On the Musical Menu...
the 1998 Tour

1998 Tour: (members of) Comma (and friends)

Here you'll find information on our 1998 tour.

The tour was a one-show appearance at 33 Degrees in Austin, Texas on December 30, 1998. That year's ensemble included Joseph Zitt, Thomas Bickley, Josh Ronsen, Tim Wood, Thom the World Poet, John Snyder and Bobby Corbell. Every member of that year's ensemble has stayed with the ensemble.

The audience included luminaries such as Debra Hay, Chris Brown and Randy Lusk. You always wonder what other audiences members think the first time they encounter improvisational work with strange instruments, random appearances of sample sounds, performers wandering through the audience and others tapping and dinging objects on a tarp. Synchronicities abounded during the performance and as Thom the World Poet noted after talking with audience members later, people were impressed with the performance. To a certain degree, even members of the ensemble were impressed that, as Thom said, "that we got away with it." And that Tim Wood somehow managed to turn Joseph Zitt's rental car into a portable sound studio to finish preperations for one piece on the drive to Austin. Even the venue itself was a work of improvisation with the staff of 33 Degrees working with members of the ensemble to create a stage in the handful of hours before the audience began to arrive.

Texas is not a place many people see as welcoming to work this offbeat. But, if that's a rule, we've had great success in breaking it year after year during our tours.

Parts of the show were recorded by Thomas Bickley and are available at www.metatronpress.com and linked on the 1998 set list part of this site. Video recorded by Tim Wood of the performance has since been lost. A local camera crew --perhaps for a community access program, perhaps not-- also captured the action.