Monday, May 21, 2007
For a limited time only!
Maxwell Gualtieri and Louis Lopez volunteered to help advertise my farewell gig...this was a bit unexpected...
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Farewell Ventura Gig
Some friends are helping me with a send-off gig at Ventura City Hall, May 26...
(Private music students please note: my last teaching day is June 29)
For those of you that don't know, I'm leaving to pursue a PhD in music (Critical Studies and Experimental Practices) at UCSD. You can read more here.
Concert Info:
Saturday May 26, 2007, 8pm
Jeff Kaiser: Farewell, Ventura!
Ventura City Hall
501 Poli Street
Ventura, CA 93001
(downtown Ventura, where California Street runs into Poli)
Admission, $10
Jeff Kaiser Quintet
Brad Dutz, drum set; Jim Connolly, electric bass; Tom McNalley, electric guitar
Andrew Pask, woodwinds; Jeff Kaiser, trumpet and compositions
The Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet
(performing "13 Themes for a Triskaidekaphobic")
Basses: Jim Connolly, Hal Onserud
Brass: Tpts: Kris Tiner, Dan Clucas, Brad Henkel
Bones: Michael Vlatkovich, George McMullen; Tuba: William Roper
Woodwinds: Vinny Golia, Andrew Pask, Jason Robinson, Nathaniel Morgan, Emily Hay, Lynn Johnston
Electric Guitar: G.E. Stinson; Organ: Wayne Peet
Percussion: Richie West, Brad Dutz
Conductor/compositions: Jeff Kaiser
(Private music students please note: my last teaching day is June 29)
For those of you that don't know, I'm leaving to pursue a PhD in music (Critical Studies and Experimental Practices) at UCSD. You can read more here.
Concert Info:
Saturday May 26, 2007, 8pm
Jeff Kaiser: Farewell, Ventura!
Ventura City Hall
501 Poli Street
Ventura, CA 93001
(downtown Ventura, where California Street runs into Poli)
Admission, $10
Jeff Kaiser Quintet
Brad Dutz, drum set; Jim Connolly, electric bass; Tom McNalley, electric guitar
Andrew Pask, woodwinds; Jeff Kaiser, trumpet and compositions
The Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet
(performing "13 Themes for a Triskaidekaphobic")
Basses: Jim Connolly, Hal Onserud
Brass: Tpts: Kris Tiner, Dan Clucas, Brad Henkel
Bones: Michael Vlatkovich, George McMullen; Tuba: William Roper
Woodwinds: Vinny Golia, Andrew Pask, Jason Robinson, Nathaniel Morgan, Emily Hay, Lynn Johnston
Electric Guitar: G.E. Stinson; Organ: Wayne Peet
Percussion: Richie West, Brad Dutz
Conductor/compositions: Jeff Kaiser
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
More Dangerous Curve and The Choir Boys
Tim Quinn of Dangerous Curve just sent these pics over. I just wanted to mention what a great venue this is, and how gracious and pleasant the hosts, Tim and Kathryn are.
The Choir Boys in action. I'm fiddling with my computer as I just got it back a few days ago from getting a new hard drive (after three years of extreme use, it started to give up the ghost). When I got it back, my preferences were changed, the screen saver went up in the middle of the gig...
Ah, finally, I can play, no screen saver...
Staring at the video, Tusalava...
The Choir Boys in action. I'm fiddling with my computer as I just got it back a few days ago from getting a new hard drive (after three years of extreme use, it started to give up the ghost). When I got it back, my preferences were changed, the screen saver went up in the middle of the gig...
Ah, finally, I can play, no screen saver...
Staring at the video, Tusalava...
Monday, May 07, 2007
Dangerous Curve and The Choir Boys...
The Choir Boys (Andrew Pask and myself) performed at Dangerous Curve in Los Angeles. Another enjoyable performance (our third) to the Len Lye film "Tusalava."
Afterwards, we enjoyed the traditional Choir Boys cigar, an Ashton Cabinet Selection #3...a truly wonderful smoke.
