Metatron Press

Quick Search:

photo by Lisa Mages photo by Peter B. Kaars (all rights reserved)

Tom Bickley

This website is under even more construction than most are. Soon you will be able to gain access to upcoming performance information, workshop details, etc. But for now please find these links helpful and feel free to contact Tom Bickley at tbickley@metatronpress.com or telephone him at 510 204 0607 for more information.

Generally, the most current info is now at
http://www.myspace.com/tbickley

Upcoming Performances:

Three Trapped Tigers (David Barnett and Tom Bickley, recorders) 13 Feb 2008 8 pm Meridian Gallery, 525 Powell St (nr. Sutter), San Francisco, CA
donation: $10/$5 students and seniors

About Tom Bickley:

Tom Bickley listens to the world always hoping to hear more and more fully. He plays and teaches recorder, and composes and performs using recorders, electronics and voice. He grew up in the semitropical soundscape of Houston, sojourned in Washington, DC (studying music, religion, and information science) and came to the Bay Area as a composer in residence at Mills College. In Berkeley he lives in Berkeley and sings at Incarnation Priory (an Episcopal Benedictine community), teaches music privately and in workshops and at the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training, and teaches on the library faculty at Cal State University East Bay. He plays with Gusty Winds May Exist (with shakuhachi player Nancy Beckman) and with Three Trapped Tigers (with recorder player David Barnett), and directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir (large choral ensemble devoted to performance of experimental music). His principal teachers were Pauline Oliveros, Ruth Steiner, and Scott Reiss. His work is available on CD on Quarterstick and Metatron Press. Musical influences in his life include Gregorian chant, Landini, Lou Harrison, John Cage, John Coltrane, and the natural environment.

Past Performances:

Tuesday 21 June 2005
Tom Bickley directing the Cornelius Cardew Choir at the
Garden of Memory at the Chapel of the Chimes, Oakland
5 - 9 pm

Monday 27 June 2005
Tom Bickley performs with the sfSound Group at
ODC in the Mission, San Francisco
8 pm

Thursday 7 July 2005
Tom Bickley directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir at the
Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco
8 pm

Saturday 16 July 2005
Tom Bickley directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir as part of the
Meridian Gallery Midsummer Music Festival, San Francisco
4 - 8:30 pm

DOVES MONUMENT
An evening of improvised dance and music
Thursday 9 June 2005 8 pm
Wildcat Studios
2525 Eighth Street (at Dwight)
Berkeley, CA 94710

Click here to view the flyer as a webpage. Click here to download the flyer!

Accomplished improvisers in dance and music from the east and west coasts meet for an evening of engaging play. Come for surprises, humor, tension, release, and enjoyment!

Suggested donation $10
Tickets available at the door
No one turned away for lack of funds

For more information email Tom Bickley at
tbickley@metatronpress.com or 510-204-0607

DRIVING DIRECTIONS FROM SAN FRANCISCO:
Take the Bay Bridge. After exiting the bridge, stay to the left, and get onto 80W. Take the Ashby Exit, and at the first stoplight, turn left onto Seventh Street. After couple minutes, turn right onto Dwight, and then immediately right onto Eighth Street. The studio will be on your left.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION:
Buses run from Ashby or Berkeley BART stations. From Ashby BART, take the 9 Westbound. From Berkeley BART, take the 9 Eastbound.
Get off at Dwight and Eighth Street. Head south on Eighth Street. The studio will be on your left.

WILDCAT STUDIO:
Enter the building (also known as Sawtooth Studios), and go all the way to the back. Turn right for Wildcat Studio.

PERFORMER BIOS:

Tom Bickley (see above)

Brenton Cheng is a teacher, director, and performer of improvised and choreographed work, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to directing his own work, he has performed with internationally-acclaimed Contraband, Zaccho Dance Theater, Angus Balbernie, Kim Epifano, Jo Kreiter & Flyaway Productions, and many others, at such places as Jacobs Pillow, Bates Dance Festival, and the Festival d?Avignon, France. He teaches classes in the Bay Area and gives workshops in France, Russia, and Taiwan. His training and inspirations include release technique, post-modern dance, contact improvisation, the martial arts, Laban Movement Analysis & Bartenieff Fundamentals, and acrobatics. www.bfalling.net

