The Pacific Exchange 2012 March 17, 2012

The Pacific Exchange brings composers and performers from diverse areas of the Pacific Rim together in order to exchange ideas and create music on a shared concert stage. Thingamajigs created this event to emphasize the commonalities of artists living on the Pacific Rim, as well as to showcase their diversity. We ask artists, ‘what does the Pacific Rim mean to you and how does it affect your music’. Thingamajigs, with composers and performers from Seattle, Tokyo, and Los Angeles, will host concerts, workshops, and demonstrations to foster an exchange of ideas with the local community.

Along with our Pacific Exchange concert at the Meridian Gallery, Thingamajigs will be in residence at the Oakland Museum of California for three weeks to offer interactive concerts of music created with objects from the museum’s collection. These reinterpretations of objects into performance will stimulate innovation and creativity for all ages.

Artists and groups involved in this year’s Pacific Exchange events include Paul Kikuchi (Seattle) and Tide Tables, Tatsuya Nakatani (Japan), Paul Stapleton (L.A.), Gretchen Jude (Oakland) and the Thingamajigs Performance Group (Oakland). Please see artist biographies and schedule below.

For over five years The Pacific Exchange concerts have exhibited the music of composers from diverse Pacific regions such as Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada and the United States.
The Pacific Exchange 2012 is supported in part by the Alameda County Arts Commission, New Music USA's MetLife Creative Connections program, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and generous contributions from individual and corporate donors.

Event Schedule:
Sunday, March 11th noon-3pm: Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St.
Oakland, CA 94607 (Free with Museum admission). Artists include Thingamajigs Performance Group and Paul Stapleton.
Friday, March 17th, 8pm: Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell Street San Francisco, CA 94108 ($10-$15 sliding scale). Artists include Thingamajigs Performance Group, Paul Kikuchi and Tatsuya Nakatani.
Sunday, March 18th noon-3pm: Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St.
Oakland, CA 94607 (Free with Museum admission). Artists include Thingamajigs Performance Group, Tatsuya Nakatani and Paul Kikuchi.
Sunday, March 25th noon-3pm: Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St.
Oakland, CA 94607 (Free with Museum admission). Artists include Thingamajigs Performance Group and Gretchen Jude.

Artists involved:

Paul Kikuchi is a percussionist, composer, sound artist, and educator from Seattle, WA. Paul is involved in a wide variety of musical projects, from percussion ensembles to jazz quartets, as well as his own groups that feature his compositions and invented instruments. He is a founding member of the acclaimed Empty Cage Quartet, an ensemble has toured extensively and released seven albums since 2002. Kikuchi’s recent work has emphasized performances and recordings in site-specific locations such as train tunnels, cisterns, and nuclear cooling towers. He actively performs internationally and his recorded music can be heard on a number of record labels both in the US and abroad. Paul is the founder and artistic director of Prefecture Records, an organization that supports contemporary music through performance, documentation, and education.

Paul’s work as a musician and composer has been recognized and supported by Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, 4 culture, Artist Trust, Earshot Jazz, Chamber Music America, the American Composer’s Forum, the Jack Straw Foundation, and the Montalvo Center for the Arts, among others. He has been featured in publications such as the Earshot Jazz Magazine and the International Examiner. www.paulkikuchi.com

Tide Tables is the duo project of Seattle musician Paul Kikuchi and SF Bay Area musician Alex Vittum. Kikuchi and Vittum’s collaboration began while studying together under percussionist Milford Graves in the late 1990’s. They have continued to work together in the ten plus years since, exploring their mutual interest in percussion, composition, instrument building, and sound art. Tide Tables creates music that defies categorization utilizing a wide variety of sound making devices including conventional percussion, modular synthesis, and found and invented instruments.

