jazztalk.net

The San Francisco Examiner wrote:By the time rock and avant-garde composer, multi-instrumentalist and painter Captain Beefheart retired from music in 1982, he had released a host of commercial and live albums, the best of which continue to inspire the Bay Area's cutting-edge music scene.

This weekend in Berkeley, "Hardly Strictly Personal—A Celebration of Post Beefheart Art" brings together dozens of artists from the experimental community to play music influenced by the boundary-breaking Beefheart (aka Don Van Vliet, 1941–2010) who, along with Frank Zappa, revolutionized rock in the 1960s.

"Performers will take the works of Captain Beefheart as a starting point for reflection, reaction, deconstruction, reconstitution and creation," says Mika Pontecorvo of the NextNow Performance Series, which is presenting the two-day marathon, a benefit for Earth Justice and the Coalition on Homelessness.

The programming, a broad sampling of new and experimental music, includes avant-rock, noise, jazz, electro-acoustic and contemporary chamber.

Performers range from brass-woodwind band Pachuco Cadaver, which covers songs by Beefheart and his Magic Band, to Beefheart-inspired throat-singer bluesman Seth Augustus, avant-guitarist Henry Kaiser, Rent Romus' Lords of Outland, free jazz multi-instrumentalist/poet/painter Jim Ryan's Forward Energy, and the most renowned of the lot, the Rova Saxophone Quartet. . . .

BFrank wrote:This is the first I've heard of this - I can't go to either show. Bummer.

bluenoter wrote:

BFrank wrote:This is the first I've heard of this - I can't go to either show. Bummer.

Bummer. Sorry, B. The SF Examiner (online) and Avant Music News didn't write about it until yesterday.

I recommend Avant Music News to you, BTW. It covers a mix of jazz and non-jazz improvisatory music with an aggregation of reviews and news. It stays right on top of the news, and events in the SF Bay area are one of its "specialties."