The Steve Adams/Vinny Golia Duo will give a rare performance on unusual woodwinds at the Maybeck Recital Hall. The concert will feature Steve’s compositions, including the premieres of A Mysterious Abundance of Quinces for bass flute, contra alto clarinet and electronics, and Neon Meat Dream of a Beefheart Machine for sopranino sax, tubax (contrabass sax) and electronics. They will also be playing pieces from their CD Circular Logic, including In Ludwig’s House, written for a Rova performance at the Wittgenstein Haus in Vienna. Steve and Vinny have been playing together since 1988 in a wide variety of ensembles, and their infrequent performances as a duo showcase the essence of their versatility and musicality.
Steve Adams – sopranino, alto and baritone sax, flute, bass flute and electronicsA Mysterious Abundance of Quinces: Steve Adams and Vinny Golia at the Maybeck
Vinny Golia – Bb, bass and contra alto clarinet, soprano sax, tubax, and …
Sunday, January 11, 2015, 3:00pm
Suggested donation: $20 at the door
Seating is extremely limited. Get your required online reservation here.
Steve Adams is active both as a composer and a
performer on saxophones, flutes and electronics. Steve is best known as a
member of the Rova Saxophone Quartet, with whom he has played for over twenty
five years and released more than twenty five recordings. Rova has been called
"one of the most daring ensembles of any instrumentation to emerge in recent
years" by Downbeat magazine. He has performed with Anthony Braxton, Sam
Rivers, Dave Holland, Roscoe Mitchell, John Zorn, Steve Lacy, Fred Frith, Tin
Hat Trio, Yo! Miles with Henry Kaiser and Wadada Leo Smith and Ted Nugent, as
well as many other jazz, rock, dance and theater groups. Steve has appeared on
more than fifty recordings, and has five recordings as leader or co-leader on
the 9 Winds and Clean Feed labels, the latest of them being Surface Tension by the Steve Adams Trio.
Steve has performed the premieres of numerous classical compositions, including
Prisoner of Love by Robert Aldridge,
Thomas Oboe Lee’s Saxxologie… A Sextet and Louie MCMLV, and Passing Time
by Jon Nelson. He performed Edmund Campion’s Corail with the Berkeley Symphony and at the Ojai Music Festival,
and was a member of the 25th Anniversary performance of Terry
Riley’s In C, which was released on
New Albion.
Steve has
written more than fifty compositions for saxophone quartet, as well as many
others for varied instrumentations. His
piece Cage (for John Cage) was
performed at the 1993 Bang on a Can festival, and his piece The Gene Pool was commissioned by Meet
the Composer and performed at their festival “The Works” in Minneapolis in
2002. His composition Owed t'Don was recorded by the
violin/marimba duo Marimolin on their CD Phantasmata.
In recent years, Steve has begun creating graphic scores, now numbering more
than 60. He received a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2000 and a Meet
the Composer grant in 1993, and teaches at Mills College. Steve is a graduate
of the School of Contemporary Music in Brookline, MA and studied composition
with Alan Crossman, Christopher Yavelov and Thomas Oboe Lee, saxophone with
David Birkin and Indian music with Peter Row and Steve Gorn.
Multi-woodwind
performer Vinny Golia's recordings
have been consistently picked by critics and readers of music journals for
their annual "ten best" lists. In 1990 he was the winner of the Jazz
Times “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition” award for Bass Saxophone. In 1998 he
ranked first in the Cadence Magazine Writers & Readers Poll, and has
continually placed in the Downbeat Critic's Poll for Baritone and Soprano
Saxophone. In 1999 Vinny won the LA Weekly’s Award for "Best Jazz
Musician". Jazziz Magazine has also named him as one of the 100 people who
have influenced the course of Jazz in our Century. In 2006 The Jazz
Journalists Association honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Mr. Golia has won
numerous awards as a composer, including grants from The National Endowment of
the Arts, The Lila Wallace Commissioning Program, the California Arts Council,
Meet the Composer, Clausen Foundation of the Arts, Funds for U.S. Artists and
the American Composers Forum. He currently teaches at the California Institute
of the Arts. In 1998 Golia was appointed Regent's Lecturer at the
University of California at San Diego. In 2009 Vinny Golia was appointed
the first holder of the Michel Colombier Performer Composer Chair at Cal Arts.
Vinny has been a featured performer with Anthony Braxton, John Carter, Bobby Bradford, Joelle Leandre, Leo Smith, John Zorn, Tim Berne, Bertram Turetzky, George Lewis, Barre Phillips, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Patti Smith, the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennick, Lydia Lunch and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra amongst many others.
Vinny has been a featured performer with Anthony Braxton, John Carter, Bobby Bradford, Joelle Leandre, Leo Smith, John Zorn, Tim Berne, Bertram Turetzky, George Lewis, Barre Phillips, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Patti Smith, the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennick, Lydia Lunch and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra amongst many others.