James Blackshaw + Meg Baird + Metal Mountains
Initially inspired by the guitarists of the 60’s Takoma label to teach himself fingerpicking, James Blackshaw writes long-form pieces primarily for solo 12-string guitar and piano that are heavily influenced by minimalist composers and European classical music and which use drones, overtones and repeating patterns alongside a strong inclination for melody to create instrumental music that is both intelligent, hypnotic and emotionally charged.
Born in London in 1981, Blackshaw has so far released six solo studio albums, one live recording and has also appeared on numerous compilations in the last five years. “O True Believers” (2006, Important Records/Bo’weavil Recordings), “The Cloud of Unknowing” (2007, Tompkins Square) and “Litany of Echoes” (2008, Tompkins Square) have received huge critical acclaim from printed and online publications including Pitchfork, Billboard, The Wire, The Observer, The Times, Uncut, The New York Times, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Onion, Magnet and Acoustic Guitar Magazine. “The Cloud of Unknowing” was also listed as one of the 50 best albums of 2007 by The Wire (no. 24) and Pitchfork (no. 34). His latest album, “Litany of Echoes” was listed as Uncut Magazine’s 13th Best Album of 2008.
Blackshaw has recently signed to Michael Gira’s (Swans/Angels of Light) Young God Records label and his seventh studio album is to be released in May 2009.
Collaborations have included a duo with Dutch lutenist Jozef van Wissem, performing under the name Brethren of The Free Spirit, live work with Andria Degen’s Pantaleimon,, a live improvisation with Japanese co-founder of The Boredoms Seiichi Yamamoto and work on the new Anok Pe Current 93 album.
He has toured extensively in Europe, US and Japan, playing approximately 200 shows since 2005 in a broad range of environments from sold-out 1,000 capacity venues supporting Jose Gonzalez to intimate church shows and institutions such as The Douglas Hynde Gallery in Dublin and The ICA in London. He has featured on National Public Radio in the US, BBC Radio 2 and performed live on VPRO television in The Netherlands.
Meg Baird has been playing music with her sister Laura for as long as she can remember. The sisters were introduced to a trove of traditional material
via Smithsonian Archives LPs early in life. Their natural gravitation to folk music must have been strong if they felt compelled to write to agencies associated with the Federal Government to unearth old tunes from the vaults.
By the time Meg was high school-aged, Laura had a four-track recorder and a Fender Broadcaster that she let her fall in love with playing. Meg’s years of childhood piano lessons and her musical family upbringing transformed into a foundation for a self-taught guitar and singing style. In the last 5 years or so Laura and Meg became known as “The Baird Sisters” — just a name to tack on a show poster — but the name stuck well with them. As a result of her work with Laura, Meg was suggested to and recruited by Brooke Sietinsons, who was looking for musical collaborators in Philadelphia. In time, the collaborators became the group called Espers, a psychedelic folk group. In addition to being a founding member of Espers, Meg is also one of the primary songwriters and singers.
Metal Mountains
Helen Rush, Samara Lubelski and Pat Gruber
till by turning + folds ensemble
Till by Turning is the collective effort of Amy Cimini, Erica Dicker, Emily ManzoSarah Biber, and Katherine Young.
Working as performers, educators, improvisers, scholars, composers, and song-writers — Till by Turning performs new chamber music by established and emerging artists and develops creative educational programs.
“There’s an old Shaker dance number, written in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett, that likely serves as inspiration for…Till by Turning. It’s called “Simple Gifts,” and what it describes is a kind of serendipitous joy in movement through time and space: “When true simplicity is gain’d / To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d / To turn, turn will be our delight / Till by turning, turning we come round right.”
The group belongs to a new generation of adventurous musicians bringing contemporary music to clubland….the players dip into the modern canon…and give breath to new works by their peers.” – Steve Dollar, Time Out Chicago
The members of Till by Turning met while studying instrumental performance at Oberlin Conservatory. Inspired in part by a unique instrumentation (violin, viola, cello, bassoon, and piano), our first concert was a program of Sofia Gubaidulina’s music.
Since then, we have commissioned and premiered music by Jessica Pavone, Aaron Siegel, Sabrina Schroeder, Alex Ness, and Katherine Young. Our repertoire also includes pieces by Morton Feldman, Olivier Messiaen, Harold Meltzer, James Tenney, and Christian Wolff. Our dedication to challenging and experimental new music goes hand in hand with our commitment to educational programs.
Jason Brogan (director), Michael Hanf (performance), Nathan Koci (horn), David Linaburg (electric guitar), Dave Ruder (clarinet) and Sam Sfirri (piano)
“A fold is always folded within a fold, like a cavern in a cavern. The unit of matter, the smallest element of the labyrinth, is the fold, not the point which is never a part, but a simple extremity of the line.” (4)
“[E]very contour is blurred to give definition to the formal powers of the raw material, which rise to the surface and are put forward as so many detours and supplementary folds.” (17)
Gilles Deleuze, The Fold
folds ensemble:
experimental music and performance
Jason Brogan, electric guitar (director)
Kieran Daly, laptop/activities
Sam Sfirri, piano/melodica
Alex Waterman – CANCELLED
CANCELLED – SORRY!!!
Alex Waterman – “In Sum”
Solos for Cello, Stroh Violin, Radios and Field Recordings.
Alex Waterman is a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. In New York he performs with the Either/Or Ensemble. Alex has worked with musicians such as Robert Ashley, Richard Barrett, Helmut Lachenmann, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Elliot Sharp, Ned Rothenberg, Gerry Hemingway, David Watson, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, and Michael Finnissy. He has performed as guest musician with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d’Action-Antwerp, Q-O2-Brussels, and Magpie Music and Dance Company. Waterman has made music for numerous European ballet and modern dance companies including Freiburg Ballett/Pretty Ugly, Scapino Ballet, Nederland Dans Theater III, and others. As a curator he has organized events at Les Bains:Connective in Brussels, OT301 in Amsterdam, Miguel Abreu Gallery and The Kitchen. His duo projects with the dancer Michael Schumacher have toured in Switzerland, Italy, Holland, the Opera of Monaco and most recently in all 5 boroughs of New York in a Joyce Theater production in association with the City Parks Foundation in July of 2008.
In 2007 Alex curated two exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agapê (June 2-July 28th, 2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery; and the other on graphic notation, Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music (September 7-October 20, 2007) at The Kitchen in Chelsea. Alex is presently working on his PhD in musicology at NYU as well as writing a book about the composer Robert Ashley with the designer and writer Will Holder. Alex participated in Dexter Sinister’s residency at the Armory for the 2008 Whitney Biennial writing a new work based upon Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. Alex Waterman and Beatrice Gibson’s film, A Necessary Music, narrated by Robert Ashley and with original music by Waterman, premiered at the Whitney Museum ISP show and will be shown in galleries and museums in the US and Europe this fall.
Jonathan Golove
(note….Chris McIntyre postponed due to weather related circumstances beyond our control)
jonathan golove
“Suite-ness Expanded”: Bach’s Suite No.1 in G major for cello is opened up to include works by contemporary composers from the USA, Mexico, and Italy.
