Gachapon: A quartet featuring Nancy Beckman, Cindy Webster, Tom Bickley
and Dean Santomieri; playing a variety of instruments including:
shakuhachi, lyre, EWI (electronic wind instrument), bowed, amplified saw,
hurdy-gurdy, guitar, taishogoto, percussion and voice. Collaborating, for
this performance, with dancer Christina Braun. A Gachapon is a Japanese vending machine that dispenses small toys in capsules.
Christina Braun’s choreography has been presented by the International
Butoh Festival Thailand, the West Wave Dance Festival and the Asian Art
Museum. Christina has been working in collaboration with composers since
2002, most extensively with Tom Nunn. As SF Butoh Lab, Christina has
produced Butoh dance symposia, performances and workshops to strengthen a
culture of peace with collaborative art practices.
Gachapon:
Cindy Webster
Cindy Webster is a Board Certified Music Therapist/Therapeutic Musician
working in the San Francisco east Bay. She also plays the musical saw,
Hurdy-gurdy and other things as well. An admirer of avant-garde music, she
creates soundscapes using found objects, found sounds and effects. She has
appeared in San Francisco, Dublin, Zootown and Grass Valley fringe
Festivals; Y2K Loop Festivals in Providence, Santa Cruz and Mexico;
Musical Saw Festivals in Austria, New York and California; trees, phone
booths, rooftops, film and recordings. Cindy has been described as, “She
can do more with her voice and saw than you can do with anything,”
Nancy Beckman
https://tigergarage.org/nancy-beckman/
Studied Myoan-Ryu shakuhachi honkyoku through Meianji Temple in Kyoto for
five years, receiving the name Fukushin and the license (menkyo Kaiden) to
teach from the temple. Later, she studied various types of shakuhachi and
ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University. She also graduated from the Music
for Healing and Transition Program, where she played shakuhachi and lyre
for hospice. As a member of ensembles Gusty Winds May Exist (with Tom
Bickley), The Cornelius Cardew Choir and Dream Down Duvet, she improvises
and plays experimental music and composes improvisational sound
meditations. She lives in Berkeley and teaches the traditional Myoan
shakuhachi repertoire.
Tom Bickley
https://tigergarage.org/
Composer/performer (EWI, electronics)
Studied Gregorian chant, other medieval music, and African
American sacred music, and recorder. His degrees are in music, liturgy and
library and information science. He is certified by Pauline Oliveros to
teach the meditative improv techniques of Deep Listening. In addition to
his work with new music ensembles Gray Code and Comma, he has performed
with Pauline Oliveros, Anne LeBaron, Viv Corringham, Philip Gelb, the
Denison Kimball Trio, the Scratch Orchestra and others. He is active in
the duo Gusty Winds May Exist, with shakuhachi player Nancy Beckman,
co-founded and directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir, and teaches for the
Center for Deep Listening @ RPI and the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training.
Dean Santomieri
http://www.deansantomieri.com
Guitar, Taishogoto and spoken word artist; composing / improvising for
guitars in non-standard tunings. He is active in the San Francisco Bay
Area free improvisation music scene and has been associated with the
groups, Donkey Boy, Malcolm Mooney and the 10th Planet, The Cornelius
Cardew Choir, Ghost in the House, I Franzen, and since 2011,
Santomieri-Farhadian Duo. He has also accompanied dancers Christina Braun,
Dawn McMahan, Kinji Hayashi and others.
CD recordings: Crude Rotation, musique concrète, 3” CD, 2000. The Boy
Beneath the Sea, story narration and music, 2001. Facebook, the Opera, for
three singers and piano, 2013. Santomieri-Farhadian Duo, RedBlue, guitar
and violin, 2015.