NEWS:

Dogma Dance Off - Oct 21, Cherry St. Tavern

A Night of Bob (Stagner) w/ Kenito Murray, The Heroes Are Horses, Jon Brumit - Nov 11, Barking Legs Theater

Trevor Watts & Jamie Harris - Nov 15, Barking Legs Theater

History Funhouse: The Wayne-O-Rama Story - through Dec 31, 2023

Wayne-O-Rama is now closed! It was open from Nov. 19, 2016 through Sept. 30, 2017. Designed by Emmy-winning artist Wayne White, it's a funhouse of Chattanooga history for all ages. Wayne-O-Rama is sponsored by See Rock City, Inc. and presented by The Shaking Ray Levi Society at the Tenn Arts space, with generous support from the Benwood Foundation, the Footprint Foundation, the Lyndhurst Foundation and the McKenzie Foundation.



Founded in 1986, the Shaking Ray Levi Society is a volunteer-run, 501(c)(3) non-profit arts education organization.

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The mission of the Shaking Ray Levi Society is to nurture and support music, film, and performance art that is challenging, non-traditional, and falls outside the mainstream, in order to help nourish the cultural growth of Chattanooga.

This is done by sponsoring shows by artists recognized on a national and international level, supporting original work by area musicians and filmmakers, and engaging the community through workshops and educational outreach programs.

"Only in our country are our children not receiving the benefits of the dynamic energies taking place in our culture and in the heritage of our culture and so, the work of the Shaking Ray Levi Society in my opinion is very important because they are seeking to provide an alternative to the marketplace dynamics." - composer, saxophonist and MacArthur fellowship recipient Anthony Braxton (video)

"SRLS is a very sound organization that has made a strong contribution to Chattanooga over the years" - Dr. Thomas Wolf, WolfBrown



The SRLS is an ArtsBuild Community Arts Partner.

 

Past Events: 2019
CoPAC and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present
Nels Cline (of Wilco)
Larry Ochs
Gerald Cleaver

Monday, April 15, 2019, 7:30 pm
Barking Legs Theater
1307 Dodds Ave
Chattanooga, TN 37404
$20 advance, $22 door

This incredible trio was created by Detroit native and internationally acclaimed percussionist Gerald Cleaver, in collaboration with Larry Ochs, founder of the legendary Rova Saxophone Quartet. With the addition in 2015 of experimental guitar icon Nels Cline (who belatedly became a pop-guitar icon by joining Wilco) the trio’s lineup was complete.

Guitar explorer Nels Cline is best known these days as the lead guitarist in the band Wilco. His recording and performing career – spanning jazz, rock, punk and experimental – is well into its fourth decade, with over 200 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader. Cline has received many accolades including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 “new guitar gods” and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time. Beyond Wilco, Cline performs with jazz guitar prodigy Julian Lage, The Nels Cline Four (with Lage plus bassist Scott Colley and drummer Tom Rainey) and CUP (a duo with wife and musical collaborator Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto) and leads The Nels Cline Singers (featuring Scott Amendola, bassist Trevor Dunn and Cyro Baptista).

Saxophonist Larry Ochs is best known as a founder of the Rova Sax Quartet, a San Francisco institution that focused right from the start on the application of improvisational strategies within the context of contemporary compositions, beginning in the late 1970s and continuing right up to the present day; 40 years old in 2018. Equally inspired by modernist 20th century composition and the more worldly, abrasive strands of 60s free jazz as well as by fellow pioneers around the globe, Rova and Ochs became widely celebrated for the lengths they would go to stretch the performance parameters of notated music through early collaborations with Henry Kaiser, Anthony Braxton, and John Zorn. Ochs connection with Cline began in the late 1990s and culminated with the Celestial Septet, a band comprised of both Rova and The Nels Cline Singers.

Drummer Gerald Cleaver is a product of Detroit’s rich music tradition. Inspired by his father, drummer John Cleaver, he began playing at an early age and, as a teenager, gained invaluable experience playing with Detroit jazz masters Ali Muhammad Jackson, Lamont Hamilton, Earl Van Riper and Pancho Hagood. After serving as assistant professor of Jazz Studies at the University of Michigan and joining the jazz faculty at Michigan State University, he moved to New York in 2002. He has performed or recorded with Roscoe Mitchell, Matt Shipp, William Parker, Craig Taborn, Charles Gayle, Jeremy Pelt, Tomasz Stanko, Charles Lloyd and Miroslav Vitous, among others. Cleaver has released four recordings as a leader and leads the bands Black Host and Uncle June.

