The Good War is just out, and writer Elizabeth Costello invited Rent Romus and Suki O’Kane to share the stage to raise funds for Romus’s most excellent Outsound New Music Summit!
Suggested donation for the event, $20 cash/venmo. BYOB.

And bring your checkbook or the digital equivalent to make a donation to the Outsound New Music Summit, under preparation at this writing for your enjoyment this July!

The Summit performance schedule includes music and sound ranging from free improvisation, to electronic manipulation, to noise, to sonic sculptural art reflecting genre-busting exploration and creativity. In addition, the festival promotes intermedia arts, fostering cross-pollination through film, dance, and writing. 

The Summit has supported more than 360 performing groups and artists since 2002!

Part of Elizabeth’s debut novel, The Good War, takes place in the summer of 1964 in New York City and features a character who becomes obsessed with Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch. Costello will read a section which features a walk through NYC with Out to Lunch in mind. Romus and OKane will improvise music in response to Dolphy’s work. Audience donations and cover charges go 100% to support Outsound. The author will sign copies of The Good War and all will be glad to see you there.

Elizabeth Costello is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. She works (remotely) as an editor for UC Berkeley and co-founded the ekphraestival, a generative exchange among visual artists and poets that culminates in readings and exhibitions in April, national poetry month. Her debut novel, The Good War, is out now from Regal House and was described by Publishers Weekly as “dark and intense…lyrical…Moody and atmospheric, this gritty tale is worth a look.”

Rent Romus (he/they) is a queer non-binary Emmy award winning Finish-American saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, music producer, and community activist. Since 1988, their work on the saxophone has been dubbed “ferocious” by the San Francisco Weekly and “central to the creative music world of the West Coast” by writer Frank Rubolino. They lead the Lords of Outland a free improvisation unit, the Life’s Blood Ensemble a composition based contemporary group, and the Otherworld Ensemble a Finnish/American collective exploring new perspectives in heritage and traditional folk. Romus has recorded over 50 albums exploring a wide variety of musical settings which have included beat poet founder ruth weiss, and creative music pioneers Chico Freeman, John Tchicai, and Vinny Golia, Teppo Hauta-aho, Heikki Koskinen, Thollem McDonas, Stefan Pasborg, Marcos Fernandez, and Ernesto Diaz-Infante to name a few. He is also the founder of Edgetone Records a community driven label with over 30 years of independent music production, and the creator of Outsound Presents, an all-volunteer musician run non-profit music presenting organization since 2000.

Suki O’Kane (she/they) is an Oakland-based musician, composer, improviser, and instigator working with artists from a wide array of music, movement, expanded cinema, and public art genres. A student of monumental and durational forms, Suki combines a long relationship with the percussion family, Jurassic electronics, everyday objects, and found sounds to create noisy, hand held miniatures.