Dino JA Deane
Friday, July 23. 2021 at 11:14pm marked the peaceful passing of Dino J.A. Deane. He transitioned in New Mexico with his dearest friends, Joe Sabella and Katie Harlow, at his side. Born on February 16, 1950, Deane was 71.
Over a career spanning more than four decades, this multi-instrumentalist, sound-designer and conductor demonstrated a unique and innovative approach to the world of music. Dino pioneered the use of live-electronics in Indoor Life - a popular art/punk band from San Francisco during the early 1980's. He played a trombone-controlled synthesizer which emulated the sound of an electric guitar and employed a tape-echo to create loops.
During the 1980’s Dino toured the world with Jon Hassell as the electro-acoustic live-sampling percussionist. That collaboration resulted in the ground-breaking Power Spot recording for ECM in 1986, produced by Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois.
During that same period Dino became a close collaborator in Butch Morris's real-time composition creations called Conductions®, and in 1995 co-produced Morris's epic 10-CD box set Testament, for New World Records. Dino originated the term “live-sampling” - recording members of an ensemble while in performance, manipulating the sound, then playing back the recorded audio like an instrument. He is considered a master in this field of performance.
Dino had an extensive background in composition for modern dance, having created over fifty dance/music works with his life partner, dancer/choreographer Colleen Mulvihill. He had an equally long history creating sound designs for dramatic theater, working with writer directors as diverse as Sam Shepard, Julie Hebert, Christoph Marthaler and John Flax of Theater Grottesco.
Since 1995, Dino released several albums under his own name and directed the ensemble Out of Context. More than 400 hours of his compositions are being prepared for streaming release to preserve his legacy and his contributions to improvisation.
In November 2020, Dino published Becoming Music - Conduction and Improvisation as forms of QiGong, which is available through Bandcamp and other stores.
https://dinojadeane.bandcamp.com/merch/becoming-music-a-book-about-the-a...
His music and writings are being preserved at:
https://dinojadeane.bandcamp.com/
http://jadeane.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Dino-JA-Deane-Tribute-107637254947183
For more information on Deane's contributions please contact:
Cookie Marenco / Blue Coast Music at support@bluecoastmusic.com
Backstory
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1973 (L.A.) - I was playing trombone, electric piano and percussion in a funk band called Poverty Train (from the Laura Nyro song), five sets a night six nights a week. I was also doing studio work with the L.A. Horns and one of our clients was Ike Turner. Ike liked to do horn sessions from about 3:00 A.M. until about 7:00 in the morning and we did plenty of sessions at his studio Bolic Sound. I learned allot about multi-track recording from Ike when we were working on NUTBUSH CITY LIMITS. After Ike & Tina split up I toured with Tina for about a year playing trombone, alto-flute, clavinet and string synthesizer. |
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1980 (San Francisco) - I dove into San Francisco's diverse and thriving music-dance-theater community in 1978 and in 1979 joined an art/punk band called Indoor Life. I was now playing electric trombone and using it to control (pre midi) analogue synthesizers. I was also using a tape-echo to create "live-loops". INDOOR LIFE put out a self titled EP that was quickly picked up (bootlegged) by Celluloid Records in France. The band decided to move to New York which would serve as a centralized home base for recording and touring in the U.S. and Europe. |
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1986 (New York) - After moving to N.Y.C. in 1981 with Indoor Life I become very involved with the downtown improvised music scene. I also started playing sampler and electro-acoustic percussion, doing what I called "live-sampling" with Jon Hassell in 1982. We toured allot in Europe and Japan. When we recorded POWER SPOT in 83/84 for ECM, we went up to Daniel Lanois' studio in Canada with Daniel and Brian Eno producing. Many people feel that this recording is Hassell's most significant and most influential work. |
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1987 (San Francisco) - I moved back to San Francisco in 1986 but projects I worked on during my time in New York continued to be released. I had performed on three of John Zorn's game pieces but COBRA was the one that became the most popular. This Hat Art release was a double album, one studio recording and one live recording. I played trombone, electronics on the live disc. |
