The Zen of Glenn: Glenn Horiuchi Legacy Ensemble with The Sky Unit (Francis Wong, Chris Trinidad, Carrie Jahde) featuring Erika Oba. Horiuchi was a pioneer in the Asian American creative music movement with a foundational legacy in compositions, recordings, and major international performances. A Zen Buddhist practitioner, he is the author of Zen of Glenn, a collection of writings published after his untimely death. Celebrated flutist, pianist, and composer Erika Oba will join the band to render a program of Horiuchi’s musical works and readings of his essays.

The Sky Unit is a multi directional ensemble emerging from electric bassist, synth performer, and composer Chris Trinidad’s weekly residency at the Sky Cafe in South San Francisco, CA. Formed as a collective also featuring trapset drummer Carrie Jahde and saxophonist Francis Wong, the Sky Unit’s two fold mission is to incubate new improvised music repertoire and excavate lesser known work from creative and jazz music lineages. Its most recent work has included a broad exploration of the hybrid palette of Asian American (+1 Canadian) Improvisers, from the jazz poetics of Genny Lim, to the Zen informed work of the late Glenn Horiuchi, to sounds of liberation of its own “OG” social justice warrior Francis Wong.

One of the Sky Unit’s key strategies is to collaborate with guest artists as a means to bring to the performance space a range of influences and lived experience in the music-making. Look out in the coming year for performances at the Sky Cafe and other Bay Area creative venues, new recording projects, and social media content. A partial list of recent guests: poet Genny Lim, flutist Erika Oba, taiko sensei Melody Takata, kulintang artist Conrad Benedicto, guitarist Karl Evangelista, Vietnamese zither performers Jacqueline and Christopher Lam, and more!

tickets available here


WatchL glenn horiuchi “Heart Place”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtKOoJ1BBjU