shared grief, shared rage : katrina benefit/protest concert September 12, 2005

Shared grief, shared rage

A musical benefit/protest in solidarity with the victims of Hurricane Katrina. All proceeds go directly to grassroots relief efforts. Promises to be a night of intense sound and energy.

Music from:
jack wright - solo sax (philadelphia)
john berndt+joseph hammer - sax/tape loops (baltimore/l.a.)
the cutest puppy in the world - space/noise duo (d.c.)
the picture is dead - electronic/vocal quartet (d.c.)
(scroll down for performer bios)

Renowned DC activist Damu Smith is scheduled to speak.

Survivors of Hurricane Katrina, currently housed in the D.C. Armory, are scheduled to attend and to share their stories. (This is subject to conditions there which are currently beyond most people?s control...)

Monday, September 12 - 7:00 p.m.
Cafe Mawonaj - 624 T St. NW (T and Florida - 2 blocks from the Shaw/Howard U. station on the green line)
food and drink available - plan to have dinner!!!
$10 suggested donation (no one turned away)

All proceeds will benefit efforts organized by Cafe Mawonaj to provide direct assistance to hurricane victims, including a supply convoy from DC to New Orleans.

9/11 offered this country an opportunity to address some very difficult issues about the way we live our lives, and we took it and ran with it in the wrong direction. Please come and this time let?s build energy towards reflecting, healing, and moving forward together in a positive way.

This event is part of a National Day of Solidarity calling for Justice for the Victims of Hurricane Katrina.

===================
===================

"Longtime activist DAMU SMITH has fought war and racism for decades. He is a pillar of the peace and anti-racism movements in the United States. He founded Black Voices for Peace and the National Black Environmental Justice Network. He hosts the program Spirit in Action on Pacifica station WPFW. He was a key leader in the anti-Apartheid movement and has fought police brutality in Washington, DC and around the country." (from the Democracy Now! website)

===================

JACK WRIGHT has been a bold saxophonist, as well as an influential musical personality over the past twenty-five years. Either on tour or organizing the next one, he has played in virtually every venue available to experimental improvised music in the US, and many in Europe as well. In 1982 he began Spring Garden Music, as a vehicle for organizing an improvisational music community, which continues to grow through regular No Net weekend sessions. He has been called the Johnny Appleseed of free improvisation for his encouragement to young players. As a musical explorer as well, his music passes through radical shifts of style and approach from one year to the next, yet always somehow identifiable as his own. These days he is playing alto, tenor and soprano saxophones, in every possible direction, sometimes even recognizable. He lives in Easton PA, which enables him to commute easily to NYC and Phila.

The Washington Post says, "In the rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is king".
Jack has over sixty partners around the US and in Europe with whom he plays on his travels and records. His most recent tours have been with people few have heard of: French soprano sax player Michel Doneda and NYC percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani in France and the US; cellist Bob Marsh of the Bay area; Michael Griener percussion and Sabine Vogel flute of Berlin; Reuben Radding, NYC bassist; Phil Durrant, English laptop musician; trumpet player Tom Djll from Oakland and soprano sax player Bhob Rainey.

For a full bio, writings, sound files and list of recordings visit his website: www.springgardenmusic.com

2001 interview with John Berndt: www.redroom.org/documentation/wright.html

===================

JOHN BERNDT improvises on reeds, electronics, and inventions. He is an organizer of Baltimore's annual world-renowned improvised music festival High Zero. He uses this space to say: "I am against reductionism not on moral grounds, but because it obviously falsifies the evidence--all the reductionisms are full of holes cognitively. A resistance to self-righteousness and ideology follows. I find our actual experience (including self-hood), on close inspection, to be stranger and more compelling than anything that we can conceive via fantasy. A robust sense of possibility goes a long way for me. The fact that we may be 'rushing to our doom' as a civilization, and that people apparently need comforting belief they know to be false to contend with life even without these palpable threats is very strange; both aspects suggest deep problems with sentience. At the same time, I'm glad that empathy exists as a profound change from business-as-usual reality, as well a potential point of departure for a different way of doing things."

===================

Perhaps the only living musicians whose musical instrument is simply the Cross-Fade, low-fi tape-loop manipulator JOSEPH HAMMER is a legendary member of the eerie entity known as L.A.F.M.S. (the Los Angeles Free Music Society) and a living, breathing ball of sensibility. Wearing a white cotton glove, Hammer subliminally "gooses" the position of his well-worn circular recording media in and out of proximity to the fields of oscillating magnetism. This interface, in combination with his fevered imagination, acts as a kind of Dali-esque-soft-cheese-grater to his sentimental musical source material, revealing or creating a psychiatrist's bedside drawer of crawling sonic subtexts through a process that can only be considered SOUND CELL GRAFTING. Hammer is also a co-founder of many influential and cryptic groups, including Dinosaurs with Horns, Points of Friction, Steaming Coils, and the active unit Solid Eye--none of whom really sound like anything else.

===================

THE CUTEST PUPPY IN THE WORLD tears it all up and throws it all away. Sometimes we even try to put it back together again. We explore saturated space, emergent forms, improvisational ethics of interaction. We sound like folk music with broken strings, jazz on a tambourine, trance in a burned-out basement. We are a DC/Baltimore-based improv duo consisting of Layne Garrett (guitar, bass clarinet, found objects) and Bryan Rhodes (keyboards). To listen, visit http://www.myspace.com/thecutestpuppyintheworld.

===================

THE PICTURE IS DEAD uses circuit bent electronics and vocal madness to create melancholy, semi-melodic tunes. The group is based in DC and features Bryan Cornell on bent things and circuitry, Sam Serafy on vocal
narration and singing, PatrickTimony on pedals, synths, guitars and James Wolf (From Quagmire) on violin. We have played on both lawns and in dark rooms. In particular, our activities in the past year have
included performances at the Black Cat, The Warehouse Next Door, the Galaxy Hut, George Washington University and the Art-O-Matic arts festival in the past year.

===================
questions? email sept12@questionthetruth.com.