Toshi Makihara is one of the major voices in Philadelphia's New Music scene today. As an aspiring youth, Makihara studied drums, percussion and improvisation with Sabu Toyozumi, a prominent percussionist in Tokyo. Since arriving in the United States in late 1970s he has worked with various new music ensembles as well as with numerous dance and theater companies internationally. Makihara has provided original music to Arden Theater Company, Diversions Dance Company (Wales), Pennsylvania Ballet, ZeroMoving Dance Company and Leah Stein Dance Company among others, and has worked with musicians including Steve Beresford, Peter Brotzmann, John Butcher, Nels Cline, Eugene Chadbourne, Tom Cora, Amy Denio, Thurston Moore, William Parker and John Zorn. He has also collaborated with poets, visual artists, filmmakers and performance artists widely. ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/tosmos/

Sharon Mansur is a Washington, DC area based contemporary dance artist and community organizer. She is also the artistic director of mansurdance. For the past fifteen years her choreography and improvisational dances have been presented throughout the Mid Atlantic region and abroad at traditional, nontraditional and site specific venues. Mansur has worked collaboratively with various US and international dance and music artists, and has been a co-curator of the DC International Improvisation Festival. She also danced for two seasons with Sara Rudner in New York City. Sharon has received support for her work this season from The John F. Kennedy Center and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She is a Certified Laban/Barteneiff Movement Analyst and a reiki practitioner. www.mansurdance.com

Saturday 9 April 2005
Three Trapped Tigers (Tom Bickley and David Barnett, recorders)
8 pm
Trinity Chamber Concerts at
Trinity Chapel
2320 Dana Street between Bancroft Way & Durant Avenue in Berkeley, California–one block from the U.C. Berkeley Campus. Trinity Chapel is wheelchair accessible.

14th century music with 21st century insights and 21st century music with 14th century insights, enjoying the contrasts and common points of both repertoires. They will present works from Italy, England, Japan and the US to surprise, engage, inspire and entertain you. Memorable tunes, striking dissonances, and "sonorous open fifths" - (American Recorder, September 2004)

$12 General/suggested donation
$8 Senior; Disabled; Student/suggested donation
No one will be turned away for lack of funds
For advance tickets call (510) 549-3864

 

Wednesday 9 March 2005
8:00 PM
Meridian Music: Composers in Performance presents
Jennifer Wilsey, percussion and Tom Bickley, recorder and electronics

Tom Bickley and Jennifer Wilsey will present an evening of recorder / percussion improvisational compositions, with added tastes of electronics and medieval overtones, a radical blend of the old and the new. Tom is a composer/performer/teacher using recorders, voice, and electronics to encourage performers and audiences to enjoy listening to the world. He is also a director for the Cornelius Cardew Choir and is active in ensembles such as Three Trapped Tigers and Mapa Mundi. Jennifer composes and performs music with a focus on polyrhythmic structures, timbre and meditative intention.  Her percussion training spans classical to hand drumming to jazz, and she performs and records with diverse artists and ensembles including Timeless Pulse, whose other members are Pauline Oliveros, Thomas Buckner, George Marsh and David Wessel.

Meridian Gallery
545 Sutter St.
San Francisco, CA
415 398 7229
Donation: $10 (no one turned away for lack of funds)

Sunday 27 February 2005
7:30 pm
One Night Like Minds Festival
with Gray Code (Jon Matis [guitar/electronics/etc.]Joe Zitt [voice/electronics, etc.]Tom Bickley [recorders/electronics/etc.])

Live Oak Concert Series at the
Berkeley Art Center
1275 Walnut Street in Berkeley, California 94709 USA
510 644 6893

Denman Maroney describes Gray Code as "Morton Feldman meets the Art Ensemble of Chicago"

Tickets: $10 General, $9 Students/Seniors, $8 BAC Members
or contact:
Tom Bickley
510 204 0607

Sunday 26 December 2004
Offerings : at Grace North Church presents
O Magnum Mysterium: a contemplation on the mystery of the Holy in our midst
7:00 PM (doors open at 6:30)
2138 Cedar St. (at Walnut near Oxford)
Berkeley, CA 94709
Donations: $10-$15, sliding scale (kids free)

Fragments of the chant sung and played and played with over drones; sections of environmental sounds: a meditation on the plainchant tune and text "O Magnum Mysterium" which will last about 50 minutes.

