Solar Plexus -

Solar Plexus was an American jazz-rock band that released the 1975/76 albums Solar Plexus and Voices on Evidence Music, followed in 1979/80 with an eponymous third and Earth Songs on Inner City Records.

Members: Denny Berthiaume (keyboards), Randy Masters (trumpet, percussion)

Background

Solar Plexus formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1972 when keyboardist Denny Berthiaume, an English instructor at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, met trumpeter and composer Randy Masters, a music teacher at UC Santa Cruz, through a Foothill interdisciplinary program.

Masters worked as a professional musician from 1964 and composed from 1966. He studied music and film at UC Santa Cruz and taught jazz and composition at the university. Berthiaume started piano at age five and entered the youth program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He spent four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he played piano in a military band, then completed a B.A. in English and wrote a 1969 M.A. thesis at San Diego State University. Berthiaume joined the Foothill faculty in 1970 after club work in San Diego and a year with a touring comedy revue.

Masters brought an interest in Latin American and South American music to the partnership. Berthiaume worked with 5/4 and 7/4 meters alongside bossa nova and samba forms as the pair developed music for Solar Plexus. Berthiaume moved to Hawaii in 1974 for a one-year teacher exchange at Leeward College in Pearl City, where he played Honolulu clubs and studied electronic music. Masters visited Hawaii several times, and the pair continued work on Solar Plexus material.

Berthiaume returned to the Bay Area in 1975 and Solar Plexus entered Dave Blossom Studios in San Francisco with bassist Mickey McPhillips, drummer and percussionist Glen Cronkhite, saxophonist and percussionist Dwain Everette, and percussionist Sammy Nortey. The group recorded live to eight-track tape across July and August. Those sessions completed the material for the first Solar Plexus album on Evidence Music International.

Discography: