"Accidentally on Purpose" Summer Series
The Camel's Back
(Music & Dance)
Saturday, July 28 @ 7:30pm
Free-of-Charge



The Camel's Back is an evening of music and dance organized by Roxanne Steinberg. This free-of-charge program is open to the public and is part of Farmlab's "Accidentally on Purpose" series that celebrates summer and spontaneity.

The Camel's Back Line-Up

  • Jesske Hume with Nels Cline (music, percussion) and Oguri (dance)

  • Robert Scott and Arnie Saiki's Obakesan, (music)

  • Miles Tokunow (dance)

  • Yuval Ron (music, earth harp composition)




  • About Yuval Ron's World Premiere Performance

    A world premier of Yuval Ron’s new music work: "Maya – themes and variations for Earth Harp" will take place at approximately 8pm.

    The new work features a stunning and grand harp, which will be wired down to the ground from the bridge over the Farmlab center in Downtown Los Angles. The Earth Harp will be played by the instrument inventor Bill Close, In addition, the new score calls for Ron on electronics and the Armenian woodwind master Yeghish Manukian on Duduk and Zurna. The site- specific work is based on themes created by Yuval Ron for the up coming film “Breaking the Maya Code” by director David Lebrun. The film explores the history of research into the language of the Mayan civilization in Central America as it is manifested visualy in the ruins and artifacts left by the Maya tribes.

    Ron also plans to respond to and incorporate the sounds of the MetroLink trains that regularly pass by the Under Spring premises.



    About the performers

    Nels Cline was named by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the most versatile, imaginative and original guitarists active today. Combining breathtaking technique with an informed musical intelligence, the self-taught Cline displays a mastery of guitar expression that encompasses delicate lyricism, sonic abstractions, and skull-crunching flights of fancy, inspiring Jazz Times to call him "The World's Most Dangerous Guitarist." Born in Los Angeles in 1956, his earliest musical influences included Roger McGuinn, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, John Fahey and Duane Allman. Cline claims his most valuable music training came from his work with bassist/multi-instrumentalist Eric von Essen, with whom he performed as a duo from 1977 until von Essen's untimely death in 1997.

    In the late 1970s, Cline formed the influential chamber-jazz group Quartet Music with von Essen, his brother, percussionist Alex Cline and violinist Jeff Gauthier. Cline's first appearance on an album was on woodwindist Vinny Golia's 1978 record, "Openhearted," and his first work as a bandleader was 1988's "Angelica," with New York City altoist Tim Berne. Since then, Cline has performed on over 100 albums in the jazz, pop, rock, country, and experimental music genres. Some of the musicians he has performed and/or recorded with include: Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Rickie Lee Jones, Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden, Tim Berne, Mark Dresser, Bobby Bradford, Elliott Sharp, Thurston Moore, Gregg Bendian, Mark Isham, The Geraldine Fibbers,Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Devin Sarno, Zeena Parkins, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Kaiser, The Scott Amendola Band, Banyan and Carla Bozulich. In addition to his latest trio The Nels Cline Singers, formed with drummer Scott Amendola and bassist Devin Hoff, Cline is also the lead guitarist for the critically acclaimed rock band Wilco, which he joined in 2004.

    Oguri, a native of Japan, studied radical visual arts with Genpei Akasegawa, which led to his career as a dancer. He studied with Tatsumi Hijikata, the creator of Butoh dance. He joined famed dancer Min Tanaka's company, Mai-Juku, in 1985. For five years Oguri lived, worked, and helped establish Tanaka's farm outside of Tokyo.

    A resident of Southern California since 1990, he conducts Body Weather Laboratory with Roxanne Steinberg, a forum for investigating the body and dance (founded by Min Tanaka in Japan, 1978). He has taught and performed worldwide. He is an artist-in-residence at the Electric Lodge in Venice, California. Oguri has received support from the California Arts Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Foundation, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, The Durfee Foundation, The Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Arts Partners Program, and The Getty Center.

    Oguri received the Irvine Fellowship in Dance for the research and development of Height of Sky, a site-specific dance project that took place in the deserts of Joshua Tree. It was an investigation of the relationship between dancer and environment, and explored the development of his identity as a Japanese dancer in America. The documentary directed by Morleigh Steinberg documentary Height of Sky about his desert project screens on the Sundance channel October 24, 2007.

    Through the Dance: Creation to Performance grant from The James Irvine Foundation and administered by Dance/USA Oguri’s William Faulkner Project Caddy! Caddy! Caddy! was developed and performed at Electric Lodge in 2006 and at REDCAT 2007. He collaborated with Dawn Saito and Myra Melford on Knock on the Sky, a work based on Kobo Abe’s Woman in the Dunes. It was performed at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the Flynn Theater in Burlington Vermont. He continues to develop and tour improvisation work with Adam Rudolph called Wildflowers.

