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For three years The Brothers Grimm have been heading the experimental music series “Tea & Improv” at Dobra Tea. Sadly, Dobra will close it’s doors this January, 2014. We’ll have one last show on Thursday 1/9 as a way to say thanks to all who have worked/come out to enjoy these events since 2011. DB, BC, & Eric will all perform short solo sets, as well as improvise together.
It can be difficult to find a welcoming platform for experimental & improvised music. Dobra has been our enthusiastic home base for much of this Madison experience. It has not simply been “a venue”, but a meeting place of disciplined philosophies, where music & tearoom perfectly alight in purpose – to have conversation. In a vibrant, hue-struck room with no internet or to-go options, the result is meaningful discussion with close friends. It was never the intent of our music to overpower the space (& people in it) to a hush, but rather to be another conversation & accept all happening sounds as music/inspiration. 3..2..1.. Now! ~ All conversation is improvisation. We fuel off the energy you give us and channel it back, vibrating the air. No sound is excluded from this Cageian discourse ~ kettle boils, clayware scrapes, somewhere a laugh, all is music.
Perhaps the most important element of performance in Dobra has been a public space for unknowing teagoers to encounter “avant-garde”//”difficult-edgy-freaky-‘nonmusic’music-skronky-improvised-noise…stuff”. We’re thankful for situations where people may come/go at any moment, have lively chit-chats, not feel they have to be classically-stuffy/know-the-rules, & happen upon experimental music over the flowing cup. Hearing such racketous free-for-all (beautiful to some…) on a record, coming at you through the speakers can be challenging for unpracticed ears – but having that be a live experience and seeing that the musician performing extended techniques is another breathing, sweating, emoting, human being that is trying to communicate something to you – is when this music becomes immediate & relateable. The more you as an audience give of your energy/vibes – the better the conversation is.
We’ve released a couple of albums at Dobra, including: Moonish Lodestar (2013) by Watercourse Quartet & Redolent Spires (2012) by The Borthers Grimm. Had wonderful performers such as: Watercourse Quartet w/ Ben Willis, Pat Reinholz (aka Weather Duo + Brothers Grimm); Lovely Socialite, db pedersen, Eric Miller, Thollem McDonas (aka Thollem Electric), Brian Tairaku Ritchie, Sult w/ Jacob Felix Heule, Guro Skumsnes Moe, Håvard Skaset; Timbre, Samuel Lockridge, Brother Stripes w/ Timothy Russell & Nick Zoulek; Prom Night Records w/ Brad Henkel, Nathaniel Morgan, & David Grollman; Dale Kaminski, Joey Molinaro, Zane Merritt, TJ Borden, Wrest Trio w/ Benjamin Bennett, Jack Wright, Evan Lipson; Stray Passage w/ Geoff Brady, Brennan Connors & more! – The tearoom has also played host to local Hindustani & Carnatic Indian Music group Saaz, Baroque & early western period instruments, & Yuri on the Russian domra.
Thanks to Qi Hong for fostering communitea.
Thank to the close friends who have come out over the years to support &/or participate in these happenings.
Thanks to all of the great Devoteas who have worked at Dobra & become a part of our lives.
Much love & one cup!
~ BCG (on behalf of The Brothers Grimm)
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“Join us for an evening of improvisation @ Shockrasonica on Friday July 12 with percussionist, improviser and composer Michael Zerang as he performs solo on hand drums and set plus collaborating with various formations of Spires That In The Sunset Rise plus sets by Madison’s John Christensen on solo bass and free jazz trio Stray Passage.”
~All The Time In The World//Shockrasonica
MICHAEL ZERANG
Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois, and is a first-generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a professional musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms.
Michael has collaborated with contemporary theater, dance, and other multidisciplinary forms and has received three Joseph Jefferson Awards for Original Music Composition in Theater, in collaboration with Redmoon Theater, in 1996, 1998, and 2000.
As a percussionist and composer, Michael has over eighty titles in his discography and has toured nationally and internationally to 34 countries since 1981, and works with and ever-widening pool of collaborators.
