2014: John Finkbeiner & Noah Phillips

Two of the Bay Area’s most singular and slippery guitarists team up for the first time in an improvised duo configuration that highlights the incredible range of sounds and approaches that inform their individual music making. Phillips, known for dreamy solo improvisations and his work in alt-rock/noise groups like Efft and Date Palms, creates atmospheric blankets of sound, using prepared guitar, alternate tunings and masterful effects to create abstracted tonal worlds and noisy layered landscapes. Finkbeiner’s guitar playing is a compelling and malleable hybrid of garage rock grit (Knights of the New Crusade), avant-garde jazz abandon (Lisa Mezzacappa’s Bait & Switch, Josh Allen’s Deconstruction Orchestra), and adventures in extended techniques tempered by a wickedly rhythmic comping style (Franco Nero, Les Gwan Jupons).

Guitarist John Finkbeiner has performed and recorded with the best and brightest in the Bay Area music scene as a member of Darren Johnston’s United Brassworkers Front, the Smith Dobson V Quartet, Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait & Switch, Aaron Bennett’s Go-Go Fightmaster, Sheldon Brown’s Distant Intervals, Scott Larson’s Franco Nero, and the Vijay Anderson Quartet, among many others. He co-leads the Caribbean folk ensemble Les Gwan Jupons. As recording engineer and co-founder of New, Improved Recording in Oakland, John has helped shape the sound of West Coast creative music, working with ROVA Saxophone Quartet, John Schott, Jewlia Eisenberg, Tango No. 9, Aaron Novik, and Devin Hoff.

Guitarist Noah Phillips was born in 1976 in Santa Monica, and was exposed to everything from disco to reggae at a very early age. Emulating the works of many innovative guitar players, composers, and rock bands of the twentieth century, Phillips’ early and lifelong influences include Bob Marley, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmore, and Jimi Hendrix. While living in a boarding school on the Big Island of Hawaii, Phillips began to explore music of the African-African diaspora, including the early works of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and John Lee Hooker. After completing music studies at USC, Phillips formed the Grasshopper Quartet with reed player and composer Cory Wright, eventually producing Phillips’ first recorded works. Phillips became very interested in the music coming out of the Los Angeles “New and Improvised” music community, and has performed or recorded with Jeremy Drake, Lynn Johnston, Chris Heenan, Harris Eisenstadt, Sara Schoenbeck, Nels and Alex Cline, Vinny Golia, Steuart Leibig, Dan Clucas,Fred Frith, Tim Perkis, and Stephen Flynn, just to name a few.

Artist (photo by Photographer)