Andrew, post-smoke...
Kathryn and Tim, the proprietors of Dangerous Curve allowed me to "curate" the afternoon. So I brought in my friends from San Diego, Cosmologic (L-R): Jason Robinson, Nate Hubbard, Scott Walton, and Michael Dessen. They provided a great set of energetic and creative tunes...
Ending up with the ever-great, Vinny Golia doing 4+1, four saxes and one clarinet. Lance, Blake and Gavin joined Vinny on saxophones and Brian Walsh held his own on clarinets.
L-R: Vinny, Brian, Gavin, Blake, Lance
Vinny and Brian
Afterwards, we enjoyed the traditional Choir Boys cigar, an Ashton Cabinet Selection #3...a truly wonderful smoke.
Andrew, post-smoke...
Kathryn and Tim, the proprietors of Dangerous Curve allowed me to "curate" the afternoon. So I brought in my friends from San Diego, Cosmologic (L-R): Jason Robinson, Nate Hubbard, Scott Walton, and Michael Dessen. They provided a great set of energetic and creative tunes...
Ending up with the ever-great, Vinny Golia doing 4+1, four saxes and one clarinet. Lance, Blake and Gavin joined Vinny on saxophones and Brian Walsh held his own on clarinets.
L-R: Vinny, Brian, Gavin, Blake, Lance
Vinny and Brian
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Boise Stolen Cigar Brigade
We had our annual post Boise Experimental Music Festival (BEMF2) gathering Saturday night after the last set. This group, duly named after the appalling theft of one of my cigars last year, featured four of the original members. (Melissa, Rick, Lucio, myself.) Slyly, I kept them from stealing my cigar by bringing decoys, Arturo Fuente Exquistos.
Photo courtesy of our bartender using Gregory Taylor's camera
From Left to right:
Gregory Taylor, Melissa Wilson, Lucio Menegon, Rob Price, Justin Cassidy, Patrick Rodriguez, David Grollman, Bob Sterling, Jeff Kaiser, Rick Walker
Photo courtesy of our bartender using Gregory Taylor's camera
From Left to right:
Gregory Taylor, Melissa Wilson, Lucio Menegon, Rob Price, Justin Cassidy, Patrick Rodriguez, David Grollman, Bob Sterling, Jeff Kaiser, Rick Walker
Monday, April 30, 2007
The Noise and The Numinous: May 2007
“[R]eligious statements are psychic confessions which in the last resort are based on unconscious, i.e., on transcendental, processes. These processes are not accessible to physical perception but demonstrate their existence through the confessions of the psyche. The resultant statements are filtered through the medium of human consciousness: that is to say, they are given visible forms which in their turn are subject to manifold influences from within and without. That is why whenever we speak of religious contents we move in a world of images that point to something ineffable. We do not know how clear or unclear these images, metaphors, and concepts are in respect of their transcendental object.” —C. G. Jung
How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual”? That is one of those other things annoy me. I’ve started replying, “That’s funny, I’m not spiritual, I’m religious.” It is not that I have ODD, a.k.a., “Oppositional Defiance Disorder.” (Look it up, it’s real. It’s similar to what we’ve traditionally called a contrarian personality, except perhaps a wee bit more pathological about it.) I’ve been accused of many things: OCD from past girlfriends as well as ADD and ADHD from teachers when I was young. And now ODD. I would probably agree if it were simply spelled “odd.” I think my grandmother, difficult person that she was, is the only one who ever correctly diagnosed me: “Jeff, you’re just ornery and rambunctious.” I like that word, rambunctious.
