WEST
OAKLAND
SOUND
SERIES
a weekly new music and experimental sound series every sunday
presented by new performance traditions and sfSound
dresher ensemble studio :: 2201 poplar street, oakland california
ample parking! please park perpendicular when past the trees on poplar
$10-$25 sliding scale (cash & venmo accepted at door - order advance here)
concerts start promptly at 7:15
:: late arrivals follow instructions on door to get buzzed in ::
MAY 10 2026 7:15pm
$20 click here to purchase advance tickets online
(FREE for students and financially challenged)

MICHAEL J. SCHUMACHER presents various “immersive/dispersive” fixed media works, composed in New Your for his portable 8 channel system and adapted for Dresher Studio's multi-channel Meyer sound system. Utilizing a radically inclusive palette of sounds, the pieces wrap the audience in webs of potential associations, making listening as vital to the creation of meaning as the act of composing itself.
Performance and visual artist ANNA HOMLER and bassist JEFF SCHWARTZ have collaborated since 2016, working as a duo and in groups with Michael Intriere, David Javelosa, Carole Kim, Jorge Martin, Mason Moy, Charles Sharp, Breeze Smith, and Biliana Voutchkova, appearing at Beyond Baroque, Highways, Open Gate, SASSAS, Soundwaves, 2220 Arts & Archives, Vernacular, Villa Aurora, and in the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Endurance festival. Coming from diverse creative realms, they find a meeting point through their shared love of improvisation, exploring the evocative power of voice, contrabass, and unexpected sound sources.

MAY 17 2026 7:15pm
$20 click here to purchase advance tickets online
(FREE for students and financially challenged)

NEIL ROLNICK performs So Many Me's, with choreographer and dancer ALEX OLIVA (and her 8 foot ladder). measuring ... selling ... falling apart ... acting out ... surrender ... Neil also performs the score to Barbara Hammer's 1990 experimental film Sanctus, featuring a host of x-ray skeletons playing trumpets, drinking, shaking hands, shaving, putting on lipstick, all to the live mashup of Sanctus movements from masses by Machaut, Bach, Beethoven & Verdi.
“Plonsey Scheme” has nothing to do with finding suckers to invest in this “music” thing which promises to be such a hot commodity, with the fraudster paying off older investors with the funds provided by the younger ones -- but as we get older it is admittedly a little more like it: what experiences, revelations and revolutions can we promise you? MANTRA PLONSEY writes the words while DAN PLONSEY writes the music, but it comes together for the first (and last) time during performance. The music is written to accommodate improvisations utilizing various constraints, miniature compositions within compositions, fragments of songs from Eastern Europe and Northern El Cerrito. The band includes bagpipes virtuoso MATTHEW WELCH (also accordion and Balinese suling), clarinet/saxophone/flutist CORY WRIGHT (also trombone), guitarist TOMEK SINCLAIR, and MIC GENDREAU on turntables, electronics and percussion (and perhaps clarinet). Mantra sings and speaks, Dan plays reeds, brass, melodica, and bits of cheap percussion. And KATTT ATCHLEY provides a backdrop of projected tableaux of dolls among art: in movement along with their lighting on a system of turntables and lazy susans. PLONSEY SCHEME is eery, majestic, lost, mysterious, ceremonial, and more/less than just there.

MAY 24 2026 7:15pm
$20 click here to purchase advance tickets online
(FREE for students and financially challenged)
ANTIMATTER (xopher Davidson, analog / digital electronics) and JACOB FELIX HEULE (percussion): Wave Function Collapse, resting upon the threshold between a state of limitless potentials and one of decoherence-that which cannot be measured, quantified, simulated or collected as data. Forever drifting over time, a spectral bass-relief sculpted by entropy.
MEERENAI SHIM and DIANE GRUBBE team up to perform composed and improvised music for a variety of flutes, including glissando and contrabass flutes. The program includes Salvatore Sciarrino’s Il pomeriggio di un allarme al parcheggio for glissando flute, Pathways for two flutes by Efraín Amaya, Matthew Joseph Payne’s Etude for contrabass flute and TI83+ calculator and the premiere of a duo for two glissando flutes by Diane Grubbe.


MAY 31 2026 7:15pm
$20 click here to purchase advance tickets online
(FREE for students and financially challenged)
June 7 2026 7:15pm
$20 click here to purchase advance tickets online
(FREE for students and financially challenged)
ROVA SAXOPHONE QUARTET presents two sets of original compositions.
First, commissioned works and recent Rova compositions for the quartet, including Music for Mouths by MIYA MASAOKA, The Knot Gallery by JOHN BUTCHER, I, Norton by GINO ROBAIR and pieces by quartet members.
In the second half, Rova joins by KAREN STACKPOLE (Gongwoman) for a set of Rova works adapted for saxophone quartet plus gongs and percussion. First streamed live in March of 2022, the works are presented to a live audience for the first time.
