2007
Archives
January 2007
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM and FRONT PORCH PRODUCTIONS
Present
“THE INDEPENDENTS” FESTIVAL
JANUARY 4-28, 2007
Presented in cooperation with Tennessee-based Front Porch Productions, “THE INDEPENDENTS” is a mammoth music festival that will showcase over fifty artists from seven of this nation’s most prestigious independent record labels. Throughout the month of January, New York will reverberate with the sounds of epic minimalism (Tony Conrad, Rhys Chatham, Phill Niblock, Leif Inge), ecstatic clangor (Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Zeena Parkins,Gamelan Son of Lion), raw Americana (Richard Bishop, Loren Connors, Peter Walker), free improv (Charles Gayle, Paul Flaherty, Bern Nix, No Neck Blues Band) and avant songsmithing (Christina Carter, Richard Bishop, Badgerlore, Lichens). Featuring an amazing array of improvised, minimal and outsider musics, as well as full programs of film and video, “THE INDEPENDENTS”promises to be an event of epic proportions, in an intimate setting.
Featuring showcases from the following independent record labels:
TOMPKINS SQUARE
XI
POGUS
LOCUST
ECSTATIC PEACE
FAMILY VINEYARD
TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS
Admission is $15 nightly. Acts and dates subject to change.
TOMPKINS SQUARE Presents:
New York City’s Tompkins Square Label released a dizzying array of
important music in its first year, ranging from underground jazz
giants (Ran Blake, Charles Gayle and Bern Nix), four acclaimed
volumes of solo acoustic guitar music past and present (Imaginational
Anthem Vols. 1& 2, A Raga For Peter Walker, Berkeley Guitar), English
folk (Sharron Kraus), reissues (Robbie Basho, Harry Taussig), and
experimental acid-folk from Texas (Shawn David McMillen). 2007
promises more exciting sounds, with new albums by country music
legend Charlie Louvin (w/ Will Oldham, members of Lambchop, George
Jones and others), UK 12-string upstart James Blackshaw, as well as
87 year old Virginian country singer / Alan Lomax-discovery Spencer
Moore.
Thursday, January 4
Bern Nix
Charles Gayle
Peter Walker
8:00 p.m.; $15
XI Presents:
“ex-eye” is the label of Experimental Intermedia Foundation, an arts organization in New York City that has been part of the Downtown New York loft scene for over twenty-five years, presenting concerts of some of the most important and innovative composers and performers. In 1989 XI was formed to release music representative of EIF¹s programming philosophy, so that the experience of hearing these engaging and pioneering artists could be extended outside of the performance space and into the home.
XI runs the avant-garde gamut, specializing in minimal music, although it is minimal in the broadest sense of the word, creating music with a maximum effect utilizing minimal means. All of the composers on the label share a powerful aesthetic, exploring various avenues of sound and opening new horizons. Unlike a great majority of pioneering work, the austerity of the process is not mirrored in the sound; the music presented on XI is pleasing to the ear.
Friday, January 5
Phill Niblock
Alan Licht
David Behrman
8:00 p.m.; $15
POGUS Presents:
Pogus Productions features releases of Electronic, Electro-Acoustic, and Experimental music. Uncompromising, non-commercial, and definitely not for everyone (unfortunately), these releases are geared towards discerning listeners. Performing at ISSUE Project Room are Al Margolis and Nick Didkovsky
Saturday, January 6
Monique Buzzarte (trombone) playing Tom Johnson’s TILEWORK
Beth Anderson performing her text-sound pieces:
IF I WERE A POET
COUNTRY TIME
THE PEOPLE RUMBLE LOUDER
YES SIR REE
I CAN’T STAND IT
I WISH I WERE SINGLE AGAIN
OCEAN MOTION MILDEW MIND
LMB (Katherine Liberovskaya/Al (If, Bwana) Margolis/Monique Buzzarte)
live video, cd players and live sampling, trombone
with special guests Lisa Abbatomarco (voice) and Sarah Weaver (djeridu)
Nick Didkovsky and the Sirius String Quartet
celebrating the new release on POGUS of
TUBE MOUTH BOW STRING (P21042-2) for electric guitar, string quartet, computer, and live electronics
8:00 p.m.; $15
LOCUST Presents:
Locust Music is a Chicago based label. Since around 2001,we’ve issued recordings that cover a variety of styles from psychedelic pop, spoken word, peculiar sound art to earthen folk and vintage electronic music. We get just as fired up over the opportunity to do a little archeology and publish a lost gem as we do in savoring the new sounds of the many terrific artists who are a part of our current line up.
Artists who are coming to Brooklyn and IPR include Coach Fingers, Gamelan Son of Lion, Kill the Vultures, David Meltzer, Apothecary Hymns, Ethan Rose, True Primes and Function
“Chicago’s locust music is one of those labels in which a discerning and adventurous record buyer could put his trust; the kind of label that understands the thrill of discovery that stimulates every record seekers perpetual travels” - Stop Smiling Magazine
“One of Chicago’s most diverse & independent record labels…that releases fine, fine records spanning the musical spectrum” - UR Chicago
“Locust Music specializes in music too weird to be considered old-fashioned” - The New York Times
“Locust Music has been around for five years now, putting out some of the best and most interesting music on the planet. One of the great things about the label is that you never know what to expect. Label founder Dawson Prater keeps your ears on the edge of their seat. Locust is a worldwide whirlwind, dishing out magic from left and right.” - Foxy Digitalis
“an odd and incalculably great label.” Songs:Illinois
“invaluable” - The Brooklyn Rail
“Without getting too teary-eyed, Locust Music is certainly a cultural resource of immeasurable quality.” -Indieworkshop
“Locust is one of those labels…with an amazing ability to hunt down unusual artists from across the globe of the highest caliber” – Boomkat
Thursday, January 11
Jonny Sender (KONK) performs Ramon Sender
w/ spontaneous visual compositions by Tony Martin
True Primes
film/video by Henry Flynt, Lau Nau, Tony Martin, Sir Richard Bishop, Ethan Rose/Ryan Jeffery
8:00 p.m.; $15
Friday, January 12
Begushkin
Kill the Vultures
Coach Fingers
8:00 p.m.; $15
Saturday, January 13
Gamelan Son of Lion
Function
Ethan Rose
8:00 p.m.; $15
Sunday, January 14
No Neck Blues Band
David Meltzer and Marty Ehrlich
Apothecary Hymns
Sir Richard Bishop
8:00 p.m.; $15
ECSTATIC PEACE Presents:
Ecstatic Peace!
ecstatic peace is a record label started in the early 80s by Thurston Moore of sonic youth. the first releases were a spoken word cassette by Lydia Lunch and Michael Gira (hard rock) and a live sound/noise collage by a young and romping sonic youth (sonic death). since then the label has existed in wicked spurts whipping out vinyl, ferrous oxide tape and nefarious passing-phase digital media by a wild list of living music men and wimmen. whenever coin allowed slabs were slipped into the arcane bins of friendly-fire record rooms. all kindsa kuts! free jazz emanation via William Hooker! forest love haunts via Fursaxa! dual exhaust heartbeat via Dead Machines! pumped and piledriving juicebox via Pagoda! there’s been over 100 different releases and there’ll be 100 more. we are now in league with satan (read: corporate rainbow) and promise to all: purifying action vision!
Artists on the Ecstatic Peace Roster:
Pagoda
Awesome Color
Be Your Own Pet
Black Helicopter
Dead Machines
Magik Markers
Monotract
Mouthus
MV + EE w/the bummer road
Notekillers
Sunburned
Tall Firs
Tam
http://www.ecstaticpeace.com/ or www.myspace.com/ecstaticpeace
Thursday, January 18
Pete Nolan/Spectre Folk
Christina Carter
Lee Ranaldo
Matt Valentine+Erika Elder with the Bummer Road
8:00 p.m.; $15
Friday, January 19
XO4
Religious Knives
TARP (Conrad Capistran + Joshua Burkett)
Bark Haze (Thurston Moore + Gown)
8:00 p.m.; $15
FAMILY VINEYARD Presents:
“… Family Vineyard occupy a particular corner of the music universe, serving up equal parts talent, ambition and pretension from people who don’t shrink from the word ‘artist’ and who make honest, blood-leaking efforts to be worthy of the name.” — John Darnielle in Last Plane to Jakarta
Family Vineyard is based on the newfangled sounds of legendary artists and visceral newcomers from across the globe. Releasing current and archival work from the likes of Loren Connors, MX-80, Paul Flaherty, Dredd Foole, Hisato Higuchi, Jessica Rylan, and many others, FV is dedicated to the presentation of uncompromising and iconoclast vision of its artists. Established 1998, the label is currently based in Lafayette, Indiana.
The artists who will be at Issue Project Room include Loren Connors, Jessica Rylan, Paul Flaherty and Philip Gayle.
http://www.family-vineyard.com/
Saturday, January 20
Loren Connors/David Daniell/Greg Kelley
Paul Flaherty
Jessica Rylan
Philip Gayle
8:00 p.m.; $15
TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS Presents:
Since 1993, Table of the Elements has has staked its claim on a massive enterprise: It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century. And beyond. That’s a tall order for even the largest multi-national corporations, whose vaults harbor so much of our cultural data. Imagine, then, the flinty ambition necessary for Table of the Elements to pursue its goal. This modestly funded, cellular organization has thrived on smarts, and pluck, in realizing its projects, which have focused on musicians whose light shimmers outside the frames of convention. The label’s 100-plus releases are a vital contemporary archive, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad, if sometimes obscured, horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider musics….