So, back to my story, I think these people (the ones claiming to be spiritual, not religious) are missing the positive points of being religious. First of all, ask them to define “spirit.” They seldom can. Same with the word “soul.” Occasionally, I’ll get some damn hippy spiritualist that will get it right. I’ll give them that. Then I’ll ask them to go home and please bathe. Patchouli really smells unpleasant to me. But usually when claiming to be “spiritual” it just means a person believes that something else is going on that we can’t see, and then they use some lame story to illustrate it like, “I feel God’s hand in the wind when I’m hiking at sunset” or some other light, happy image. So, your life is perfect at that moment, but what about the rest of the world? Don’t confuse feeling good about yourself and your life with being in touch with God. What about those dying of disease here and abroad, those getting killed in wars, killed by drought and famine, and those being held back in life by racism, intolerance, bigotry, those being denied basic human rights such as food, clean water, healthcare, education and housing. Is the “hand” of God you felt in the wind during your sunset hike present in all of that? Actually, it probably is. If you believe in God, how could it not be? And how do you reconcile this with the “good” stuff of life?
“God” is a word that needs defining when used in conversation. We all filter it, when it is used, to mean what “we” believe it means. But is what “we” think it means the same as what “others” think it means? Is “He” an old guy sitting on a throne geographically located somewhere in the sky? (Elderly, male, Caucasian, long-white hair with a beard. Sounds like a police report.) Is he “ever changing and flowing” or is he “unmovable and never changing?” We all vary, sometimes with slight nuance, sometimes with broad differences on our definition of God. It is good to get straight what is being communicated.
I define “God” very simply: God is a metaphor for the currently unknown and possibly unknowable levels of human consciousness. And God is also a symbol, in the purest sense of the word: the best possible representation of something that cannot be fully known. As with so many great symbols and metaphors, people have literalized God into a physical fact, taking away from the value as a psychic fact (from psyche as the totality of our inner life, every bit as valid and valuable as the external physical world), taking away the mysterious nature of the most numinous image we have. By taking that away, they have trivialized religion into a set of systematic beliefs and a code of conduct. It seems that what those proudly proclaiming “spiritual, not religious” want to be, is distanced from religion as they see it, which is as a set and defined church or group believing the same thing that have used these set beliefs not only for good, but for some of the greatest acts of violence in human history. The “spiritual” lovers want freedom from that. Who wouldn’t?
Here is the clincher: there is freedom in religion. I don’t belong to or attend a church. But I’m very religious: because religion, at its core, is not about an organization and its history, but is about experiencing the ineffable, the sublime, and the transcendent. That is something I want everyday. Belief is a about the categorization of these experiences. When you see this, you realize the very personal nature of the categorizations (beliefs). The categories are not universal, but the experiences themselves may be. Unfortunately, the categories become the building blocks of organized religion.
I’m all for the experience of the sublime, and let’s share our experiences. But let’s keep our categories to ourselves, or at the very least not extrapolate universal imperatives from them. That is where religions have gone astray.
How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual”? That is one of those other things annoy me. I’ve started replying, “That’s funny, I’m not spiritual, I’m religious.” It is not that I have ODD, a.k.a., “Oppositional Defiance Disorder.” (Look it up, it’s real. It’s similar to what we’ve traditionally called a contrarian personality, except perhaps a wee bit more pathological about it.) I’ve been accused of many things: OCD from past girlfriends as well as ADD and ADHD from teachers when I was young. And now ODD. I would probably agree if it were simply spelled “odd.” I think my grandmother, difficult person that she was, is the only one who ever correctly diagnosed me: “Jeff, you’re just ornery and rambunctious.” I like that word, rambunctious.
So, back to my story, I think these people (the ones claiming to be spiritual, not religious) are missing the positive points of being religious. First of all, ask them to define “spirit.” They seldom can. Same with the word “soul.” Occasionally, I’ll get some damn hippy spiritualist that will get it right. I’ll give them that. Then I’ll ask them to go home and please bathe. Patchouli really smells unpleasant to me. But usually when claiming to be “spiritual” it just means a person believes that something else is going on that we can’t see, and then they use some lame story to illustrate it like, “I feel God’s hand in the wind when I’m hiking at sunset” or some other light, happy image. So, your life is perfect at that moment, but what about the rest of the world? Don’t confuse feeling good about yourself and your life with being in touch with God. What about those dying of disease here and abroad, those getting killed in wars, killed by drought and famine, and those being held back in life by racism, intolerance, bigotry, those being denied basic human rights such as food, clean water, healthcare, education and housing. Is the “hand” of God you felt in the wind during your sunset hike present in all of that? Actually, it probably is. If you believe in God, how could it not be? And how do you reconcile this with the “good” stuff of life?