Music of:
J.S. Bach
Jeffrey Stadelman
(World premier)
Andrew Rindfleisch
Luciano Berio
and Mexican composers
Mario Lavista and
Nicandro Tamez
Cellist/composer Jonathan Golove is a native of Los Angeles, California and a resident of Buffalo, New York, where he serves as Associate Professor in the University at Buffalo’s Department of Music. Mr. Golove’s career is marked by its versatility, sense of adventure, and commitment to the performance of both new and traditional works, as well as of improvised music. Mr. Golove has been featured as soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Slee Sinfonietta, New York Virtuoso Singers, and, as a baroque cellist, with the USC Early Music Ensemble. He has recorded for the Albany, CRI, ICMC, Sunken Gong, and Nine Winds labels, and his performances and interviews have been broadcast by public radio stations of Colorado, Buffalo, and Dayton, as well as the West German Radio and Radio France. His summer festival appearances include the Sebago-Long Lake and Roycroft Chamber Music Festivals, as well as numerous festivals devoted to new works, including June in Buffalo, the North American New Music Festival, the Aki Festival of New Music, and the Festival del Centro Histórico, Mexico City. A member of the critically acclaimed Baird Trio, Mr. Golove is a former member of the Elisha and June In Buffalo String Quartets, and has performed as a guest with the Cassatt Quartet and the Cleveland Octet.
Mr. Golove is also active as an electric cellist, particularly in the field of creative improvised music. He has performed and recorded with groups including the Michael Vlatkovich Quartet, Ubudis Trio, and Vinny Golia’s Large Ensemble, and made appearances at the Vancouver Jazz Festival, the Eddie Moore Jazz Festival (Oakland), and the International Meeting of Jazz Musicians (Monterrey, Mexico). He has also been honored to perform with such leading figures as Andrew Cyrille, Rashied Ali, Sonny Fortune, Ramón Lopez, and Andre Jaume. His collaborators in experimental electronic improvisation have included Cort Lippe, Barry Moon, and Misha Nogha.
Jonathan Golove’s original works have been performed in a variety of locations in the North America and Europe (USA, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Italy), by such ensembles as the Slee Sinfonietta, VOXNOVA, the Ensemble Court Circuit, the Bozzini String Quartet, the Amherst Saxophone Quartet, Maelstrom Percussion Ensemble, and The Instrumental Factor. Some of the important venues where his music has been heard are the Kennedy Center, Washington D.C., Venice Biennale, Festival of Aix-en-Provence, Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society II, the Kitchen, and the Sonic Circuits and June in Buffalo festivals. The 2004 season featured two world premieres of his chamber works at Carnegie (Weill) Hall. His opera (in progress) Red Harvest was commissioned by the European Academy of Music and received its premiere in Festival of Lyric Art of Aix-en-Provence in 1998. He has received commissions, awards and grants for his works from organizations including ASCAP, the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, Meet the Composer, the Darius Milhaud Society, and the Hyde Foundation. His primary interests as a composer are the integration of music and text, the combination of electronic resources in the realm of acoustic music, and the exploration of human relationships within musical settings.
celebrity t-shirt endorsements
Check out Jonathan Kane sporting the new limited edition ISSUE Project Room T-Shirt designed by Rogues Gallery!
Amiri Baraka and Henry Grimes with special guest Atiba Kwabena-Wilson
ISSUE Project Room is proud to host its first Littoral Reading Series event of 2009 featuring:
Amiri Baraka and Henry Grimes
$10 – buy tickets
In 2007, Akashic Books ushered Amiri Baraka back into the forefront of America’s literary consciousness with the short story collection Tales of the Out & the Gone. Now, this reissue of Home–long out of print–features a highly provocative and profoundly insightful collection of 1960s social and political essays.
Home is, in effect, the ideological autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka. The two dozen essays that constitute this book were written during a five-year span–a turbulent and critical period for African Americans and whites. The Cuban Revolution, the Birmingham bombings, Robert Williams’s Monroe Defense movement, the Harlem riots, the assassination of Malcolm X . . . each changed the way Jones/Baraka looked at America. This progressive change is recorded with honesty, anger, and passion in his writings.
Amiri Baraka (previously known as LeRoi Jones) is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey by the New Jersey Commission on Humanities, from 2002-2004. His most recent book, Tales of the Out & the Gone (Akashic, 2007), was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. He lives in Newark, New Jersey.
Henry Grimes
Master jazz musician (acoustic bass, violin) HENRY GRIMES has played more than 3OO concerts in 23 countries (including many festivals) since May of ‘O3, when he made his astonishing return to the music world after 35 years away. He was born and raised in Philadelphia and attended the Mastbaum School and Juilliard. In the ‘5O’s and ‘6O’s, he came up in the music playing and touring with Willis “Gator Tail” Jackson, “Bullmoose” Jackson, “Little” Willie John, and a number of other great R&B / soul musicians; but drawn to jazz, he went on to play, tour, and record with many great jazz musicians of that era, including Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Haynes, Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, Sunny Murray, Sonny Rollins, Roswell Rudd, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, and Rev. Frank Wright.
Sadly, a trip to the West Coast to work with Al Jarreau and Jon Hendricks went awry, leaving Henry in Los Angeles at the end of the ‘6O’s with a broken bass he couldn’t pay to repair, so he sold it for a small sum and faded away from the music world. Many years passed with nothing heard from him, as he lived in his tiny rented room in an S.R.O. hotel in downtown Los Angeles, working as a manual laborer, custodian, and maintenance man, and writing many volumes of handwritten poetry. He was discovered there by a Georgia social worker and fan in 2OO2 and was given a bass by William Parker, and after only a few weeks of ferocious woodshedding, Henry emerged from his room to begin playing concerts around Los Angeles and shortly afterwards made a triumphant return to New York City in May, ‘O3 to play in the Vision Festival. Since then, often working as a leader, he has played, toured, and / or recorded with many of today’s music heroes, such as Rashied Ali, Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson, Marilyn Crispell, Ted Curson, Andrew Cyrille, Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas, Andrew Lamb, David Murray, William Parker, Marc Ribot, and Cecil Taylor. Henry has also given a number of workshops and master classes on major campuses, released several new recordings, made his professional debut on a second instrument (the violin) at the age of 7O, has now published the first volume of his poetry, “Signs Along the Road,” and has been creating illustrations to accompany his new recordings and publications. He has received many honors in recent years, including four Meet the Composer grants and a grant from the Acadia Foundation. He can be heard on more than 
recordings on various labels, including Atlantic, Ayler Records, Blue Note, Columbia, ESP-Disk, Impulse!, Jazz NewYork Productions, Pi Recordings, Porter Records, Prestige, Riverside, and Verve. Henry Grimes now lives and teaches in New York City.
Atiba Kwabena-Wilson (musician/poet/storyteller) is the founder and artistic director of both Songhai Djeli and the Befo’ Quotet. He was the recipient of a full Scholarship for voice and flute, earning his B.A. in Music from Long Island University. Mr. Kwabena-Wilson studied arrangement and orchestration for jazz ensembles with Calvin Hill (bassist with Max Roach and faculty advisor for L.I.U.). He also studied Jazz Improvisation with the late John Lewis (pianist with the Modern Jazz Quartet and professor at City College).
Atiba visited Jamaica in February of 2004, where he was interviewed by Jean Small, host of “A Festival of Words” on Radio Mona FM 93. He spoke of his life’s journey which has led him to poetry and storytelling.
In 2005, Atiba was featured in “Uptown” magazine, summer issue.
