Matthew Sperry in Memoriam

The Red Hot Chachkas are an eclectic Bay Area klezmer group who, once upon a time, played at Matthew and Stacia’s wedding. Soon after, Matthew joined the Chachkas as a basisst, and played with the group until his death.

The Chachkas have written a song for Matthew: Suite Matthew.

Julie Eggers wrote this song in memory of a wonderful friend, bassist Matthew Sperry. He played many types of music, including klezmer and avant-garde, and was a Red Hot Chachka for several years. He died in a tragic accident in 2003. We take this tune outside as a nod to Matthew.

Suite Matthew

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Festival special guests Ellen Fullman (CA) and Sean Meehan (NY) announced the release of their new CD, which Ellen has dedicated to Matt. Copies will be available at the Festival for purchase. (Update: Copies of the CD can now be purchased through limitedsedition.com)

Click links for audio samples:

Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3

Festival-goers will also be able to buy the latest release of rare recordings of Matt. This year’s recording is of a concert featuring Matt with Lesli Dalaba (trumpet), Fred Frith, and Gino Robair.

You can hear these new releases, plus other SperryMusic by tuning into these radio programs:

• Music from Other Minds
  Fridays, 11pm (repeated Mondays 11pm) Pacific Time
  KALW 91.7
• Psychoacoustic Soundclash
  with Nozmo King

  Saturday, June 9 from 3pm - 6pm
  KFJC 89.7FM
  John Shiurba and Ellen Fullman will be in the studio with Nozmo, playing SperryMusic and talking about the Festival, with special guest live performances TBA and ticket giveaways.

Thanks to Other Minds, KFJC and KUSF for their support of the Festival.

Please join us in a celebration of Matthew Sperry’s life and music
with the Bay Area’s creative music community:

June 9 & 10, 2007

Fifth Annual Matthew Sperry Memorial Festival

This year the festival features special guests drawn from Matthew’s personal circle of all-stars: Sean Meehan (NY) and Ellen Fullman (CA). These musicians who inspired Matthew and his music will perform over two nights, in both experimental gallery and intimate studio settings, in both solo sets and small ensembles, in a musical journey of remembrance and reunion. The festival tradition of commissioning new works for large ensemble continues with The Enormous Quartet, where a creative cloud of Bay Area musicians will perform in spontaneous combinations of four.

Saturday June 9 | 8pm
21 Grand

416 25th Street at Broadway
Oakland
with special guest
Sean Meehan
solo and in trios with
Scott Rosenberg/John Shiurba and Bill Hsu/Gino Robair

and
The Enormous Quartet
(with many musicians!)
Admission is $6 - $600 sliding scale at the door

Sunday June 10 | 8pm
Casa Ninja
Address provided upon reservation
Berkeley
with special guest
Ellen Fullman
solo and in duos with
Sean Meehan, Gino Robair and Theresa Wong

Admission is $25 - $50

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Seating is extremely limited at Casa Ninja
Advance reservations are required for Sunday performance; click here to reserve.

Note: If you previously reserved a seat for the Casa Ninja performance, please RE-RESERVE. Due to an email delivery problem, your original reservation submission was lost. We apologize for the inconvenience.

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All proceeds from these benefit performances support the Matthew Sperry Memorial Fund.

it’s amazing to me that so many amazing artists show up for no other reason than to contribute to a sense of community and higher purpose; to pay tribute to not only matthew but to what it means to make art in a communal way. i know matthew would have loved that. this is the most clear and obvious demonstration of the fact that art and music can connect human beings and their communities to the upper partials of existence on this planet, and perhaps beyond. i know that i did my best as one of the organizers of the festival, to foster an atmosphere of appreciation and respect for each player, and to acknowledge the fact that the music of each of the participants expresses some meaning, the elucidation of which lies well beyond my capacity. my reflection on matthew’s life and work and life-force has inspired in me something beyond the obvious need to strive to be a better musician, namely to strive to be a better member of the community. in that sense i feel this year’s festival was a true success. and of course the music was incredible.

Tom Baker writes:

I thought you or someone on the list might be interested in that I played on June 1st in Den Haag in Holland, where I played excerpts from my Requiem “What Remains” that I wrote for Matt and played on the first memorial concert in Seattle at Polestar. It went very well, and I had lots of questions about Matt and his work. The CD of the piece is at www.cdbaby.com/tbaker2 and there is more at www.tombakercomposer.com and www.presentsounds.com.

