The Ambient Jazz Quartet

Jeff Oster (trumpet), Michael Manring (bass), Dave DiLullo (percussion) and I did a show at The New Zealander, Alameda in early July. We played to a full house, and have been asked to return in September. The two hour set is condensed to a steady 10 minute flow of improvised ambient jazz.

"Loop Light"

This is the first in a series of music videos aimed at presenting new music in unusual spaces. “Loop Light” is a piece for slide guitar and loop pedals, recorded in the sanctuary at FCCA in Alameda earlier this month. The acoustics were excellent, thanks to the wood floors and curved interior of this vintage 1904 church.

I Got Your Ring Right Here

When going on a date, it’s always important to notice what your companion is wearing. If you don’t, you’ll miss out, and she will notice that you’re missing out. If she happens to introduce you to several of her close friends, it’s important to notice what they are wearing as well. This is a lot of noticing for me to keep up with, which is one of the reasons I became a photographer, and thus carry a camera with me to all events where I might notice things, and would like to remember them later. On this occasion the closest of my date’s close friends was wearing a ring. This ring was hard, if not impossible, not to notice. It was large, even at a polite distance. After my polite noticing, our friend brought her ring up to my camera lens at kung fu speed, though thankfully coming to a safe stop at a close viewing distance, where my camera took notice.

The Gallery Gig

"The Gallery Gig" Video

Jeff Oster - trumpet, flugelhorn, looping
Carl Weingarten - slide guitar, looping

"Pipewinds" Video from Dreaming In Colors

Since reissuing Dreaming In Colors in February, the CD is making its way onto radio, and distribution through CDbaby, Amazon and iTunes. When the LP version was originally released in 1985, "Mermaid" was the popular tune. This time it's "Pipewinds" that's catching the downloads. The song features Walter Whitney's classic analog synth orchestration, toe tapping groove, and ethereal space-flute melody. This new video production includes new original footage, plus brilliant animation by David Baumber.

Recording Session with Michael Manring and Celso Alberti

I recently dreamed up a trio music project, and invited two of my favorite musicians to record - bass guitar maestro Michael Manring and Brazilian percussionist Celso Alberti. The two very busy working musicians, graciously accepted my invitation upon hearing several demos I’d produced.

After the usual cat herding, our schedules came together and we all arrived at Noah Perry’s Merritt Sound Studio on April 19.

The full day session went even better than expected, with the live bass, drums and looping guitar, shaping into an exciting new recording. Release is a few months away, but we'll be posting tracks in progress. --Carl

Download/Play this 3 minute MP3 excerpt of "BlueScapes"

Bone Dog Blues ( video)

"Bone Dog Blues" is on both escapesilence (2002) and the Hand In The Sand Compilation (2004). The song received good airplay, including NPR’s All Thing Considered, and the CD also came in at number one on that year’s Echoes Radio Listener’s Choice Poll. The tune is a straight ahead instrumental, and the theme, featuring Brian Knave’s excellent harmonica, is up tempo and cinematic. Enjoy.



Check out the following video I just produced, a concert performance by singer percussionist David Dilullo and singer Nadine Risha.

Alameda On Camera 2010

During the last weekend of February 2010, The Frank Bette Center hosted the annual Alameda On Camera photography event. 48 bay area photographers, me included, were given 48 hours to take pictures within an assigned 48th slice of the Alameda map. I was given the north eastern tip of the island, which includes Lincoln Park and the High Street Bridge.

There are few better motivators than a deadline. The advantage of photographing where I live is knowing the territory. This is also the disadvantage. How to make fresh the commonplace?

I approached this challenge in the following ways:

1. Find the most unfamiliar (to me) locations in subject area
2. Be there during the most dramatic light – morning, evening
3. Don’t plan the shoot other than what gear to bring
4. Shoot with multiple cameras – digital, film and pinhole
5. Stay for a while and take in the scene, like a movie
6. Give chance a chance

The above helped me to capture several great images in different styles. However, the final inspiration came from a familiar subject – the weather. It rained that weekend. The alternating sun and rolling storm clouds gave me ever changing views, filling the frame and broadening the perspective of each subject.

The Alameda Camera show opening was Friday April 2. The house was packed and of the awards given, my black and white photo Steel Cathedral won Best Classic Photo. Three additional photos I submitted are also on display through the end of April - Bike Night, Lightning Survivor and the panoramic pinhole, The Guardian.

