Suns of Mothers (Live) 12-29-2024

The second installment of the trio I’m part of with Tommy Guerrero and Nino Moschella. Performing live at Little Hill Lounge, El Cerrito California 12-29-2024. (Free)

We spent two days in the studio last week to record some ideas and shape together some songs. It has been quite liberating to play in a small ensemble with so much space for texture, silence, and rhythm. We just started playing together a few months ago but we have spent decades drinking from a lot of the same musical fountains and when we get together, things just flow.

Videos: Sulah Jordan “Museé Melancolique” & "Jasmine"

The Sulah Jordan “Ladybug” album came out a little while ago. I was invited to perform tenor saxophone and flutes on some songs. It was fun to record and a delight to listen to. Now there are videos. Enjoy.

Suns of Mothers: Debut Performance

Suns of Mothers is a new improvisational music trio me 🎷🪈Tommy Guerrero 🛹🔥🎸and Nino Moschella 🥁🎙️ put together.

We played our first show 11-20-2024 at the Little Hill Lounge in El Cerrito, California. It was a jam. We were joined by vocalist Destani Wolf who took us and the music to a whole other dimension.

I regret we didn’t record the whole set as it turned out to exceed my wildest expectations, but some friends fortunately shot a few clips. We are hoping to do this once a month at Little Hill- next one late December or early January. Stay tuned IG: @sunsofmothers

This happened....rocking with Togetherness Ensemble at Gray Area Mission SF

My plan was to have had this post up before this happened, but it was a crazy week. So it’s in past tense. On 10-26 I performed with the Togetherness Ensemble as part of an emergent composition in four movements. the first three movements featured eight different musicians and we all got together for the fourth. You had to be there. I met a lot of really wonderful people, most of whom for the very first time. It feels good to be part of a musical community again.

The Togetherness Ensemble is convened on occasion by Zekarias Musele Thompson to hold space for communal resonance through collective improvisation. Prompted by the historical and contemporary creative sensibilities of African and African diasporic peoples, and the possibilities of emergent composition as the scaffolding for recognizing ourselves as free.

The Togetherness Ensemble made its debut interpreting James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing, during closing performance of Possible Dialogues: Vol 1 in July 2023 at the BAMPFA.

For this fifth iteration we will explore Togetherness in three parts with a new composition titled RE-EDUCATION. Inspired by the current moment, the ecstatic motions of Alice Coltrane’s 1972 epic Lord of Lords, as well as Floating Points' and Pharoah Sanders' 2021 collaboration, Promises.

RE-EDUCATION

Movement 1: A Curiosity

Movement 2: A Recognition

Movement 3: A Promise

with: Salimatu Amabebe, Matt Brownell, Gabriele Christian, Roco Córdova, B Dukes, Christopher Robin Duncan, Mary Graham, Cat Lauigan, Phillip Laurent, Amina Malika, Micah Morris, Maya Nixon, Jasmine Nyende, Martin Perna, Justin (Hongry) Robinson, Benjamin Rodgers, Joel St. Julien, Zekarias Musele Thompson, David Wilson, Josh Wismans, and Gaia WXYZ.

Song collaboration: DJ Platurn : "Give a Damn"

I was honored to get loose with the flutes on this song by DJ Platurn from his latest album “Through Storm and Grief.” also available on Bandcamp.

Los Angeles: The Golden Thread

Playing multiple woodwinds in this really fun concert with a few of my oldest musical friends and some brand new ones, at one of my favorite venues in Los Angeles.

Collab:: Sulah Jordan "The Sweetest Gift"

The second installation of some collaborations with my friend Sulah Jordan and company. This song is a rendition of Sade’s “The Sweetest Gift" I was invited to perform tenor saxophone solos. If you haven’t checked her first EP “Lady Bug”, you can find it on Spotify or at Bandcamp. Enjoy.

Sonorous Present at Getty Center LA 3/16-17

Los Angeles! I’ll be performing at the Getty Center on March 16-17 as part of a beautiful musical project called Sonorous Present, composed and performed by my dear friend, musician/scholar Alex E. Chávez with musical direction by Grammy-award winning producer/musician Quetzal Flores. The event is FREE. Yes FREE. You have to sign up to reserve your tickets HERE.

