West Oakland Sound Series connects musicians to improvise, innovate and experiment.

On an early evening in September, a modest crowd entering the Dresher Ensemble Studio received disappointing news at the door: One of the two acts they came to see would not be performing. However, the show must go on, and the West Oakland Sound Series is no stranger to improvisation. 

Matt Ingalls, Sound Series director, was not going to let his audience go without a second act. In the spirit of this avant-garde musical community, he would later join woodwinds player Matthew Evan Taylor, cellist Theresa Wong, percussionist Kjell Nordeson and bassist Lisa Mezzacapa in a group improvisation that featured nature-mimicking vocals and switching instruments on a whim, from cymbals to clarinets. The performance began with Wong flipping her cello and using it as a percussion instrument, a preview of the experimentation that was to come.

This fall, audiences will have the chance to experience such innovative performances from October through mid-December. 

Crossing paths

Ingalls comes from a classical composition background which he developed as a student at Mills College, once a hub of experimental music. He got the chance to interact with other styles of music, from jazz to punk, through living in an artists’ warehouse space in East Oakland. In the 1990s, he primarily performed in San Francisco, where most of the artists he knew lived. But as he and his colleagues migrated back to the music scene in Oakland, he questioned why there were few spaces for new and experimental music in the East Bay.

“It felt like over the years everyone found their own little circles and there was less crossover, so that was one of the goals for this series,” Ingalls said.

This is why there are always two distinct acts in the weekly concerts at Dresher. They are acts that might not have crossed paths if not for the series, which he started in 2023. That means performances featuring classical instruments are often paired with artists like Silvia Matheus, the electronic composer who was unable to perform at the September concert due to playback issues with her sound files. Matheus, originally from Brazil, came to the Bay Area in the 1980s to pursue her love of sound at Mills College.

“That’s the way it started,” Matheus said. “With sound.”

Matheus uses electronic instruments, some of which she invented, to bring discordant sounds together into a cohesive whole. Her instruments range from large soundboards covered in multicolored wires to glass etched with conductive paint. She creates music through free improvisation, a style of live composition that allows her and other artists to mix the sounds, tones, and textures that make up their music in real time. Matheus compares it to painting. 

“When you look at an abstract painting you see the totality, you see shapes, you see color and texture. With experimental music, we are shaping this right in front of you,” she said. Matheus’s palette includes prerecorded vocals, piano notes, and electronic frequencies. 

In addition to improvisation, the series also highlights innovation. “I’m not doing, in general, things with straight-ahead, 4-4 beats or singer-songwriter types of things, or even straight-ahead jazz,” Ingalls said. “Some of that sneaks in, but that’s not the focus. It’s experimental and contemporary music.”

Instrument invention

Lorin Benedict, a longtime improvising vocalist and a volunteer at the series, describes the performers as “noiseicians” rather than musicians. This doesn’t just end at the sounds they produce, it also involves how they produce them. Much like Matheus, many musicians in the series create their own instruments or find new ways to use traditional instruments, a process called extended technique. At the West Oakland Sound Series, it is not unusual to see a drum kit being played with dish scrubbers, something that really did take place in this intimate concert space. 

The experimental music community has historically been interested in the unconventional use and creation of instruments. “When you see, for instance, that drummer playing weird things, you can tell that he’s coming out of the tradition of instrument invention,” Benedict said, referring to Winant, a percussionist at the Sept. 21 concert, whose tools at the performance included chopsticks, balloons, and bird callers, along with the scrubbers. 

The West Oakland Sound Series gives audiences a chance to see these varied styles evolve on a nearly weekly basis this fall, with performances held at the Dresher Ensemble Studio, 2201 Poplar St. 

A list of upcoming concerts is on the Sound Series’ website.

(Top photo: Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and percussionist William Winant perform at the Dresher Ensemble Studio, by Nicolle Delgado)

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