Out of This World

The San Francisco Jazz Festival never fails to sponsor at least one or two ear-bending performances during its annual two-week celebration. Radical adventure-seekers should not miss the "Avant World" showcase, featuring a pair of trios that aim to redefine the concept of global-minded jazz.

Terry Riley, "the father of minimalism," appears at the 19th annual S.F. Jazz Festival.

Details

Sunday, Oct. 28, at 7 p.m.

Admission is $18-30

788-7353

http://ww w.sfjazz.org

Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness (at McAllister), S.F.

Related Content

• No Genre Bias: Experimentalists Cosa Brava, Jack O' The Clock, and Grex Bend the Rules This Sunday
  August 10, 2011
• Taj Mahal, Ravi Shankar, Vieux Farka Touré Among Performers in SF Jazz Festival
  June 28, 2010
• Bigger than Gandhi
  October 21, 2009
• Art Operations
  July 1, 2009
• Radio Rahaim
  June 24, 2009

More About

• Krishna Bhatt
• Headliners Terry Riley
• George Brooks
• Miya Masaoka
• Larry Ochs

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Headliners Terry Riley (piano/vocals), Krishna Bhatt (sitar), and George Brooks (tenor saxophone) present serenely beautiful ruminations that draw from Indian ragas, Western classical music, and myriad jazz traditions. Less self-consciously synthesized than the East-meets-West fusions Ravi Shankar famously pioneered three decades earlier, the trio's music blends disparate cultural motifs with ease. The meditative melodic and rhythmic arcs led by minimalist master Riley on the 88s repeat naturally in Bhatt's evocative ad-libs on the Indian lute and Brooks' oblique accents on the horn.

Opening act Maybe Monday -- Fred Frith (guitar), Miya Masaoka (koto/electronics), and Rova Saxophone Quartet's Larry Ochs -- approaches so-called world-jazz from a less dreamy space. In fact, sections of the group's 1999 CD debut Saturn's Fingerborder on the nightmarish. In an eclectic fusion of acoustic and electric sounds, the trio explores collective improvisation as an edgy union of melody and noise. The players constantly adjust the timbre of their respective instruments with deft moment-to-moment transmutations that are startling in their synchronicity and breadth. For example, Frith's detuned six-string can be flabby, rough, or strangely streamlined; Ochs' saxophone riffs chitter and wail, whisper and splash, pumping momentum into the mix like volcanic spray; and Masaoka steers her harplike Japanese zither from lovely iridescence to frightening cacophony. Focusing on such subtle shifts in tonal color, the players feed the organic development of the music, which journeys fearlessly into new worlds that know no bounds.