    Yuval Ronwas born and raised in Israel. Ron is a film composer, world-music artist and record producer who has composed internationally for Film, TV, Dance and Theater. Based in Los Angeles Yuval is a graduate of Berklee College of Music majoring in Film Music Composition (Cum Laude). Yuval composed scores for numerous TV programs and films including the Oscar Winner musical comedy film West Bank Story, Golda’s Balcony, Proteus, Oliver Twist, The Spiral Staircase, Susie Q and Someone to Die For. His work for TV was shown on CBS, Disney, Fox, UPN, ESPN, Fox Family Channel, and includes "Sweet Valley High," "Politics and the Games," and "To Life - America Salutes Israel's 50th."

    Ron is the musical director and oud player for The Yuval Ron Ensemble, which includes Arabic, Jewish and Christian artists who unites the sacred musical traditions of Judaism, Sufism and the Armenian Church into an unusual mystical, spiritual and inspiring musical celebration. The Ensemble has been actively involved in creating musical bridges between people of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths. It was featured in the World Festival of Sacred Music in Los Angeles in 2002 and 2005 as well as in numerous venues and festivals worldwide since 2000. Yuval Ron has produced field recordings in the Sinai Desert with the Bedouins and produced the album "One Truth - A Window into the Divine Passion and Poetry of Sufism" with Turkish Sufi master musician Omar Faruk Tekbilek. His other recordings include "Under the Olive Tree", "In Between the Heartbeat", “In the Shallows”, "One", "Proteus" and “Tree of Life”. Yuval is also a noted lecturer and leader of workshops and master classes at numerous schools and universities in the US and abroad, including Berklee College of Music, MIT, UCLA, John Hopkins University, University of Pittsburgh, Brandeis University, Boston Center for the Arts, Camera Obscura and Sam Spiegel Jerusalem Film School. Between 2000-2003 he was the curator and host of world music concert series The International Underground at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. For more information about Yuval Ron please visit: www.yuvalronmusic.com.



    Jesske Hume is a Los Angeles based musician and performer. For the past two and a half years she has been involved with Body Weather Laboratory and playing bass in various groups. She has studied many forms of dance including
    Butoh and Latin dance. She also studied West African percussion in Mali and in the US with Abdoul Doumbia and Rusty Eklund. She consistently has several projects going on at the same time. Most recently she played with Carla Bozulich in Europe, and she is playing and recording with her band Weyou, a duo with Nate Wood. Jesske's loves include pit bulls, heart-shaped things, and hands.

    Robert Scott was born and raised in Hawaii. His irst movement studies were in the jungle and the ocean. A musical collaboration with Arnie Saiki began with a garage band in the 1980’s and continues through soundscores for dance to this day. Robert’s study in dance began at the University of Hawaii and continued in New York where he was exposed to the work of Poppo Shiraishi and the Go Go Boys. Robert joined Body Weather Laboratory in Los Angeles in 1989 and eventually danced with Oguri’s dance troupe, Renzoku. He was a founding member in the Gain Dangerous Visions and the Isle of Pines performance art ensembles. He has presented solo dance in New York, Los Angeles and Honolulu. Robert is a current and founding member of Oktagon, a group dedicated to analyzing and distilling the essence of dance.

    Arnie Saiki's Obakesan line-up includes Roger Park, Doug Scharin and Jay Villanueva

    Roger Park plays bass, pedal steel guitar, ganguro-girl guitar, piano, mandolin, banjo and accordion. As a music critic, his articles have been published in Wired, Launch Yahoo!, LA Weekly and various other publications. A native of Southern California, he lives in Los Angeles.

    Doug Scharin has been touring and recording extensively over the past 14 years, playing drums for the bands Codeine, Rex, June of '44, Directions in Music and Mice Parade. Doug has written and produced his own music with projects such as HiM and Out in Worship. His music has been remixed by Japanese artist Susumu Yakoto and Nobukasu Takemura as well as producer Bill Laswell. Recently Doug has organized a new HiM group with Japanese artist Ultra Living. They have just recorded a new record in Tokyo which will be released in early 2008. A new project with guitarist Jeff Parker entitled 'Activities of Dust' will be released on Doug's own imprint of the same name later this year.



    Arnie Saiki has been performing musical pieces for dance often in collaboration with Robert Scott since the early 80s. Since the beginning of the harmonic shift he has been approaching music through pan-asian folk instrumentation like harmonium, er-hu, sanshin and zithers and appropriating traditional folk melodies and random-numbered sequencing with orchestral timbre to enhance the thematic apparitional focus of Obakesan.

    Jay Villanueva has been composing and playing cello, guitar and accordian for many years. He is currently the impressario of Soul Sessions at Jazz Star in Chinatown, every other Friday.

    **Please note that one performer previously listed above will not in fact be on the bill.

     



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