News Archive
Welcome the Year of the Dragon!
2012 is here! Best wishes to all for a productive and inspiring year ahead!
Just a few Zai Circle Updates to bring in the New Year:
We have done some major updating and revamping of the Zai Circle Website over the past few months. Lots of new features including: interviews, sound clips, links to the new CD "Notes From The Field" and other goodies-(new contact page and tighter security to keep spam away).
We are completely revamping the photo gallery with a whole new format that should be up and running in the next few weeks, but the biggest "new" feature is the Zai Circle Dialogue Space. This is a blog post of sorts and I am hoping you will all join in the discussion with your thoughts and insights to help make the Dialogue Space reflect and integrate the directions Zai Circle is going musically. The Dialogue Space is also a way that I can bounce ideas off off all of you and post different types of content from poetry, to dreams, to conversations, and musings.
I hope you stop by for a visit and engage in the Dialogue with me!
Right now I am planning the next trip to China-this time I will spend a few weeks in Taiwan and will hopefully do some sort of concert there with the Zai Circle Trio-ill keep you posted on the my progress!
As always-thank you for visiting
KeLan
Zai Circle China #1
Flowing Musical Conversations in The Moment was more sucessful then I could have imagined! A super big thanks to all the musicians for digging down deep and playing from your hearts-Cha Gan, Yang WeiLin LiBo, Kenneth Kang, ChrisThomas, and Sam VanDame, Spring Chen!
The Zai Circle Trio Hosts: 聚流:此时此刻 国际音乐对话 flowing musical conversations
The Zai Circle Trio Hosts:
聚流:此时此刻 国际音乐对话
flowing musical conversations
with special guest: Mongolian Horse Head Fiddle Virtuoso: LiBo
2quartets, 7 musicians, 5 countries, 1 stage, together
April 23 2011. 7:30pm, Xaimen Culture and Art Center, NO.95, Tiyu Rd. Xiamen, China
First Zai Circle Concert in China!
Hi, Everyone! As always thank you for visiting! Today I have confirmed the date for the first Zai Circle concert in China! The concert will happen in Fujin Provence, city of Xiamen, on April 23, 2011. Saturday night (finally we get a Saturday night venue!)
This concert will feature some very special musicians from China on GuZheng, Pipa, and Voice. A powerful spoken word/singer/performer from Belgium, a Narrator, and poetry. Oh yes, and I almost forgot your host KeLan on Basses and Cymbals.
Zai Circle Updates:China/New Music
Zai Circle China is off and running!
Happy Year of the Rabbit!
I am back in the US for a few weeks on vacation and thought I better update the site! It has been a busy and exciting time in China. I have been playing regularly with three outstanding musicians: Cha Gan who is playing GuZheng, Yang Wei Ying playing Pipa and a traditional Chinese singer Susan (I do not have the correct spelling of her name so I will have to update this later). Right now we are really just exploring together and finding a common ground and also building a foundation for more composed session that will start when I return. I have posted 3 new sound clips in the Archives section that come from our live improvisational sessions. In my last session we also added a friend whom I have gotten to know from Belgium who joined us with spoken word/singing with some of my new poems. This was very cool and quite intense with this added English voice-look for some new posts with this soon.
Here a few notes on the sound clips called Pendulum and the Blues of Zai:
The Blues of Zai: For this piece I had asked Cha Gan who is from Mongolia, to start with an idea. She had been working with a tuning of her GuZheng that she said was in two keys and was a traditional tuning used in ancient times from Yunnan Provence. The term "blues" is not something she was not familiar with or had ever heard, yet as soon as she started playing I knew right away it was a blues. The two keys she was referring to is actually a mode of a blues based scale. This set the tone for a heartfelt true blues. After we played it, I explained that it was connected to the term blues from the West. It is something I am going to explore much more with her as well as taking some trips to Yunnan. I was very excited about this piece-it’s a bit long but I felt it needed to not be edited as the feeling was very focused from start to finish.
Zai Circle update. July 2010. New directions, challenges and possibilities for Zai Circle.
Hello Zai Circle supporters! First a big thanks to those who came to the CD release concert of Water Tiger 10-it was great to have you all there! Another huge thanks to the fantastic musicians who helped make Water Tiger 10 a reality!
Trio#1 Alicia Jones and Jean Mann
Trio #2 Greg Sinibaldi and Steven Banks
Trio#3 Abel Rocha and Terry Wergeland
Geoff Ott and London Bridge Studios for recording and mixing and expertise!
I am working on setting up a download site for "Water Tiger 10" and "Remembrance" and selected pieces from the "WT10" concert as well as from the ""Dialogues of Here and Now Series of last year. Hopefully this will be up and running by the end of the summer. The link to the new "store" will be found here.
I have added one new "conversation" to the archive section and have a few more to post up in the next few days-check them out!
New Directions: Zai Circle goes to China in September 2010!
At the end of last year, during our annual vacation pilgrimage to China and specifically to the city of Xaimen, I had the opportunity to do 2 very small Zai Circle conversations with a few wonderful local “Chinese Classical” musicians and instruments including the PiPa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipa), and the Guzheng (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guzheng). We had a few hours to explore how these sounds work with the electric bass (on a bass that I borrowed from a local music store), and to improvise a bit and begin to understand how our musical cultures, philosophies, and backgrounds could come together to create something new. We had a very rewarding time learning and listening to each others musical voices.
Zai Circle Updates 3/5 2010
Join us on June 24th 2010 at 7pm for the CD release concert of "Water Tiger 10" Featuring: KeLan: Basses, guitars, loops, cymbals. Abel Rocha: Harps and Voice. Alicia Jones: Voice. Greg Sinibaldi: Tenor Sax and EWI. Jean Mann: Voice. Steven Banks: Drums. Terry Wergeland: Accordion, Flugelhorn, Piano.
Place: The Good Sheperd Chapel
4649 Sunnyside Ave N. (4th floor)
Seattle WA 98103
Tickets are $15. Buy one ticket at full price, the second is only $5. One free CD with full price ticket!
Tickets at the door or at brownpapertickets.com
search Zai Circle
Water Tiger 10 “Conversations on Three Poems”
“Water Tiger” started as an idea to explore more of a compositional form with 3 different trios. The poems deal with themes of transition, compromise, goals and aspirations, reservations, and in general the things we must balance in life.
Each trio entered into a deep musical dialogue on each poem. Compositionally, there is a blend, (and a blurred line), of what is “composed” and what is improvised. The “recording” was done live with no overdubs at London Bridge Studios in Seattle.