Stan Lunetta & Sacramento's Avant-Garde: The Sacramento Living Library - August 18th

 The Sacramento Living Library Returns! 

We're kicking off our new season

Sunday, August 18th, at 7:00pm

with

Stan Lunetta and the Sacramento Avant-Garde

(in conversation with Bill Burg)

Stan Lunetta is a Sacramento native who grew up in Oak Park. His father was a trumpet player in the American Legion and Camellia City marching bands, who encouraged Stan to pursue music. Stan was inspired by his music teacher at Stanford Junior High and Sacramento High School, Aubrey Penman, and studied to become a music teacher at Sacramento State. Stan played in downtown Sacramento jazz bands to work his way through school, and was a member of the local Musician's Union. Stan played at jazz clubs all over the region, including the Mel-O-Dee Club, Chicken Villa, the Iron Sandal, the Belmonte Gallery, the Jay-Rob Theatre, and the El Rancho Hotel, in styles ranging from popular "hotel music" and dance bands to improvisational late-night jam sessions. He was a member of the Bill Rase Orchestra and the Concert Jazz Quintet.

After two years teaching junior high and elementary school band, he entered the UC Davis music program and became a member of the UC Davis music department, whose faculty (including Larry Austin, Richard Swift, Wayne Johnson, Dary John Mizelle and Art Woodbury) formed its own free improvisational jazz band, the New Music Ensemble, in 1963. In the 1960s, UC Davis attracted composers in residence like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who were impressed by Lunetta and hIs cohorts, and inspired even more musical experimentation. Starting in 1967, members of this group started Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, an enormously influential but little known magazine that featured cutting-edge experimentation in every aspect, from the frontiers of electronic music, performance art and environmental art, to graphic design and multimedia content, including 10" extended-play records folded into the magazine, edited and laid out in Stan's basement in Poverty Ridge.

Stan continued his musical forays, both in traditional forms as a percussionist for the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra, Sacramento Opera Association, Sacramento Choral Society and California Musical Theater, and non-traditional forms via his experimental music/performance art ensemble AMRA/ARMA. He designed and built his own electronic musical instruments, including instruments designed to play themselves or in combination with other machines, without human intervention. His website www.moosack.net includes biographical information, music clips, and a digital version of the AMRA/ARMA comic book, a true fantasy tale about the band's trip to a distant land to engage in musical rituals that summoned Elder Gods from other dimensions. Stan has retired from musical performance, but still lives in Poverty Ridge with his collection of musical equipment, homebrewed experimental music devices, Macintosh computers and science fiction.

This event is FREE and everyone is invited!