Michael founded and was the artistic director of the Link’s Hall Performance Series in Chicago from 1985-1989 where he produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music. Michael has been a Board Member of Links Hall Since 1989. He continued to produce concerts at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and at his own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood, from 2001 – 2005.
Michael has taught as a guest artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in performance technique, sound design, and sound/music as it relates to puppetry; rhythmic analysis for dancers at The Dance Center of Columbia College, Northwestern University, and MoMing Dance and Arts Center; courses in Composer/Choreographer Collaborations at Northwestern University; music to children at The Jane Adams Hull House.
Michael currently tours and holds workshops in improvisational music, and teaches private lessons in rhythmic analysis, music composition, and percussion technique.
JOHN CHRISTENSEN
Madison’s John Christensen will perform a rare solo bass performance. John can be seen with killer groups such as free jazz trio Deconunisms – featuring Luke Polipnick (guitar), Devin Drobka (drums).
BRENNAN CONNORS & STRAY PASSAGE
Brennan Connors & Stray Passage is a jazz trio lead by saxophonist Brennan Connors. The ensemble embraces free and structured improvisation, original compositions, and groove based experiments. Geoff Brady (Yid Vicious) is featured on drums and percussion; BC Grimm on Contra-cello (and a variety of Chinese string instruments). The breadth of the group ranges from focused minimalism to fiery high energy music, all while maintaining a sense of narrative organization throughout performances.
⑈| Sult album ᗚ Bark | GrimmusiK | Dobra |⑉
▓ Free Improv’ers & Tea Drinkers of Madison ⇝ Join us for a special night of improvising trios next Wednesday, April 3rd at the tea room.
8pm Eric Miller (bass viola da gamba, trumpet) will join the Brothers Grimm ∱ at 9pm the space-aware, contemplative music of Sult will bloom through the room (see below) ∯ For those who have supported Watercourse Q4 Dobra experiences in the past ≽ you won’t want to miss this show! Sult is most certainly a kindred spirit to the WCQ4 sound.
Sult (Oslo/San Francisco)
Jacob Felix Heule percussion
Guro Skumsnes Moe contrabass
Håvard Skaset acoustic guitar
Sult is a Norwegian/American trio playing sound-oriented improvised music: Acoustic noise drawing inspiration from contemporary music, electroacoustic improv, and drone. Their music reflects great patience, deep listening, and complete trust in one another. Their individual sounds alternately cohere into unified group textures, and run precariously aside one another as independent streams.
The group has been working together since January 2008, and has played throughout Europe and America. They are dedicated to developing their band through touring, in order to explore their music as deeply as possible. In the spring of 2012, they toured the US and Scandinavia, and released their first album, Bark, on Bug Incision. A new LP, Harm, is forthcoming this spring on Bocian Records.
Members of the trio have performed extensively with their own projects Ettrick, Basshaters, Bluefaced People, and MOE; and have collaborated with musicians such as Fred Frith, Bill Orcutt, Maja S. K. Ratkje, Okkyung Lee, Ikue Mori, Barn Owl, Michel Doneda, Jack Wright, and Gino Robair.
↜Oslo, May 2012
“a precise gravitude whose nodes, voltages, rails and landfills, are the bulk of the speech.” — Guillaume Belhomme, Le son du grisli (via Google Translate)
↜Phoenix, March 2012
“music with a preponderance of fundamentally rich percussive traits and sneering anti-melodies … Sult [has existed] since 2008… and it shows: their interplay – in spite of the timbral jaggedness – is solid, even precise, musical in the right spots and also in the ‘wrong’ ones. The quartet is positively willing to let room for a listener to break through the secret corners of what gets conceived on the spot, which is basically the raison d’être behind the enjoyableness of the whole.” — Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes
“These compositions sound at once orchestral and also mechanistic – a natural industrial sound. Several compositions on Bark reminded me of listening to a wooden boat hull adjusting at sea or a house’s walls shifting. There is an unpredictable yet organic tendency to the creaks and drones.” — Thomas John Filardo, Suave Citation
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