absolutely thrilled to be here,” Lage said during the show. “You know, we talk about it in the band that we just don’t take any of this for granted – not a second of it. To be able to just plug in and play music, let alone have a great audience is pretty phenomenal.” … Continue reading »
Berkeley does comedy, goes beyond hipsters and dudes
By Diana Arbas
It’s LGBT Pride Month, and downtown Berkeley’s coming out with a sense of humor.
The first ever Berkeley Gay Comedy Festival kicks off at The Marsh Berkeley on Saturday, June 11, and every adult — regardless of sexual orientation or hairstyle — is invited.
“Too often when you go to comedy nights you’re just going to see a certain demographic, certain age group, kind of just young white dudes,” said the Festival’s founder, Marga Gomez. But this festival is geared to people who like thoughtful, progressive comedy, she said.
A nationally celebrated comedian herself, Gomez is the force behind The Marsh’s 2011 stand-up comedy programming. Inclusiveness has always been her mission.
“The kind of comedy that I think people are used to seeing is … kind of very slacker, it’s hipster and it’s a trend,” she said.
Gomez tries to break that trend. “I have always aimed to make it inclusive for women comics and men comics, comics of every sexual orientation, trans comics. I just want great comics. There’s nothing like our show in the East Bay and probably anywhere,” Gomez said. … Continue reading »