Tatsuya Nakatani is originally from Osaka, Japan. In 2006 he performed in 80 cities in 7 countries and collaborated with 163 artists worldwide. He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. He utilizes drumset, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects, bells, and various sticks and bows to create an intense, organic music that defies category or genre. His music is based in improvised/ experimental music, jazz, free jazz, rock, and noise, yet retains the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music.
He was selected as a performing artist for the Pennsylvania Performing Artist on Tour (PennPat) roster as well as a Bronx Arts Council Individual Artist grant. http://www.hhproduction.org/TATSUYA_NAKATANI_WORKS.html

PAUL STAPLETON is a sound artist, improviser and writer originally from Southern California. Paul designs and performs with a variety of modular metallic sound sculptures, custom made electronics, found objects and electric guitars in locations ranging from experimental music clubs in Berlin to remote beaches on Vancouver Island. He is currently involved in a diverse range of artistic collaborations including: performance duo ABODE with vocalist Caroline Pugh, interdisciplinary performance group theybreakinpieces with Nick Williams and Mona McCarthy, improvisation duo with saxophonist Simon Rose, networked installation design with Tom Davis, Eric Lyon's Noise Quartet, and the DIY improvisation quartet E=MCH. Since 2007, Paul has been lecturing at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Queen’s University Belfast), where he teaches and supervises MA & PhD research in performance technologies, interaction design and site-specific art. http://soundcloud.com/paul-stapleton

Gretchen Jude has studied a variety of performance practices with teachers in Japan, Idaho, and the Bay Area. As a koto player and vocalist she has improvised, done performance art and sung/played classical, traditional, experimental, acoustic & electronic/computer music around the U.S. and Japan, appearing with artists such as Willie Winant, Lona Kozik and Ellen Fullman, in new works by composers like Christian Wolff, Hugh Livingston and Edward Schocker. In addition, she has played/composed music for dance works by Linda K. Johnson, Peiling Kao, Shinichi Iova-Koga's inkBoat and many others.

Gretchen has an MFA in Electronic Music & Recording Media (with the Donna Peterson Vocal Prize) from Mills College, as well as an intermediate koto certificate (with distinction) from the Sawai Koto Institute in Tokyo. She currently teaches music technology at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

The Thingamajigs Performance Group emerged from the long-term collaborations from the individual artists that now make up its ensemble members. Using unusual musical instruments, TPG combines traditional Eastern sensibilities with modern American technologies and performance practices. Creating pieces in a group collaborative process that sometimes incorporate voice and multimedia elements, this ensemble of musicians expands and contracts within each performance situation.

Since 2006 Thingamajigs have been collaborating with poet Stephen Ratcliffe to create long-scale multimedia works, each based on 1,000 of Stephen’s poems. Each work is approximately 14-hours in duration. TPG’s works and collaborations have been premiered at Headlands Center for the Arts, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, Oakland Museum and UC Davis. http://www.thingamajigs.org/programs/TPG.html

History and Mission Statement:

Thingamajigs is a genre-crossing arts organization that promotes, presents and performs music created with made and found materials or alternate tuning systems. Since 1997 we have presented world premiere works and performances by over 100 local, national and international artists. Known for our adventurous and genre-crossing programs, many of our artists have gained international recognition, including two MacArthur Fellows, Gerbode Foundation's Emerging Composers Awardees, and a McKnight Composer Fellow, to name a few.

Thingamajigs began in 1997 at Mills College. Originally conceived as a forum for composers/performers who develop new and unique ways of producing sound, it soon broke out of the college environment and into a large public offering. As of 2004 a permanent board of was created, by which many events in addition to the Annual Music for People & Thingamajigs Festival are produced. In addition to our annual festival Thingamajigs offers a variety of arts, educational, and cross-cultural events such as The Pacific Exchange Series, Thingama-kids!, and various artist exchange programs.

Our mission is to develop and nurture the exploration of alternate materials and methods of creating sound, as well as promote collaborative efforts within other artistic disciplines not generally associated with festivals of music. With open workshops and performances, we welcome audiences/participants of all ages and backgrounds to join in a wonderful tradition started here in the Bay Area by such composers as Henry Cowell, Harry Partch, Lou Harrison, and John Cage.

Official Website: http://www.thingamajigs.org