June 3, 2010 – Join HEARding Cats for a presentation of Kyle Bruckmann & Rich O’Donnell at Joe’s Cafe

Kyle Bruckmann and Rich O’Donnell
Thursday, Jun. 3, 2010 – 8:00 pm
Joe’s Café
6014 Kingsbury Ave.
Admission: $5 for Joe’s Cafe members ($10 for non-members)

Remember, BYOB!

Creative music masters Kyle Bruckmann (oboe), and Rich O’Donnell (seesaw percussion, kyma/pacarana electronics) take the stage at Joe’s Cafe for an evening of true improvisation.  The pair, though exceptionally skilled at the language of free improv have never actually played together prior to this show.  This sort of disconnect only adds excitement to the allure of the strange and wonderful soundscape that awaits those listeners who venture to Joe’s Cafe for the concert.

With a history of conservatory training gone awry, oboist and electronic musician Kyle Bruckmann combines the rigorous discipline of a classical foundation with raucous sensibilities more indebted to punk’s aftermath in a dizzying variety of artistic endeavors. He has performed throughout the U.S. and in Europe as a composer, an interpreter, and an improviser and has appeared on more than 40 albums of various genres.

Long-term affiliations include EKG, an electroacoustic duo with Ernst Karel, and the experimental “rock” monstrosity Lozenge.  Bruckmann’s quintet Wrack performs original compositions drawing equally from the traditions of contemporary jazz and classical modernism, cultivating an “ability to combine turned-up flame with clear-headed attention to texture and space” (Jason Bivins, Dusted Magazine). As a member of the Bay Area new music collective sfSound and of Gene Coleman’s Chicago-based Ensemble Noamnesia.

Upon moving to San Francisco in 2003, he joined forces with sfSound and with Quinteto Latino, a wind quintet repeatedly selected for the San Francisco Symphony’s acclaimed Adventures in Music educational program. Current Bay Area working groups include Shudder (with Lance Grabmiller and Phillip Greenlief), Ghost in the House (with David Michalak, Tom Nunn, and Karen Stackpole) and Pink Mountain (an outrock band with Sam Coomes, Gino Robair, Scott Rosenberg, and John Shiurba).

Rich O’Donnell is a longtime St. Louis new music aficionado, composer, virtuoso performer, and inventor of percussion instruments, techniques (seesaw drumming), and electronic instruments.  He played with the St. Louis Symphony, mostly as principal percussionist for 43 years until his retirement.  His seesaw drumming invention has created a wholly unique and new percussion language that transcends the term “extended technique.”  The palette of textures and color that O’Donnell obtains with his humble setup speaks volumes about his ability as a player.

He has traveled the globe performing (including a 5 city tour of China in which he introduced free-improv), and has recently collaborated with many of the finest creative musicians on the planet, including John Butcher, Leroy Jenkins, David Wessel, Denman Maroney, Vinny Golia, Gino Robair, and Thomas Buckner.