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1991 (Oakland) - I moved to Oakland in 1990 but associations I had made in New York continued to grow. The most important musical connection I made during my stay in NYC was with Butch Morris. I started playing trombone, electronics and sampler in his large ensembles in 1985 (conduction #3) and in his touring trio with Wayne Horvitz in 1986. The project called X-COMMUNICATION - Deane, Hirsch, Hwang, Koch, Lovens, Morris, Reichel, Schütz, was an octet that played the European festival circuit for about three years (88/89/90). This recording was from the FMP festival in Berlin 1990. |
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1995 (Ribera) - I moved to rural New Mexico in 1995 and started to engage with a completely new musical community. 1995 marked the release of NOMAD (Victo) a collection of dance/music works I created with my partner, dancer choregrapher Colleen Mulvihill, at our loft in Oakland. It was the first release under my name and the continuation of a very prolific period for me. Deane mixes unlike sonic textures together in a way that gives life to something entirely different, something you've never heard before. - Vanishing Point |
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also in 1995 - I had been collaborating with my now dear friend Butch Morris for ten years playing trombone, electronics in his touring trio as well as doing all of the live-sampling in his large conduction ensembles. I co-produced his epic 10 CD box set TESTAMENT for New World Records. The most ambitious documentation of an evolving, cutting-edge music since CECIL TAYLOR IN BERLIN '88....The players are the medium with which Morris action-paints sprawling, intense soundscapes....Butch Morris has made an important contribution to the cultural dialogue we call music. - JazzTimes |
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1996 (Ribera) - BURNING CLOUD - recorded at the FMP festival in Berlin 1993. Le Quan Ninh, percussion J.A. Deane, trombone, electronics, live-looping, flute This work is a monument to these three musicians' total willingness to communicate with each other, led by forces they didn't even understand when they were creating this masterpiece. ~ Thom Jurek for the site ALL MUSIC |
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Dino & Colleen "EXILE IN RIBERIA" 1997 to 2007 This was a very intense period of upheaval, transition, research, and rebirth and through my association with Mark Weber and Zerxpress it became a very prolific time as well. |
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THE BUBBADINOS Mark Weaver - tuba : Stefan Dill - flamenco & electric guitars : Bubba D (aka j.a. deane) - lapsteel, piano, bass-flute |
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SPOKEN WORD tapes, piano, shakuhachi |
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OUT OF CONTEXT Conducted by J.A. Deane high mayhem |
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DINO J.A. DEANE Live at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston '88 shakuhachi, bass drum, sampler, live-sampling |
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2008 (Villanueva) - I stopped playing the trombone in 2001 feeling I had taken the instrument as far as I was going to take it (acoustic & electric). This recording of THE WEBSTER CYCLES (ColdBlue) by Steve Peters for six multi-tracked acoustic trombones was recorded in Santa Fe in 1998. Deane is a soulfully expressive musician and, despite the calm and coolness of Peters's music, his interpretation has immediate emotional appeal as well as seductive depth. - Julian Cowley, The Wire |
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"STRING THEORY" I played the trombone a fretless brass instrument for forty years......and as George Lewis said to me when he found out that I had stopped playing it ..... "You know Dino, a gentleman is someone who can Play the trombone, but refrains from doing so". one for him / one for me, based on the ancient Chinese GuQin - I start seriously practicing all 3 instruments. I play it incessantly. |
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2014 (on the front range) I moved to Longmont Colorado and over the next three years I worked with Daniela Veronesi (linguest / editor) to articulate the Lexicon of signs and gestures of the Conduction vocabulary in an effort to finish The Art of Conduction : A Conduction Workbook by Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris.
Butch passed on 1/29/13 before the completion of his book, documenting all of the techniques of Conduction, his lifelong work with collaborative composition. The book was published in 2017 |
