Open Gate Theatre Presents
Sunday Evening Concert Series feat. Horvits-Krauss-Ninh Trio + Such Simple Ears

Sunday April 4, 2010
7:00 – 10:00pm

$10 General // Students, Seniors, and Series Performers $5

Horvitz-Krauss-Ninh Trio

Wayne Horvitz - keyboards

Briggan Krauss - saxophones

Le Quan Ninh - percussion

Such Simple Ears

Dan Clucas - trumpet

Brian Christopherson - percussion

 Renowned keyboardist and composer Wayne Horvitz doesn’t play in the L.A. area very frequently.  His improvisational trio with saxophonist Briggan Krauss and percussionist Le Quan Ninh, a fairly recently-assembled unit, has never played in the area . . . until now.  Horvitz, well-known for his important contributions to the early heyday of New York City’s “downtown scene” via his ensembles the President, the Horvitz-Morris-Previte Trio, Pigpen, and the New York Composers Orchestra, as well as notable work as a sideman with the likes of John Zorn (Naked City, Cobra, etc.), Bill Frisell, Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp, and Robin Holcomb, moved to Seattle many years ago, where he continued his deep musical legacy via such groups as Zony Mash and his remarkable current projects, Sweeter Than the Day and the Gravitas Quartet.  Krauss, still a fixture on the scene in New York, is a founding member of Sex Mob and has played on projects with such heavyweights as John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Eyvind Kang, Medeski, Martin, and Wood, Jim Black, Ikue Mori, and Satoko Fujii, among many others, and is known for such projects of his own as Good Kitty and the solo project Descending to End.  Le Quan Ninh, a classically-trained percussionist uniquely fluent in both New Music composition and free improvisational music languages, hails from France and has worked with an impressive diversity of major artists in Europe as well as with many from the States and Japan, some of them being Peter Kowald, Butch Morris, J.A. Deane, Zeena Parkins, Wadada Leo Smith, Tetsu Saitoh, Martine Altenbuger, Kazue Sawai, and Frederic Blondy.  When these three forces unto themselves come together to make music, it has to be memorable, exciting, and satisfying.  It’s certainly a rare event for Open Gate Theatre and for the music community here in Southern California.

 Opening the evening will be the marvelous local duo Such Simple Ears, featuring the always gripping and dynamic trumpeter-cornetist-flutist Dan Clucas and his longtime collaborator, subtle and sensitive percussionist Brian Christopherson.  Both are veterans in a broad range of musical contexts and are important, if criminally under-recognized, contributors to the richness of this area’s creative music community.  Together they remind the listener how nuanced, how breathtaking, how magical, and how beautifully meaningful free improvised music can be.

About Open Gate Theatre

Open Gate Theatre was founded in 1982 by Artistic Director Will Salmon. They are dedicated to opening the gates between music, dance, and drama; between cultures; between the unconscious and the conscious; between emotion, mind and spirit. Open Gate is both an ensemble and a creative collective, combining image with sound, voice with movement, and poetics with light; Open Gate strives for a theatre that is both passionate and numinous. Open Gate is a unique approach to theatre; unified in its expression and impulse, diverse in its sources and disciplines. For more information, contact Artistic Director Will Salmon  626.795.4989.