“God” is a word that needs defining when used in conversation. We all filter it, when it is used, to mean what “we” believe it means. But is what “we” think it means the same as what “others” think it means? Is “He” an old guy sitting on a throne geographically located somewhere in the sky? (Elderly, male, Caucasian, long-white hair with a beard. Sounds like a police report.) Is he “ever changing and flowing” or is he “unmovable and never changing?” We all vary, sometimes with slight nuance, sometimes with broad differences on our definition of God. It is good to get straight what is being communicated.
I define “God” very simply: God is a metaphor for the currently unknown and possibly unknowable levels of human consciousness. And God is also a symbol, in the purest sense of the word: the best possible representation of something that cannot be fully known. As with so many great symbols and metaphors, people have literalized God into a physical fact, taking away from the value as a psychic fact (from psyche as the totality of our inner life, every bit as valid and valuable as the external physical world), taking away the mysterious nature of the most numinous image we have. By taking that away, they have trivialized religion into a set of systematic beliefs and a code of conduct. It seems that what those proudly proclaiming “spiritual, not religious” want to be, is distanced from religion as they see it, which is as a set and defined church or group believing the same thing that have used these set beliefs not only for good, but for some of the greatest acts of violence in human history. The “spiritual” lovers want freedom from that. Who wouldn’t?
Here is the clincher: there is freedom in religion. I don’t belong to or attend a church. But I’m very religious: because religion, at its core, is not about an organization and its history, but is about experiencing the ineffable, the sublime, and the transcendent. That is something I want everyday. Belief is a about the categorization of these experiences. When you see this, you realize the very personal nature of the categorizations (beliefs). The categories are not universal, but the experiences themselves may be. Unfortunately, the categories become the building blocks of organized religion.
I’m all for the experience of the sublime, and let’s share our experiences. But let’s keep our categories to ourselves, or at the very least not extrapolate universal imperatives from them. That is where religions have gone astray.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Second Annual Boise Experimental Music Festival: Day Three
Final Day
Overall, a fantastic festival with a nice (not huge, not small) and mostly attentive audience.
I love Boise, part of me would love to move there. It is beautiful, housing is reasonably priced, and there is an excellent airport...it is a beautiful city with beautiful memories for me.
**************
Didn't get pics of all the groups....but here are a few:
Krispen Hartung & Lumper-Splitter
Stefan Smulovitz & Rick Walker
Tom Baker & Jesse Canterbury
Lumper-Splitter
The Transhumans
Rick Walker
Overall, a fantastic festival with a nice (not huge, not small) and mostly attentive audience.
I love Boise, part of me would love to move there. It is beautiful, housing is reasonably priced, and there is an excellent airport...it is a beautiful city with beautiful memories for me.
**************
Didn't get pics of all the groups....but here are a few:
Krispen Hartung & Lumper-Splitter
Stefan Smulovitz & Rick Walker
Tom Baker & Jesse Canterbury
Lumper-Splitter
The Transhumans
Rick Walker
Second Annual Boise Experimental Music Festival: Day Two
Another beautiful day for music....
Moe! Staiano and Z'EV
Stefan Smulovitz
Ted Killian
Jeff Kaiser and Gregory Taylor
(photo by M.A. Taylor)
Rob Price and David Grollman
Moe! Staiano and Z'EV
Stefan Smulovitz
Ted Killian
Jeff Kaiser and Gregory Taylor
(photo by M.A. Taylor)
Rob Price and David Grollman
Friday, April 27, 2007
Second Annual Boise Experimental Music Festival: Day One
The Second Annual Boise Experimental Music Festival began today. What a blast, a great music and social event. So wonderful to hang out with like-minded people. Here are a few images from the first night:
Joe Rut (of Lumper Splitter) with our MC, Rick Walker
After Rick purchased the dayglow green baseball set, Joe and I played baseball in the parking lot, where the bat (purchased for its musical ability) was duly broken...click here for a video.
