FAX from: Chris Brown 415-387-4087 to: Jim Royce, Marketing Director Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Gardens 415-512-1006 re: INTERPLAY copy for Performing Arts Magazine

There follows some copy for your use as requested for the INTERPLAY program. First, a listing of the composer/performers and the specific information about the concert you requested. Then, a prose description of the event. Please contact Arnold if you need additional publicity about the artists or more specific program information: I proposed this event, and curated the artists involved, but I am not managing the publicity for it, so I don't have all the materials.

INTERPLAY

An Evening of Interactive Electronic Music and Improvisation featuring performances by:

George Lewis with poet Quincy Troupe Laetitia Sonami ROOM: Chris Brown, Larry Ochs, and William Winant Bob Ostertag & Fred Frith

The evening will consist of four twenty-minute performances with a twenty-minute intermission.

This evening of performance spotlights music that pairs improvisation with interactive, electronic media. The growing role of automation, robotics, and mechanization in the late 20th century presents an increasingly important question to performers: how to integrate the knowledge and power that these tools provide while preserving the spontaneity, flexibility, and sensitivity that are essential to life.

The work of the musicians and performers featured on this evening all provide unique answers to this problem, but one trend is noticeable in all of their work: as their instruments have become more mechanical, composition has become imbedded in their own design of their instruments, and improvisation has played an increasingly important role in performance.

George Lewis, a virtuoso trombonist and improvisor, has for over a decade been developing software programs that improvise with him and other musicians, and that have their own distinct personalities and character. For this evening he has developed a percussionist/improvisor program that will accompany the performance/poetry of Quincy Troupe.

Laetitia Sonami performs her music using an elegant ladies' evening glove fitted with electronic sensors. Her hand gestures trigger sounds and control responses to the stories and songs she tells and sings.

ROOM is a trio of Bay Area based improvisors: pianist/electronic musician Chris Brown, percussionist William Winant, and Rova saxophonist/composer Larry Ochs. Their sound world combines extended, acoustic instrumental sounds and new electronic technology that responds to the musicians' gestures, providing an interactive structure through which the music moves.

Bob Ostertag holds a microscope up to samples of recorded sounds, creating richly textured music from the repetitions, unfoldings, and intersections of carefully selected sound fragments. He performs using a nearly invisible instrument, the Buchla Lightning, which translates three-dimensional hand gestures into electronic instrument controls. He will be performing in duo with the extraordinary guitarist, composer and improvisor Fred Frith, a long-time collaborator from their days in New York's downtown, improvisation scene.