From the Getty Museum:

“Sounds of LA 2024 launches with an exclusive performance of immersive, poetic music from Alex E. Chávez’s forthcoming album SONOROUS PRESENT. What began as an experimental, collaborative, and improvised performance in Chicago—inspired by the music and poetics of Chávez’s award-winning book Sounds of Crossing—has been subsequently reimagined as a studio album in collaboration with Grammy Award-winning producer Quetzal Flores. SONOROUS PRESENT offers a never-before-heard blend of Mexican and Latin American folk elements with progressive jazz, poetry, dance, field recordings, and ethnographic songwriting that crosses the sunburst surrealism of America's musical and cultural borderlands.”

The main band will be composed of Alex Chávez (pictured below), and members of the group Quetzal. I’ll be doing my horn thing, flying down from the Bay with a few armloads of saxophones and flutes and percussion and getting in where I fit in. The music is so beautiful. It is an honor to be a part of this, and to be part of the maiden voyage of bringing this to the stage and public. Hope to see you there.

I first met Alex in Southeast Austin in 2003 when I was on a roadtrip from Brooklyn to Michoacan. My friend Adrian Quesada, on one of our many runs around the city, took me to his apartment one day to meet him. Little did I know then that I would be relocating two years later to Austin, and that we’d cross paths many times, whether it was a University of Texas grad student circles that he and my wife ran in, double bills with my Ocote Soul Sounds and his Maneja Beto, or guest appearances on album’s by his group Mitote. The friendship lasted after we both left Austin. He continued on to Chicago to teach and start another great musical project, Dos Santos, which I’ve had the pleasure of making cameo appearances. And now this.

Oñi Ocan: The Heart of Sweetness

It has been a pleasure to collaborate with my partner Courtney Desiree Morris, finally, on more big art things that put our heads and talents together. Below are shots from Oñi Ocan: The Heart of Sweetness, a multi-modal performance art piece she designed/directed and performed in. The multi-channel video piece and altar installation just went up at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Below are shots from the performance of the work at Berkeley Art Center. I did live sound and sound design in collaboration with sound artist/scholar SA Smythe.

Oñí Ocan: The Heart of Sweetness (dir. Courtney Desiree Morris, 2023)
live performance programmed for Rabbit Hole (exhibition feat. Courtney Desiree Morris)
Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, California, USA
Curator: Adrianne Ramsey
all photos © Carla Hernández Ramírez

The Yoruba term oñí ocan is typically applied to initiates of Oshun, the orisha of rivers, freshwaters, sweetness, and everything that makes life worth living. Like all orisha she operates in duality: she is the divine embodiment of abundance, sensuality, fertility/pregnancy, wealth, pleasure and good fortune. She is also an orisha who has experienced grief, disappointment, abandonment, rejection, and loss. Because of this complexity, Oshun is known as a healer who works with honey and cool water to restore the body and bring mental clarity and self-awareness through the use of her mirror. She is also the patron orisha of sex workers and LGBT practitioners. Oñí Ocan is a multimedia performance ritual that focuses on the use of honey as a material and metaphysical healing modality, as well as a way to honor current and former sex workers and pleasure activists. It is composed of a five-channel experimental film as well as live performances of honey rituals.

The Honey Drippers (actors): Arianne Benford, Kendall Benford, Kiara Brown, Monica Canilao, Odaymar Cuesta Kruda, Rachel De Souza Bolden, Ashara Ekundayo, Dillon Gardner, Sura Hertzberg, Ignacia, Alie Jones, Aja Lenae, Janelle Luster, Sam McGinnis, Pi Palomo, Callan Porter-Romero, Kiara Sample, Savannah Shange, Annie Sprinkle, Undine, & Avery Zeus

Support for Oñí Ocan provided by: The Panta Rhea Foundation, The City of Berkeley, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, & the Foundation for Contemporary Art

Film shot on location at Toro y Moi Studios in Oakland, California
Liver performance at the Berkeley Art Center in Berkeley, California
all photos © Carla Hernández Ramírez