June 6th, Mikl-em's First Frickin Fridays #6

Improvisational Bridges & Kozmigroov Waves

Live spoken words and moving limbs, and an X-ray spec-ial look back at a strain of jazz hybridized by electronic components and forward at its legacy

8pm Friday June 6th, 2003
21 Grand Gallery located at 449B 23rd St.
(between Broadway and Telegraph) in Oakland
(510) 444-7263 (that's 44-GRAND)

Featuring
Mikl-em
Sara Kraft and Ed Purver
& DJ {free/form}

This instance of First Frickin' Fridays takes a stance straddling music, poetry and performance with an undercurrent of improvisation throughout. The format will feature one part performance and one part listening party/dj set.

The first half of the show will interweave the works of performing poet Mikl-em and multi-media performing artists Sara Kraft and Ed Purver. The second will feature {free/form} as dj/tour guide through the pleasures of the music known as Kozmigroov.

This is a new format for FFF, which will be repeated in future shows: live performances in the first half, and an exploration & presentation of a "post-electronic" musical genre in the second. The musical section will cross-fade from a discussion and presentation about the genre into a mixed set of that music.

In the first half Mikl-em will read from recent writings and Sara Kraft and Ed Purver will perform new work. Mikl and Sara will also do a collaborative piece. Special guest accomplices may appear.

Our musical feature will spotlight "Kozmigroov", a direction of music which, amongst its features, marks the effect of electronics on jazz. Our special guest DJ {free/form} will play and explicate this groove-y, worldly genre. {f/f} will spin essential sounds from classic Kozmigroov artists like Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Fela Kuti, and bring us back to the future in the form of such modern Kozmigroovers as Spaceheads & Cinematic Orchestra. He'll crossfade from conversing about Kozmigroov with Mikl-em to a full-on set of groove-tunes, to close the night.

Mikl-em, the producer of First Frickin' Fridays, tells poems, says stories, and performs performances. His "Absurd Night Live" show was a part of The EXIT Theater's 2002 Absurdist Festival, and he is a regular in the annual Dadafest. His work runs the range from beat re-fleck-shuns to dada rants to excursive flights of thought and sound that trespass equally on the grounds of rap & jazz. He is allergic to pretension and obsensed with humor. He has never met nor admitted a typo he didn't like (in the sense obsession isn't senseless). Mikl incorporates recent poems in Bermuda, and will make his latest work at the show, before the eyes of an amazed audience (nothing up his sleeve, keep your eye on the ball). Hear Mikl in action

Sara Kraft emigrated to San Francisco 3 years ago from Chicago. She spent the decade previous in the Windy City creating, directing, and performing original multi-media performance, dance and music. Her celebrated Bay Area performances include:

• 2001 Fringe Festival Midair: odes to easycomeasygo
• Best of Fringe 2002 Woods for the Trees
  in collaboration with Ed Purver [audience reviews]
• In3 a collaboratively devised piece at the Exit Theater.

Sara was a founding member and co-artistic director of Baubo Performance Project, a collective acclaimed for "fashioning moving, beautiful, transcendent work" (Chicago Reader). She has guested with such Chicago companies as Xsight!, Redmoon, and Street Signs. Her individual and collaborative work have been presented at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, DanceChicago Festival, and Berlin's Theaterhaus Mitte. Sara has a B.A. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, certification from Moving on Center School, and has studied with a range of artists including members of Pina Bausch's Tanztheatre Wuppertal, Meredith Monk's House company, SITI company, Contraband, Goat Island, Ruth Zaporah, and Lynn Book. She also teaches performance and works extensively in film and video.

Ed Purver is a British actor of theater, television and film. He has performed principle roles in some of the most reputable theaters in the UK including the Royal Exchange, the New Vic, the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and in London's West End. He also conceived and performed "Tube Twins", a series of site specific events on the London Underground. Recently he collaboratively created and performed in the local physical theatre hit 28 Very Short Scenes About Love at Noh Space. Purver graduated from LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art). He has trained in dance and physical theatre with Theatre de Complicite, Monika Pagneux of Lecoq School, Lower Left Dance Collective, Ruth Zaporah, Keriac, and Goat Island Performance Group.

{free/form} is the keeper of the Kozmigroov Index co-founder of bianca's Smut Shack, both the on-line and off-line incarnations. He has DJ'd at numerous events including a series of Jazzatronic Brunches at Cafe Lola, and at bianca's shack at Burning Man.