Dreaming In Colors

Among the few thousand independent LPs that made their way into record stores during the mid 1980s was an electronic music recording I produced with my friend and keyboard wizard Walter Whitney. Dreaming In Colors was
the fifth, and last, vinyl LP released on Multiphase Records. The music received good reviews, including from
critic Dean Suzuki, writing for Option Magazine, described the album’s guitar and electronic landscapes as, ”smart
and well-crafted . . . fabric of elegant sound”.






However, within months, Dreaming In Colors sold out, as did our main distributors, NMDS and GEM in New York. They went Chapter 11, pocketed our receipts and disappeared with what inventory they had left. With no income from sales, Dreaming In Colors went out of print. Only 1000 copies were pressed.

Despite its short run, Dreaming In Colors continued a life of its own. Over the years the music has appeared on radio, internet broadcasts, record auctions, news groups, and music blogs.

Walter and I have kept in touch, and we even released a second recording, Primitive Earth (CD1989), which is still available. Last year I retrieved and listened to the master tapes of Dreaming In Colors, and was inspired to release the music on CD. I sent a copy to Walt, who in turn mailed me a disc of orphaned songs that we hadn’t used (due to vinyl time limits) on the original release. Teaming up with producer Noah Perry, we spent several weeks remastering the analog tapes to 24bit digital. With the new material added to the lineup, the CD now includes all the tracks produced for the original album.

Finally, the reissue also features a gift from writer/producer Dean Suzuki of KPFA-FM. Upon hearing a demo, Dean graciously agreed to write a new set of liner notes, which follows up his original 1986 OP Magazine review.

Dreaming In Colors is now available direct from Multiphase Records, or on CD and MP3 from CDbaby and Amazon.

Pinhole Photography

I don’t know what it is about low-tech, but I’m there. It’s often the beginnings of an artists work, or trend in technology and culture that are more interesting to me than the periods that followed. There’s beauty in the basics. Case in point - Pinhole Photography. It’s just a hole in a box, but add camera and film technology, and a creative world opens up.

Pinhole photography is more versatile than ever. An array of cameras have been produced over the years, but recently a new generation of artists have emerged, pushing the genre forward with their own vision and new custom built designs. - see Flickr. Still, the art centers on its essential and beautiful concept - forever mysterious, Nature’s Eye shapes untamed light into renderings of the physical world.

The attached photos are the first in a new series of pinhole images I’ve been working on for several months. “Alameda Under Rain” is a one minute exposure made with a Holga 120 Panoramic Pinhole, as were “Cathedral, Oakland” and "Three Ships".

Super 8 Movies

For about 10 years, between junior high through college, my career goal was to be a filmmaker. When I was 7 my father gave me a still camera for Christmas, which began training my eye, and took pictures from time to time with whatever film I could afford. At 13, my mother gave me a Super 8 movie camera, and it was destiny from there. During this early geek life I produced about 50 short Super 8mm movies, many with sound. I tried every genre from clay animation to comedies and documentaries, usually with my friends and family as subjects or reluctant cast members. In high school, I entered the national Kodak Teenage Movie Awards, and won two honorable mentions. However, that would be my highest climb up the film business food chain.

After college, I began producing music, which had opened as the next independent frontier. By that time, my films had gone into storage, and I kept them as anyone keeps their family pictures. They were part of another life.

Recently, after 30 years, I retrieved these films out of storage. I wanted to see if that unfinished life had anything to tell me now. Like a box of old love letters, I hesitated with mixed emotions at looking back. So why was I holding on to them? As I made my way through the stacks of reels, I remembered most of the films, but some were surprising. One such relic was a 10 minute movie called “The Fair”. I had shot the footage one day during my summer break in 1978. My home town of University City held a street festival, and in true experimental film-school mode, I captured the event with a micro lens, filming faces and objects in tight close-up, with blurry waves of people, double exposures, and crowds moving in slow motion. All the effects were done in the camera, a Fuji Single 8mm that allowed me to rewind the film, make fades, overlap, shoot high speed, etc. There was no soundtrack, but I had apparently spent time editing the film, and probably stopped when school started that fall.

Nothing plagues the artist quite like unfinished work. However, 30 years is plenty of time to make a fresh start. This look back gave me some inspiration. I transferred the footage to video and began a new round of editing. The more I studied the film, the more it clicked what I was attempting. Most of the original cuts were fine, and I didn’t want to remake the entire project. Instead it was really about finishing what had been started. I added a soundtrack, a loop-guitar piece called “Panomorphia” recorded this last year, and it all came together. Whatever meaning I was originally trying to convey, the old film and new music bridged two unfinished lives.