"I think Gerald Cleaver is one of the greatest drummers in jazz history"
- Matthew Shipp





Secret Weave and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present
Journey to the Center of the Earth Day Fest
feat. Geologist (Animal Collective) and Pedestrian Deposit (L.A.)

with Superbody, Tryezz, GMO Sharia Law, Owen Fear, Meinschaft, Dixon III, Mr. Strawberry, Alex Hampshire, Tape Canvas, DJ Lil Current Year and DJ Bobbi Superbody

Sunday, April 21 and Monday, April 22, 2019
The Spot
1800 E Main St.
Chattanooga, TN 37404
8 p.m. each night
$10 door (cash only please) each night

This 2-day showcase features headliners Geologist (from Animal Collective) making his Chattanooga debut and the intense Los Angeles duo Pedestrian Deposit plus a diverse assortment of regional and local talent, from pop and funk to noise and provocative theatrics.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
APRIL 21 (SUNDAY, 8 p.m.) LINEUP:

Geologist (Brian Weitz) is a member of the popular and acclaimed experimental pop band Animal Collective, where his duties consist of sound manipulation and sampling. Animal Collective's 2009 album "Merriweather Post Pavilion" was named best album of 2009 by Spin, Pitchfork, Entertainment Weekly and others.

Superbody (Chattanooga): green-screen new-wave pop from Adult Swim star Robert Gregg McCurry II.

Meinschaft: a perpetual vortex of ritual energy and concentrated spectacle.
"Meinschaft is like a clown leading a circus of pain, shoveling toxic detritus into piles then slithering away and laughing from the sidelines at a game it refuses to play." - Chattanooga Pulse

GMO Sharia Law (Cleveland, TN): radical pop deconstructions taken to ecstatic extremes.

Owen Fear

DJ Lil Current Year

Tape Canvas (video artist)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
APRIL 22 (MONDAY, 8 p.m.) LINEUP:

Pedestrian Deposit (Los Angeles): Reverse tension, abrasive composition. The duo of Shannon A. Kennedy and Jonathan Borges is best described as visceral and narrative, informed by elements of experimental sound, harsh noise, musique concrete, neo-classical, dark ambiance and performance art but is not beholden to any one genre.

Tryezz (Chattanooga) calls his style of music "Scenic Groove," a mix of jazz, funk and dance music intended to take listeners to amazing and incredible places straight out of his dreams.

Dixon III (Dalton, GA)

Mr. Strawberry (Chattanooga)

Alex Hampshire (Savannah, GA) is an American poet, b. 1985.

DJ Bobbi Superbody

Tape Canvas (video artist)

Facebook event



David Greenberger and Prime Lens

Saturday, April 27, 2019
Bill Medley Auditorium, Santa Ana High School
520 W. Walnut St.
Santa Ana, CA 92701
6 p.m. (doors at 5:30 p.m.)
Free and open to the public

David Greenberger, a Grand Central Art Center (GCAC) artist-in-residence, was invited to create a new work drawn from Santa Ana's richly diverse elderly population. He developed text based on his dozens of recorded conversations that took place at the Santa Ana Senior Center, Tustin Senior Center, Heninger Village, Flower Terrace Apartments, and Bowers Museum. Working with Prime Lense, the Chattanooga-based ensemble, they went into the studio in the spring of 2018, collaborating to create "It Happened to Me."


David Greenberger has been exploring the nature of conversation and unique, often ignored voices since 1979. Originally focused on aspects of aging, his work has grown to include individuals living outside of or on the fringes of much of society’s awareness. These books, recordings and performances underscore the dignity in what can be ordinary or even fragmented stories and anecdotes—all rich with a conversational voice. He continues to be a keynote speaker at universities, museums and conferences on aging.

As part of a two-night concert event celebrating Dennis Palmer’s life and work in 2013, David and Bob Stagner were joined by bassist Evan Lipson and keyboardist Tyson Rogers for a performance. They debuted their new ensemble, David Greenberger and Prime Lens, at the Big Ears Festival in 2014 (festival founder Ashley Capps dedicated the three day event to the memory of Palmer and Lou Reed). Since it was Dennis who had brought them together in the first place, “and Prime Lens” is an anagram of “Dennis Palmer.”

Bob Stagner has been a percussionist, teacher, speaker, and leader in arts advocacy for thirty years. He co-founded the duo the Shaking Ray Levis, as well as the Shaking Ray Levi Society, an arts education organization that supports emerging artists in performance, visual art, and film. Stagner is the Southeast director of the Rhythmic Arts Project providing music workshops for people with disabilities. He has performed and recorded with a wide range of musicians, including Derek Bailey, Rev. Howard Finster, Wayne White, Bob Dorough, Vassar Clements, June Carter Cash, Tony Oxley, Fred Frith, Amy Denio, Shelley Hirsch, Col. Bruce Hampton, John Zorn, and Roger Alan Wade (with whom he tours regularly).

Evan Lipson tours with Roughhousing (featuring Jack Wright and Zach Darrup). Past units include Normal Love, Satanized, Wrest, Dynamite Club, Psychotic Quartet, Femme Tops, and the Weasel Walter Trio. He has collaborated in performance and on recordings with, among others, Susan Alcorn, Mick Barr, Kath Bloom, Peter Evans, David Grubbs, Col. Bruce Hampton, Mary Halvorson, Konk Pack, Byard Lancaster, Pauline Oliveros, Jessica Pavone, Ruins (Yoshida Tatsuya), Shaking Ray Levis, Veryan Weston, Wolter Wierbos, Davey Williams, and Nate Wooley.

Pitchfork magazine called Tyson Rogers a “wayfaring keyboard wrangler” for his multi-faceted abilities as a recording and touring musician. Tyson toured extensively with bluesman Tony Joe White and country legend Don Williams, playing on his Grammy nominated duet with Alison Krauss, “I Just Come Here for the Music.” Tyson’s original music has been featured by National Geographic, The North Face, and Tom’s Shoes. His recordings have received critical acclaim, earning “Best CDs of the Year” by Downbeat magazine and others.




Dogma Dance Off

Sunday, June 2, 2019, 3:00 pm
Barking Legs Theater
1307 Dodds Ave
Chattanooga, TN 37404
$10 minimum donation at door

Now in its 4th year, DOGMA DANCE OFF is an annual celebration of music, art and charity that has expanded from a one-day event to a sprawling three-day festival, spanning Nashville (May 31), Murfreesboro (June 1) and Chattanooga (June 2). Formed from founder Ethan Boyd's passion for local art scenes and charitable activism, and assisted by his "Dog-Team" including Tanner Pancake, Dogma Dance Off is focused on bringing the community together with fresh musical and artistic talent.

This year, Dogma Dance Off has partnered with the arts non-profit organization The Shaking Ray Levi Society, Ooko Studios (Nashville) and Melted Magazine, and all proceeds from the festival will go to two organizations: Mark Making (Chattanooga), devoted to empowering individuals and transforming communities through the arts, and Jessi Zazu, Inc. (Nashville), created with a mission to continue Zazu's work in the arts and humanities, social justice and women's health after Zazu, a member of celebrated band Those Darlins, succumbed to cervical cancer in 2017.

At Chattanooga's Barking Legs Theater on June 2, get ready for an all-day event on two stages (indoor and outdoor) with some of the region's brightest and newest pop, rock and hip-hop sounds from emerging artists, plus a showcase of art for sale, food trucks, drone yoga, and so much more.

Chattanooga event lineup (June 2):
Nordista Freeze
Future Crib
O Summer
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Planet Terrestrial
Keem the Cipher
Peppermint Boys
Lava Gulls
Fiona Cauly Comedy
Zaidee's Twilight Drone Yoga
Sammy David
Moon Hollow
Slum
The Floor Is Yours
Lul Lion
Hip-Hop Lounge Live
Moodi
Dare

Facebook event



CoPAC, Secret Weave and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present
Longmont Potion Castle: Documentary and Live Prank Phone Call

Friday, June 28, 2019, 8 pm
Barking Legs Theater
1307 Dodds Ave
Chattanooga, TN 37404
$13 advance, $15 door

Called "America's Underground Prank-Call King" by Rolling Stone magazine, Longmont Potion Castle has been confounding people - including the likes of Eddie Money, Sidney Poitier, Kiefer Sutherland and Alex Trebek - for over 30 years. He is the only person who has elevated the prank phone call into an art form and has even been featured at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) PS1.