Festival Director Krispen Hartung with percussionist Vincent Miresse
Craig Green
Amy Vecchione
Our Fearless and Flawless Soundman Aaron Davis
Off to the fantastic Bitter Creek Alehouse with Bob Sterling (The Transhumans), Rob Price, David Grollman, Lucio Menegon (Lumper Splitter), Craig Green, Krispen, Joe and Aaron afterwards...great time.
More on the music later...
Joe Rut (of Lumper Splitter) with our MC, Rick Walker
After Rick purchased the dayglow green baseball set, Joe and I played baseball in the parking lot, where the bat (purchased for its musical ability) was duly broken...click here for a video.
Festival Director Krispen Hartung with percussionist Vincent Miresse
Craig Green
Amy Vecchione
Our Fearless and Flawless Soundman Aaron Davis
Off to the fantastic Bitter Creek Alehouse with Bob Sterling (The Transhumans), Rob Price, David Grollman, Lucio Menegon (Lumper Splitter), Craig Green, Krispen, Joe and Aaron afterwards...great time.
More on the music later...
Sunday, April 22, 2007
I do love Idaho...
Idaho is one of my favorite states. Absolutely beautiful; beauty that is as much about what is not there, as what is. The sense of space is glorious. Click here for a short video I made on Hwy 20 between Idaho Falls and Arco. I was listening to Glenn Gould playing Bach, the music fit the austerity and beauty of the landscape perfectly.
I'm here to do a few gigs. Started out last night doing a duo with Craig Green at the University Auditorium in Idaho Falls. He is a fantastically creative acoustic guitar player, doing preparations to the instrument I had not heard before. A lovely venue, and a great gig. Craig and Trinity Sullivan were great hosts, and introduced me to several area brews that I had not tasted before. Excellent music, beer, and great company.
Craig and I before the show. What a great green room to prepare in. (The green belt in Idaho Falls.) Idaho Falls is a nice town, about 50,000 population, and supposedly one of the highest ratios of PhD's per capita. (Thanks to the Department of Energy and the 800 some companies that consult there.)
Driving out the backroads, I was stopped by a cattle run (stampede? whatever you call that) Cows running down the highway being pursued by ATVs. Run cows, be free...!
A few pix of me in Twin Falls. It was bright, hence the squintage of the eyes.
The road back to Boise from Craters of the Moon national monument. (BTW, my Craters shots didn't turn out.)
Off for a few days to hang in Boise, then some gigs at the Boise Experimental Music Festival. I'll playing with Gregory Taylor. I am really looking forward to that.
I'm here to do a few gigs. Started out last night doing a duo with Craig Green at the University Auditorium in Idaho Falls. He is a fantastically creative acoustic guitar player, doing preparations to the instrument I had not heard before. A lovely venue, and a great gig. Craig and Trinity Sullivan were great hosts, and introduced me to several area brews that I had not tasted before. Excellent music, beer, and great company.
Craig and I before the show. What a great green room to prepare in. (The green belt in Idaho Falls.) Idaho Falls is a nice town, about 50,000 population, and supposedly one of the highest ratios of PhD's per capita. (Thanks to the Department of Energy and the 800 some companies that consult there.)
Driving out the backroads, I was stopped by a cattle run (stampede? whatever you call that) Cows running down the highway being pursued by ATVs. Run cows, be free...!
A few pix of me in Twin Falls. It was bright, hence the squintage of the eyes.
The road back to Boise from Craters of the Moon national monument. (BTW, my Craters shots didn't turn out.)
Off for a few days to hang in Boise, then some gigs at the Boise Experimental Music Festival. I'll playing with Gregory Taylor. I am really looking forward to that.
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