-Steve Dollar
“[Table of the Elements] is a national treasure.”
Pitchfork
“Table of the Elements are to the 21st century what CRI was to the 1960s
and Lovely Music to the 1980s — fearless purveyors of the wildest
stuff around.”
— Kyle Gann (New York Times)
Arists included in The Independents month include Rhys Chatham, Neptune, Tony Conrad, Jonathan Kane, Leif Inge , Lichens, David Daniel, Zeena Parkins and more.
http://www.tableoftheelements.com/index2.php
Wednesday, January 24 (5:00 PM start)
Leif Inge “9 Beet Stretch” (24-hour performance)
Thursday, January 25
Zeena Parkins
Tony Conrad
David Daniell
8:00 p.m.; $15
Friday, January 26
Jonathan Kane
Ateleia
Badgerlore
8:00 p.m.; $15
Saturday, January 27
Rhys Chatham “Guitar Trio All-Stars” with Ernest Brooks III, David Daniell, Kim Gordon, Jonathan Kane, Alan Licht, Robert Longo, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Colin Langenus, Byron Westbrook and Adam Wills.
Lichens/Licht
Neptune
8:00 p.m.; $25
Sunday, January 28 (3:00 PM start)
Poetry Reading by Ira Cohen and films:
The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda + Brain Damage
Live Scores by Sunburned Hand Of The Man + Mahasiddhi
Followed by Hubcap City
$15
February 2007
Couplings: Likely, Unlikely & Actual
FEBRUARY 3-24, 2007
Saturday, February 3
christine bard + jim pugliese
julian bennett holmes + jim pugliese
first set
CHRISTINE BARD + JIM PUGLIESE
The long-awaited reunion of Duo Bard and Pugliese in Concert
a.k.a. “The Mighty Drums of Christine Bard and Jim Pugliese”
Bard and Pugliese play percussion that creates other worlds and takes you on a guided tour. They will make sounds move through IPR, to surround and suspend the listener on the pulse of their own Chi. Pitched and “non-pitched” instruments will play pieces of precision and beauty. Deep drums will take care of the rest.
second set
JULIAN BENNETT HOLMES + JIM PUGLIESE
Julian Bennett Holmes was born in New York in 1991. He has been the drummer in the bands Stungun, Soñar (which debuted at Issue Project Room) and Fiasco. He co-founded (with Lucian Buscemi) the independent record label Beautiful Records (beautifulrecords.org, myspace.com/beautifulrecordsny) in 2005, which has since released three albums - two Soñar recordings and one recording of Care Bears on Fire’s Confuse Me, which was released in November 2006.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, February 8
bradford reed + jane scarpantoni
anthony coleman + ne(x)tworks
first set
BRADFORD REED pencilina + JANE SCARPANTONI cello
Bradford Reed never fails to entertain and inspire. This Brooklyn-based composer, performer and producer fights and tames the idiosyncrasies of the pencilina, an original instrument of his own design and construction. The pencilina is an electric ten stringed collision of the hammer dulcimer, slide guitar, koto and fretless bass with six pickups of varied types. It is struck with sticks, plucked and bowed, giving Reed an incredibly wide sonic palette.
Jane Scarpantoni has transformed the Cello into a new instrument. Her work with the Lounge Lizards, Patti Smith, Lou Reed and many others is enjoyed the universe over.
second set
ANTHONY COLEMAN + NE(X)TWORKS
Members of Ne(x)tworks, with special guests (Marty Ehrlich, Kevin Norton) in a performance ofAnthony Coleman’s “Lapidation”, a piece commissioned by the late, lamented ensemble of the Kitchen, Kitchen House Blend. This performance is in preparation for Coleman’s upcoming CD of his Chamber Music, to be recorded for New World Records (look for more such performances as the year progresses…) Opening this half of the program will be a rare short set by the legendary Selfhaters!
CJ Camereri - trumpet
Chris Mcintyre - trombone
Doug Wieselman - clarinet
Marty Ehrlich - sax
Cornelius Dufallo - violin
Dan Barrett - cello
Sean Conly - bass
Stephen Gosling - piano
Kevin Norton, Jim Pugliese - percussion
Anthony Coleman - piano, organ, conductor
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, February 9
marc zegans + aki onda
loren connors + steve dalachinsky
first set
MARC ZEGANS + AKI ONDA
“Women, Waking, Danger”
“Women, Waking, Danger” is a first for Zegans and Onda, a collaboration in which they explore the chemistry needed to combine existing works developed by two distinct personalities. “Women, Waking, Danger” unfolds through spoken words and projected photo images. It is a visual and poetic journey through three regions of a thematic landscape; love, illusion in conscious mind, and the edge of
survival, whose borders, indistinct and interpenetrating, open our eyes to otherness as necessity; to combination and dissolution as the stuff of life, and to the entwinement of love, magic and absolute
exposure in each waking moment. The interplay of these projections, voice in air and light on walls is a meditation on the possibilities of “Combination” that arise when artists of separate intent and common desire bring work together with open hands and curious minds.
Aki Onda is a self-taught electronics musician, composer and producer, and a photographer. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories, for which he uses field-recording sounds he
recorded himself as a diary. He recently started another project Cinemage, which is composed of slide projections of still photo mages and improvised music. He has collaborated with artists including Ikue Mori, Alan Licht, Michael Snow, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock and others.
Marc Zegans is a poet, playwright and author. His current work explores waking dreams and the experience of human fragility in the post-industrial landscape. He is now completing a book, which develops these themes, entitled, Poems of Danger and Abandon. He is also developing a spoken work album for Philistine Records. As a non-fiction writer Marc has written extensively about innovation in the public sector, and philanthropic practice. He is currently completing a book entitled, The Essential Work of Public Management, which is a non-foundationalist theory of the role of administration in democracy. Marc was a 2004 writer in residence at Mesa Refuge, Point Reyes California, and a 2005 Fellow at Harvard University’s Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation. In 2005 he began the Question Book Project which circulates hand-made books throughout the world inviting individuals to add an ever-growing web of questions to their pages.
second set
LOREN CONNORS + STEVE DALACHINSKY
Loren Connors was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1949. Best known as a composer and improviser, Connors has issued over 50 guitar records on his own imprints (Daggett, St. Joan, Black Label) since the late 1970s and over two dozen on other labels across the globe. He has recorded under the names Guitar Roberts, Loren Mattei, Loren MazzaCane Connors and other variations. Connors’ singular adpation of the blues is a distinct personal vision combining the Delta bottleneck sound and the ancestral blues voice (appearing as distortion, baying hounds or multi-tracked guitar), with hauntingly unexpected sounds. Outside of Connors’ three decades of solo work, he has collaborated with Suzanne Langille, Jim O’Rourke, Darin Gray, Alan Licht, Christina Carter, Keiji Haino, San Agustin, Jandek and many others, as well as leading the group Haunted House. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Steve Dalachinsky is a legendary New York downtown poet. He is active in the scene. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. He has been writing poetry for many years and has worked with such musicians as William Parker, Susie Ibarra, Matthew Shipp, Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, Mat Maneri, Federico Ughi, Rob Brown, Tim Barnes and Jim O’Rourke. He has appeared at most of the Vision Festivals, an Avant-jazz festival involving many of these musicians. He also appears often at the Knitting Factory, a unique live music club in Tribeca. He currently lives in Manhattan.
His books include Trial and Error in Paris from Loudmouth Collective Press and Quicksand from Isis Press. His spoken word albums include Incomplete Directions, I thought it was the end of the world then the end of the world happened again with Federico Ughi, and Phenomena of Interference.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, February 10
anthony ptak + alex waterman
lee ranaldo + leah singer
first set
ANTHONY PTAK, theremin + ALEX WATERMAN, cello
Anthony Jay Ptak is an artist and composer who studied under Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits, Lydia Kavina, and Herbert Brun, and had technical consultations with Robert Moog. He performed at the First International Theremin Festival, and has been a guest theremin artist at the historic Experimental Music Studios at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2000, where he was appointed visiting researcher in 2001. He has given presentations on the theremin and electro-acoustics at Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), School of the Art Institute, Chicago Cultural Center, St. Louis Art Museum, Krannert Art Museum, FFMUP Princeton University, and Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He is a member of the New York Theremin Society.http://axoxnxs.com
Alex Waterman is a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. Alex has worked with musicians such as Richard Barrett, Keith Rowe, Axel Dorner, Tristan Honsinger, Ned Rothenberg, Gerry Hemingway, Steve Heather, Cor Fuhler, Gert Jan Prins, Andy Moor, Achim Kaufmann, Michael Moore, Chris Mann, Brian Ferneyhough and Michael Finissy as well as members of the dutch punk band “the Ex” . He has performed as guest musician with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event Berlin, Champs d´Action-Antwerp, and Q-O2-Brussels. Waterman has also curated music in Musiclab at Les Bains::Connective in Brussels and guest curated for the Kraakgeluiden series in the OT301 in Amsterdam. He has toured the Bach Suites for solo cello over the last two years, and been pursuing a more active solo career in the avant-garde classical world. Alex has a number of groups in Holland and Belgium and is an indispensable collaborator in many projects in Europe and the US. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
second set
LEE RANALDO + LEAH SINGER
Lee Ranaldo / Leah Singer known for their film/electric gtr/spoken word collaboration DRIFT, will present a new work in progress, incorporating audio and visuals.
