Alpine to Bakersfield to Berkeley...a beautiful drive…

I'm guest lecturing at The Jazzschool in Berkeley, California this coming week...and decided to make a bit of a Spring Break trip out of it. Spent time with Nicholas Deyoe, Tom McNalley and Frannie Garretson at Highland Cafe in Los Angeles, then Louis Lopez at the Market in Pasadena, Kris Tiner at The Padre in Bakersfield and Chris Truitt at Dagny's in Bakersfield before heading off to Berkeley. Then I step out of my hotel in Berkeley and turn a corner and George Lewis is walking towards me...had a pleasant, but brief visit. This was doubly odd to see George as I had just been watching him speak in Elements of One, the Steve Coleman documentary....Dinner at Cafe Gratitude and now off to meet Leah Bowden, Phil Skaller and Tom Ferguson for cocktails...(Yes, Leah and Phil are in town. Wacky.)

Some of the views in the past 36 hours:

Morning, from my backyard in Alpine.

 

 

From Dagny's in Bakersfield.

 

 

On the 580 near Livermore. 

 

From my hotel in Berkeley.

Some pfMENTUM and Angry Vegan business....

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We're pleased to announce our latest release,
***Endless Pie***
featuring Jeff Kaiser and Phil Skaller.

The first review described it as "Wicked trumpet meets prepared piano in this intense and hilarious pairing of twisted minds." --San Diego Reader

It is available for purchase as CD or download, and you can stream the entire recording for free at:
http://www.pfmentum.com

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OTHER News:

We've started a Facebook page, please "Like" it to help get the word out!
https://www.facebook.com/pfmentumangryvegan

And we've started Twitter accounts:
https://twitter.com/pfmentum
https://twitter.com/angryvegan

We've got several recordings lined up for release, including:

Jeff Denson/Claudio Puntin

Paul Stapleton/Simon Rose and

Ted Byrnes/Nicholas Deyoe...

____________________________
Jeff Kaiser and Louis Lopez
pfMENTUM.com • AngryVegan.com

Todd Reynolds at Space 4 Art in San Diego

Thanks to Bonnie Wright for bringing Todd Reynolds to town.

Click any of the images below for larger version.

Double Quartet Re-visited...

Despite, what it says in the review, it is not *quite* out of print...I also have a few copies that are available....nice to revisit the review, though!

From Downtown Music Gallery's Newsletter today:
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JEFF KAISER DOUBLE QUARTET With VINNY
GOLIA/MICHAEL VLATKOVICH/BRAD DUTZ/GENE DOI/JIM
CONNOLLY/RICHIE WEST/HANNES GIGER - Nothing Is
Not Breath: Music For Double Quartet (Nine Winds
206; USA)  Jeff Kaiser, trumpet and pump organ;
Michael Vlatkovich, trombone; Vinny Golia,
woodwinds; Gene Doi, woodwinds; Jim Connolly,
contrabass; Hannes Giger, contrabass; Brad Dutz,
percussion; Richie West, percussion.
"I almost began this review with a confession
that I was lying about the Trignition CD [9Winds]
being the most inaccessible CD, but as I listened
further, I stopped myself. This disc is a huge,
70-minute, eleven-part suite that begins subtly
and improvisationally and then explodes in many
multi-layered compositions and quirky fanfares. I
feel the apex of the disc culminates in Section
VIII, which I will call the "theme".  It's the
only part of the disc that my mind sings. The
rest is an avant-garde smorgasboard that swings
in places, much like Ornette's original double
quartet did on the historic Free Jazz. Nothing Is
Not Breath goes beyond that template, happily,
and saturates itself with wonderful 20th Century
classical sensibilities. In attempting to
interpret the title of this work, I believe that
even though only four of the eight instruments
are winds, the percussion and double basses
actually seem to breathe. The rising and falling
of dynamics, and the lack of rhythm or pulse in
some selections, resembles a large organism
slowly inhaling.. and exhaling. The tumbling
marimba is the rattle of its breath, the
squealing reeds its vocal chords, the percussion
its raspy cough. This is a Kaiser masterwork -
not to mention that Golia is on it, of course!" -
Fred Barrett
CD normally $15.. NOW $13      (Out of print, but we have it!)
***********************

Two new reviews from Downtown Music Gallery

Two new reviews from DOWNTOWN MUSIC GALLERY…

DMG Newsletter for November 16, 2012

http://www.downtownmusicgallery.com/Main/index.htm

ENDLESS PIE [JEFF KAISER/PHIL SKALLER] - Endless Pie [2 CD set] (pfMentum 072; USA) Jeff Kaiser on trumpet, flugelhorn and electronics and Phil Skaller on prepared piano. Jeff is a restless explorer on trumpet and flugelhorn, always searching for other like-minded musicians to work with. Kaiser has done a number of duo discs before this, each one unique depending on his partner. Mr. Skaller seems to work mostly inside the piano, banging on the strings with assorted objects. Kaiser continually alters his sound with mutes or electronic devices, as well as playing some strange synth sounds. This is a particularly intense and focused duo, always working tightly together, complimenting and pushing each other. Although this music is completely (?) improvised, the duo often create patterns which sounds closer to modern chamber music. Reminding me at times of recent discs from Ernesto Martinez and David Rosenboom. This is an extraordinary duo and one of this year's most challenging efforts on a variety of levels. - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery 2 CD set for $14

