Symphony in Sea, by David Samas for the Shorekestra and Vacation Mens Choir
Monday Oct. 14 2013 8pm, @ Berkley Arts
2133 University Avenue, Berkeley $10
Part of the Thingamajigs Festival

David Samas composes unique visions for environmental concert music, focusing on authentic materials and rare techniques with visually stunning instruments which he builds himself. 
Symphony in Sea is a vacation; we journey with the audience away from the familiar shore, across the choral reef, through rough seas, out beyond the horizon and back blending improvised textures and cheeky shanties with an unusual orchestra of invented instruments.

Our “Shorekestra” is a compilation of some of the best extended improvisors in the bay area new music scene, with the inventors Tom Nunn and Bob Marsh playing sonic paintings, steel plates, waterphones and sonic suits, extended bassist Paul Winstanely, Doug Carroll playing a contramast (16 ft. double bass), Ron Heglin and Peter Bonos on shells and kelp horns, Ian Saxton polynesian percussion, and composers David Samas and Grace Renaud voice and ukelele.

Symphony in Sea-Excerpt

By Jen Baker (extended technique trombone), and David Samas (extended technique vocals and invented instruments)

Recorded live at the Meridian Gallery, San Francisco CA November 14, 2012

A 9-site cycle that tells the story of a song for peace and freedom (voiced for multiphonic trombone) as it travels through the seven major vortices (energetically dense places) in the US along the First Nations' Ley, extending east-west across the northern part of the country from the monastery at Shelburne Falls, to Mt. Shasta and on to Mauna Kea.  As the song travels west, it is supported by and then transformed with 9 sonic landscapes for invented instruments and extended technique vocals; each soundscape being a reflection of the landscape, its wildlife and its native tribes.

ABOUT LEY LINES:
	Ley lines are the circuitry of the geomagnetic field, or meridians, encompassing the earth.  Similar to the nervous system of the human body, these meridians carry information and energy specific to each particular line.  They all pass through various sacred sites, major cities, fault lines, lakes or springs, volcanoes, and mountain ridges.  The quality of energy along any segment of a ley line is most directly affected by other locations and events occurring on it.  The aboriginals of Australia know them as song lines because shamans use them to pass information over great distances in the form of a song

HDD recording and CD-R mastering by Michael Zelner • mic@zoka.com

The Western Wood

Mt. Shasta

Ensemble features David Samas - Voice and Invented Instruments, Bob Marsh - Contrabass, Doug Carrol - Cello, Grace Renaud - Piano and Invented Instruments & Peter Bonos - Sound Design and Invented Instruments.

Recorded live, at Berkeley Arts Festival, October, 2012

The Green Wood:a (super)natural opera (excerpts)

created for a museum show in Nebraska, Silent Creatures features driftwood chimes, shamanic rattles, and the buzz roarer.

Silent Creatures

solo improv on invented instruments featuring the free cage, tree harp and flightless egg tabla.

Free cage

vocal gymnastics supported by an old accordion belonging to master musician Bob Marsh. this track represents the range of poly and multi-phonic techniques ive been working with.

16 Ways to Crack Space

The Change in ALL

comprovised work in 3 sections for keybar, voice and field recordings; 1, birds; 2, whales; 3, crickets.

Gamelan of the Animals

written for the conceptual artist michael dodge in 2000, song and distance is performed in three sections; "anxiety", "a traveling tune" and "gone". the entire work is performed a cappella through a long plastic tube he left me when he moved.

Song and Distance- for Michael

David Samas is a composer, cosmologist, poet, painter, performer, philosopher, farmer and father of 4; he is a practitioner and professor of arcane healing technologies and traditional magics- a field which includes massage, herbalism, hypnotherapy, psychoacoustics and shamanism. He has a BFA from the SF Art Institute in conceptual art and studied poetics at the New College of California, Vassar, Bennington and S.F. State. As a young man he performed with the SF Boys Chorus, the SF Opera and the SF Symphony with which he won a GRAMMY for the “best classical recording” of 1994. He also makes sacred geometry amulets and talismans, is an excellent cook, and self publishes small editions of hand bound art books.

Lately, he focuses on inventing instruments and extended vocal techniques. He is the creator of the Superb Metaliphone, the Gamelan Piano, the Crystalithaphone, Glassilalia and a number of musical paintings which serve as sets, orchestras and characters for his inventive operas and shadow plays. He uses Tuvan overtone singing and Tibetan deep chanting along with a host of birdsongs, whale songs, howling and polyphonic split tones to weave a dense tapestry of unusual sounds.

David has performed everywhere from the altar of Grace Cathedral on Easter, to the Art in Nature Festival in the Oakland woods, to guerilla audience performances of “orchestrated applause” at the Other Minds Festival and Davis Symphony Hall. David has performed and been interviewed on local and national radio (KALW-2012, PRN-2011, KQUD, Fifi?) on topics as diverse as organic farming, historical shamanism and healing song. His chamber opera “The Green Wood” premiered at Berkeley Arts Festival in Oct. 2012 and will be performed at shotwell studios in march 2013.   His collaborative trombone concerto premièred at Meridian gallery’s Composers in Performance series Nov 2012 and will be performed tellamatically (bicoastaly) with Pauline Oliveros at CCRMA Stanford and Reinssleir Polytechnical simultaneously . He has performed invented instruments at the Exploritorium (2000) and the SF Art Institute (2001) and received honorable mention form the NFA (1997).

check out his invented instruments on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.383195125039619.110511.100000474044278&type=3
or listen to him on soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/david-samas 

David Samas is also the impresario and host of the Turquoise Yantra Grotto-
a house concert series for avant improvisers and invented instrumentalists with a focus on ethno-modernism and extended techniques. TYG holds a monthly event which is part concert, part art opening and part social club, with Chinese tea service, near Glen Canyon in San Francisco. In that context has recently collaborated with Joe Lasqo, Bart Hopkin, Bob Marsh, Laurie Amat and Tom Nunn. 
Check out tyg on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Turquoise-Yantra-Grotto/284577768269213
or listen in at sondcloud: http://soundcloud.com/turquoise-yantra-grott

He currently plays with and composes for Pet the Tiger, an improvised acoustic collective for invented instruments with Grace Renaud (keyboards and percussion), Ash Ritter (idiophones and aquatiphones), and Peter Bonos (horns and explosives).


David Samas

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