UC Botanical Garden presents Murmur Garden Quartet featuring Myra Melford, Ben Goldberg, Ben Davis, & Jordan Glenn
Mather Redwood Grove, UC Botanical Garden
200 Centennial Drive, Berkeley, CA 94720-5046 USA
6:00 PM, Tuesday, September 10, 2024

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[5:59 PM] {Introduction and announcements by Christine Manou}
[6:01 PM] {Myra jokes 'This is actually XX's band' while introducing each of today's players}

1. [6:02 PM] November 4 2020 - Dedication to You All (Ben Goldberg)
2. [6:03 PM] Dried Print on Cardboard (Myra Melford)
   [6:12 PM] {banter from BG: back- and fore-announcements}
3. [6:15 PM] Three Ingredients #6 (Ben Goldberg)
4. [6:19 PM] Interlude (To Dribble‚ to Smear‚ to Splash) (Myra Melford)
5. [6:23 PM] Porch Concert Material #2 (Ben Goldberg)
   [6:28 PM] {banter from BG: back- and fore-announcements‚ kudos to BD}
6. [6:29 PM] A Line With a Mind of its Own (Myra Melford)
   [6:35 PM] {BG introduces the next tune}
7. [6:35 PM] For Bradford (Mark Dresser)
8. [6:39 PM] (unidentified tune #1)
9. [6:44 PM] The Wayward Line (Myra Melford)
   [6:52 PM] {banter from BG: back- and fore-announcements}
10. [6:54 PM] Evening Song (Ben Goldberg)
    [6:58 PM] {final applause; BG introduces everyone one last time} [6:59 PM] {show ends}

• Ben Davis: cello;
• Jordan Glenn: drums;
• Ben Goldberg: clarinet;
• Myra Melford: keyboard.

I love seeing shows in Mather Redwood Grove – even on cold grey days like today! I doubt the performers were psyched about the cold, but at least they seemed well prepared, with Ben Davis even wearing fingerless gloves!

I think Ben also gets credit today for contributing the most 'out there' parts to today's ensemble performance. Everyone got strange now and then, but Ben seemed to really delight in dropping all sort of weird sounds into the mix via a huge variety of extended techniques: he was really fun to watch!

I don't recall hearing anything about Murmur Garden in Christine's introduction or later banter from the band members, but I liked the moniker, so I copied it from the website text. Maybe that's the title of a forthcoming album?

Ben was pretty careful to introduce song titles, and though a few of his announcements varied slightly from the 'canonical' titles used on commercial releases, it wasn't too hard to straighten things out in that area. I was a little surprised that all but two of today's pieces were short (5 min or so): I wonder if that was a conscious effort in order to squeeze more tunes into the hour of time allotted for this performance.

I really enjoyed today's concert: hopefully they'll be back for longer set next summer!

Big thanks to Ting for the photo gallery!

Whoa! This section is incomplete for now, sorry!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2024 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2024 event list! ☸ On to the next event!