Lee is a member of the group Sonic Youth. Through January ‘07 he has visual work in the show “Old News” at CNEAI, outside Paris. Text of Light, his “other group” with Alan Licht, Christian Marclay, Tim Barnes and others, have just released the 3xCD “Metal Box” on UK label Dirter Productions.
Since the early 1990’s Leah Singer has performed worldwide with her film work. Using modified 16mm film projectors in a live setting she manipulates the films speed, direction and rhythm creating improvisational performances. DRIFT, an ongoing live film/music/spoken word collaboration with Lee Ranaldo has recently been released as a single channel work on DVD by Plexifilm. She is currently contributing to Old News, a project at CNEAI in Paris and is working on a new edition of copy, her all graphic newspaper series.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Sunday, February 11 (dinner 4:30 reading 5:00)
Waiting for Godot
performed by Brave New World Repertory Theatre
WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett
Ticket price: $18 includes dinner and wine
Brave New World Repertory Theatre draws its members from the rich pool of theatre professionals who live on the Brooklyn side of the bridge. The company strives to create affordable, accessible theatre in and for its own diverse community. Brave New World reaches out to different corners of the borough with site specific readings and productions of classic and neglected plays, as well as new plays by BNW members.
Past readings and productions have been presented in Brooklyn Heights, Stuyvesant Heights, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Red Hook, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope, Sunset Park, Ditmas Park, and Prospect Park serving well over 5,000 people.
BNW’s 2005 production of To Kill a Mockingbird on Westminster Road in Ditmas Park received press from, among others, The New York Times, The Daily News, Timeout NY, New York Magazine, The Sun and Brooklyn Magazine. In 2006 Celebrate Brooklyn hosted BNW’s acclaimed production of Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Great White Hope.
In 2007 Brave New World will return to Celebrate Brooklyn and The BRIClab. Brave New World has received grants from The Department of Cultural Affairs, The Brooklyn Arts Council, The Independence Community Foundation and The Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund.
Waiting For Godot by Irish born Samuel Beckett will be presented at The Issue Project Room on February 11. BNW Producing Artistic Director Claire Beckman will direct.
For reservations:
e-mail: theatre@bravenewworldrep.org
www.bravenewworldrep.org
4:30 p.m.; $18
Thursday, February 15
Littoral Launch
w/ Sam Lipsyte + Ben Marcus
lit·to·ral
adj. Of or on a shore, especially a seashore: a littoral property; the littoral biogeographic zone.
n. A coastal region; a shore; the region or zone between the limits of high and low tides.
a new performance series curated by Tony Antoniadis and Suzanne Fiol, featuring writers and musicians whose work dissolves boundaries between language, sonority and art.
Sam Lipsyte
Ben Marcus
Musical Guest TBA
Ben Marcus is the author of The Age of Wire and String, a collection of stories, and Notable American Women, a novel. His fiction has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Tin House, and McSweeney’s.
Sam Lipsyte’s most recent novel is Home Land, a New York Times Notable Book for 2005 and winner of the Believer Book Award. He is also the author of The Subject Steve and Venus Drive, named one of the 25 best books of the year by the Village Voice. His work has appeared in The Quarterly, Open City, N+1, Slate, Fence, McSweeney’s, Esquire, Bookforum, The New York Times and Playboy, among other places. He teaches at Columbia University.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, February 17
Elliott Sharp + Janene Higgins
R. Luke DuBois + Lucian Buscemi
first set
Elliott Sharp and Janene Higgins
“Suspension”
Janene Higgins: video mix
Elliott Sharp: guitar, clarinette, laptop
“Suspension” is a duet of image and sound: a veritable dialog, an eloquent and compelling interaction that pulls the audience in and through, simultaneously parallel, conflicting, complementary. As a duo, Higgins & Sharp have performed throughout the US, as well as in Italy, Germany, and Montreal.
“Suspension” explores the the contrast of the instant and the extended duration suspended in time: the awareness of momentary stillness in a city: “Suspension of disbelief” as an essential component of the cinematic experience, and the metropolitan air of continuous mystery, calamity, and suspense.
Composer/multi-insrumentalist/sound artist Elliott Sharp leads Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane and pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and biological metaphors to musical composition and interaction. His compositions have been performed by the Symphony of the Hessischer Rundfunk, The Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Rezonanz, Continuum, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Flux Quartet, sirius Stirng Quartet, and Zeitkratzer and collaborators have included qawaali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, blues legend Hubert Sumlin; playwright Dael Orlandersmith, cello innovator Frances-Marie Uitti, sci-fi writers Pat Cadigan and Lucius Shepard; jazz greats Sonny Sharrock, Jack deJohnette, and Oliver Lake; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians of Jahjoukah. Sharp’s orchestra piece “Calling” was commissioned by the Hessischer Rundfunk to open the 2002 Darmstadt Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik and the CD won the January 2004 German Critics’ Prize. His composition “Quarks Swim Free” was premiered at the Venice Biennale in September 2003 and his chamber opera EmPyre was premiered at the 2006 Biennale. Sharp’s most recent CD releases include “Quadrature”, a collection of solo acoustic guitar compositions; “Calling” with the Radio-Symphony of Frankfurt; Terraplane’s “Secret Life”; and the string quartet “Dispersion Of Seeds”. He founded the ongoing zOaR Records in 1978 both for his own productions including the critically-acclaimed compilations Peripheral Vision and State Of The Union and for other radical music. He has recently completed the scores to the feature-films “What Sebastian Dreamt”", “Commune” by Jonathan Berman, and “Spectropia” by Toni Dove. Installations include: “Suspension”, a video and audio work in collaboration with video artist Janene Higgins, Chelsea Art Museum, NYC, 2003; “Fluvial”, computerized multichannel audiowork commissioned by Engine 27 gallery, NYC June 2002; “Chromatine”, an interactive string sculpture/audiowork created for the Gallery of the School of Museum Of Fine Art, Boston, 2001.
Janene Higgins’ videos and digital media have been described as “abstract narratives: undefinable journeys filled with sudden layerings and allurings.” Her single-channel works and installations have been performed and exhibited at numerous festivals and galleries worldwide, such as The New York Video Festival at Lincoln Center; documenta in Kassel, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon; City of Women festival, Slovenia; The Chelsea Art Museum, NYC; MAD ‘03 in Madrid; Art Institute of Chicago; Experimenta Festival in Buenos Aires; The Hamburg Short Film Festival; and at The Impakt Festival in The Netherlands. She developed a technique for live video performance, and has collaborated with many of New York’s preeminent composers and improvisors of new music, including duo performances with Elliott Sharp, Ikue Mori, Alan Licht, Aki Onda, Nurit Tilles, Okkyung Lee, and Zeena Parkins.
http://www.echonyc.com/~myrakoob
second set
R. Luke DuBois, video and Lucian Buscemi guitar, bass
R. Luke DuBois is a composer, performer, video artist, and programmer living in New York City. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University and teaches interactive sound and video performance at Columbia’s Computer Music Center and at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. He has collaborated on interactive performance, installation, and music production work with many artists and organizations including Toni Dove, Matthew Ritchie, Todd Reynolds, Michael Joaquin Grey, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gordon, Bang on a Can, Engine27, Harvestworks, and LEMUR, and is the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season. He is a co-author of Jitter, a software suite developed by Cycling’74 for real-time manipulation of matrix data. His music (with or without his band, the Freight Elevator Quartet), is available on Caipirinha/Sire, Cycling’74, and Cantaloupe music, and his artwork is represented by bitforms gallery in New York City.
Lucian Buscemi plays drums, bass and guitar and has a certain passion for noise and played at the Issue Project Room at least 5 times in various bands/combos. He plays guitar in band the LEGS, bass in Fiasco and whatever is needed to be played in the noise group Soñar. He co-founded the record label Beautiful Records and the noise group Soñar with Julian Bennett Holmes, who plays drums in Fiasco, and who has known Lucian since he was 1 year old. Soñar has released 2 albums and are currently working on a 3rd. Beautiful Records has 8 bands on it, has 3 albums out and is still recording other groups. Please check out beautifulrecords.org or myspace.com/beautifulrecordsny for more info on everybody.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, February 22
BAM Brooklyn Next Festival:
Kimiko Hahn, poet + Harold Schecter, writer
Alan Licht - Puzzle Number 1
Kimiko Hahn is the author of seven books of poems, including: The Narrow Road to the Interior (W.W. Norton, 2006), The Unbearable Heart (Kaya, 1996), which received an American Book Award, andEarshot (Hanging Loose Press, 1992), which was awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award. Kimiko has also written text for film, such as the 1995 two-hour MTV special titled Ain’t Nuthin’ But a She-Thing (for which she also recorded the voice-overs); and most recently, a text for Everywhere at Once– a film by Holly Fisher’s based on Peter Lindbergh’s still photos and narrated by Jeanne Moreau. Among her editorial projects was Issue 122 of The Tri-Quarterly Review, which focused on writers who use outside source material. Kimiko is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award. She is currently working on a sequence of poems inspired by the science section of The New York Times and is a Distinguished Professor at Queens College/CUNY.