Throughout the years, Atiba Kwabena-Wilson has been involved with numerous projects and programs that have reached out to many people. An abbreviated list of his performance profile is provided below:
* Guest Lecturer at Hunter College (subjects: “African Origins of the Blues” and “African Origins of Hip-Hop”)
* Served as artistic director through Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, 1999-present, of “Music Meets Poetry” series
* Toured schools under the auspices of the Julliard-Lincoln Center Community Out-Reach Program, both as a solo artist and as a member of “Ngoma”, performing traditional songs, stories and dances of Azania (aka South Africa)
* Performed at FESTAM International Music Festival, Inc. in Dakar, Senegal 1998 through 2000
* Filmed with the Grammy Award Winning Rap group ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (MTV Unplugged)
* Featured in “Bum Rush the Page- A Def Poetry Jam”, Edited by Tony Medina and Louis Reyes Rivera, Three Rivers Press 2001 and “New Rain” Vol. 9 Edited by Gary Johnston and Malika M’Buzi Moore, Blind Beggar Press 1999
* Appeared as percussionist/ flutist on “The Rose That Grew From Concrete” Vol.1: A CD focusing on poetry by Tupac Shakur, performed by various artists
* Appeared as a performing artist for the American Museum of Natural History
* Featured on CBS, Traditions
* Provided “Edu-tainment Clinics” for Hospital Audiences Inc.
* Conducted storytelling and music workshops for the New York City Housing Authority
* Provides music, poetry and storytelling workshops, staff development seminars, assembly programs, concerts and lecture/ demonstrations throughout the tri-state area under the auspices of the Caribbean Cultural Center, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corp. Education Dept. and Henry Street Settlement Cultural Outreach/Ed. Dept.
Share with guest Martin Philadelphy
what is share?
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens Sundays in New York City at the Issue Project Room from 8 to Midnight.
open jams and walk-in sets
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join.
8pm, free – – – 3/22/09 featured guest set (starting around 9 p.m.)
Martin Philadelphy
Philadelphy - Solo Performance
Martin Philadelphy - guitar, elektronics and vocals
I will play this evening some songs of older projects (Paint, Philadelphy-Martinek, Sheriff´s), of the new programm “Luck” (in german language) and stick them together with some improv. soundscapes.
Blues influenced Songknight..:) with no fear to play jazz
it´s bound to be a wild ride again!
Also check >>http://share.dj/share/event_info.php?eventID=560
http://www.youtube.com/user/philadelphy
8pm, free
For more info please visit:
http://issueprojectroom.org/
http://share.dj
http://issueprojectroom.org/
http://share.dj
Share with guest Marko Timlin
what is share?
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens every Sunday in New York City at the Issue Project Room (through December), from 8 to Midnight.
open jams and walk-in sets
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join.
8pm, free - - – 3/15/09 featured guest set (starting around 9 p.m.):
Marko Timlin is a sound artist and performer.
During the last years he has developed his main musical and artistic objective: the intuitive improvisation and interaction with self-made electronic instruments. His music demonstrates a perfect balance between order and chaos. Timlin freely breaks the boundaries of composition and improvisation in his non-contradicting mix of organized parts and completely messed up blasts of sound. While playing live in concert the creation of his music happens in real-time and, therefore, is as surprising for the audience as it is for the performing artist himself. He allows the audience to witness a dialog between man and machine.
During the last 3 years Marko Timlin has performed regularly all over Europe.
For his performances Marko Timlin creates his own musical instruments: ultra sonic sensors, solar panels and photo resistors are re-used as musical interfaces to control sound machines created with Pure data. Additionally he uses nasty little self-made analogue sound machines.
Timlin started his musical career in the early 90´s as an active member of the underground electronic music scene in Berlin. In Berlin he founded the group tritop with Antye and Jotka of Laub, with whom he released 2 CDs and a Vinyl-maxi on INFRACOM records. Collaborations with internationally famous artists like Laub, Tarwater, Jazzanova, Rope, Foo Fanick and the 17 Hippies and several solo releases followed.
Marko Timlin taught electro-acoustic composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Granada and in several other Spanish cities. Currently he is giving a lecture called “Connecting Sound and Image” at the “Centre for Music & Technology” at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.
Lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.
—
check infos under: www.timlin.de
8pm, free
For more info please visit:
http://issueprojectroom.org/
http://share.dj
http://issueprojectroom.org/
http://share.dj
Share with guest Peter Kutin
what is share?
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens every Sunday in New York City at the Issue Project Room (through December), from 8 to Midnight.
open jams and walk-in sets
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join.
8pm, free
Peter Kutin
* 1983 somewhere in the Austrian countryside trained on classical guitar he moved to vienna in 2001 to forget about the classic and to study electroacoustic-music
released 2 solo-albums so far :
panora / u-cover / 2006
menora / karate joe / 2007
founded the project dirac in 2005 with daniel lercher;
three releases with dirac so far :
„” / u-cover / 2007
emphasis / spekk / to be released in feb. 2009
tba / valeot-records / to be released in autumn 2009
kutin founded and still runs the non-profit organization velak, which reassembles a platform for audio and also video/dance artists the organization´s monthly “listenings” called velak-gala & velak_rec hosted more than 100 performances of international musicians and artist from different experimental-scenes.
he realized field-recording projects in the himalajan regions of northern india (2007) and in iceland (2008).
results where broadcasted on int. radiostations, presented at var. festivals, or exhibited as sound-installations in galleries.
Kutin is active in Vienna’s improv. scene; he is playing concerts solo / dirac / in various combinations, using the laptop in combination with anlogue instruments – all his processing is done live and in realtime.
the music is oriented on layers, drones and vibrations
works appeared on various compilations and were played as tape-music on different int. sound-festivals.
for more information and audio-recordings, see:
http://kutin.klingt.org
http://velak.klingt.org
http://dirac.klingt.org
http://www.myspace.com/kutin
Also check >> http://share.dj/share/event_info.php?eventID=557
For more info please visit:
http://issueprojectroom.org/
http://share.dj
share
what is share?
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens every Sunday in New York City at the Issue Project Room (through December), from 8 to Midnight.
open jams and walk-in sets
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join.
8pm, free
For more info please visit:
http://issueprojectroom.org/
http://share.dj
share
what is share?
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens every Sunday in New York City at the Issue Project Room (through December), from 8 to Midnight.
open jams and walk-in sets
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join.
8pm, free
For more info please visit:
http://issueprojectroom.org/
http://share.dj
Pamela Z (8pm) + share (9:30pm)
Pamela Z is a San Francisco-based composer/performer and audio artist who works primarily with voice, live electronic processing and sampling technology. Processing her live voice through “MAX MSP” software on a PowerBook, she creates solo works that combine operatic bel canto and experimental extended vocal techniques with found percussion objects, spoken word, and sampled concrète sounds. These sounds are often triggered via custom MIDI controllers such as Ed Severinghaus’ BodySynth™ or Donald Swearingen’s Light SensePod, both of which allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures. Her performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in flexible black-box venues and proscenium halls. In addition to her performance work, she has a growing body of inter-media works including multi-channel sound and video installations– some solo, and some involving visual collaborators
Pamela Z has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. She has performed in numerous festivals including: Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center in New York; the Interlink Festival in Japan; Other Minds in San Francisco; and Pina Bausch Tanztheater’s 25 Jahre Fest in Wuppertal, Germany. She has composed, recorded and performed original scores for choreographers and for film/video artists, and has done vocal work for other composers (including Charles Amirkhanian, Vijay Iyer, and Henry Brant). Her large-scale, multi-media performance works, Parts of Speech, Gaijin and Voci, have been presented at venues including the Kitchen in New York, Theater Artaud and ODC Theater in San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Art Theatre in Chicago, as well as at theaters in Washington D.C. and Budapest Hungary. Her one-act opera Wunderkabinet (co-composed with Matthew Brubeck) premiered in 2005 at The LAB Gallery in San Francisco, and was presented at REDCAT in Los Angeles and Open Ears Festival in Canada. Her new inter-media work The Pendulum is scheduled to have its San Francisco Premiere at the Royce Gallery in 2008. She has had audio works included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum in Cologne. Her site-specific, multi-channel sound works have been presented at the Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs NY, the Dakar Biennale in Sénégal, and the Hellenic Museum in Chicago. Her work has also been presented at the San Jose Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio in New York, and La Biennale di Venezia in Italy.
