Jeff Younger w/ Guthrie & Streb November 11, 2006

Blim and Jeff Younger present:
Jeff Younger w/ Guthrie & Streb

Jeff Younger's Devil Loops returns to the Blim environment. The Vancouver guitarist/composer brings an improviser's fingers, a composers brain, and a dark thirst for the abstract, the beautiful, the entirely improvised and the entirely disconcerting. be afraid, be very afraid.

Guthrie & Streb, a progressive viola and cello duo, plays Bilm on November 11th. The Los Angeles based duo will be performing original works by living composers from jazz as well as classical backgrounds. Guthrie and Streb will round off the evening with an improvisation set with local sound artist Jeff Younger.

Guthrie & Streb is a Los Angeles based cello and viola duo, which began in the spring of 2005. Cellist April Guthrie and violist Cassia Streb launched the duo with a concert series in October 2005 where they premiered over 20 new compositions written for the series.

Guthrie & Streb decided to continue on this path to creating a musical community where musicians, in all of their capacities, performance, composition, improvisation and electronics etc, would encourage one another to innovate and help them realize their ideas. The duo continues to commission new works. They have also begun a community initiative by performing at local high schools. The duo collaborates with other chamber ensembles to access a larger repertoire, which extends to the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, Javanese Gamelan Kyai Dorodasih, and other LA based chamber groups. Recently, the duo traveled to Germany to attend and perform as part of the Darmstadt International New Music Festival.

April Guthrie recently completed her Master's Degree in multi-focus cello performance at the California Institute of the Arts. This Kansas City native received her BA in cello performance and environmental studies at Illinois Wesleyan University. During her studies at IWU she began working with Mario Pelusi and David Vayo in the realm of new music interpretation and performance, and also began her work directly with composers—Libby Larson, Mario Lavista, and Louis Andriessen (“La voce”). She has studied cello with Ludemilda Lupatcheva, Dr. Nina Gordon, and currently studies with Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick of the California EAR Unit.

More recently, she founded a sextet with five vocalists, and in March of 2006 they performed the North American premiere of Greek composer George Aperghis' “Sextour: L'origine des espèces.” In May of this year Ms. Guthrie organized a retrospective concert of the work of American composer Earle Brown with friends and colleagues of the late Mr. Brown performing. This concert—in collaboration with The Earle Brown Foundation—included a publication with writings by Michael Pisaro, Christian Wolff, Joan LaBarbara, Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, Dorothy Stone, Art Jarvinen and many others. Her musical style is also being influenced by studies with the renowned Javanese composer Djoko Walujo WP—with whom she studies rebab and performs with in the Kyai Dorodasih Gamelan on both cello and Javanese gamelan instruments.

Cassia Streb is a violist, improviser and composer from Vancouver, Canada. She is very active in the field of contemporary and experimental music and performs regularly as a soloist as well as a chamber musician. In this area of her music, she works with Christian Wolff, James Tenney and Michael Pisaro. Cassia is involved in a range of styles of music. She performs with the Kyai Dorodasih Javanese Gamelan Ensemble (“Venerable dream come true”) and the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble. Cassia collaborates with many artists through improvisation. This extends to electronics, western classical instruments, theatre and film. She studies improvisation with Vinny Golia and experimental notation interpretation with Wadada Leo Smith.

As a supporter of new compositions, she has commissioned and performed a large number of works by established and emerging composers. She has worked closely with a range of artists including Jurg Frey, John Zorn, Mort Subotnik, Mark Trayle, David Rosenboom, Radu Malfatti and members of the California EAR Unit. Cassia holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Victoria and she recently completed her Masters' at the California Institute of the Arts where she studied with Mark Menzies and Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick.

Official Website: http://www.guthrieandstreb.com/