Resonance at Battery Townsley

Season Opening Event featuring Danny Paul Grody (guitar, voice), Gregg Kowalsky (tape recorders), and Jacob Felix Heule (drums) & Kanoko Nishi (koto)

In this stunning Soundwave season opening event, Green Sound takes you beyond the city streets and into the wilderness for a sonic event like no other. Up in the hills of the Marin Headlands, amongst the gorgeous ocean and parklands, lies a structure steeped with history, Battery Townsley at Fort Cronkhite (http://www.nps.gov/goga/historyculture/battery-townsley.htm). Built in 1940 during WWII, this strongest and most secretive harbor fortification was a marvel in technology outfitted with battleship guns to defend the western shores against the Japanese navy. After the war, the outpost was a military testing site but by the 1980s, it was largely abandoned. National Park Service took authority and historians, contractors and Volunteers in Parks helped restore a historic site.

Green Sound retreats to the Battery for a special performance event in this metallic highly resonant structure. From war comes art as artists are commissioned to re-interpret the environment in the Battery’s gun well and hallway with sonic sculptures and music. Performances will be without electrical power and using only the extreme resonant spaces to amplify their sounds. Featuring musician Danny Paul Grody (acoustic guitar and various soundmakers (melodica, bells, bows, voice, tapes), Sound artist Gregg Kowalsky (tape recorders) and free improv duo Jacob Felix Heule (drums) & Kanoko Nishi (koto).

Soundwave is offering bus transport from The Lab Gallery in San Francisco’s Mission District to and from the Marin Headlands site to limit carbon emissions. The gallery will act as a bus station (box office, refreshments, merchandise sales, waiting area).

Note: This is an outdoor event on top of hill overlooking the ocean and can be quite windy and foggy. Please bring warm clothes and proper shoe attire. We highly recommend our SF bus service, but if you are not using it, please park in the Rodeo Beach Parking Area and arrive at least 30 minutes before performance time. There is a 20-minute mild uphill hike from the Rodeo Beach parking lot to the Battery. There will be partial chair seating on a first come basis.

Danny Paul Grody is a founding member of San Francisco-based bands Tarentel and The Drift. A self-taught guitarist, the melodies at the core of Danny’s songwriting bring to mind his love of West African kora, Tacoma style fingerpicking and all things minimal, repetitive & hypnotic. His debut solo album Fountain came out in January 2010.
http://dannypaulgrody.com/
http://www.myspace.com/dannypaulgrody

Oakland-based sound artist Gregg Kowalsky completed an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media at Mills College. Gregg’s compositions range from drone & noise pieces to meditative psychedelia. Following his debut album, Through the Cardial Window, he began working with cassette tapes, sine oscillators and mixer feedback. His recent series Tape Chants (2009) explores the acoustics of performance spaces through the placement and manipulation of cassette players. Gregg has performed throughout Europe and the United States and participated in numerous festivals, including such as WDR’s SoundArt-Köln Festival, Sonar, ERTZ Festival and the Ideal Festival. His recordings have released on Kranky, Rootstrata, Arbor and Important Records.
http://greggkowalsky.net/
http://www.myspace.com/greggmkowalsky

The music of drummer and electronic musician Jacob Felix Heule follows from the traditions of free improvisation and noise. Jacob creates music that directly expresses sonic texture and timbre and spans the extremes of physicality and intensity. Jacob works in a variety of musical styles and settings. In 2004, he founded the acoustic grind duo Ettrick that combines free jazz and black metal. His growing interest in free improvisation and electronic music led to his forming Basshaters in 2008 with bassist Tony Dryer. Heule and Dryer also perform and record in trios featuring clarinetist Jacob Lindsay (debut album, Idea of West) and saxophonist Jack Wright, (Deburring Tool).
http://www.heule.us
http://www.myspace.com/jacobfelix

A classically-trained pianist, Kanoko Nishi has turned her attention to free improvisation in both solo and group setting. She is exploring techniques to extend the sonic vocabularies of the piano and her second instrument, the koto (Japanese zither). Inspired by her studies with prominent improvisatory musicians and composers, such as Fred Frith, Joelle Leandre, and Kazue Sawai, Kanoko is working to push the limits of musical expression. In her collaborations with musicians, dancers and visual artists, she strives to find ways to communicate with other forms of performance art.
http://www.myspace.com/kanokonishi