Ms. Z has been commissioned to compose works for new music chamber ensembles: the Bang On A Can Allstars; Ethel, the California E.A.R. Unit; the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble; the Empyrean Ensemble, and the St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra. Since 1986, she has been producing “Z Programs”, an ongoing series of interdisciplinary events in which her own work has been featured along with that of other experimental artists in various genres. She has collaborated with a wide range of composer/performers, media artists, and choreographers including Miya Masaoka, Joan Jeanrenaud, Jeanne Finley + John Muse, Shinichi Momo Koga, Leigh Evans, and Jo Kreiter. She has participated in several Zakros New Music Theatre events (including their John Cage festivals), and has performed with The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Pamela is the recipient of numerous awards, including: the Guggenheim Fellowship, the CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts; the Creative Capital Fund; the ASCAP Music Award; and the NEA and Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. For more information, please visit: www.pamelaz.com
what is share?
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens every Sunday in New York City at the Issue Project Room (through December), from 8 to Midnight.
open jams and walk-in sets
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join.
8pm, free
For more info please visit:
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Flaming Fire + Lydsod
“The Brooklyn-based collective Flaming Fire is more like an evangelical church congregation than like a conventional rock group, with its leader, Patrick Hambrecht, in the role of preacher and the other members (including his wife, Kate) as his loyal followers. The group’s songs pair deceptively simple Residents-like riffs and occasional bursts of noise with fearsome, Biblical-sounding group chants and call-and-response singing. Most refreshing are Hambrecht’s seriousness and fervor. (The band’s sense of irony is limited to the darker variety — ‘Kill the Right People,’ one refrain goes.)”
-The New Yorker
-The New Yorker
“Well, at least some of the kooks have stuck it out in New York City and they are in Flaming Fire, an awesomely kooky, theatrical band singing songs of biblical plagues and Egyptian sexual practices. Picture the Butthole Surfers, the Residents, the Manson Family, and the B-52s all running amok in a Kenneth Anger film.”
-Meg Sneed, Vice
ISSUE Project Room is pleased to present the premiere performance of Flaming Fire II, the new incarnation of Flaming Fire, rising like a glorious phoenix out of the ashes of their smoldering remains.
LYDSOD
Debut record from this Brooklyn-based group, Ancient Age spawns similarities with the Koi Pond release from 2008, but whereas that was a more mischievous try (subversive, yet suggesting that a pretty vehement sound should be digested with a laid-back attitude), Lydsod have created a more directly-assaulting approach. Their distributors note they’re a collective devoted to an ideology of non-stop recording and, in consequence, Ancient Age displays the reassembled highlights of a year and a half’s worth of group improvisations.
Interestingly, this is quite a cohesive collection for such a fragmentary recording ethos. Situated somewhere between the free-wheeling attitude of straight-out psych-noise bands and the integration of pop sensibilities that quasi-noise-rock bands are into nowadays, Lydsod’s try at recorded work still manages to “rock out” in a fairly conservative way, impression probably induced by the Krautrock-like beats that pop up here and there. The dividing line which sets them between the two is probably the absence of vocals, a fairly rightful decision. (”by chance upon waking” LP release review)
Cleve Pozar’s Free Funk Trio, Ken Thomson’s Slow/Fast and Keir Neuringer
Cleve Pozar
Cleve Pozar is a percussionist and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. Born Robert F. Pozar in 1941, he is schooled in wide breadth of musical styles, including Afro-Cuban, Latin, jazz, free improvisation, classical, avant-garde, funk, country, polka, and more. In the early ‘60s, Pozar participated in some of the pivotal events in free jazz and avant-garde classical music: with Bill Dixon at the October Revolution in Jazz and with Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley, Eric Dolphy, and many others at the Once Festivals in Ann Arbor. Among Pozar’s first appearances on record are some seminal titles: Bob James’ “Bold Conceptions” and “Explosions” (ESP-Disk), and Bill Dixon’s “Intents and Purposes” on RCA. Dixon also produced Pozar’s first album as a leader, “Good Golly Miss Nancy,” which was released by Savoy in 1967. Several years later, he followed it up with a private-press album, “Cleve Solo Percussion,” which introduced his solo act (and, indeed, a name change). One of the tracks, “Echo Afrika,” can be heard on this page. He also did extensive studio work with songwriters such as Peter Ivers and Stephen Whynott. Subsequent years found Cleve increasingly interested in developing a solo concept for electronic Latin percussion, clips of which can be seen on Youtube. Cleve has written two books on the Bata rhythms, Chachalekpafun and Yakota, which are in depth studies of those rhythms. Cleve plays acoustically at Palo Monte Ceremonies for K7T and is working on a CD. He collaborates with Tata C on art graphics and music videos found on Youtube under the name Kimbiza. Cleve’s other current projects include the Free Funk Trio and the long-awaited second installment of Cleve Solo Percussion. His Coltrane Jazz Trio will also soon be performing concerts and lectures in public schools.
Daruis Jones
Darius Jones, is an alto saxophonist, composer, and producer. He joined the New York music community in 2005, after living and studying in Richmond, Va. Darius comes from a diverse musical background that has lead to his unique, alternative, and soulful approach to music. Jones has composed and performed in a wide variety of areas such as electro-acoustic music, chamber ensembles, contemporary jazz groups, free jazz groups, modern dance performances, and multi-media events. Darius enjoys playing with a steady group of artists and improvisers. The current bands Jones works with are the Cooper-Moore Trio, Mike Pride’s From Bacteria to Boys, Nioka Workman’s House Arrest Band, William Hooker’s Bliss Quartet, Trevor Dunn’s Proof Readers, and Period. In New York, Darius has produced records for Korean jazz vocalist Sunny Kim and country-folk artist Mary Bragg. Jones has performed in Italy, France, U.S. and Canada. Jones has a band with Travis LaPlante, Ben Greenberg, and Jason Nazary called Little Women, which recently went on a national tour to promote the release of their first record “Teeth” on Sockets (www.socketscdr.com) and Gilgongo Records (www.gilgongorecords.com).
Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin is a busy and versatile NYC bassist. In addition to playing electric and upright basses, he is also a singer and a composer. His recently released CD, Flowers to Strangers is currently available. A partial list of artists Lee has worked with reflects a wide range of styles: Diametric Ensemble, Saco Yasuma’s Y’oin, Arabesque, New York Express/Music Under NY, Ted Curson, Julee Cruise, Pinetop Perkins, Martha Reeves, Coco Robiceaux, Melvin Sparks and, as a composer, for Baha Sadr’s theater pieces The Rule and Things I Meant to Say. Lee holds a BA in music from Empire State College. He has studied electric bass with Jerry Jemmott and Guillermo Edgehill and upright bass with Wilbur Little and Home Mensch.
