Ned Rothenberg has played live with the Tuver singer
Sainho Nomchylak.
A small, free music concert including some big names at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture could prove a good alternative to the October Revolution holiday on Tuesday, November 7.
A Tuvinian singer, who lives in Austria, a leading American sax and clarinet player, a Japanese band of percussion instruments and electric bass will all gather in the 250-seat hall of the Lensoviet Palace of Culture to play this one-off concert in the city.
Sainho (full name Sainho Nomchylak) is one of the most prominent figures on the current improvised music scene. Apart from her unique performing qualities, it was instrumental to her success that she was born in Tuva, in Eastern Siberia, which has become a mecca for Western musicians and music students because of its traditions of throat singing.
Apart from her command of Tuvinian throat singing techniques, Sainho was classically trained as a vocalist at Moscow's Gnesinsky Institute. She studied Siberian ethnic music in the early and mid-1980s, but in 1989 she got involved with new jazz.
Sainho collaborated with Moscow's famous improvised music trio Tri O, as well as with many reputed musicians, both Russian and international.
Now she lives in Vienna but tours extensively around the globe and makes recordings for the world's leading record labels in the field of improvised music, having released several albums.
Another performer to appear in the concert is Ned Rottenberg, the Boston-born composer and performer, who collaborated with Sainho. He will play mostly alto saxophone and bass clarinet together with flute and various self-designed instruments.
Rottenberg is well-known in the new music scene, having played with such people as Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, and Eliot Sharp. His music idiom is said to (get ready for this one!) "incorporate polyphony and accurate microtonal organization through the manipulation of multiphonics, circular breathing, overtones and unorthodox fingering techniques."
Japan's Poly-Breath Percussion Band, which is also taking part in the concert on Tuesday, heavily relies on the individuality of performers which, they claim, is the only way to reach the polyrhythm and polyphony. "You cannot breathe another person's breath," said its leader, Japanese eminent drummer Shoji Hano. After many experiments, concerts and jams Hano has found musicians who could fulfill his ideas -- Megumu Nishino, who plays Wadaiko, Japanese traditional drums, and electric bass player Tetsu Yamauchi.
Rock fans of some experience will probably recognize the name of the latter. One of the first generation of Japanese rockers, he left Japan for Europe in the late 1960s and played bass with some well-known British rock bands, including Free and Rod Stewart's Faces, in the early 1970s.
The concert will be the second in the series of events organized by the newly-launched Olbi Jazz Club, which will start to work on a regular basis in a couple of months.