Wednesday, June 15, 2016

June 18th: The Untempered Festival of Dissonant Arts!



Musician-composer Stanley J. Zappa, together with pianist and musical theorist Andrew Wedman have created The First Annual Untempered Festival of Dissonant Arts, an event celebrating sonic adventures and musical exploration.

One of the highlights of the festival is an appearance by legendary guitar genius Peter Walker, whose performance will blur the boundaries of raga, flamenco and folk. Walker, who was a fixture of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the '60s and studied under greats including Ravi Shankar, has recently come out of retirement to tour and release new recordings. His music is being discovered by a whole new generation.

The festival will also feature The Jooklo Duo, Virginia Genta and David Vanzan. Cosmic free jazz giants from Italy, they will perform along with Stanley Zappa as Jooklo Zappa. Together, their frenetic approach is propelled by unhinged dual saxophones and primal drumming, creating musical transcendence, chaos and cacophony.

Festival founders Zappa and Wedman will perform improvised sonorities unique to Wedman’s bass piano (a piano de-tuned one octave) in combination with Zappa's clarinet and saxophone. Their work rarely complies with principles of tonality dominant in western music. Their focus on so-called “untempered” and “dissonant” tones was the inspiration for the festival.

Wedman and Zappa hope that the Untempered Festival can be a part of a larger circuit. According to Zappa, “There are a number of BC music series that feature improvised and sonically adventuresome music. Casse-Tête in Prince George along with Skin and Bones in Kelowna get world class musicians to perform. I want them to come here, too, so that we can open up to more experiences of the truly new music these artists are creating.”

The First Annual Untempered Festival of Dissonant Arts will be held at the Shatford Centre on Saturday, June 18th. Performances begin at 7 p.m.


The Shatford Centre
760 Main Street
Penticton, BC (parking entrance on Eckhardt Avenue)

Saturday June 18th, 2016
Doors at 6:00 p.m.
Concert 7:00 – 11:00 p.m.
$10

Tickets available at the Shatford Centre office and at the door.

Stanley J. Zappa's new album, Sing-Song Songs, is available from New Texture.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Stanley J. Zappa + Jooklo Duo = Jooklo-Zappa on Tour!



The Jooklo-Zappa West Coast Tour 
The Jooklo Duo (Italy)—Virginia Genta on saxophone and David Vanzan on percussion
+ Stanley J. Zappa (Oliver, BC), saxophone

June 
17 Kelowna BC / Habitat / Skin and Bones Music Series
18 Penticton BC / Shatford Center / First Annual Untempered Festival of Dissonant Arts
22 Calgary AB / Wine Oh’s / Sled Island
23 Edmonton AB / Ortona Armoury / Point of Departure
24 Prince George BC / Exploration Place / Casse-Tête Festival
25 Prince George BC / Exploration Place / Casse-Tête Festival
28 Vancouver BC / Merge
29 Seattle WA / 1214 Gallery / with Greg Kelley
30 Seattle WA / Blue Moon Tavern / with Hound Dog Taylor’s Hand

July
1 Portland OR / Alice Coltrane Memorial Coliseum
3 Portland OR / Turn! Turn! Turn!

Italian giants of Free Jazz Virginia Genta and David Vanzan, together known as the Jooklo Duo, have combined forces with Okanagan single-reed quester Stanley J. Zappa to create Jooklo-Zappa, an arresting trio of like-minded musicians dedicated to dismantling tonality.

Through their mutual friendship with Kevin Reilly, proprietor of Relative Pitch Records and all-around friend of improvised music, the Jooklo Duo and Stanley J. Zappa, along with Steve Leffue and Jim Hobs, met at the JACK performance space in Brooklyn, NY for an initial performance.

Jeremy Stewart, director of Casse-Tête: A Festival of Experimental Music, (held in Prince George) responded enthusiastically to the performance, and booked the Jooklo Duo and Stanley Zappa as headliners for Casse-Tête. Jooklo-Zappa was born.

 A small tour took shape. Upcoming Jooklo-Zappa performances include radio station CSJW and the Sled Island festival in Calgary, the Point of Departure music series in Edmonton, the Skin and Bones music series in Kelowna, The First Annual Untempered Festival of Dissonant Arts in Penticton, and The Merge Gallery in Vancouver. In the United States, Jooklo-Zappa are performing at the Blue Moon Tavern in Seattle, as well as the Alice Coltrane Memorial Coliseum and Turn! Turn! Turn!, both in Portland.

The music is improvised—no two shows will (or can) be alike. Listeners can expect repeated challenges to their expectations in the form of carefully and not-so -carefully crafted melodies, harmonies and rhythms, designed at that very moment in time.


Stanley J. Zappa's new album, Sing-Song Songs, is available from New Texture.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Stanley J. Zappa's SING-SONG SONGS CD Available Now!



If you enjoy _________

A. loud noises
B. broken machinery
C. free jazz
D. Charles Gayle
E. Albert Ayler
F. Frank Wright

and __________

A. Jimmy Lyons
B. Marco Eneidi
C. Arthur Doyle
D. improvised music
E. the sound of glass shattering
F. ice cubes in a blender

Sing-Song Songs is the new album by Stanley J. Zappa.
Get it on CD and download HERE

Preview the CD's artwork:
artist photo: K. Molloy