Gino Robair
Encyclopedia
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, improvisor, drummer
Drummer
A drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...
, and percussionist. In his own work (as a soloist and in improvisation ensembles), he plays prepared/modified percussion, analog synthesizer, ebow and prepared piano
Prepared piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers....
, theremin
Theremin
The theremin , originally known as the aetherphone/etherophone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without discernible physical contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin, who patented the device...
, and bowed objects (polystyrene, customized/broken cymbals, faux daxophone, metal). Although Gino is often referred to as a jazz musician, he grew up playing both rock and concert music.
Based on the cryptic liner notes of recent releases (for example, the duo CD "Sputter" with Birgit Ulher), it is not always clear what instruments Robair is playing. In recent interviews (Paris Transatlantic, The Wire
The Wire (magazine)
The Wire is a British avant garde music magazine, founded in 1982 by jazz promoter Anthony Wood and journalist Chrissie Murray. The magazine initially concentrated on contemporary jazz and improvised music, but branched out in the early 1990s to various types of experimental music...
), he notes that the term "energized surfaces" refers to the use of drums as resonators for other objects, which he bows, scrapes, rubs, or activates with an ebow, motors, or compressed air through a horn. "Voltage made audible" is used to describe analog electronics and circuit bent instruments.
As a composer, Robair has written pieces for a variety of ensembles (including the ROVA Saxophone Quartet
Rova Saxophone Quartet
The Rova Saxophone Quartet is a San Francisco-based saxophone quartet formed in October 1977 at the same time as their "less adventurous" but better known colleagues the World Saxophone Quartet. The name "Rova" is an acronym formed from the last initials of the founding members: Jon Raskin, Larry...
), scored numerous Shakespearean plays with the California Shakespeare Festival (where he was music director for five years), and created jingles for radio and television. He also served as music director and composer (within the Club Foot Orchestra) for the CBS/Film Roman Saturday morning cartoon series "The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat
The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat
The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat is an animated series starring the classic 1919 feline character, Felix the Cat produced for television by Film Roman. It aired from September 9, 1995 to November 25, 1997 on CBS.-History:...
".
His large-scale work, "I, Norton," is an opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
based on the life of Emperor Norton, which combines improvisation, graphic scores, game pieces, and fully notated scores. The piece was featured in the documentary Noisy People, by Tim Perkis
Tim Perkis
Tim Perkis is an experimental musician who works with live electronic and computer sound.He has founded or played in live computer network bands such as the...
.
Gino Robair is the former editor of Electronic Musician
Electronic Musician
Electronic Musician is a monthly magazine published by Penton Media featuring articles on synthesizers, music production and electronic musicians....
magazine, and he runs Rastascan Records.
Robair frequently tours North America and Europe as a soloist and often improvises in ad-hoc groups. He has recorded with Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...
, Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
, John Butcher
John Butcher (musician)
John Butcher is an English tenor and soprano saxophone player who has lived in London since the late 1970s. He began playing at the University of Surrey where he was studying physics...
, LaDonna Smith
LaDonna Smith
LaDonna Smith is an American avant garde musician from Alabama . She is a violinist, violist, and pianist. Since 1974 she has been performing free improvisational music with musicians such as Davey Williams, Gunther Christmann, Anne Lebaron, Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, Misha Feigin, Michael...
, Otomo Yoshihide, Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
, Lou Harrison
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison...
, Eugene Chadbourne
Eugene Chadbourne
Eugene Chadbourne is an American improvisor, guitarist and banjoist. Highly eclectic and unconventional, Chadbourne's most formative influence is free jazz. He has also been a reviewer for Allmusic and a contributor to Maximum RocknRoll.Chadbourne started out playing rock and roll guitar, but...
, Club Foot Orchestra
Club Foot Orchestra
The Club Foot Orchestra is a music ensemble founded in 1983 by Richard Marriott. After a brief career playing dramatic, complex music in San Francisco clubs, they became known for their equally dramatic and complex scores for classic silent movies. The ensemble got their name from a performance art...
, ROVA Saxophone Quartet
Rova Saxophone Quartet
The Rova Saxophone Quartet is a San Francisco-based saxophone quartet formed in October 1977 at the same time as their "less adventurous" but better known colleagues the World Saxophone Quartet. The name "Rova" is an acronym formed from the last initials of the founding members: Jon Raskin, Larry...
, Birgit Ulher, Beth Custer, and Fred Frith
Fred Frith
Fred Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor.Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew...
, and many others. In addition, he has performed with John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
, Nina Hagen
Nina Hagen
Nina Hagen is a German singer and actress.-Early years:Hagen was born as Catharina Hagen in the former East Berlin, East Germany, the daughter of Hans Hagen , a scriptwriter, and Eva-Maria Hagen, an actress and singer...
, and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 is an experimental indie rock group formed in 1986 in San Francisco, California, though half of its members are from Iowa. Their albums combine lo-fi noise rock and ambient sounds with tightly constructed rock and pop songs. The band has a small but intensely loyal...
. He is also a founding member of the Splatter Trio and Pink Mountain.
His academic work includes composition studies with Barney Childs
Barney Childs
Barney Childs was an American composer and teacher.Born in Spokane, Washington, he taught and composed avant-garde music and literature at universities in the United States and United Kingdom.-Music:...
at the University of Redlands
University of Redlands
The University of Redlands is a private liberal arts and sciences university located in Redlands, California. The university's campus sits on near downtown Redlands. The university was founded in 1907 and was associated with the American Baptist Church. The land for the university was donated by...
and Lou Harrison
Lou Harrison
Lou Silver Harrison was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer. He was a student of Henry Cowell, Arnold Schoenberg, and K. P. H. Notoprojo Lou Silver Harrison...