Ken Thomson’s Slow/Fast
Ken Thomson (alto saxophone, bass clarinet, compositions)
Russ Johnson (trumpet)
Nir Felder (guitar)
Adam Armstrong (bass)
Fred Kennedy (drums)
Ken Thomson’s Slow/Fast
In demand as a composer and freelancer in many settings, Brooklyn-based clarinetist, saxophonist and composer Thomson moves quickly between genres and scenes, bringing a fiery intensity and emotional commitment to every musical situation. He plays saxophone and writes for the punk/jazz band Gutbucket, with whom he has toured internationally to 19 countries and 32 states over nine years, and released CDs for Knitting Factory, Enja, NRW, Cuneiform, and Cantaloupe Records. He also is a member of the internationally-touring punk/cabaret band World/Inferno Friendship Society, next-generation chamber orchestra Signal (conducted by Brad Lubman), world-jazz group Fire in July, all-improvised No Net Trio with Lukas Ligeti and Eyal Maoz, and was a co-founder of punk/chamber composer-performer collective Anti-Social Music. He is a frequent collaborator with new-composed music groups Alarm Will Sound (on forthcoming Nonesuch Records debut), International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), So Percussion, and more. He is a faculty member at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival and Institute. He is a Selmer Artist, and endorses Sibelius software.
As a composer, he has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Bang on a Can, the True/False Film Festival, and others, and has received awards from ASCAP and Meet the Composer. The New York Times wrote of his work “Wait Your Turn” for the American Composers Orchestra upon its debut at Carnegie Hall in October 2007: “The concert ended on a high note…. the music offered a density worthy of the closing bars of a Led Zeppelin epic;” and of his work “seasonal.disorder” for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, “a virtuoso piece… a texture laced with power chords, screaming clarinet lines and cluster-laden piano writing. In the end it is sheer madness, in a good, thrillingly visceral way.” The Philadelphia Inquirer also noted: “Thomson’s Wait Your Turn is as visceral as music can be.”
His through-composed rescoring of the 22-minute 1936 British film “Night Mail” was called “a masterful re-imagining of an old classic” by Indiewire.com upon its debut in March 2007 at the True/False Film Festival. His recent works include for Gutbucket+Ethel (string quartet), premiered at the Cologne Triennale 2007 and Jazz Saalfelden Festival 2006. His 2006 clarinet quintet “How to Play” has been played in the US and Australia by multiple ensembles.
His arrangement of Aphex Twin’s “Gwely Mernans” for Alarm Will Sound was recorded on their acclaimed CD Acoustica (Cantaloupe Music), premiered live at the Lincoln Center Festival 2005, and later choreographed by Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance Company. He has had two works released on CD by Anti-Social Music, including “Song” (ASM Sings the Great American Songbook/Peacock Recordings), and an arrangement of Bob Massey’s “The Mountain” (The Nitrate Hymnal/Lujo Records).
In the July/August 2006 issue of the German-Dutch Sonic magazine, Ken was the “Top Interview,” garnering a four-page feature in which critic Ulrich Steinmetzger remarked about his “intense performances” which “left behind astounded audiences… [who] witnessed him blow raw energy from the stage like few others can.” The Boston Globe has called his improvisation “dazzling;” and Time Out New York has called him a “manic sax dervish.”
Keir Neuringer
Born in New York in 1976, Keir Neuringer is a composer and performer (saxophone, voice, electronics). His output ranges from pulse-based electronic music, through free jazz and experimental electroacoustic improvisation, to theater music and notated compositions for contemporary chamber ensembles. He also writes texts and makes videos and installations critical of the destructive behavior of the dominant culture. In 1999 he moved to Europe and spent ten years, during which time he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Adacemy of Music in Krakow and a master’s degree graduate of The Hague’s interdisciplinary ArtScience Institute. It was during these ten years that he cultivated a personal and intensely physical approach to solo saxophone performance that both honors and eschews diverse music-making traditions.Keir Neuringer collaborates with a wide and undefined network of musicians, including Rafal Mazur, Ensemble Klang, Joel Ryan, DJ Sniff, Carlos Iturralde and MattBauder. He has performed and exhibited works in the US, Mexico, Israel, Turkey, South Africa and throughout Europe. He moved to New York in January 2009.
ISSUE Project Room T-Shirts!
This is a very special limited edition Rogues Gallery t-shirt designed specifically for ISSUE Project Room. Rogues Gallery generously designed these one of a kind t-shirts to help us raise money to move into our new space at 110 Livingston. Sizes variable.
available through etsy.com
Zeena Parkins & Ikue Mori’s “Phantom Orchard” + Phantom Limb & Wooley
An Evening of Phantoms
Ikue Mori
Ikue Mori moved from her native city of Tokyo to New York in 1977. She started playing drums and soon formed the seminal NO WAVE band DNA, with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. DNA enjoyed legendary cult status, while creating a new brand of radical rhythms and dissonant sounds; forever altering the face of rock music.
In the mid 80’s Ikue started in employ drum machines in the unlikely context of improvised music. While limited to the standard technology provided by the drum machine, she has never the less forged her own highly sensitive signature style.
Through out in 90’s She has subsequently collaborated with numerous improvisors throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music.
1998, She was invited to perform with Ensemble Modern as the soloist along with Zeena Parkins, and composer Fred Frith, also “One hundred Aspects of the Moon” commissioned by Roulette/Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust.
Ikue won the Distinctive Award for Prix Ars Electronics Digital Music category in 99.
In 2000 Ikue started using the laptop computer to expand on her already signature sound, thus broadening her scope of musical expression. 2000 commissioned by the KITCHEN ensemble, wrote and premired the piece “Aphorism”
also awarded Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship.
2003 commissioned by RELACHE Ensemble to write a piece for film In the Street and premired in Philadelphia. Started working with visual played by the music since 2004. In 2005 Awarded Alphert/Ucross Residency.
Recived the grant from Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2006. Tate Modern commissioned the live sound track for Maya Deren’s silent films and premired in 2007.
In 2008 Celebrated 30th music year, presented 5 on-going projects at Japan Society in NYC.
Current working groups include MEPHISTA with Sylvie Courvoisier and Susie Ibarra, projects with Kim Gordon, duo project PHANTOM ORCHARD with Zeena Parkins, various projects with John Zorn. and John Zorn’s Electric Masada.
www.ikuemori.com
Phantom Limb & Wooley
(Jaime Fennelly – electronics & harmonium; Chris Forsyth – guitar; Nate Wooley – trumpet)
Multi-instrumentalist & artist Jaime Fennelly maintains a practice of musical performance & composition which borders on near ritual praxis in its approach and conception. He is a founding member (along with Chris Forsyth and Fritz Welch) of the iconoclastic group Peeesseye. Jaime is also a member of the elusive and rarely spotted quartet Phantom Limb & Bison, the intermittent pranksters Manpack Variant and the noise/akshuntist cover band peeinmyfacewithsurgery. His music has been released by Digitalis Records, QBICO, Archive Recordings, 8mm, Misanthropic Agenda, Chocolate Monk, Unframed Recordings, Utech, Deep Fried Tapes, Locust Music and Evolving Ear. Currently he is working on a series of photographs documenting his own slow unraveling whilst living on a remote island off the state of Washington.
Chris Forsyth’s music eludes easy categorization. He is a founding member (along with Jaime Fennelly and Fritz Welch) of the iconoclastic group Peeesseye, a transcontinental amalgam of minimalist rock, noise, folk, drone, psych, improv, sound poetry, and absurdity that has produced seven CDs, one 7-inch, over 145 concerts in Europe and the US, and untold blown minds since forming in 2002. He also performs solo on both electric and acoustic 6- and 12-string guitars, leads the free rock trio Soft History with drummer Ryan Sawyer and bassist Peter Kerlin, and is a member of the elusive and rarely spotted experimental group Phantom Limb & Bison. Other notable collaborators have included reductionist/blues guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, Bay Area composer/performer Ernesto Diaz-Infante, trumpeter Nate Wooley, and choreographers Miguel Gutierrez and RoseAnne Spradlin, plus others too numerous too mention. His first solo CD Live Journal at the Mice Machine VIP Dance Floor was recently released on the Incunabulum label. He is the caretaker of Evolving Ear and lives in Brooklyn, NY, USA.
Nate Wooley grew up in a fishing and lumber town in Oregon. He began playing trumpet professionally at age 13 with his father’s big band, but quickly began adding “outside” influences to his knowledge of jazz. After a brief and painful stint in Denver, Nate moved to Jersey City where he is in demand as a collaborator with such diverse improvisors/composers as Tony Malaby, Steve Beresford, Paul Lytton, Anthony Braxton, Wolf Eyes, Akron/Family, and David Grubbs. His own solo trumpet work has been described as “exquisitely hostile” by Massimo Ricci of Touching Extremes Magazine (Italy).
James Ilgenfritz Group w/ Special Guest Steve Dalachinsky
NOTE: William Parker Cancelled…apologies.
James Ilgenfritz Group w/ Special Guest Steve Dalachinsky
James Ilgenfritz – Bass
Denman Maroney – Piano
Jay Rozen – Tuba
Sara Schoenbeck – Bassoon
Jay Rosen – Drums
Lawrence D “Butch” Morris
Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris’ work includes television, film, theatre, dance, radio, interdisciplinary performance based collaborations and concert and recording settings. As a composer he in known most notably for the development and evolution of Conduction, conducted improvisation and interpretation that transcend culture and geographics to present a new social-logic to the language of music.
In the last 15 years he has assembled over 100 ensembles for performance in 14 countries. In 1999, the Bell Atlantic-Jazz Awards nominated him Composer of the year and creative musician of the year. Morris also develops interdisciplinary projects with choreographers such as Min Tanaka, with visual artists such as David Hammons, with writers such as Ntozake Shange, and with theatre artists such as The Wooster Group.
He has worked with countless musicians/composers including Alice Coltrane, Gil Evans, Philly Joe Jones, Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, David Murray, Don Pullen and Reggie Workman.
C. Spencer Yeh + Michael Johnsen
C. Spencer Yeh
C. Spencer Yeh was born in Taipei, Taiwan 1975, moved to the US in 1980; studied radio/television/film at Northwestern University, and isnow based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Yeh is active both as a solo and ensemble artist, as well as with his primary ‘organized sound’ project, Burning Star Core. As an improviser, Yeh has focused on developing a personal vocabulary using violin, voice, and electronics. As a sound organizer/composer, Yeh works with all aspects available surrounding a work, aurally and physically, as elements key to the cumulative experience. He is concerned not only with the sensual aspects of sound, but the gestural qualities as well.
Yeh has performed alongside and collaborated with a deep and ever-growing list of artists and groups including Tony Conrad, Evan Parker, Thurston Moore, The New Humans with Vito Acconci, Paul Flaherty and Chris Corsano, John Wiese, Lee Ranaldo, JP Feliciano, Rafael Toral, John Edwards, Matthew Bower, Aaron Dilloway, John Olson,
Amy Granat, Jutta Koether, LaDonna Smith, Carlos Giffoni, Okkyung Lee,
Greg Kelley, Christine Sehnaoui, Helena Espvall, Peter Jacquemyn, Atsuhiro Ito, Matthew Bower, Audrey Chen, Nate Wooley, Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio All-Stars, Damo Suzuki’s Network, Comets on Fire, The Graveyards, Six Organs of Admittance, Smegma, Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista, and many others, and has performed across the U.S.A. and Europe in a variety of settings and festivals.
Most recently he participated in the 24 Hour Drone People project in Stockholm, alongside artists such as CM Von Hauswolff, Mika Vainio, Joachim Nordwall, BJ Nilsen, Hildur Gudnadottir, and Mark Wastell. Other 2008 plans included a residency at STEIM in Amsterdam NL, the Sound Forest Festival in Riga Latvia, the Open Circuits: Interact
Festival in Hasselt, Belgium, the Floating Points festival at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY, a tour as The New Monuments (with Don Dietrich of Borbetomagus and Ben Hall of The Graveyards), an invitation to back Jandek at the Wexner Center in Columbus OH, and a performance with Burning Star Core at the NADA Art Fair in Miami FL. He has also had visual art and video works presented internationally.
Michael Johnsen
MICHAEL JOHNSEN was born to German immigrants in Pittsburgh, where he continues to live. A tinkerer’s curiosity with commercial electronics led eventually to the design and construction of his own integrated system of devices specifically for live performance whose idiosyncratic behaviors are revealed through their complex interactions . The extensive patching of large numbers of devices produces simple sounds, sudden transients and charming failure modes; embracing the dirt in pure electronics. As an antidote to all that wire, he is equally devoted to the singing saw, a simple folk instrument. Most of what he might have learned has come from the natural world, like watching robins run. He is particularly fond of sounds that end.
He has played widely in the US and Europe in improvising and noise contexts, at major festivals, squats, kindergartens, and museums including the Pittsburgh Biennial, Musique Action 2008, No Adults, Karlsruhe
Kunstverien, and three High Zero Festivals in Baltimore . Recent/important partners include Margaret Cox, Jack Wright, trio with Pascal Battus/Thomas Lehn; also Michel Doneda, Michael Zerang, Joe McPhee, Bhob Rainey, Tom Djll, and Greg Pierce. His recordings are distributed by Metamkine.
Ingrid Laubrock, Mary Halvorson & Tom Rainey + Magick Report
Mary Halvorson is a guitarist, composer and improviser living in Brooklyn. She grew up in Boston and studied jazz at Wesleyan University and the New School. Since 2000 she has been performing regularly in New York with various groups and has toured Europe and the U.S. with the Anthony Braxton Quintet (Live at the Royal Festival Hall, Leo Records) and Trevor Dunn’s Trio-Convulsant (Sister Phantom Owl Fish, Ipecac
Recordings). She has also performed alongside Joe Morris, Nels Cline, John Tchicai, Elliott Sharp, Andrea Parkins, Marc Ribot, Tony Malaby, Oscar Noriega and Jason Moran. Current projects which Mary composes for and performs with include a chamber-music duo with violist Jessica Pavone ( On and Off, Skirl Records, 2007); The Mary Halvorson Trio with John Hebert and Ches Smith; and the avant-rock band People (Misbegotten Man, I & Ear Records, 2007). She also performs regularly in ensembles led by Taylor Ho Bynum, Ted Reichman, Tatsuya Nakatani, Jason Cady, Matthew Welch, Brian Chase and Curtis Hasselbring.
Magick Report
The Magick Report is an electronica project that is the brainchild of Ross Finlayson. Generally it is a solo project, but William Gilchrist, otherwise known as Avatar Glaeba, has been involved in a large amount of recordings and live shows. Finlayson has gone by a number of monikers since he started making electronic music in the summer of 2003, under the alias Majiq Rupert. He has since gone by Dr. Knives, Bassnoise Boomtower, Antitower, Venereal Coil N Snake, Screaming Cheetah, Anticheetah, Polycheetah, IO/NIO, 1/0, 0/1, The Nothingness, among others. He has also produced hip-hop for Godfather Germ and Loo$e $crew$.
