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Butcher / Masaoka / Robair

John Butcher, Miya Masaoka and Gino Robair have separately spent careers as innovators in composition, improvisation and performance. Though each of the others has worked separately with Robair, Guerrilla Mosaics records their first meeting as a trio.

John Butcher lives in London and has played the saxophone for about 25 years. By the early 80s he had developed an individual voice, while also completing a physics doctorate on the theoretical properties of charmed quarks. His music now ranges through free improvisation, composition, multitracked pieces, work with pre-recorded tape, and also with live electronics. His solo work was featured in the BBC TV series"Date with an Artist". Groups he has played with include Derek Bailey's Company, John Stevens' Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Chris Burn's Ensemble, Butch Morris' London Skyscraper, Polwecshel, EX Orkestra. Duos include concerts with Gerry Hemingway, Fred Frith, Phil Minton, Derek Bailey.

Gino Robair is a percussionist, music journalist, and published composer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gino frequently tours North America and Europe as a soloist and often improvises in ad-hoc groups. He has performed and recorded with Anthony Braxton, John Butcher, Otomo Yoshihide, Tom Waits, Eugene Chadbourne, John Zorn, Nina Hagen, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, and he is a founding member of the Splatter Trio. Gino has studied percussion with Ron George, AMM percussionist Eddie Prevost, William Kraft, and William Winant; studied composition with Barney Childs, Lou Harrison, David Rosenboom, and Larry Polansky; and has earned two masters degrees--Electronic Music and Composition--from Mills College.

Miya Masaoka works simultaneously in the varied musical worlds of jazz, Western classical, electronic music, traditional Japanese music, and free improv. She has studied Japanese music with court musician Suenobu Togi, and holds music degrees from San Francisco State University and Mills College. She has performed solo and with a wide variety of musicians and traditions, including Pharoah Sanders, L. Subramaniam, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Steve Coleman, George Lewis, and others. With an array of extended techniques that include strumming, bowing, scratching, and thumps, and using various triggering devices in tandem with live samples, ultra sound, light sensors and digital signal processing, she employs fragments of koto-created sounds to weave an organic synthesis of the acoustic and electronic.

Guerrilla Mosaics
Guerrilla Mosaics (2002)
...a sax-koto-percussion conversation with results as unexpected as would be expected from these players
"a revelation... makes the improvising arts a vital and urgent place all over again." - Coda

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John Butcher

Miya Masaoka

Gino Robair

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