"O great mystery and sacramental wonder!
Animals see the Lord's birth, who lies in a manger,
Blessed God-Bearer who was worthy to carry the Lord Christ in your womb!
Hail Mary, full of grace! The Holy One is with you!"

Saturday 11 December 2004
DC Improv Festival: BROKEN GLASS
8:00 PM
Jack Guidone Theatre at Joy of Motion Dance Center Friendship Heights
5207 Wisconsin Avenue NW
Washington, DC
$15, Gen Adm; $12, Students, Seniors, Artists; Tickets & Info: Joy of Motion, 202-362-3042

Dance: Daniel Burkholder, Sharon Mansur, Jennifer Clark Stone; Claire Elizabeth Barratt (NYC); Music: Tom Bickley (Berkeley), Toshi Makihara (Philadelphia), Alvin Hill, Jonathan Matis
Theatre: Frank Mancino and Sylvia Toone;
"Broken Glass" is an evening of tightly knitted structured improvisations, or scores, developed over a four day intensive with the artists. They have created four different improvisational scores that are drawn from their individual artistic mediums, but then are given to the players of the other mediums to truly create an evening of spontaneous cross over. Web Preview: Claire Barratt: www.hhproduction.org; Alvin Hill: www.munkstrunk.com; Sharon Mansur: www.mansurdance.com; Dan Burkholder:http://homepage.mac.com/theplayground

Sunday 5 December 2004
The Cornelius Cardew Choir, Tom Bickley, director
Fourth Annual Year-End Concert
7:30 pm
Live Oak Concert Series at the
Berkeley Art Center
1275 Walnut Street in Berkeley, California 94709 USA
510 644 6893

Tickets: $10 General, $9 Students/Seniors, $8 BAC Members
or contact:
Tom Bickley
510 204 0607

Sunday18 January 2004
Three Trapped Tigers: recorder players David Barnett and Tom Bickley
8:15 pm
ACME Observatory (a s e r i e s o f c o n t e m p o r a r y m u s i c)
@ The Jazz House (http://www.thejazzhouse.org/)
3192 Adeline (at MLK Jr Way) in Berkeley, CA USA
acme@sfSound.org (510) 649.8744

Cost : Free, donations go to the performers
For more information see http://metatronpress.com/ttt
or contact:
David Barnett
(707) 996-8524 damabarn@aol.com

music by Landini (14th c. Italy), Hirose (20th C. Japan), Bickley (21st c. America), Machaut (14th c. France),
Gasser (20th c. Switzerland) and improvisations (21st c. America)

The concert reflects the performer's love of music as diverse as trecento Italian music, the Ars Subtilior, Asian musics, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, John Coltrane and Matching Mole (to name a few).

On the same performance, the improvising quartet Vorticella:
Brenda Hutchinson (acoustically processed vocals), Krystyna
Bobrowski (natural and household phenomena), Karen Stackpole (gongs and exotic percussion) and Erin Espeland (cello)

Sunday 29 February 2004
time tba (afternoon?)
Bay Area Recorder Series Benefit Performance
St. Albans Episcopal Church, Albany, CA

The 3rd Anniversary Concert by the Cornelius Cardew Choir
Tom Bickley, director
16 November 2003 Sunday 7:30 pm
Berkeley Art Center
1275 Walnut St.
Berkeley, CA 94709
gen adm $10 BAC members $8
We look forward to your presence at this event. Please vist the Cardew Choir's website for more information.

1 October 2003 Wednesday 7:30 pm
Berkeley Art Center
1275 Walnut St.
Berkeley, CA 94709
gen adm $10 BAC members $8
Improvised solos, duets, and trios with Tom Bickley, recorders, trombonist Monique Buzzarte (from NYC) and shakuhachi player Philip Gelb (from Oakland) (poster available for viewing/downloading here)

18 October 2003 Saturday 8 pm
Sangha Cafe,
7014 Westmoreland Avenue,
Takoma Park, MD 20912
Venue Phone: 301-891-3214
$10
an evening of new music for recorder, voice, guitar, and electronics with Tom Bickley and Jonathan Matis