A Night with Olde English Spelling Bee with Predator Vision + Ducktails
Olde English Spelling Bee + Future Sounds Presents:
Predator Vision + Ducktails
Predator Vision
Influenced by watching the movie Predator while listening to soft rock records of Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon, and Todd Rundgren. This documents an acid- drenched jam recorded in the basement of Skylight Horizon Studio in Northampton, MA. Featuring Matt Mondanile and Ben Daly on guitars and Etienne Duguay on drums. Mixture of Neil Young amped guitar lines with krauty Guru Guru progressive feel. Definite on the beach zoner Yahowa 13 style.
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Predator Vision “This City’s A Jungle” (via Raven Sings the Blues)
Ducktails
Ducktails is the solo project of Matt Mondanile (with the occasional live collaborator).
A Special Valentine’s Day Performance by Iva Bittova with Antonin Bittova
Iva Bittová was born in 1958 in Bruntal in northern Moravia in what was then Czechoslovakia – and nowadays the Czech Republic. Both of her parents were musicians. Her mother Ludmila was a pre-school teacher who spent most of her life with her family; her father Koloman Bitto – Bittová is the surname’s female form – was a musician strongly influenced by the land of his birth – southern Slovakia. His main instruments were string bass, cimbalom, guitar, and trumpet. This exceptional ability to play almost any instrument he laid his hands on, whether performing in classical or folk music styles, proved a major influence on his three daughters as they grew up. Both of Iva’s sisters – her older sister Ida and her younger sister Regina – are professional drama and music performers.
Iva attended drama pre-school, specializing in violin and ballet. In due course she gained admittance to the Music Conservatory in Brno, often called the Czech Republic’s second city. She graduated in drama and music. During her studies, Iva took part-time engagements as an actress and musician in Brno’s Divadlo Husa na provázku (Goose On A String Theater). She cites these engagements as some of the most formative and influential of her life.
Around this time she also featured as an actress in radio, TV and movie productions. Later on, while working full time in theater, she re-kindled her interest in playing violin, an instrument she had set aside in her younger years. After her father’s early death, she decided to follow in his professional footsteps as an instrumentalist and by composing her own music.
In 1982, Iva started studying with Professor Rudolf Stastny, the primarius (first violin) of the Moravian String Quartet. In the intervening years the violin has become her life’s passion and the most inspiring musical instrument in her professional life. Iva firmly believes that, as playing the violin places extreme demands on musicians, the composer’s work depends utterly on commitment and diligence.
After living in the countryside near Brno for 17 years, Iva decided to relocate her personal and professional life to the United States. In the Summer of 2007, she settled amid the splendors of nature in upstate New York. Iva shares her Hudson Valley home with her younger son Antonín (born 1991) – also a dedicated musician and another chip off the Bitto block.
Text of Light + Slouching Towards Gomorrah
The Text of Light group was formed in 1999 with the idea to perform improvised music to the films of Stan Brakhage and other members of the American Cinema avante garde of the 1950s-60s (Brakhageʼs film ‘The Text of Light’ was the premiere performance and namesake of the group). The original premise was to improvise (not ‘illustrate’) to films from the American Avante-Garde (50s-60s etc), an under-known period of American filmic poetics.
Members of the group include Lee Ranaldo and Alan Licht (gtrs/devices), Christian Marclay and DJ Olive (turntables), William Hooker (drums/perc), Ulrich Krieger (sax/electronics), and most recently Tim Barnes (drums/perc). Various combinations of these players attend ‘Text’ gigs, depending on individual schedules, so the group takes on various permutations—sometimes all members participate, sometimes not. Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, DJ Olive & William Hooker will be performing at ISSUE.
To date the group has performed with the following films: Brakhageʼs The Text of
Light, Dog Star Man, Anticipation of the Night, Songs; Harry Smithʼs Mahagonny outtakes, Oz-The Approach to the Emerald City, and Late Superimpositions. The group has headlined the Victoriaville Music Festival, Canada (2002); Three Rivers Film Festival, Pittsburgh; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and have done several tours of Europe as well as performing in New York City and other USA club and cinema venues.
Alan Licht
Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable whoʼs who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Rashied Ali, Derek Bailey) and electronica wizards (Fennesz, Jim OʼRourke) to turntable masters (DJ Spooky, Christian Marclay) and veteran Downtown New York composers (John Zorn, Rhys Chatham). Licht is also renown in the indie rock scene as a bandleader (Run On, Love Child) and supporting player to cult legends like Tom Verlaine, Arthur Lee, Arto Lindsay, and Jandek. He has released five albums of compositions for tape and solo guitar, and his sound and video installations have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. Licht has collaborated on film and video performances with Charles Atlas and Andrew Lampert. He has written extensively about the arts for the WIRE, Modern Painters, Art Review,
Film Coment, Sight & Sound, Premiere, Purple, Village Voice, New York Sun, Time Out New York, and other publications. His book, Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Media, the first extensive survey of the genre in English, was published by Rizzoli in fall 2007.
Lee Ranaldo
Lee Ranaldo is a composer/performer, visual artist, writer, and founding member of the New York City group Sonic Youth, who continue to record new music and tour the world on a regular basis. Their visual art exhibition “Sonic Youth etc : Sensational Fix” recently opened in itʼs second venue (October 2008, Museion, Bolzano, Italy) of an extensive tour. Leeʼs visual art & sound works have been shown most recently at ZKM, Karlsruhe; MACBA, Barcelona; and ISCP, Brooklyn. His latest collection of poems is Hello From The American Desert. Maelstrom from Drift, a new solo CD, was released in May 2008. His longstanding duo performance Drift with partner Leah Singer has been presented in clubs, galleries, and museums around the world, and debuted as an installation work at Gigantic Art Space, NYC in 2005. The pair are now at work on a new conception for installation and performance, I Love You/I Hat You, the premeire version of this piece opened at the Teaching Gallery, Hudson County Community College, Troy NY in October 2008. In February 2008 further iterations of this piece will be presented at Cneai, Paris; and Magasin3, Stockholm. In 2007 & 2008 the pair were artists-in-residence at Atelier Cneai, Paris.
DJ Olive the Audio Janitor (aka Gregor Asch)
son of two ethnographic filmmakers. Raised in Rhode Island, Nova Scotia, Trinidad, and
Australia. received a BFA from SUNY Purchase in 1987. In 1990, after living in Greece, he moved to Greenpoint Brooklyn becoming an active member of the infamous Williamsburg art scene co-founding Lalalandia Entertainment Research Corporation. In 1994 he started up Multipolyomni.com and We˙ while producing ambient events throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan. During a joke he gave birth to the term “illbient” the same year. He has started two recording labels in 2000, Phonomena and theAgriculture and continues to design and produce segments from multipolyomni’s opera “Quark Soup” a few solo and collaborative compositions, recordings by We˙: “as is”, Asphodel, San Fransico, 1997. “Square Root of Negative One”, Asphodel, San Fransico, 1999. “Decentertainment”, Home Entertainment, New York, 2000. some recent venues played: Munich Opera House, Munich, Germany, 2000, Lincoln Center, New York, 2000, burning man festival, 9:30 and Brain, Black Rock Dessert, Nevada, 2000, Saalfelden Jazz Festival, Saalfelden, Austria, 2000, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, 2000, Cosmos Arts Culture International, Taipei, Taiwan, 2000 “the term illbient was born as Dj Olive relates… i said as a joke ʻthat’s illbientʼ, meaningsick.” Illbient, Jana Martin, the village voice, page 37 – 40, July 23, 1996.