His provocative and sometimes infuriating improvised phone conversations lean toward surrealism and Dadaism, with absurd scenarios involving zebras, weight-lifting binges, peacock meat or truckloads of peat moss. Sometimes manipulating his voice and adding disorienting sound effects, his calls transcend mere comedy and enter the realm of the truly bizarre and unfamiliar.

The new documentary "Where in the Hell Is the Lavender House? The Story of Longmont Potion Castle" is several movies in one, delving into the mysterious, anonymous legend and also documenting the struggle of rookie filmmakers to tackle a shadowy and unconventional subject. Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute on "The Office"), who is featured in the documentary, has called Longmont Potion Castle "a surrealist, brilliant genius" and described his best as "sublime work of art, beyond a crank call."

In addition to a screening of the documentary, the evening will also feature a rare treat: an actual live call-in from Longmont Potion Castle himself, who will answer questions and perform prank phone calls.

Facebook event



CoPAC and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present
Wendy Eisenberg
Shane Parish
with special guests Evan Lipson and Bob Stagner


Thursday, August 8, 7:30 pm
Barking Legs Theater
1307 Dodds Ave
Chattanooga, TN 37404
$15 ($10 for ages 25 and under) at door

Guitarists Wendy Eisenberg and Shane Parish, "two fast-rising stars of the current crop of accomplished avant-garde guitar maestros" (S. Victor Aaron, Something Else), lead a dynamic evening of innovative solos and duets, plus a special opening set from the duo of iconoclastic double bassist Evan Lipson and percussionist Bob Stagner (Shaking Ray Levis), book readings about music and creativity from Eisenberg and Parish and an artist question/answer session.

Set 1: Evan Lipson (double bass) and Bob Stagner (drums) duo
Set 2: Wendy Eisenberg (guitar) solo
Set 3: Shane Parish (guitar) solo
Set 4: Wendy Eisenberg and Shane Parish duo
Music followed by a book reading from Eisenberg and Parish and Q/A

Wendy Eisenberg and Shane Parish are two sides of the same wishbone. Both inventive, spiny guitarists with deep roots in all genres, both veterans of critically acclaimed experimental rock bands, both published in "Arcana VIII: Musicians on Music," edited by John Zorn (2017). They only just met in March 2018, while Wendy was on tour in Asheville. Hours after meeting, they recorded "Nervous Systems," a collection of radical standard-tuning guitar improvisations that explode the capacity of the instrument to accommodate fingers, pushing harmolodic boundaries, and displaying an uncanny psychic interplay that seems to evidence the fatefulness of this encounter.

As an acoustic soloist, Shane Parish creatively interprets and deconstructs folk music and jazz tunes, plays original cutting-edge poly-rhythmic and contrapuntal works, and transforms the instrument, via preparations and detuning, into a mini-percussion ensemble, banging out pulsating rhythmic trances reminiscent of John Cage's prepared solo piano works. Parish is also known as the guitarist for the celebrated, intense avant-rock band Ahleuchatistas. Parish's 2016 collection of folk interpretations Undertaker Please Drive Slow (Tzadik Records) was described by composer John Zorn as "reminiscent of John Fahey and Robbie Basho, at times of John Cage and Morton Feldman, Shane uses these beautiful songs as launching pads for his creative flights of fancy, at times boiling them down to their very essence. A spiritual project that will keep you riveted from first note to last.”

"Shane Parish is one of the most interesting new guitar voices to come out of the country blues tradition of Mississippi John Hurt, Lightin Hopkins… via John Fahey, and the folkie fingerpickers….this recording finds Parish standing at the cross-roads between playing the country blues and… deconstructing? Devolving? Destroying?…them. Some of the miniatures are stunning, haunted by an Anton Webern-like economy. Check it out!" — Marc Ribot

Wendy Eisenberg is an improvising guitarist, banjo-player, vocalist and poet. Using the languages of free jazz, new music, metal and art song, her music challenges the representational and technical demands placed on a guitar and a banjo in contemporary music. She has two solo careers: improviser/composer, and songwriter. Both Wendy's album Its Shape Is Your Touch and the album from her trio The Machinic Unconscious with Ches Smith and Trevor Dunn made Billboard’s Critic’s Choice Top Ten Jazz Records 2018 year end list, and received features and attention from NPR and National Sawdust. Her acclaimed band Birthing Hips was described by NPR as “brainy, noisy punk based in sonic adventure, technical mastery, and rejection of the status quo,” and Eisenberg has created soundtrack work for the scientific projects of MIT Media Lab fellow and scientist-artist Ani Liu.

