2014: Jill Burton Trio

Jill Burton: vocals
Doug Carroll: cello
Tim Perkis: electronics

This will be a first-time trio collaboration between deeply experienced and versatile musicians: Jill Burton, Tim Perkis and Doug Carroll. It is the nature and purpose of free improvisation to simultaneously compose and perform specific musical subject matter utilizing no specific musical direction whatsoever. In performance, this is inherently dramatic, both for the audience and the performers alike. The unfolding of the interactions as well as the musical content comes largely as much to the surprise to the musicians as to the audience. In this sense the positive effect is much the same for audience and performer alike, a shared experience of discovery and unpredicted coherence emerging without conscious planning, which in turn facilitates an appreciation of subtle and extreme degrees of expressive interaction between the intellect and the intuition among the performers, and between performer and audience. In short, a mutually unifying adventure, a mutual curiosity; this itself is a near-universally beneficial experience.

Jill Burton is an improviser, extended vocalist, dancer, performance artist and energy worker. Noted as one of the great foundation improvisors of America, she is also known for incorporating spiritual healing with improvised performance. Active in the American improv scene since the early 1970s, she has lived and worked all over the country, including a ten-year stint in the 1980s as part of the downtown East Village experimental arts community, and six years in Sitka, Alaska, where she worked with Tlingit storytellers providing musical accompaniment for their healing stories. Burton is unusual for a musician in that her work is ephemeral, in-the-moment, and therefore recordings of her work are rare. She has collaborated with many notable experimental musicians and dancers, including LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, Jane Scarpantoni, Judy Dunaway, David First, Rain Worthington, Gino Robair, Jack Wright, and Scott Walton.

Tim Perkis has been working in the medium of live electronic and computer sound for many years, performing, exhibiting and recording extensively throughout North America and Europe. His work has largely been concerned with exploring the emergence of life-like properties in complex systems of interaction. A founder of the computer music band The Hub, he is also a well known performer in the San Francisco Bay Area's active improvised music scene, and a designer of multimedia systems for corporate clients. Recordings of his music are available on the Artifact, Lucky Garage, Meniscus and Limited Sedition labels.

International cellist and composer Doug Carroll expands into new sound domains with the use of electronic processing and creative thought. Carroll's compositions for electronic cello and tape feature the spontaneity and drama of a live performance combined with the richness and diversity of the taped material. His solo improvisations have received international acclaim for their stark originality and musical sensitivity. Additionally, he has composed for a variety of multimedia events, including modern dance, theatre, film, and video, as well as collaborations with visual artists.

Artist (photo by Photographer)