William Hooker
William Hooker is one of New York’s most important band leaders, an avant-garde drummer and
poet who has been performing with various cutting-edge ensembles, bridging the gap between
the jazz of the past and the possibilities of the future and taking jazz composition to new levels for
over 25 years. He has led bands which included David Murray and David S. Ware, has toured
and recorded extensively with Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and has worked
with artists as diverse as Christian Marclay, DJ Olive and Jim O’Rourke. He has released records
on Silkheart, Homestead, RGI, Table of the Elements and Knitting Factory Works.
Highly regarded in both the alternative rock and avant-garde jazz circles, Hooker has always
placed himself beyond catagory, creating sounds and making music which makes quick work of
the earth-bound semantics used to describe it. A product of New York’s loft scene, he has
recently done live scores to films of avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage and black film pioneer
Oscar Micheaux. Hooker’s latest recordings are Black Mask; Complexity 2 and The Gift all
available at finer record stores. A collection of Hooker’s poetry and images, as well as interviews
and discography, can be found at www.williamhooker.com.
Slouching Towards Gomorrah
Matt Heyner of No Neck Blues Band, Malkuth and bassist for Thurston Moore teams up with Jim Thomson drummer of Bio Ritmo, Gwar, Carcinogenic Static Carnival and Super Human Happiness Orchestra to bring you Slouching Toward Gormorrah, short attention span musical theater.
Dafna Naphtali & Alex Waterman & Darius Jones + Maria Chavez
Dafna Naphtali is a sound-artist/improviser-composer from an eclectic background of music-making. A singer/guitarist/electronic-musician she performs and composes using her custom Max/MSP/Jitter programs for sound processing of voice and other instruments that she has been writing since 1992. Besides her composing and improvised projects, she co-leads the digital chamber punk ensemble, What is it Like to be a Bat? with Kitty Brazelton (www.whatbat.org). and has collaborated / performed with Lukas Ligeti, David First, Joshua Fried, Ras Moshe, Kathleen Supovê and Hans Tammen She’s received commissions and awards from NY Foundation for the Arts, NY State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, Experimental TV Center, American Composers Forum, and a residency at STEIM (Holland). She teaches and has given workshops at universities in the US (especially New York University) and in Europe. As a freelancer, she teaches, programs and consults about Max/MSP since 1996, and has done sound design and/or programming work for the projects of Jin Hi Kim, Shelley Hirsch, Pamela Z, Phoebe Legere, Fred Frith, Jim Staley, Henry Threadgill, Steve Coleman, Chico Freeman and others. Dafna can be heard with Mechanique(s) on a forthcoming release on Acheulian Handaxe (Fall ‘08), on Hans Tammen’s Third Eye Orchestra (Innova 2008) and was featured vocalist on Josê Halac’s CD ‘Dance of 1000 Heads’ (Tellus), as well as on her acclaimed release with What is it Like to be a Bat? on Tzadik/Oracles (4 Stars, All Music Guide).
Alex Waterman is a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. In New York he performs with the Either/Or Ensemble. Alex has worked with musicians such as Robert Ashley, Richard Barrett, Helmut Lachenmann, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Elliot Sharp, Ned Rothenberg, Gerry Hemingway, David Watson, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, and Michael Finnissy. He has performed as guest musician with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d’Action-Antwerp, Q-O2-Brussels, and Magpie Music and Dance Company. Waterman has made music for numerous European ballet and modern dance companies including Freiburg Ballett/Pretty Ugly, Scapino Ballet, Nederland Dans Theater III, and others. As a curator he has organized events at Les Bains:Connective in Brussels, OT301 in Amsterdam, Miguel Abreu Gallery and The Kitchen. His duo projects with the dancer Michael Schumacher have toured in Switzerland, Italy, Holland, the Opera of Monaco and most recently in all 5 boroughs of New York in a Joyce Theater production in association with the City Parks Foundation in July of 2008.
In 2007 Alex curated two exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agapê (June 2-July 28th, 2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery; and the other on graphic notation, Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music (September 7-October 20, 2007) at The Kitchen in Chelsea. Alex is presently working on his PhD in musicology at NYU as well as writing a book about the composer Robert Ashley with the designer and writer Will Holder. Alex participated in Dexter Sinister’s residency at the Armory for the 2008 Whitney Biennial writing a new work based upon Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. Alex Waterman and Beatrice Gibson’s film, A Necessary Music, narrated by Robert Ashley and with original music by Waterman, premiered at the Whitney Museum ISP show and will be shown in galleries and museums in the US and Europe this fall.
Darius Jones, is an alto saxophonist, composer, and producer. He joined the New York music community in 2005, after living and studying in Richmond, Va. Darius comes from a diverse musical background that has lead to his unique, alternative, and soulful approach to music. Jones has composed and performed in a wide variety of areas such as electro-acoustic music, chamber ensembles, contemporary jazz groups, free jazz groups, modern dance performances, and multi-media events. Darius enjoys playing with a steady group of artists and improvisers. The current bands Jones works with are the Cooper-Moore Trio, Mike Pride’s From Bacteria to Boys, Nioka Workman’s House Arrest Band, William Hooker’s Bliss Quartet, Trevor Dunn’s Proof Readers, and Period. In New York, Darius has produced records for Korean jazz vocalist Sunny Kim and country-folk artist Mary Bragg. Jones has performed in Italy, France, U.S. and Canada. Jones has a band with Travis LaPlante, Ben Greenberg, and Jason Nazary called Little Women, which recently went on a national tour to promote the release of their first record “Teeth” on Sockets (www.socketscdr.com) and Gilgongo Records (www.gilgongorecords.com).
MARIA CHAVEZ:
Maria Chavez is an avant-turntablist from Peru, currently living in New York City. She focuses on electro acoustic sound of vinyl and needle and has a collection of needles from immaculate to ruined that she calls her “pencils of sound” and a collection of records that provide the palette.
She has performed with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth in her New York City debut, recorded with London-based laptop artist Kaffe Matthews and performed with Otomo Yoshihide, dieb13, and ErikM as part of the Wien Modern festival of contemporary music in Vienna in November of 2007.
Chavez has created sound pieces for gallery spaces all over the world including STEIM (Amsterdam), El Cervatino (Merida, Yucatan), the Kitchen (NYC), and was an artist in residence with the Issue Project Room (Brooklyn) for the fall of 2006 and with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Bard College in June and July 2008 where she had to create and perform a large scale sound piece for the DIA:Beacon museum in Beacon, New York. She performed within one of Richard Serra’s “Torqued Ellipses” along with David Linton, Newton Armstrong and Stephan Moore.
Chavez has been awarded several artist grants, the most recent award came from the Jerome Foundation as an Emerging Artist Grant from Roulette Intermedium in SOHO, NYC.
She currently finished working on a short film score w/ video artist David Gacs and performing artist Matthew Day entitled “Through my Geography” which can be viewed on her myspace page. And is working as an apprentice with BROOKLYN:PHONO, a professional vinyl cutting service under the instruction of Master Lathe cutter Albert Grundy, founder of the Audio Engineering Society.
Author Tara Rodgers has included Chavez in a book entitled “Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound” alongside Ikue Mori, Mira Calix, and Marina Rosenfeld which is due to be published by Duke University Press in 2009.
2009 looks to be a promising year with public performances scheduled in Vienna for the “PhonoFemme” festival in the Spring, San Fransisco for the “Electronic Music Festival” in the fall and many more performances to be announced.
For booking Maria Chavez: mariachavez@mail.com