Host:	Jeff Oster
Type:	Music/Arts - Performance
Network:	Global

Date:	Thursday, January 7, 2010
Time:	8:00pm - 11:00pm
Location:	McGrath's
Street:	1539 Lincoln Ave
City/Town:	Alameda, CA

The Blue Season

Fall is the most underrated season. The Summer heat has finally peaked out, and the weather becomes dynamic. Clouds and robust thunderheads gather like premonitions. The wind is both hot and cool, full of woody smells, and brisk enough to make a jacket feel cozy.

It’s time to reflect and perhaps tie up some lose ends. There’s a sense of letting go with the year winding down, but with the holidays still ahead.

Compared to the east, California Falls are not much of a season: more like a damp slide into winter. I live in Alameda, which is technically an island a few hundreds yards off the coast of Oakland. It’s one of the oldest communities in the bay area and until recently had resisted development for many years. As a result, the houses are old and the trees are big. In fact, they’re among the largest urban trees anywhere.

This Fall there was a window of about two weeks that had a very east of the Rockies feel to it. The leaves had turned in clusters, and we had a few days of bright sun and cool air. It was about as fall as it was going to get. With coffee and camera, I took to the trees.

Jerry Quarry at Peace

This photo was taken at the memorial service for the heavyweight boxer Jerry Quarry.  I was there as a guest

 of the Quarry family, having become friends with Jerry’s older brother James, who hired me to develop The Jerry Quarry Foundation web site.

When I was growing up, Irish Jerry Quarry was one of my heroes.  He competed in a field of brilliant fighters that included Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Earnie Shavers, Ron Lyle, Jimmy Ellis, George Foreman and others, during one of the sport’s best and most competitive eras.  Among the most popular boxers of the day, Jerry was a smart, classy fighter and a dangerous counter puncher with a granite chin.

For all his talent however, Jerry was also an insecure, erratic, and at times foolhardy competitor, who lacked the training discipline to back up the risks he took in the ring.  A crowd pleaser with a tragic personal life, Jerry never won the world championship, but during his prime, he lost only to the best. When George Foreman returned to boxing and regained a world championship at the age of 45, Jerry attempted his own comeback. His last fight, in 1992, left him impaired with the onset of Alzheimer’s. 

I never got to meet Jerry.  By the time I was involved, he was too ill to carry on a conversation. He died in 1999.  The funeral was a certified celebrity and media event.  I met a number of Jerry’s old foes, who had long since bonded as friends, including Mac Foster and Joey Orbillo, as well as the actor-boxer Mickey Rourke, whom Jerry helped train.

After the service, I stayed behind.  As the guests filed out, I was struck by the tranquility of the scene, and took this photo.  In it, you can see the many flowers as well as stacks of Coca-cola, Jerry’s favorite drink, and the shamrock wreath entitled “Champ”, sent by Muhammad Ali.

Live with Jeff Oster's Band

Over the last year I've been playing out more than ever. It's a good thing for me, as I was all but ready to pack away my studio, pedals and guitar for good. Thanks to encouragement from friends like trumpet virtuoso Jeff Oster, bass-master Michael Manring and producer Noah Perry, I realized my disenchantment was with the business of music and not the experience of music.

For the first time since Delay Tactics (my 1980s studio group), I've enjoyed playing in a band. I've had a long career as a solo artist, but for now the group setting offers the same level of satisfaction without the heavy shoulders. I've spent 30 years developing my guitar style, and it's gratifying to offer just what I do best.


This video features Jeff Oster, Michael Manring, Dave Dilullo, Kelly Park and myself at The Shedd Theater in Eugene on September 3rd.

Aquarium Earth

Most of my photography is inspired simply by what's in front of me. Scenes are either stumbled upon, or familiar places with a changing cast of characters. If I'm lucky enough to capture the moment, the print becomes my witness.

Then there's the extended spontaneity of photo design, where Photoshop has become my second camera. Aquarium Earth began with a photo I shot during my visit to the Monterey Aquarium this last summer with my father. It was my first time there. My Canon G10 struggled under the low light of the big marine tanks and the sharks refused to pose for me, so I focused instead on the entranced people hovering at the glass. It struck me that the fish were as much out of their element as were the people watching in the darkness. Everyone was in outer space.

Aquarium Earth and two other new photos (Lucky Stars and Opening Night) are on display in the "Starstruck" exhibit at The Frank Bette Center for The Arts, Alameda, California through the end of December.