Press release:
Keyboard legend Don Preston, best known for his work with Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, will be performing with his Akashic Ensemble at The Mothlight in Asheville on Nov. 14, 2015.
DON PRESTON leads a life filled with music, innovation, and experimentation. “Groundbreaking” is a phrase that is clearly overused..with Don it rings true. One of the first performers to drag a pile of oscillators and filters onstage, he brought his classical training to the avant garde. In the early 60s a weird guy named Frank Zappa would come to see Don’s “electronic music with films of bacterial life” shows in Los Angeles. Don was soon in Zappa’s radical new group The Mothers Of Invention, touring and playing on classics like We’re Only In It For The Money and Roxy & Elsewhere from 1966 to 1974.
Don’s played with everyone from Elvin Jones to The Residents, Jack Bruce and Robbie Krieger. His keyboard solos on Zappa albums, as well as countless soundtracks like Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, are considered ground-breaking moments in synthesizer music history.
Still very active at 83, Don was there for the dawn of electronic musical performance, and today grafts new technologies into his experimental palette with software synths & iPhone apps, blending jazz, rock, comedy, magic and ambient synths into a captivating performance.
MIKE DILLON How many artists are called “punk rock provocateur”, “jazz vibraphone visionary” and “percussion virtuoso” in the same sentence? There’s only one: Mike Dillon. 2014 has seen Mike on tour with Primus, touring as a quintet in support of their version of the “Willy Wonka” soundtrack, or with his own Mike Dillon’s Band of Outsiders. The Texas native sets his own standards and has toured or recorded with artists like Les Claypool, Ani DiFranco. As well as being a creative force or bandleader in Garage A Trois, The Dead Kenny Gs, Critters Buggin, Billy Goat and Hairy Apes BMX.
Onstage Dillon may move seamlessly from vibes to marimba, tabla to surdo, congas to timbale, or might grab the mic to drop some science or deliver a Stooges cover. Anything and everything happens when this man hits the stage.
ANDRE CHOLMONDELEY With a career split between playing in numerous bands and tour managing/guitar teching for a long list of rock & prog legends like Adrian Belew, John Wetton or David Torn, one wonders when Cholmondeley sleeps. His guitar palette springs from an approach that’s somewhere between rock n roll guitar, the 20th century avant & musique concrete composers he studied in college, and the illbient electronic world of texturalists like Tricky, Lustmord and Autechre. Of course, also the huge influences from all the usual and unusual suspects on guitar.
Andre brings his deep dedication to looping, electronic textures and “guitar that doesn’t sound like guitar” to the Akashic Ensemble.
NOVEMBER 2015 TOURDATES
13 FRI Atlanta GA Red Light Cafe
14 SAT Asheville NC The Mothlight
15 SUN Birmingham AL Syndicate Lounge
16 MON Hattiesburg MS Thirsty Hippo
17 TUE New Orleans LA Cafe Istanbul
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