Harold Schechter is the bestsellng author of DEVIANT and other historical true-crime books, as well as a series of mystery novels starring Edgar Allen Poe. He teaches at Queens College, CUNY.
Alan Licht is an guitarist and composer, living in Brooklyn whose work combines elements of pop, noise, free jazz and minimalism. His earliest musical influences, in the 1970s, were mainstream rock bands like the Bee Gees and Wings—he remarks in an interview with Paris Transatlantic magazine that ‘What made me want to play guitar was that painting of Wings in concert in the gatefold of Wings Over America. It looked so exciting… I wanted to be part of it.’ Later, in school, he listened to punk and no wave bands like Mission of Burma, Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth. However, his musical trajectory was set when his guitar teacher gave him a copy of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, which would lead to his discovery of other minimalist music. Licht majored in Film Studies at Vassar College in New York. Since the 1980s, he has worked and recorded with the bands Lovechild and then Run On, and with other avant-garde musicians including Jim O’Rourke, Rudolph Grey, Loren
Mazzacane Connors, and La Monte Young.
Puzzle Number 1 is a new piece for pre-recorded tape and live radio transmission that deals with issues of volume thresholds, audibility and inaudibility, interruption, the assertion of the individual within society, and mortality.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, February 23
BAM Brooklyn Next Festival:
Angela Jaeger + Byron Coley
Angela Jaeger and Byron Coley: NOUVELLE VAGUE…JAMAIS!
Angela Jaeger and Byron Coley met at Hampshire College in 1977. Both flush with excitement from the incipient punk movement, Jaeger’s trajectory carried her through a series of musical groups in both New York and London (Stare Kits, Drowning Craze, PigBag etc.), Coley’s into a world of underground journalism (NY Rocker, Forced Exposure, Arthur).
Tonight they summon the spirit of the period through records, eyewitness testimony and memoirs. Angela will read from her extensive punk diaries, which are currently being shaped into book form; Byron will read from The Moisture of Diapers, a bilingual collection due soon from Montreal’s l’Oie de Cravan. The records they play will not be chosen by committee!
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, February 24
BAM Brooklyn Next Festival:
ISSUE Project Room’s Theremin Society
in an evening of couplings
MICHAEL EVANS, theremin and ANDREA PARKINS, electric accordion/laptop
ROB SCHWIMMER, theremin and DORIT CHRYSLER, theremin
DAVID SIMONS, theremin and LISA KARRER, vocalist, performer, composer
ELIZABETH BROWN, theremin and STEPHANIE SKAFF, voice
ANTHONY PTAK, theremin NICOLAS COLLINS, electronics
8:00 p.m.; $10
March
Friday, March 2
sensorium
exhibition opening
“Portable Scentorium /Olfactory Factory”
Performance by Laure Drogoul
Laure Drogoul, a Baltimore based sculptor, installation and performance artist will be performing her “Portable Scentorium” and inviting visitors to expand their olfactory awareness with her scent infusions derived from various fragrant flora. Drogoul has earned various awards for her performances, installations and video art, including a US/Japan Creative Arts Fellowship, Mid Atlantic Arts “ Artist as Catalyst Award”, and 3 Maryland State “Individual Artist Awards”.
6-9p.m.; $10
Saturday, March 3
films by stan brakhage +
stan van der beek +
steina and woody vasulka
STAN BRAKHAGE
Dog Star Man + selected films
Stan Brakhage (1933 – 2003) was one of the most influential experimental film makers whose explorations on the subject of light led him to paint directly onto film strips creating abstract films of fleeting sensations and sensorial rapture. Several films will be screened including his unequivocal masterpiece “Dog Star Man”, called a “rapturous, orgiastically beautiful viewing experience” by the Austin Chronicle.
STAN VAN DER BEEK + STEINA AND WOODY VASULKA
“Synaesthetic Video Revival” + selected films
presented by Sabrina Gschwandtner
Includes rarely screened video by technical pioneers who were among the first to experiment with analog sound and image
Stan Van Der Beek (1927 – 1983) was one of the members of the American Expanded Cinema. An artist in residence at NASA, in 1964 he created his “Movie Drome” self built space capsule to experience full sensory film projection. He was a poetic visionary who produced theatrical multimedia events that included projection systems, dance and early computer graphics and image processing systems.
The Vasulkas, founders of The Kitchen, were early pioneers who contributed to the evolution of video art with their investigations of analog and digital processes. They were some of the primary architects of expressive electronic imaging.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, March 8 + Friday, March 9
see hear now: visible music
David Gamper – multi-instrument acoustic music with live digital transformation using Max/MSP/Spat and 16 channel sound
Gisela Gamper – live video mixing and multi-stream projection using Isadora on laptops, video mixers, mirrors and servomotor shutters
Geoff Gersh – electric guitar with electronic devices and found objects
+ Guest on March 8
David and Gisela Gamper’s See Hear Now (www.seehearnow.org) is a real-time music and video collaboration that merges the sonic and the visible into a transcendent experience. In their individual work, the artists are fascinated by sounds and images from nature and life. To create his live improvisations, David begins with the acoustic sounds he draws from his instruments and found objects. When he expands them through live electronic transformations they retain the power of natural sound. Originally a photographer, Gisela has extended her image making into video. Her imagery reveals how movement and rhythm create our world. With a system David developed, Gisela performs her imagery with the same immediacy as David performs his music. For these live improvised performances at Issue Project Room, the Gampers create a unique installation using projectors, mirrors, and speakers.
See Hear Now premiered in upstate New York in 1999 and has performed and given workshops widely. In a series of loft installations, the Gampers have explored alternative ways of immersing both audience and performers. Many of these performances included guest artists. RouletteTV produced a performance which was first broadcast in 2003. The duo was featured in Brooklyn College’s Electroacoustic Music Festival in 2003, the 2004 SOUNDPlay festival in Toronto and in Juilliard’s 2005 Beyond the Machine festival in New York City. They released their DVD See Hear Now: Visible Music in 2005. Their 2006 performances include the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Roulette’s Festival of Mixology, and at Optisonic Tea at Diapason Gallery in NYC.
David Gamper moves freely among the worlds of music performance, improvisation, and electronic instrument design. These passions merge in the performer controlled sound processing environments he has created for acoustic improvising musicians. A member of Deep Listening Band (with Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster) since 1990, he developed a major redesign of the Expanded Instrument System for DLB and others. In addition to his other ensemble and solo work, Gamper has performed frequently as a duo with Oliveros. The recording of their concert at the IJsbreker in Amsterdam has been described as “the pinnacle of the Oliveros-Gamper collaborations, music that through its depth, reveals ever more profound expression.” Gamper’s solo piece Conch was in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s BitStreams exhibition and is on the CD of sound art from that show.
Gisela Gamper has been photographing and exhibiting for over 30 years. She exhibited her photographs widely and in 1997 Fabrications, a catalogue of her photographs for two concurrent solo shows in New Orleans was published by the Contemporary Artists Collection of Station Hill Arts of Barrytown, NY. Among her grants and numerous awards are two fellowship grants from the Vermont Council on the Arts and the Hasselblad Cover Award in 1991. Gamper’s photographs are in the collection of the Albany Institute of History & Art in Albany, NY, and in many private collections. In 1999 she extended her fascination with textures and collage into the medium of video. Since then her main focus has been See Hear Now, creating video for live mixing in her improvised performances and creating site specific installations.
Guitarist/Composer Geoff Gersh explores the sonic boundaries of the electric guitar with and without the aide of electronic devices and found objects. Aside from the various musical projects he’s involved with, Geoff has worked with choreographers Robert LaFosse, Cynthia Oliver, Karen Graham, Lawrence Goldhuber and has composed two scores to go along with paintings by David Stoupakis. Geoff has received grants from Meet the Composer, American Music Center, New York Foundation for the Arts and a Bessie Award for his collaborative score for Cynthia Oliver’s SHEMAD.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, March 10
video & film by
assume vivid astro focus +
aldir mendes de souza
Brazilian Sensorama featuring the psychedelic videos of Assume Vivid Astro Focus and the first showing in the U.S. of Brazilian avant garde artist Aldir Mendes de Souza’s ground breaking innovative film “Brazilian Suicide” shot entirely in X-Ray. Assume Vivid Astro Focus’ collaborative brand of 60’s influenced psychedelic installations, graphics, videos have been exhibited internationally most recently at John Connelly Presents and the travelling exhibition “Tropicalia”. Aldir Mendes de Souza (b 1941) artist/plastic surgeon, developed a unique and innovative body of work in the 1970’s using the medium of X-ray to explore themes of portraiture and social and political commentary. “Suicidio Brasileira” was shown first at the XI Bienal de Sao Paulo in 1971.
