Racer Session #561 | Paul Sakai (Bay Area) & Nathan Chamberlain (NYC) | Sunday March 19th, 2023 at 7pm

Greetings Racers!

We’ve got another Racer Session coming in hot - this Sunday at 7pm, friend of the session Paul Sakai will be joined by his longtime collaborator Nathan Chamberlain to present music from their most recent album, as part of a series of west coast shows they’re performing this month.

Paul Sakai is a Japanese American drummer and improviser based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born in Berkeley, CA and raised as a part of the international community in South East Asia, his music focuses on place, self, family and cultural history. Current collaborations are with visual artist and guitarist Danny Lulu (Providence, RI), guitarist and improviser Mark Chinen (Seattle, WA) and solo project, Roy Kiyo. Paul Sakai studied at the University of Washington under John Bishop and Cuong Vu, and more recently has come under the mentorship of Akira Tana.

Nathan Chamberlain is an indigenous/Latinx guitarist, composer, and improvisor who currently is a student at the New School College of Performing Arts in New York City where he is studying with Mary Halvorson and Miles Okazaki and pursuing a Master's of Music. His music has been performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Living Earth Show, Lucian Pixley, and David Yang. As a performer, Chamberlain has collaborated with artists such as Paul Sakai, Josiah Branaman, Shinya Lin, Olivia Jones, Jane Lee, Dup Crosson, Nick Monaco, Dave Kim, and Audrey Chau. His music has been performed at Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley, Z-Space, the Flight Deck Theatre, the Luggage Store in San Francisco, and Pro-Arts Oakland.

Sakai and Chamberlain were first collaborators when they formed the Pinbokeh Trio, an Oakland-based trio that performed improvised ambient soundscapes. In 2019, Sakai and Chamberlain began to perform as a duo.

Paul has written a great blog post, and for the first time in a while we have a structured jam plan for improvisations after the opening set! Read on for those words from Paul, a sample of Nathan’s score for the jam, and more juicy deets. We’ll see you at Cafe Racer Sunday at 7pm!

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“My name is Paul Sakai, I’m a drummer and percussionist based in the Bay Area. Years ago (2008-2012) I was at school with many of the early members of the Racer Sessions - I so appreciated those early days of first stepping into improvised, experimental music. It’s been so long since then and the Racer Sessions have grown and evolved so much (and so wonderfully) since those days - I’m really excited to return to Seattle and share in community with you all!

Nathan Chamberlain and I are celebrating the release of a project we recorded this past year with a small West Coast tour. While it’s in the improvised avant/jazz vein, it’s conceptually very much based around childhood memory, homecomings, nostalgia, and family.

Top: Paul Sakai, Bottom: Nathan Chamberlain

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For this week's session we’d like for us all to participate in a guided improvisation of Nathan’s, “Evening”. This guided improvisation speaks to the cyclical nature of day and night, while also speaking to family and ancestral ritual. A sort of cycle of returning, but in every return, new growth and change.

“Gesture/gestures” refers to any illustration or music notation in the score. All gestures notated or illustrated are to be interpreted by the performer(s) in any way they like in an improvised manner. Each repeat of any gesture is to be subtly but not significantly different from any prior interpretation of that same gesture. The performer(s) must determine how many times they would like to complete the circle for the duration of the performance. Performer(s) should take notice of how their breath is connected to their interpretation of each gesture. The duration of time it takes to move from one gesture to the next, is determined by when a performer’s body and breath has fully acclimated to the corresponding gesture. The total duration of the piece will depend upon how many times the circle is performed and how each gesture is interpreted.

To begin the performance, the performer(s) starts with the gesture at the center of the circle. Afterwards, the performer(s) may branch out to any part of the circle (if two or more performing, each performer may branch out to different parts of the circle). Once the outer gestures of the circle are being performed, the performer(s) moves around the circle either clockwise or counterclockwise. A gesture may only be followed by another gesture if they are in adjacent positions around the circle with each other. To complete the circle, all gestures in and around the circle must be performed.

-Paul Sakai