“She can play with the scattershot ferocity of a cobra striking the neck of her 1989 Japanese Jazzmaster, or as contemplative and meandering as an acoustic instrumental plucked by a fireplace inside an old Upstate, NY hostel. And with two fantastic albums, former Birthing Hips guitarist Wendy Eisenberg emphasizes both sides of her style. ” — Ron Hart, Billboard

"Dizzily complex configurations of starburst harmonics and frantically negotiated counterpoint" - Bill Meyer, Chicago Reader, on Eisenberg and Parish's Nervous Systems

Bob Stagner has been a percussionist, teacher, speaker, and leader in arts advocacy for thirty years. He co-founded the duo the Shaking Ray Levis, as well as the Shaking Ray Levi Society, an arts education organization that supports emerging artists in performance, visual art, and film. Stagner is the Southeast director of the Rhythmic Arts Project providing music workshops for people with disabilities. He has performed and recorded with a wide range of musicians, including Derek Bailey, Rev. Howard Finster, Wayne White, Bob Dorough, Vassar Clements, June Carter Cash, Tony Oxley, Fred Frith, Amy Denio, Shelley Hirsch, Col. Bruce Hampton, John Zorn, and Roger Alan Wade (with whom he tours regularly).

Evan Lipson tours with Roughhousing (featuring Jack Wright and Zach Darrup). Past units include Normal Love, Satanized, Wrest, Dynamite Club, Psychotic Quartet, Femme Tops, and the Weasel Walter Trio. He has collaborated in performance and on recordings with, among others, Susan Alcorn, Mick Barr, Kath Bloom, Peter Evans, David Grubbs, Col. Bruce Hampton, Mary Halvorson, Konk Pack, Byard Lancaster, Pauline Oliveros, Jessica Pavone, Ruins (Yoshida Tatsuya), Shaking Ray Levis, Veryan Weston, Wolter Wierbos, Davey Williams, and Nate Wooley.

Facebook event



CoPAC and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present
Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel
Ann Law
Beth Markham Herring

 
Thursday, September 5, 7:30 pm
Barking Legs Theater
1307 Dodds Ave
Chattanooga, TN 37404
$10 advance/$15 door

This unique evening will feature the mesmerizing sounds of Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel accompanied by dancers Ann Law and Beth Markham Herring along with stunning new work from Atlanta filmmaker Robbie Land.

Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel creates a combination of sounds from two non-fixed-pitch instruments and laptops in an improv environment with a disregard for traditional styles and a penchant for creating rich, compelling textures. Over the duo's twelve-year existence, they've toured extensively in the U.S. and also in Europe, released four CDs and have played notable events including the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN, EtherFest in Asheville, NC, the Electro-Music Festival, WhoFest, the City Skies Festival and the Improvisor Festival.

"The name of this Atlanta duo implies a proper classical recital, a rigid formality. But Scott Burland (Theremin) and Frank Schultz (lap steel) don't do scripted, improvising not so much distinct sounds as evolving eddies of sound, vapors of tones that develop and transform gracefully. Hypnotic pulses and dreamy drones weave together to form a kaleidoscope of sounds and moods, ambient clouds and swooning collages that are as much about texture as they are timbre, like a long-lost soundtrack to a deep-sea documentary." - P. Wall, Columbia Free Times


Ann Law and Beth Markham Herring have been dancing together since 1992. Their first performance was a piece by the famous NYC choreographer Mark Dendy. Their continuing collaborations have spanned cities, and have been strengthened by major life events, and enduring friendship, always returning home to Barking Legs Theater. They are excited to continue the journey.

DUET FOR THEREMIN AND LAP STEEL LINKS:
Website
Creative Loafing interview
"This Is Atlanta" mini-doc
Bandcamp

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