Filling in the evening , DJ Elena, spins the infectious sounds of Brazilian music, as caipirinhas are served in celebration of that vibrant cultural force.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Sunday, March 11
riley lee with ned rothenberg & ralph samuelson
an evening of shakuhachi - traditional and modern music in solo and ensemble settings
Shika no Tone - classic Kinko duo with Ralph
Birdwing for Shakuhachi and tape by Frances White
Ryuhei/Exile - Chikuho solo honkyoku
World Premier duo composition for 2 2.4 shakuhachi by Ned Rothenberg
The Universal Flute - solo shakuhachi work by Henry Cowell played by Ralph Samuelson
Raftsong at Sunrise by Ross Edwards (1996)
Azuma Jishi traditional Do-Kyoku piece
Improvisation for Shakuhachi and Bass Clarinet with Ned Rothenbeg
The Summons by Tim Constable and Riley Lee for Shakuhachi and tape
Mushi Kuyo (Chikuho duet) with Ralph
(all pieces are performed by Riley unless otherwise specified)
Riley Lee has played the shakuhachi and wadaiko (Japanese festival drums) internationally since the 1970’s. In 2003, he became the first shakuhachi specialist to be invited by Princeton University (USA) as one of its Visiting Fellows. He performs regularly in Australia and abroad both as a soloist and with others, notably with TaikOz and harpist Marshall McGuire. Over 50 of his recordings have been released on international labels. In 2005, he premiered Ross Edward’s shakuhachi concerto, “Heart of Night” with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and with the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra in April 2006. Riley will be instrumental in organizing the Fifth World Shakuhachi Festival in Sydney in July 2008 to be held at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he teaches. He lives in Manly NSW.
Composer/Performer Ned Rothenberg has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 25 years in North and South America, Europe and Asia. He has played shakuhachi since 1980, studying with Ralph Samuelson in NYC and Katsuya Yokoyama and Goro Yamaguchi in Tokyo. His latest cd is “Inner Diaspora” on Tzadik which features his trio Sync with guest artists Mark Feldman and Erik Friedlander. Other collaborators have included Sainkho Namchylak, Paul Dresher, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Yuji Takahashi and Evan Parker.
Ralph Samuelson was trained in the classical tradition of the Kinko school of shakuhachi under Goro Yamaguchi, Kodo Araki V, and Shudo Yamato, both in Japan and in the graduate World Music Program at Wesleyan University. He has performed in numerous concerts of traditional and contemporary music in North America, Asia, and Europe, and is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and music schools. He has been presented in radio and television broadcasts in the United States and Japan and has recorded for Lyrichord Records, Music of the World, and CBS Masterworks. He teaches the shakuhachi in New York, where he is also the director of the Asian Cultural Council.
7:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, March 15
spring artist in residence audrey chen solo
+ susan alcorn (pedal steel guitar)
+ nate wooley (trumpet)
Audrey Chen (cello/voice electronics)
Audrey Chen is a Chinese-American musician and performance artist born outside of Chicago in 1976. Using the cello, voice and analog electronics, Chen’s work focuses on the combination and layering of traditional and extended techniques. a large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is often extremely personal and visceral. Her performance work incorporates sound, movement and simple visual/sculptural concepts. Chen performs solo and in collaboration with a wide number of musicians and dancers. Some current projects include duos with Gianni Gebbia, Tatsuya Nakatani, Alessandro Bosetti and Nate Wooley. The SILO trio with Nate Wooley and Leonel Kaplan. and Trockeneis with Andy Hayleck, Dan Breen, Catherine Pancake and Paul Neidhardt. Chen has performed in Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan and the USA. She is currently based in Baltimore, MD USA where she is member of the Red Room and High Zero Collective, an on-going series and festival devoted to experimental music.www.redroom.org, www.highzero.org, www.audreychen.com
Susan Alcorn (pedal steel guitar)
Susan Alcorn began playing the pedal steel guitar over 25 years ago, and in that time has evolved into a musician/composer of such rare inspiration that her music has redefined, for many, the very perception of the instrument itself.
She has collaborated in performance with electronic composer Pauline Oliveros, German bassist Peter Kowald, and multi-instrumentalist Eugene Chadbourne. “Uma”, her debut CD, was released on the US label Loveletter Recordings in the summer of 2000, and a CD of recordings with Chadbourne, “Texas Music”, was released on Chadbourne’s own imprint soon afterward. Ms. Alcorn currently resides in Houston, TX.
Nate Wooley (trumpet)
Nate Wooley grew up in a Finnish-American fishing village in Oregon. He has spent the rest of his life trying musically to find a way back to the peace and quiet of that time by whole-heartedly embracing the leap between complete absorption in sound and relative absence of the same. He began playing trumpet professionally at age 13 with his father. Nate’s music deals more with a cobweb of sound then with pure melody and meter. He is sought out for his work in the free jazz idiom, but finds more meaning in a well prepared sound or silence or burst of feedback. He currently resides in Jersey City, New Jersey and has performed or recorded with Anthony Braxton, John Butcher, Alessandro Bosetti, Chris Forsyth, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Tony Buck, Joe Morris, Jack Wright, Fritz Welch, Jason Roebke, Scott Rosenberg, Herb Robertson, Randy Peterson, and Tim Barnes. www.natewooley.com
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, March 16
The NY Theremin Society and IPR proudly present an evening of Theremin,
introducing new members:
Duet for Theremin & Lapstell
John Hoge
Kip Rosser
Bruce Tovsky
plus special guests:
Dorit Chrysler & Bradley Eros & Rob Schwimmer
Anthony Ptak
featuring a special
Theremin Orchestra Performance to the Theme of “SYNAESTHESIA”
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, March 17
“we are happy”
w/ jim pugliese +
donna-maree wilding
Are we just mere tourists traveling through life?
Are we looking through glass tainted by life and all she has dealt us?
Your truth? My Truth? The Truth? What is reality?
Portrayed in an interactive multi-media installation using light, sound, movement and reflection, “We Are Happy” is an archetype of the urban mecca of today. The piece is a collaboration by Italian-American, percussionist and composer, Jim Pugliese and New Zealand born, Installation Artist,Donna-Maree Wilding.
DM Wilding is an Installation Artist who was born in Auckland New Zealand. Since receiving a B.F.A from Auckland University she has resided mainly in Europe. She has had numerous exhibitions throughout New Zealand, London, Italy and the United States. Wilding now works and lives in the East Village, New York City.
Jim Pugliese is a drummer, percussionist, composer and international recording artist on over seventy CD’s of experimental, Classical, Jazz and Rock music. Jim’s performing experience is diverse. As a freelance percussionist he is in much demand and has performed with The New York Philharmonic Horizon Series (guest artist), New York City Ballet and soloist or performer on numerous new music and jazz festivals in Europe, Japan and the USA. He has recorded and or performed with John Cage, Kent Nagano and Philip Glass among others. For the last fifteen years, while living in the East Village of New York City, Jim has been performing and recording with many of downtown New York’s most prominent composer/improvisers including John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Zeena Parkins and Anthony Coleman.
Jim’s music reflects his ongoing quest to explore the powerful, enlightening and spiritual secrets of drumming and is inspired by his recent association and work with Nii Tettey Tetteh, master musician from Ghana, with Milford Graves, learning drumming and healing through the heartbeat and his study of the spiritual songs of the Mbira Dzavadzimu from Zimbabwe.
This will be the second collaboration of these two artists. The last collaboration in Naples, Italy received rave reviews and sold out.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, March 22
LoVid + C.H.I.A.K.I.
Chiaki Watanabe, media artist known as C.H.I.A.K.I.(http://www.vusik.net), creates moving images that integrate digitally processed images with electronic music as a visual language. Both minimal and organic, she works with live video, performance, video installation and motion graphics. Chiaki will be performing her work “muxology” with Tristan Perich(live sound), an experimental visual music project that attempts to relate to brain waves from electro-psycho-physical perspectives. Muxing is a term derived from digital processing concerning the fusing of audio and visual data into one.
LoVid is Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus, who work in variety of sculptural/video manifestations. Using homemade electronic devices and DIY sculptural instruments, LoVid explores the translation, decay and preservation of natural, electrical and biological signals. Their multidirectional approach crosses the boundaries of the physically experienced, visually perceived, and sonically induced, creating work that is “romantic, aggressive wireless and wire-full”.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, March 23
Littoral
w/ Chris Mann, Lynne Tillman and Marc Ribot
Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and critic. AMERICAN GENIUS, A COMEDY is her fifth novel. Her previous novel, NO LEASE ON LIFE, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction (1998) and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her stories have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, such as Bomb, The New Gothic, New York Writes After September 11, Conjunctions, Black Clock, The Literary Review, McSweeney’s, and Cabinet. Her art and literary criticism has been published in Bookforum, Art in America, Artforum, Frieze, Aperture, Nest, and The New York Times Book Review. Her most recent story collection, THIS IS NOT IT (2002), contained stories and novellas that responded to the work of 22 contemporary artists. Tillman is Professor/Writer-in-Residence at The University at Albany. In 2006, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Chris Mann is an Australian composer, poet and performer specializing in the emerging field of Compositional Linguistics, described by Mann as “the mechanism whereby you understand what I’m thinking better than I do.”[1] He is currently based in New York City.
Mann studied Chinese and linguistics at the University of Melbourne, and his interest in language, systems, and philosophy is evident in his work. Mann founded the New Music Centre in 1972 and taught at the State College of Victoria in the mid-1970s. He then left teaching to work on research projects involving cultural ideas of information theory and has been recognized by UNESCO for his work in that field (ibid).
Mann moved to New York in the 1980s and was an associate of American composers John Cage and Kenneth Gaburro. He has performed text in collaboration with artists such as Tom Buckner, David Dunn, Annea Lockwood, Larry Polansky, and Robert Rauschenberg.