, David Rosenboom
David Rosenboom
David Rosenboom is an American composer and a pioneer in the use of neurofeedback, cross-cultural collaborations and compositional algorithms...
, and Larry Polansky
Larry Polansky
Larry Polansky is a composer, guitarist, mandolinist, and a professor at Dartmouth College. He is a founding member and co-director of . He co-wrote HMSL with Phil Burk and David Rosenboom....
at Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
. He studied percussion with Ron George
Ron George
Ronald Alan George is a Republican member of the Maryland House of Delegates, the lower assembly of the Maryland state legislature. He represents District 30, which is coterminous with Anne Arundel County. He shares this district with Democratic members House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Virginia P...
, William Kraft
William Kraft
William Kraft is a composer, conductor, teacher, and percussionist.-Undergrad and Graduate School Years :...
, William Winant
William Winant
William Winant is an American percussionist.In addition to his work in contemporary classical music -- notably performing Lou Harrison's compositions—Winant has worked in a variety of genres, including noise rock, free improvisation and jazz. Notable collaborators include Glenn Spearman, Thurston...
, and Eddie Prévost
Eddie Prévost
Edwin Prévost is an English drummer and percussionist.Prévost began as a jazz drummer before branching out into entirely improvised music. He was a co-founder of the group AMM, and remains its only constant member...
of AMM
AMM (group)
AMM are an important British free improvisation group, founded in London, England in 1965.AMM have never been well known to the general public, but have been incredibly influential on the field of improvised music...
. He also studied Javanese Gamelan with Jody Diamond
Jody Diamond
Jody Diamond is an American composer, performer, writer, publisher, editor, and educator. She specializes in traditional and new music for Indonesian gamelan and is active internationally as a scholar, performer, and publisher.-Biography:She received a B.A. from the University of California,...
and Widyanto, and wrote several works for the instruments.
In addition to his work operating the Rastascan label, Gino Robair had been active in the 1990s organizing music venues, notably "the Dark Circle Lounge" series,
which in the 1990s was located in the Hotel Utah bar in San Francisco.
He has often been regarded as one of the more active members of
the Bay Area Improv Scene
Bay Area Improv Scene
The Bay Area Improv Scene is a commonly used name for a loose association of musicians and composers centered in the San Francisco Bay Area who create a style of music that evolved largely from avant-garde jazz and modern classical music, with influences from other areas such as Electronic art...
.
Gino Robair currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
.
Selected Discography
- "I, Norton: an opera in real time." Rastascan Records, 2009. CD
- "Other Destinations" (solo). Rastascan Records (San Francisco). CD.
- "Singular Pleasures" (solo). Rastascan Records (San Francisco). CD.
- "Sputter" with Birgit Ulher (tpt). Creative Sources (Lisbon, Portugal). CD.
- "New Oakland Burr" with John Butcher. Rastascan Records (San Francisco). CD.
- "Blood Money," "Alice," "Orphans," "The Tiger and the Snow" and "Bad As Me" with Tom Waits.
- "Duets 1987," "Nine Compositions (DVD) 2003," and "Six Compositions (GTM) 2001" with Anthony Braxton.
- "Grosse Abfahrt: Luftschiffe zum Kalifornien" 2007 Serge Baghdassarians - electronics; Boris Baltschun - electronics; Chris Brown - piano; Tom Djll - trumpet; Matt IngallsMatt IngallsMatt Ingalls is an American composer, clarinetist, concert producer, and computer music programmer. He is mostly associated with the San Francisco Bay Area Improv Scene, sfSound, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, and the computer music program Csound.-Performance:Ingalls is most active as a...
- clarinet; Tim Perkis - electronics; Gino Robair - electronics; John Shiurba - guitar. Creative Sources (Lisbon, Portugal). CD. - "Supermodel Supermodel" 2006 Gail Brand trombone; Tim Perkis electronics; Gino Robair percussion, faux dax, horns, Styrofoam, ebow snare; John Shiurba electric guitar; Matthew Sperry double bass and preparations. On Emanem (UK). CD.
- "Six Fuchs" 2004 Wolfgang Fuchs (reeds), Tom Dill(tpt), Gino Robair(perc), John Shiurba(gtr), Matthew Sperry(bass), and Tim Perkis (electronics). Rastascan Records (San Francisco). CD
- "Gino Robair Live on the Artship" 2002 The Artship Recordings are a series of live solo improvisations each by a different artist, and each performed in "The Artship", a decommissioned US Navy troop transport which was docked in Oakland and served as a floating arts center for several years. (3.5-in CD).
- "Buddy Systems" 1998 Gino Robair plays selected duos and trios, with John Butcher and Tim Perkis, Otomo Yoshihide, Carl Kihlstedt and Matthew Sperry, Dan Plonsey, LaDonna Smith, Splatter Trio, Oluyemi Thomas, and Myles Boisen On Meniscus(Minneapolis). CD
- "Matthew Sperry Trio" 1997 Actually a quartet, that didn't include the late Matthew Sperry! Matt IngallsMatt IngallsMatt Ingalls is an American composer, clarinetist, concert producer, and computer music programmer. He is mostly associated with the San Francisco Bay Area Improv Scene, sfSound, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, and the computer music program Csound.-Performance:Ingalls is most active as a...
, Tim Perkis, Gino Robair, John Shiurba. On Limited Sedition (Oakland). CD