Lawste, Kenneth Tarek Sabbar, Matt Blair at Common Sage

Common Sage, a house venue just off of South Park Street in the Greenbush neighborhood, tends to showcase avant-garde music by way of cozy immersion. During a December winter solstice celebration and an October multi-media tribute to La Monte Young, Common Sage’s hosts invited attendees to share potluck meals and gather around a fire pit in the backyard. This show is a bit more straightforward in name, but all three sets offer a chance to see musicians exploring new territory, or at least things the audience doesn’t often get to see them do. (Oh, and no potluck this time around, but there will be a post-show fire pit if weather allows. The show is happening a little later than usual for the venue, so as not to conflict with digital artist Eric Theise and bassist Ari Smith’s performance at Arts + Literature Laboratory the same night.)

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Lawste combines Milwaukee bassist Barry Paul Clark—whose contributions run from his eerie electronic solo project adoptahighway to performing in the big-hearted folk-rock outfit Field Report to adventurous groups like Argopelter and Tontine Ensemble—with New York-based harpist/vocalist Rebecca El-Saleh, who has performed in a variety of experimental settings in addition to creating song-based material in their solo projects. Lawste is a new product of a years-long collaboration, so it’s anyone’s guess what it will sound like as Clark and El-Saleh use bass, lever harp, and electronics to draw on musical backgrounds that truly run the gamut.

Kenneth Tarek Sabbar goes by his full name for experimental live performance, Tarek Sabbar for techno and ambient music, and Luxate for his solo noise project. The Madison-based synthesist/producer/guitarist recently put out a new Tarek Sabbar EP, No One Will Care As Much As You, and has a Luxate EP planned for later this spring. Neither release has much to do with the electroacoustic set he plans to perform here through a quadraphonic sound setup. Sabbar says he will be “using manipulated gathered acoustic sounds alongside synthesis sounds.” 

Madison pianist Matt Blair also pulls together a wide spectrum of interests, from chamber music to the more dissonant, electronics-enhanced fringes of jazz, and will be opening the show with a new work. “I’m going to be performing an audiovisual piece based on found sound, found footage, and some composed music that was inspired by a regular walking route I like to take along the Yahara River as it flows into Lake Monona,” Blair tells Tone Madison.

—Scott Gordon

Image: Detail from poster art by Kenneth Tarek Sabbar.