Mann’s unique style of reading incredibly dense, parenthetical texts at a high speed has brought him recognition as a unique performer and recording artist. He has had a variety of recording projects over the years, including the ensemble A Machine For Making Sense with Amanda Stewart and others, Chris Mann and the Impediments (with two backup singers and Mann reading a text simultaneously while only being able to hear one another), and Chris Mann and The Use. His piece The Plato Songs, a collaboration with Holland Hopson and R. Luke DuBois, features realtime spectral analysis and parsing of the voice into multiple channels based on phonemes.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, March 24
an extraordinary evening w/
jim pugliese’s “phase III” +
“nii tettey tetteh and the kusun ensemble”
first set
The Kusun Ensemble are an extraordinary group of musicians and dancers from Ghana, West Africa. Founded by Master Musician Nii Tettey Tetteh. The ensemble includes past and present members of The National Ballet and The Pan African Orchestra.
second set
Jim Pugliese will perform Urban Bushmusic with PHASE III, special guest Nora Balaban - timbila vocals mbira, members of The Kusun Ensemble and more…
PHASE III features: Christine Bard on drums and timbila, Kato Hideki on bass, Marco Cappelli on guitar, Michael Attias on sax & Jim Pugliese on drums, mbira, timbila and signals
8:00 p.m.; $10
Tuesday, March 27
an evening with jack rose
First set
OneLong Lash -Tim and Erica Barnes.
strange rhythmic feels, truncated onto another strange rhythmic feel, then pound on one chord for a dozen measures or so. Some how it all comes out as pop music.
Jack Rose-Member of the legendary drone/noise/folk group Pelt since 1995. Pelt along with Tower Recordings, UN, Charalambides was one of the early groups who forged a new sound that combined free improv, drone, traditional folk music in the early to mid nineties, later coined “weird new america” by the Wire’s David Keenan in the early oughts. Since 2001 Rose has pursued his own path in the solo acoustic guitar solo genre as invented by John Fahey. Like Fahey Rose draws his inspiration from early rural American musicians like Charley Patton, Skip James and Blind Blake. In addition to those influences he gleans inspiration from Robbie Basho, Ry Cooder, Zia M. Dagar, La Monte Young, Terry Riley. Jack incorporates all of these elements into his own idiosyncratic style and it is his sound and his alone. Since 2002 he has released 3 critically acclaimed LP’s for the Eclipse label, 2 cd’s for VHF, a 14 min track alongside fellow travelers: Rick Bishop, Stiffen Basho-Junghans and Tetuzi Akiyama on the now influential “Wooden Guitar” anthology released by Locust and one LP side on the massive triple LP set “You Shall Know the Roots, by it’s Fruits” with Six Organs of Admittance, Ursa, Joshua, Dreaded Fooled, MV and EEC that was released and went out of print this year.
This year his 4th LP/CD, “Kensigton Blues”, will be out in aug/sept on the VHF, Beautiful Happiness and Tequila Sunrise labels.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, March 29
corridors +
mario diaz de leon w/
the allsar quartet
set one
Corridors: solo audio/video project from Byron Westbrook (also of The Winter Pageant & Rhys Chatham’s Essentialist) using dialogue between multiple sound sources and dynamic light projection. His work involves performance of processed instrumental and environmental recordings through a multi-channel environment with a focus on redistributing distilled energy of sound and light.
This set will present a piece for guitar feedback, piano, field recordings as well as a piece for viola, organ, electronics using ISSUE Project Room’s 16-channel sound system.
set two
Mario Diaz de León lives in New York City, where he composes chamber music for instruments and electronics, presents solo performances, and collaborates with Jay King in the audiovisual duo King/Diaz de Leon. Composition studies with Maryanne Amacher, George Lewis, and Randy Coleman. His collaborative and solo work has been featured in performances and exhibitions at Roulette, The Museum of Biblical Art (NYC), PS1 Contemporary Art Center, MUSAC (León, Spain), Paris London New York (Brooklyn), Merkin Concert Hall, Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), The Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis), The Stone, Rose Studio at Lincoln Center, and Oberlin Conservatory. He is a recipient of the 2005 Meet the Composer / Van Lier Fellowship and a winner of ICE’s 21st Century Young Composers Project.
Diaz de León’s string quartet Psalterion, inspired by the first vision of Ezekiel and passages from the Urantia Book, re-tunes the strings to create tones that dance and shimmer. Tonight it will be presented alongside the improvisation style that was developed in parallel with its composition, using an amplified zither and mixer feedback.
The Allsar Quartet :
Amie Weiss, Erik Carlson - violins
Miranda Sielaff - viola
Chris Gross - cello
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, March 30
synaesthesia evening w/
the american synaesthesia association
“Synaesthesia Evening” with The American Synaesthesia Association will feature a screening of the documentary “Chroma” about the phenomena of synaesthesia, which features co-founders of the ASA, Pat Duffy, author and synaesthete, and Carol Steen, painter and synaesthete. Pat Duffy will be reading from her book, “Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens” a personal account of her experiences with synaesthesia. Carol Steen will talk and show images of her paintings of the forms and colors that she sees while listening to electronic music.
Also appearing will be Greta Berman, art historian at Julliard, who will speak on the relationship of synaesthesia and music. She will be accompanied by Synaesthetic musicians from the master class at Julliard School of Music.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, March 31
herb robertson and agusti fernandez
This duo represents a play between trumpet and piano along with all of the toys and preparations that Agusti and Herb will do to their instruments to create a pallette of unusual sounds unrecognizable as the goal during these improvisations. Mr. Robertson and Mr. Fernandez have been playing together for a while now usually in Barry Guy’s 10 piece BGNO (Barry Guy New Orchestra). They have a trio with Evan Parker and this will be their debut as a duo. These two sound producers together will show an inclination toward play and response while destroying (without damage) and re-building their principal instruments.
Agustí Fernandez considers himself a self trained musician even though he studied in Palma de Mallorca’s Conservatory and extended his formation at the Darmstadt Summer Courses and with Iannis Xenakis and Carles Santos, among others.
His interest in creative orientation was of a main importance in his discovery of two totemic figures of the avant-garde: Cecil Taylor in jazz and Iannis Xenakis in contemporary music.
His continuous collaborations with international free improvisers became fundamental for his maturity and progression, as well as for a later recognition inside this scene. Among many others, Agustí has played with Tom Cora, Evan Parker, Butch Morris, Peter Kowald, Marilyn Crispell, Carlos Zingaro, Lê Quan Ninh, Mat Maneri, William Parker, Susie Ibarra, Matthew Shipp, Assif Tsahar, John Butcher, Ramón López, Frances-Marie Uitti…
Clarence “Herb” Robertson is internationally renowned as an innovative instrumentalist, composer and arranger in both traditional and avant-garde jazz idioms and new music. Since the 1990’s Robertson has recorded and performed internationally with Tim Berne , The Mark Helias Band, The Fonda / Stevens Group, the Simon Nabatov Quintet, Andy Laster’s Hydra and the Barry Guy New Orchestra along with many others. He has since performed/recorded with Anthony Davis, Bobby Previte, Elliot Sharpe, David Sanborn, The George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, the London Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, the Klaus Konig Orchestra, Rashied Ali, Ray Anderson, Bill Frisell, Paul Motian and Dewey Redman, among many others. Currently Robertson’s own ensembles include The Double Infinitives, the Herb Robertson Brass Ensemble, and his improvising trios with Dominic Duval, Jay Rosen, Paul Smoker and Phil Haynes, The Downtown All Stars. Among Robertson’s performances and recordings for theatrical and dance productions are the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation with composer, David Behrman and the Public Theater production of Track and Field with composer, John Zorn.
“Robertson transforms his instrument into many things; makes it squeal, purr and chortle; plays beautiful soaring, almost classically contoured cries; and works out a Doppler shift effect, with fluffier notes approaching and receding, only to gradually skew out of equilibrium and become syncopated with ominous growls and squawks.”
Joseph Milazzo / One Final Note
8:00 p.m.; $10
Sensorium and the month of March have been funded in part by; Meet The Composer, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Brooklyn Arts Council, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and media The foundation, inc.
April
Friday - Sunday, April 6-8
s&w, p&p
sound and word, painting and print
‘P&P’ is an exhibition of recent paintings and prints. This exhibition will be on view each evening before the performances (6-8pm).
‘Simple Methods’ is Michael Graeve’s ongoing sound performance project. He assists his orchestra of record players and loudspeakers in picking themselves up: Rich textures, rhythms and tones evidence simple interactions between machine process and human gesture.
Michael’s work has persistently explored the interaction between painting and sound, and it situates itself in the oscillating terrain found between these two forms. He is fond of the manner in which they suggest new possibilities for each other, the manner in which they re-frame each other, the manner in which they desire to fall together and to fall apart.
Michael lives in Chicago and exhibits and performs internationally. Recent projects and residencies include ‘[silence]‘ (Gigantic ArtSpace NY), ‘Tonspur Residency’ (Vienna), ‘Dialogue 1′ (raum 2810 Bonn), ‘Sonambiente’ (Berlin) and ‘ISCP Residency’ (New York). His 13th year of art school is currently concluding with an MFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. At this school he also moonlights as an instructor for the Sound, Painting and Art History departments, where he designs and delivers syllabuses exploring the nexus between painting, sound and space. Branden W Joseph reviewed his work in the March 2005 issue of Artforum International.
