SperryFest 2011 is almost upon us, with three excellent venues this year! Save the date for:

Wed July 13 8pm
Francois Houle solo
In The Mood For Food Dinner Concert
Reservation only: td@pixar.com

Thu July 14 8pm
Orchesperry plays Cardew’s Treatise + TrioShift
Luggage Store Gallery
1007 Market St, San Francisco

Fri July 15 8pm
Francois Houle solo and duo with Gino Robair
Temescal Arts Center
511 48th St, Oakland

The 9th annual Matthew Sperry Festival kicks off on Wednesday, July 13 with a dinner/concert by Canadian clarinetist Francois Houle.

We will serve a vegan/vegetarian dinner (an International Noodle Buffet) at 7:00 PM, followed by a solo performance by internationally renowned Canadian clarinetist Francois Houle. (Note the early start time! Dinner will be a buffet on the deck, so we need to start well before sunset.)

RSVP to td@pixar.com. Seating is limited, and we need to know how many to cook for!

Dinner concerts catered by Philip Gelb (of In the Mood for Food) are a traditional part of the Matthew Sperry Festival. This year, owing to a bicycle accident featuring a couple of cracked ribs, Phil is on the Disabled List. Substituting is Susan Dickey, renowned family chef and impromptu caterer. Her International Noodle Buffets, featuring Mediterranean, American and Asian noodle dishes are known from here to New Jersey. Susan notes that she is not available to cater your benefit concert or art gallery opening.

As usual at Tom’s Place, this is a free event, though we will be collecting donations for the performer.

The Matthew Sperry Festival continues at the Luggage Store Gallery, July 13 (Orchesperry does a Trioshift and performs Cardew’s Treatise, all 193 pages in an hour!) and at the Temescal Arts Center, July 14 (Francois Houle, solo and duets with Gino Robair).

About Francois Houle

Part of Vancouver’s terrific jazz community, Houle has an output that covers a nice swath of experimental musics. He’s done some nice free-jazz work for the Songlines label, including a 1999 album called In the Vernacular that I remember fondly. He’s also recorded on Spool with some of the key Vancouver names of the last 10 to 15 years, including Peggy Lee (cello) and Dylan van der Schyf (drums).

Houle brings a fresh energy to new classical music as well, as in Double Entendre, an album of new-music pieces for multiple overdubbed clarinets and fixed media (i.e. tape music). More recently, he recorded ‘Flirt’, a duet with accordianist Jelena Milojevic composed by Doug Schmidt.

About Matthew Sperry (1968 – 2003)

Musician Matthew Sperry was killed by an inattentive driver while riding his bicycle to work on June 5, 2003. Matthew was a father, husband, and bass player, who touched and left lasting impressions on everyone he met. Since then his many friends in the Bay Area music community have organized annual performances in his memory. From the original, spontaneous convening of grieving musicians at 21 Grand in June 2003 the Festival has grown to include national and international artists drawn from Matthew’s vast circle of inspiration and collaboration: from Tom Waits to M.C. Schmidt, Swedish musician and inventor, Johannes Bergmark to local composer and cellist Theresa Wong, who used Matthew’s bicycle as an electro-acoustic instrument.

Tom’s Place 3111 Deakin Street, Berkeley CA Directions – Information

Admission: donation. All proceeds go directly to the musicians. Doors and food at 7:00. Nota bene: Early start time, Wednesday, not Tuesday!