Cellista debut solo album

I am headed into the studio this September to record my first album based on my hopeless devotion to San Jose and the SF Bay Area as a whole. 

I’ll be recording the album in two parts. One in downtown San Jose at Anno Domini art gallery and the other at Tiny Telephone recording studios in San Francisco. 

I am doing a Kickstarter to raise the basic funds to bring this project to life. The funds raised from this will cover:

• Recording, mixing, and mastering
• Paying collaborators
• Artwork
• Publicity and promotion
• Manufacturing of album
• Music video costs

The concept of the album is simple. It is improvisational and offers reflections of San Jose and the SF Bay area.

The first recording session will take place in San Francisco at Tiny Telephone Studio where I will work with audio engineer (and cellist) Shawn Alpay to record a series of soundscapes which include the voices of Bay area residents I have recorded over the past year.  I will also be utilizing elements of my first installation at subZERO in 2014 which was done in collaboration with visual artist Tulio Flores.

The second recording session will occur at Anno Domini gallery in downtown San Jose. This session is entirely improvisatory and offers a reflection or response to the town itself. 

I will shoot a short music video following the recording sessions that is  interdisciplinary  and surrealist in focus with the modern dancer Lauren Baines. Baines  will create original choreography based on one piece from my album.

I will also be collaborating with Santa Clara Poet Laureate David Perez and Vallejo composer Joshua Icban. Journalist Gary Singh will contribute the liner notes for the physical copies.  Beat boxer Carlos Aguirre (Emcee Infinite) will be contributing, and singer Rykarda Parasol.

The album will merge the two recording sessions into a seamless narrative that offers itself as a mirror to the Bay area’s innovative and diverse arts community.

Most especially, this is an offering to the artists of San Jose. I owe San Jose my creative life. I see the town going through a period of rapid growth and development and I would like to offer this album to my community in dedication of a time when San Jose used to be orchards. This community has been foundational to me as a creative.

This album will nurture and honor the strong roots of San Jose and its artists and will help cultivate its already rich creative grounds.