Friday; 6-8pm
Exhibition opening ‘P&P’
8pm Performances ($10):
Alison Knowles performs with Jessica Higgins
Nicolas Collins performs ‘Duck Pond’
Saturday; 6-8pm
Exhibition viewing ‘P&P’
8pm Performances ($10):
Michael Graeve performs ‘Simple Methods’
Chris Mann performs ‘told you so’
Sunday; 6-8pm
6-8pm Exhibition viewing ‘P&P’
8pm Performances ($10):
Kenneth Goldsmith and David Grubbs
Dan St. Clair and Aki Sasamoto
Nicolas Collins
Duck Pond — many microphones, many speakers, trying not to feed back, but failing.
Nicolas Collins studied composition with Alvin Lucier, worked for many years with David Tudor, and has collaborated with soloists and ensembles around the world. He lived most of the 1990s in Europe, where he was Visiting Artistic Director of Stichting STEIM (Amsterdam), and a DAAD composer-in-residence in Berlin. He is a Professor in the Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Editor-in-Chief of the Leonardo Music Journal. Recent recordings are available on PlateLunch, Periplum and Apestaartje. His book, ‘Handmade Electronic Music - The Art of Hardware Hacking’, was published by Routledge in 2006. www.nicolascollins.com
Kenneth Goldsmith and David Grubbs
Kenneth Goldsmith and David Grubbs will present a collaborative performance of Kenneth Goldsmith’s new book “Traffic” (Make Now Press, 2007). This is their second collaborative performance - the first one was a wonderful performance at IPR in June of 2005.
David Grubbs is a professor of radio and sound art at Brooklyn College, CUNY. He has been called one of two “Best Teachers for an Indie-Rocker to Admire” in the Village Voice and “le plus Français des Américains” in Libération. Grubbs has released nine solo albums and played in numerous groups; his most recent release is Souls of the Labadie Tract (Blue Chopsticks), a collaboration with poet Susan Howe. www.bluechopsticks.org
Kenneth Goldsmith is a poet, writer and critic. He is founding editor of UbuWeb, teaches Poetics and Poetic Practice at the University of Pennsylvania and is Senior Editor of PENNsound. He hosts a weekly radio show at WFMU and has published eight books of poetry.http://www.ubu.com/contemp/goldsmith/index.html
Alison Knowles, with Jessica Higgins
Real-time collages on a lantern slide projector, arrangements of research on beans- a projected poetry of images and sounds.
Alison Knowles is an artist known for her sound works, installations, performances, publications and her association with Fluxus. She is obsessed with beans, and her captivating voice and attention to acoustic gesture is mesmerizing. www.aknowles.com
Chris Mann
‘told you so’.
language is the mechanism whereby you understand what i’m thinking better than i do (where ‘i’ is defined by those changes for which i is required).
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, April 12
an evening with ipr’s artist in residence audrey chen
AUDREY CHEN (cello, voice, electronics) w/
AKI ONDA (tapes) and KATT HERNANDEZ (violin)
Aki Onda is a self-taught electronic musician, composer and producer, as well as a photographer. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories, for which he plays field-recording sounds he recorded himself as a diary. He recently started another project Cinemage, which is composed of slide projections of still photo images and improvised music. He has collaborated with such artists as Alan Licht, Loren Conners, Michael Snow, Shelley Hirsch, Ikue Mori, Noël Akchote, Jac Berrocal, and Linda Sharrock.
Focused primarily on freely improvised music, Katt Hernandez draws a firey
array of electronic-like sounds and keening melodies from her completely
accoustic violin. She works extensively with microtonality, drawn from a
study of a broad mixture of sources. Katt has recently moved to
Philadelphia, after living in the Boston area for nine years, playing the
violin, running spaces, and producing shows. She immediately became
involved in performances on the Bowerbird, Soundfield,and Ars Nova series’
upon her arrival. Over the last year, Katt toured the U.S. with Vashti
Bunyan, as well as the Mill Town/Mall Town Bicycle Tour of performance
artists and electronic musicians from Providence, RI burgeoning arts
community. Before leaving Boston, she also participated in the Voltaic
Vaudeville festival, wherein she played Solo, with butoh dancer Jennifer
Hicks, and with the Beat Circus. Katt has collaborated with a
magnificently variated sea of musicians, dancers, and others including-
but certainly not limited to- Joe Maneri, Zack Fuller, David Maxwell,
Nicole Bindler, John Voigt, Allisa Cardone, Gordon Beeferman, Jonathan
Vincent, Walter Wright, Joe Burgio, Eric Rosenthal, Jeff Arnal, Jack
Wright, Andrew Neumann, and Hans Rickheit. She has twice been invited to
perform on the Autumn Uprising, High Zero,and Improvised and Otherwise
festivals, and has also appeared on a number of other festivals throughout
the country. She has been a guest artist at MIT, Harvard, University of
Indiana and the New England Conservatory, and performed in a vast slew of
localized venues and life-making places throughout the east coast
metropolii.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, April 13
keith rowe
rick reed
michael haleta
Keith Rowe (born March 16, 1940 in Plymouth, England) is an English free
improvisation guitarist. Rowe is a founding member of AMM in the mid-1960s (though in 2004 he quit that group for the second time) and a founding member of M.I.M.E.O. He
trained as a visual artist, and Rowe’s paintings–often reminsicent of Pop Art–have been featured on most of his own albums. After years of obscurity, Rowe has achieved a level of relative notoriety, and since the late 1990s has kept up a busy recording and touring schedule. He is seen as a godfather of electroacoustic improvisation, and many of his recent recordings have been released by Erstwhile Records.
Rick Reed (b. 1957) is an entirely self-taught composer/visual artist
who has been working in the Austin music underground for the past 25
years. Using old battered electronic devices like sine wave
generators, short wave radios and a vintage EMS analogue synthesizer,
Reed has performed solo and with various electronic/noise groups
including Frequency Curtain, Abrasion Ensemble, FTC and many others. The
Spring 2006 issue of Signal To Noise Magazine said of his most recent CD
release, Dark Skies at Noon, that “(Reed works) a complex weave of sounds
plucked from the dawn of electronic music-or maybe stolen from some future
fading memory of it’s passing”.
Since the early 90s, Reed has released several LPs and CDs on labels
such as Ecstatic Peace, Beta-Lactam Ring, Pale Disc Japan and Elevator
Bath. Among other projects, he’s been the host of Commercial Suicide, a long
running ‘other worldly’ music radio program heard on a local station, KOOP
FM . He is also the musical director of an experimental music concert series
called Toneburst, which is dedicated to promoting unheard or underexposed
musicians from the Austin new music community. Since 2004, he has worked
closely with New York filmmaker Ken Jacobs on three soundtracks for his
Nervous Magic Lantern displays, one of which, entitled “Capitalism:Child
Labor”, had it’s world premiere at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival. Reed
has 3 new releases due out later this year, a new CD on Spectral House, a
Ken Jacobs DVD project and a picture disc LP on Elevator Bath.
Michael Haleta
(b. 1978) is a multidisciplinary artist based in New Jersey. A classically trained cellist turn electro acoustic composer interested in individual sounds and bits rather than complete things. Haleta has released audio for: Alienation, Raw Special Effects (RSE), Carpark and Hoss records. Michael and his wife Dawn run the small edition label/shop, Raw Special Effects (RSE) which is scheduled to release material by EVOL, Peter Rehberg and others within the upcoming year. Shows/Exhibits/Happenings: Maryland Institute College of Art (Brown Hall) Baltimore, Maryland, E-Werk Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany, Transmissions Festival 003 (2001) Chicago, Illinois, Jeff the Pidgeon, Allentown, PA, Whitney ISP Exhibit at CUNY Graduate Center + other
galleries, festivals, bars and clubs.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, April 14
david linton & Z’EV
While they have known each other for over 25 years sonic etcetera artists David Linton and Z’EV have never before performed together in NYC. Their first appearance together occurred on Nov 11th 2006 in Bremen and a collaborative cd released in conjunction with that performance is available through the German company Die Stadt [diestadtmusik.de]. The evening will begin with some acoustic phenomena from Z’EV, followed by an electronic A/V set by David and end with an electro-acoustic A/V duet. Get set for a historic occasion and rare opportunity to see two seminal artists at the top of their game.
David Linton entered the downtown NY experimental music scene through the art punk garage door at the tail end of the 1970’s. Initially - on drums - he performed and recorded with Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Lee Ranaldo, Elliott Sharp, as well as his own collaborative band Interference - among others…
From here he moved - on one hand - to electro-acoustic improvisation and live solo performance on his own customized proto electronic drum kit… and - on the other - into sound score design for dance and theater - producing dozens of works in this vein between the mid 80’s & mid 90’s. Notable among these - his scores for The Wooster Group & for choreographers Karole Armitage & Stephen Petronio.
By the early 1990’s, somewhat bored and disillusioned with the conventions of the Improv, Indie Rock , and Post Modern Dance scenes to which he had contributed for years, David was drawn to embrace Techno and the emergent ‘Immersive’ movement in electronic music and digital media. This in turn led to a focus on venue/audience development & ‘event design’ in the course of advocating the new popular modes of realtime audio and visual performance demonstrated in catalytic events like SoundLab (host), Unitygain (organizer/curator), & Unitygain Television (producer/director).
