dinner/concert: Rich O'Donnell performing! July 30

Saturday, July 30
8 pm
seating for 20
$55/person
byob

We are quite happy to present a friend visiting from St Louis, the brilliant percussionist and amazing inventor, Rich O'Donnell in a very rare bay area appearance.


appetizer
peach rosewater kanten

salad
grilled peaches, mizuna, fried parsnip strips, salted daikon, peach miso dressing

small plate
peach roasted tempeh
our renowned homemade tempeh marinated and  roasted with spices, peach juice, red miso, pomegranate molasses
quinoa pilaf
arugla-radichio salad

entree
eggplant rollatini
Roasted eggplant stuffed with our homemade almond "ricotta", peaches, basil and pine nuts in heirloom tomato sauce served on a bed of homemade spaghetti

dessert
tba

Rich O’Donnell’s career as a professional musician spans a half century. In addition to his virtuosity as a percussionist, O’Donnell is a prolific composer, innovator and inventor of percussion and electronic instruments, a teacher, and a writer. He is currently director of the Electronic Music Studio at Washington University, St. Louis. He co-founded in 09 HEARding Cats, a 501(c)(3) arts collective with Anna Lum, Mike Murphy, Ryan Harrris. Though O’Donnell grew up loving and playing jazz in the bop-era, his talent led him to a career with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra at the young age of 22. Never finishing his degree at North Texas, he went on to play with the SLSO for 43 years, spending most of that time as principal percussionist before retiring in 2002. Throughout his professional career, O’Donnell has been a mainstay in helping promote, produce, and perform modern music in the United States as a board member and long-time Music Committee Chair of New Music Circle. Through the years, constantly reinventing, O’Donnell refined his own craft in extended percussion techniques through timbre exploration and instrument-building (acoustic percussion instruments, analog synthesizers, and digital gestural controllers). He has been directly involved as a professional performer, composer, and inventor in many of the major musical movements of the modern era: bop/hard-bop; free-improv; improvised chamber; analog and digital synthesis; tape music; minimalism. More recently, O’Donnell’s innovation and vision in percussion led him to create SeeSaw Drumming—a revolutionary playing technique using a new type of sticks and pedals. SeeSaw Drumming is based on reciprocal motion and makes use of two beaters per hand (and foot). Using two beaters per appendage gives O’Donnell the ability to create complex layers of polyrhythms and hemiolas that provide new insight into rhythmical structures. He no longer thinks in terms of downbeats and bars, but rather convergence, overlays, and cycles of the various layers. This technique can be fast and dense, but it can also be elegant and in the pocket. On May 1, 2000 he premiered SeeSaw Drumming at City Museum in St. Louis under the auspices of New Music Circle, and on May 11, 2000 the New York premiere at Merkin Hall by World Institute of Music. O’Donnell has completed a book entitled, 3:4:5 with accompanying CDs illustrating the technique. Through the years, many compositions have been written especially for O’Donnell by the following composers: Jocy d’Oliviera, Eleazar de Carvalho, Walter Susskind, Robert Wykes, Carlos Santoro, Tom Hamilton, J.D. Parran, and Michael Hunt. Recently O’Donnell has performed with the following individuals (among many others): Leroy Jenkins, John Butcher, Vinny Golia, Gino Robair, Thomas Buckner, J D Parran, David Wessel, Denman Maroney, Peter Zummo, Tom Hamilton, Morgan Guberman, Min Xiao-Fen, Andre Vida, Davey Williams, Robert Dick, Carol Genetti, Mike Murphy, and Anna Lum. In the distant past, he has appeared on stage with: Igor Stravinsky, Iannis Xenakis, Aaron Copland, Elvis Presley, Yo Yo Ma, Bob Hope, Dean Martin, John Adams, Imrat Kahn, Chet Baker, Luciano Berio, and Jocy d’Olivera.