CHARISMATA [JEFF KAISER/GREGORY TAYLOR] - The Desert Fathers (pfMentum 070; USA) Jeff Kaiser on quartertone trumpet and laptop and Gregory Taylor on laptop. This disc was recorded live in a studio at STEIM in Amsterdam. Since the last time we heard from pfMentum founder a few years back, Jeff Kaiser has released another three discs of his own duos, a trio and a few collaborations. With more than a half dozen duo efforts released, Mr. Kaiser has done it again with another couple of winners. The quartertone trumpet which has a fourth valve and can play microtones is relatively rare. The only one that I've seen & heard was played by Thomas Heberer. Since Mr. Kaiser uses different extended techniques and plays laptop as done his partner, it is difficult to tell who is doing what outside of the familiar odd trumpet sounds. The STEIM studio sounds like a high end affair since there is good deal of depth and dynamics to these sounds. Is that feedback, magnified static or trumpet making those extreme sounds?!? This music is intense, powerful, sometimes brittle, often bent, swirling electronics and twisted trumpet sounds. Mr. Kaiser keeps digger deeper and coming up with large variety of odd sounds from his trumpet, often reminding me of Nate Wooley or Peter Evans, both of whom are also restless explorers who can match wits with any acoustic or electronic instruments. This disc is more than an hour in length and I found myself at the edge of my seat throughout wondering what they would come up with next. - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery CD $12

First review for "Endless Pie"

Phil Skaller and I have a new disc that will be out any day, but we already have a review...!

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/jam-session/2012/nov/08/jeff-kaiser-phil-skaller-endless-pie/

Profile in ITG Journal...

One of the editors for the International Trumpet Guild journal ran across the "Brave New Sonic World" article (posted below) and decided to do a profile on my work for the ITG journal in March. I'm quite excited about that...

Dottie Grossman Memorial

Sunday, July 29

7-11pm

Glendale Moose Lodge

357 Arden Ave
Glendale, CA 91203
http://www.mooseintl.org

7pm enter and sign up to offer music, poetry...
7:30 the artistic offerings start.
Please bring some munchies for our food.
Drinks are available at the lodge.
We are asking a $5 donation to cover the cost of the hall.

"Jeff Kaiser's Brave New Sonic World," NBC San Diego

Writer/critic Robert Bush did an interview with me, published on NBC San Diego's web site... Click the link to give it a read:

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/blogs/sounddiego/Trumpeter-Jeff-Kaisers-Brave-New-Sonic-World-162948706.html

The E-MU E64 (6400) Saga Ends...

My first and third albums (Excerpts from The Prince and Ganz Andere) along with numerous dance projects, installations and several commissions relied heavily on the E-MU E64, the first version of what became the E6400. (I still have the original box, it says E64, Model: 6400.) So, thinking I was all hip and tech savvy, when I purchased the E-MU, I also purchased a Fujitsu MagnetoOptical SCSI drive. This featured read/write optical discs that could hold 230 MB (approx 217 after formatting). It was on these discs that I stored all of my E-MU information.

Recently I decided I wanted to revisit the musical material, and realized: Where am I going to get a machine that not only has SCSI (version 1) but would even see the Fujitsu, let alone read E-MU EOS format and translate it for a software-based sampler. To shorten the story, I knew my friend Rand Steiger had used the E6400...and then I ran into him at a concert and he put me BACK in touch with Trevor Henthorn and Joe Kucera (friends of mine!). After some twiddling with the drive, Joe and I were able to get a server in Studio A at UCSD to see the E-MU formatted MO discs (hint: don’t set the dip switches to Mac, but to PC/UNIX), but not mount them, so we decided to burn an image of the disc...and then Trevor used a PPC program* (sorry, won’t work with OSX 10.7) called CDXTRACT to both mount the disc image and translate them into a format of choice, in my case Kontakt. After all the fiddling with one of the last SCSI machines in UCSD music to see the MO drive, burning images of nine discs and translating took less than an hour in total.

And they sound fantastic, if I may say so.

But let this serve as a warning, Mac’s with SCSI are (of course) obsolete and it is probably not long until the only one you can find is in a museum, or buy one on Ebay for $374,500. So do the transfers now, don’t wait...I feel I got lucky having knowledgeable friends with access to quickly obsolescing technology.

 *Note: It seems that Translator from ChickenSys works on OS 10.7.4, but I only tried the demo so YMMV.