The Michael Pierre Vlatkovich Quartet
Christopher Garcia – Drumset, Percussion
Chris was born, raised, and still resides in East L.A. (Never to be confused with West L.A.). His background includes performances in a wide variety of musical settings including; Progressive Jazz, Rock, World Music, traditional Mexican music, percussion ensemble, soundtracks, and cartoon music. He attributes his musical growth to his studies with Professor John Bergamo, Pandit Tarnath Rao, Swapan Chadhouri and Leonice Shinemann where he studied tabla, while attending California Institute of the Arts on a full scholarship.
Chris was also a member of the award winning Cal Arts Percussion Ensemble in 1979. He attributes his “style”(?) to Listening to EVERYTHING, logging in thousands of hours, practicing, rehearsing,performing and touring constantly with musicians interested in stretching and reinventing themselves. Chris’ drumming is unusual in that it incorporates not only the standard rhythms and their permutations, but also a fluency with odd time signatures and sonic textures, which he seamlessly incorporates into his playing. He has toured extensively throughout the United States, Canada and Asia. He has consistently held the drummer/percussionist chair in several Vlatkovich ensembles since 1992.
He has also been the drummer/percussionist of several critically acclaimed ensembles including: Continuum – fusion for the 21st Century, Quarteto Nuevo – a world music improvising chamber ensemble, The Michael Vlatkovich Trio, Quartet, Quintet & Sextet – Avant trombonist, The Jihad Racy, Roberto Miranda, Christopher Garcia – world music trio, the World Music Percussion Quartet with Gustavo Aguilar, Park Je Chun, Takinojo Mochizuki, The Grandmothers – Ex Mother Of Invention – Don Preston, Roy Estrada, Bunk Gardner, Napoleon Murphy Brock, and duets with Drummer/percussionist Alex Cline, guitarist Nels Cline and multi woodwinds master Vinny Golia.
more on Christopher Garcia here…
Jonathan Golove – Electric Cello
Jonathan Golove is a native of Los Angeles, California and a resident of Buffalo, New York. He currently serves as Lecturer in the Music Department of the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he received a Ph.D. in musical composition as a Woodburn Fellow. His principal composition teachers have been David Felder and Donald Erb, and he has studied computer music with Cort Lippe. He has worked with or participated in master classes given by composers including Marc-Andre Dalbavie, Philippe Manoury, Lukas Foss, Roger Reynolds, Gerhard Staebler, and Walter Zimmermann. Mr. Golove’s works have been performed in a variety of locations in the North America and Europe, by such ensembles as the Ensemble Court Circuit, the Amherst Saxophone Quartet, Maelstrom Percussion Ensemble, and The Instrumental Factor.
He has received commissions, awards and grants for his works from organizations including the European Academy of Music/International Festival of Lyric Art of Aix-en-Provence, VOXNOVA, ASCAP, the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, Meet the Composer, and the Darius Milhaud Society.
He has written for a variety of ensembles, often in combination with live electronic processing, including (Max’s 24 Hours) Pray-O-Mat for two cellos and the IRCAM Signal Processing Workstation, which was performed at the 1996 Sonic Circuits Festival in Toronto. In 1995, Mr. Golove was the first winner of the ASCAP Foundations Leo Kaplan award. His winning composition, Shreds of Evidence, is scored for two pianos, electronically processed spoken text, and video, and was premiered at the North American New Music Festival in February, 1995. A version of Shreds for piano duo was subsequently premiered at the June In Buffalo Festival. Here and There, a work for female voice and percussion quartet, has been recorded by the Maelstrom Percussion Ensemble on its CD release Whirled Music.
Mr. Golove is also an accomplished cellist, having been a student of Siegfried Palm and Ronald Leonard. In 1997 he was featured as soloist in Morton Feldman’s Cello and Orchestra with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and will perform Gubaidulina’s Detto II for cello and ensemble with the Slee Sinfonietta in April 1999. He is active, as well, in the field of improvised music, appearing on a number of recordings with noted composer/performer Vinny Golia.
Mr. Golove has been a founder and co-director of chamber ensembles dedicated to the performance of new music including The Instrumental Factor (Buffalo), Just Like It Sounds (San Francisco), Arc-en-Ciel (Berkeley), and the Three-in-the-Time-of-Two Festival, which had its debut in Cleveland in 1994. He has performed in or composed works for summer music festivals including the Pacific Music Festival, the Rome Festival, and the Sarasota Music Festival. He was a founding member of the Elisha String Quartet, a group which served as the Apprentice Quartet at The Cleveland Institute of Music and participated in the 1993 Julliard Quartet Seminar. In addition, he has performed in the June In Buffalo String Quartet, the Roycroft Festival, and with the Cleveland Octet, a group made up of members of the Cleveland Orchestra.
more on Jonathan Golove here…
David Mott – Baritone Saxophone
David Mott is a graduate of Berklee College of Music and holds the degrees of Master of Music, Master of Musical Arts and Doctor of Musical Arts from the Yale University School of Music, where he also taught graduate composition and directed the Yale Jazz Ensemble. He has been an Associate Professor at York University in Toronto since 1978.
The earliest of his compositions date from 1964, and include chamber works in a style the composer describes as “contemporary western art music”, pieces for both small and large jazz ensembles, and compositions demonstrating his spectacular mastery of his own instrument, the baritone saxophone, either by itself, with electroacoustic elements, or in conjunction with his colleagues in the Toronto-based saxophone quartet, 40 fingers.
Mott maintains an enthusiastic interest in the cultures of Tibet, China, Korea and Japan. Many of his compositions bear evocative titles that reflect an Eastern-inspired concern with nature and its ways, or relate to the explicitly Buddhist approach to music defined in his article, Towards a New Mind/Body Music, first published in the journal Musicworks over the course of four issues from 1982 to 1983. His music is recorded on Music Gallery Editions, Opus One Records, Hamagi Records and Unity Records.
more on David Mott here…