Ode To Gravity:
A Concert from Pier 2 with Stuart Dempster & Bill Fontana

Trombonist virtuoso Stuart Dempster, the master of the sewer pipe didjeridu, performs live from San Francisco's Fort Mason's Pier 2, where the sound installation of Bill Fontana, "Landscape Sculpture with Foghorns", was still sounding. That installation, part of the 1981 New Music America Festival, involved piping in via telephone lines, the sound of eight Bay Area foghorns and then manipulating their sounds with various delay effects. When Dempster, whose earlier performance at the Japan Center had been a big hit at the same Festival, went to Pier 2 and heard his alter egos performing from across the Bay, he decided then and there to play in concert with the sound of the eight foghorns. The result was this two hour sensuous soundscape, a program that very quickly became an audience favorite at KPFA and which can now be enjoyed by listeners from around the world through radiOM.org.

Warning: the exact point of separation between the two musical selections is uncertain.