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Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
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Bassist and composer Lisa Mezzacappa premieres a new set of music at the Lab with the latest incarnation of her stellar improvising ensemble (Aaron Bennett, Kyle Bruckmann, Mark Clifford, Brett Carson, and Jordan Glenn), exploring the concept of worldbuilding as a way to envision new kinds of musical interaction, storytelling, structure and play.

Mezzacappa's previous works for this group have drawn inspiration from Dashiell Hammett and Paul Auster's lean noir crime novels and Italo Calvino's hilarious and poignant Cosmicomics stories. Now she's exploring the concept of worldbuilding—inspired by teenage Dungeons & Dragons sessions with her metalhead friends, and her fascination with the speculative fiction of Ursula Le Guin and David Mitchell— as a way to envision new kinds of musical interaction, storytelling, structure and play.

Berkeley-based composer, bassist and producer Lisa Mezzacappa has been active in the Bay Area music community for more than 20 years. Her activities as a composer and ensemble leader include ethereal chamber music, electro-acoustic works, avant-garde jazz, music for groups from duo to large ensemble, and collaborations with film, dance, and visual art. This year, she is releasing 12 records by Bay Area creative musicians in 12 months on her micro label QueenBee Records.

Fred Frith is a pioneer of the extended electric guitar. He learned to compose in Henry Cow, developed his song-writing skills in Art Bears, explored his multi- instrumentalism in Skeleton Crew, rocked the house with Massacre and is still doing all of those things, having been in one band or another continuously since 1964! Meanwhile his work has been performed by both Baroque and contemporary music ensembles, along with string quartets, chamber orchestras, and a whole range of groups and artists in the ever-expanding field of semi-popular music. Fred composes extensively for film and dance, and has played as a guest musician on records by Brian Eno, Material, Negativland, The Residents, Robert Wyatt and John Zorn among many others. Fred is the subject of Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzels’ award-winning film Step Across the Border.