Friday June 2 at Starry Plough
3101 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, 9PM
Black Cat Duo (from Seattle)
Daniel Popsicle & dotdotdot

Saturday June 3 at 21 Grand
416 25th St, Oakland, 8PM
Stuart Dempster (from Seattle)
in small groups and with Orchesperry

Sunday June 4 at 21 Grand
416 25th St, Oakland, 8PM
Christian Asplund (from Salt Lake City)
in small groups and with Orchesperry

Doug Theriault writes:

I have a new release with Matthew playing bass. It’s called:

Sperry/Burdon/Theriault
Straw Dog Music 03/01
Improvised on June 16th, 2001 at “Are You Listening” Studio, Portland, Oregon.

Recorded and Engineered by Simon Widdowson.
Matthew Sperry: Acoustic Bass ‚ Mark Burdon: Percussion ‚ Doug Theriault: Guitar

It is available here: http://dougtheriault.tandjrec.com/discography/. This release is meant to be a showcase for Matthew’s playing, nothing more. Only 50 copies are being released and 35 have gone out already to be reviewed (hopefully). That leaves 15 copies. This is not a fundraiser, and if anyone of you wants a copy (without artwork) I will send it to you personally for the cost of postage.

On the second night of the recent Matthew Sperry Memorial Festival, cellist Theresa Wong played an amplified bicycle, in a performance that brought many in the house to tears. Wong, who studies performance at Mills College, had been playing the amplified bicycle prior to having known of Matthew or his passing. Scot Hacker had been storing the bicycle from which Matthew was struck in his garage for the past year.

After the performance, Hacker offered Matthew’s bicycle to Wong to use as her instrument (with Stacia’s permission); she accepted. After some cleanup and distengling of gears and brakes (the bike was in amazingly good shape, considering), the bicycle was delivered. Theresa found Matthew’s bicycle wonderfully resonant and full of surprising sounds. After a few minutes of orientation, she improvised a piece for Matthew in her Oakland loft. A wild dove had been hanging out in the loft for a few days, and we imagined it to be Matthew’s visiting spirit.

There are two versions of the performance here:

- An audio-only version of the complete performance (5:20, mono, 3MBs), captured directly from Wong’s amp (click to listen; to save, right-click (Mac: Ctrl-click) and choose Save.

- An edited set of video excerpts (including the dove), showing the bicycle being played. 2:48, 6MBs. Requires QuickTime.

PRESS RELEASE:

The Third Annual Matthew Sperry Memorial Festival
June 4-7
at
21 Grand Art Gallery and Performance space
416 25th St., Oakland, CA 94612

Two years ago on June 5, bassist and composer Matthew Sperry was killed in a traffic accident while bicycling to work. Since then his many friends in the Bay Area music community have organized annual performances in his memory. This year, the Matthew Sperry Memorial Festival spans four evenings.

June 4 is experimental music titan Anthony Braxton’s 60th birthday. To celebrate, the sixty-member Triaxium West Large Ensemble under the direction of John Shiurba and Gino Robair, will perform works spanning the four decades of Braxton’s career, including many rarities.

June 5: Matthew’s friends pay him tribute with music from many small groups, culminating with a performance by OrcheSperry. All proceeds from this event will benefit the Sperry family.

June 6: an evening of live electronic performances curated by Lance Grabmiller, featuring:

1. Phase Chancellor (M.C. Schmidt from Matmos with Nate Boyce from
2. Men Against Mountains and J. Lesser from Sagan)
3. John Bischoff
4. Kenneth Atchley
5. Matt Davignon and Lance Grabmiller duet

June 7: Johannes Bergmark and Friends
Swedish musician and inventor, Johannes Bergmark, performs on a variety of unusual instruments with local improvisers, including Gino Robair and Tom Nunn.

All events start at 8:00 PM. Admission is $6-$50, sliding scale.

WEB LINKS:

Matthew Sperry: http://matthewsperry.org/
Anthony Braxton: http://www.wesleyan.edu/music/braxton/
Johannes Bergmark: http://www.bergmark.org, http://www.bergmark.org/gall.html
21 Grand: http://www.21grand.org

Win Aldrich has added Matthew’s name to be commemorated at “The Ride of Silence.”

On May 18, at 7 PM across the country and around the world, cyclists will take to the roads in a silent protest of what they call carnage taking place on the streets. Although cyclists have a legal right to share the road with motorists, much of the motoring public doesn’t seem aware they are there.

Chris Phelan organized the first Ride Of Silence in Dallas in May 2003 after endurance cyclist Larry Schwartz was killed by a bus mirror on an empty road.

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