Linton’s most recent solo audio-visual performance work with “The Bicameral Research Sound and Projection System” brings things full circle drawing on his over 25 years of experience in the multi media arts to mark the reaffirmation of the pre-eminent organic values embodied in realtime analog processes in the worlds of sound and visual media.
z’ev TEXT/SOUND ARTS
1972 chosen for the SECOND GENERATION show at the Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco. Work at this time was primarily Sound and Visual poetries. 1976 concentration on acoustic phenomena, developing a wide range of concussive and percussive instruments, sound scultptures and assemblages devoted to their productions as the basis for subsequent solo work. 1977-8 one of the founders of the so-called Industrial Music/Art Movement codified in the Industrial Culture Handbook published by RE/search in 1983. Began touring – performance/installations in diverse contexts [from Documenta to Amsterdam's Concertgebouw to NYC's Public Theatre and Mudd Club] - currently in over 100 cities in over 20 countries. 1981 produced shake, rattle & roll VHS, this was the first ‘commercial’ music/art video, Fetish Records UK release. salts of heavy metals EP, Lust/Unlust NYC release. production and decay of spatial relations LP, Backstreet Backlash NL release. 1983-94 resided in Amsterdam, continued touring and releasing over 30 collections of musics on lp’s, cassettes and cd’s. 1986-90 Guest teacher in Composition + Improvisation at the Theatre School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam.
Began working with London Spectacle Group, The Bow Gamelan. 1990 work with Dutch house musician DJ DANO resulted in what became known as Hard Core/Gabbber [tempos over 150 bpm]. 1992 my 1988 LP, BUST THIS! chosen by The Wire as one of the 50 best percussion-based records of all time, and my first book Rhythmajik: practical uses of number, rhythm and sound was published by Temple Press UK.
1994-2003 retired from artistic endeavors. July 2003 now out of retirement my focus has been on cooperations and collaborations, resulting in works with: Oren Ambarchi, Nigel Ayres, Joh Irmler/Faust, HATI, David Jackman, KK.Null, David Linton, Francisco Lopez, BJ Nilsen, Stephen O’Malley, Ramona Ponzini, Peter Rehberg, Boyd Rice, Kasper T. Toeplitz, and Chris Watson.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Wednesday, April 18
A PictureBox night at Issue Project Room
PictureBox is a Grammy-Award winning publisher and visual culture studio based in Brooklyn, New York. Led by art director and editor Dan Nadel, PictureBox specializes in bringing artists’ visions to
print in startling and unexpected ways. Nadel art directs and oversees all PictureBox projects, from CDs to posters to books.
Amy Lockhart is a Vancouver-based filmmaker, animator and painter. She’ll be screening some of her short films collected under the moniker Walk For Walk.
Matthew Thurber is a Brooklyn-based cartoonist and musician who creates 19th century versions of multi-media performances with masks, scrolls, and a small guitar.
Gary Panter is the legendary artist behind Jimbo and the designer of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. His paintings, comics, and graphics have influenced generations of artists. He will be performing vocal and guitar songs for the first time in over three decades. Appearing with Panter will be Devin Flynn.
Devin Flynn is part of the bands Plate Tectonics and Gangstahs Wit Gats and has a cartoon show on Adult Swim’s website.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, April 19
pure horsehair w/
john haskell, pamela ryder, garrett devoe & shahzad ismaily
John Haskell is the author of I AM NOT JACKSON POLLOCK and AMERICAN PURGATORIO, and has contributed to n+1, A Public Space, the KGBbar website, and recently, a book about memorable concerts.
Pamela Ryder’s fiction has appeared in many literary journals. Her
latest work, Correction of Drift: A Novel in Stories, is due for
publication in Spring 2008.
Pure Horsehair, is based on the songs of singer/guitarist Garrett
Devoe and the multi-instrumental talents of Shahzad Ismaily.
Initially, bare bones acoustic music accompanied by free form
improvised percussion, their sound has evolved into more developed
arrangements performed with nearly telepathic interplay.
Garrett Devoe was born in Fort Huatchuka, AZ and raised three hours north
of New York in Mechanicville. After high school he traveled across
the country, working various jobs, learning, listening to guitarists
such as John Fahey and Sandy Bull and lyricists like Robert Hunter and
Leonard Cohen. Garrett eventually settled and began performing in
Phoenix, AZ before landing in New York in late 2000. It was in
Brooklyn where he began collaborating with Shahzad, also a recent
transplant from Phoenix.
Shahzad Ismaily, was born of Pakistani descent in rural Pennsylvania, taught
himself music theory and composition while studying pre-med in Arizona
and in his time in New York has played on stage and in the studio with
multiple musicians (Marc Ribot, Nels Cline, Cyro Baptista, Laurie
Anderson etc.).
Late 2005, saw to the completion of Pure Horsehair’s first full
length cd, ‘Aubade’, initiated by the gift of four blank reels of tape
and the loaning of an eight track 1/2″ recording studio. The album was
then recorded by Garrett in his Brooklyn apartment and was later mixed
by Joe Blaney (producer/engineer of White Magic, The Clash), whom
they are currently recording a follow up with.
Together, they has been performing and recording regularly since
2003 and has shared bills with Alec Ounsworth (clapyourhandssayyeah),
Kyp Malone and Gerard Smith of TV on the Radio, Viking Moses, Carla
Bozulich, T.K. Webb, PG Six, and Richard Buckner. In 2006, they
opened for Laura Veirs on her European tour, won over audiences
unfamiliar with their music and returned sold out of their new album.
The last performance of that tour, at Rouen Sainte Pelletiers, was
recorded by the french label ad-luna and is set to be released in
early 2007.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, April 20
anthony coleman +
kioku
ANTHONY COLEMAN
Composer-keyboardist Anthony Coleman performs, records, and inspires throughout the world. Whether as a bandleader, a sideman, or solo pianist, the work of Anthony Coleman forms an important contribution and has helped to shape and influence the course of New York’s Downtown Music scene over the last two decades.
This performance is in preparation for Coleman’s upcoming CD of his Chamber Music, to be recorded for New World Records (look for more such performances as the year progresses…)
with
Marty Ehrlich, Doug Wieselman, Jim Pugliese, Ned Rothenberg, Jacob Garchik, Dan Barrett, Joe Kubera, Ted Reichman. Marco Cappelli and Anthony Coleman
The King of Kabay
Mise en Abime
KIOKU
Based in New York City, the musical group KIOKU presents traditional Asian folk music within a new context of collaborative experimentation and improvisation. The trio consists of Wynn Yamami (East and Southeast Asian percussion, including Japanese taiko, Korean gongs, and Filipino kulintang),Christopher Ariza (live laptop electronics), and Ali Sakkal (saxophones, percussion). While committed to the preservation of musical traditions, KIOKU (Japanese for “memory”) acknowledges the plasticity of tradition and freely adopts musical techniques found within improv-based and new music circles.
www.kiokugroup.com
Wynn Yamami began his taiko studies with the San Jose Junior Taiko Group and later trained with Soh Daiko, Kiyonari Tosha of the Nihon Taiko Dojo, Takada Yosuke of the Tokyo Chindon Club, the Tachibana School of Nihon Buyou, and ethnomusicologist Terada Yoshitaka. Now based in New York City, he has performed with a wide variety of musicians including Arturo O’Farrill and the Lincoln Center Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Badal Roy, and Giovanni Hidalgo at such venues as Galapagos, Birdland, Merkin Concert Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Arthur Ashe Stadium. He has performed taiko and percussion for theater and dance productions at the NYC Fringe Festival and the United Nations and has appeared in television commercials for the US Open and Iron Chef. When he is not performing with KIOKU, Wynn straps on the portable Japanese drum unit (chindon) with HAPPYFUNSMILE, a group devoted to Japanese street music, enka, bon-odori tunes, and Okinawan rock.
Born in Kuwait of Iraqi descent, saxophonist Ali Sakkal draws from a dynamic blend of musical influences, from the European classical tradition and Middle Eastern music to the trans-Atlantic avant-garde. Ali has studied with Branford Marsalis, Oliver Lake, John Purcell, Hafez Modirzadeh, Andrew Speight, and classical virtuoso Greg Dufford. As a recipient of the Pone Music Scholarship, Ali spent his undergraduate years at San Francisco State University and had the opportunity to study at Kingston University of London under the tutelage of Duncan Lamont Jr. and the European free-jazz pioneer Evan Parker. An Americorps teaching participant, Ali has spent the past few years as a music educator in New York City public schools. Active in both the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, he has performed with Heftpistole, fAt kiD, the Gabe Stivala Quartet, HAPPYFUNSMILE, and the progressive improvisational quartet FISH KNUCKLE at such venues as the Knitting Factory, Galapagos, the Luggage Store and the Monterey, Umbria, and Montreaux Jazz Festivals.
Christopher Ariza is a composer and programmer of sonic structures and systems. He has composed for theatre, film, concert-hall, and interactive media, and his works have been performed at numerous concerts and festivals. Recognitions in composition include the Hugh MacColl prize (1999) and the John Green Fellowship in Composition (1999) from Harvard University, two BMI Student Composer Awards (2001, 2002), and a finalist designation in the 25th Concorso Internazionale “Luigi Russolo” (2003); commissions include new works for the 2003-2004 tour of the Los Angeles based TaikoProject. Research grants include a U. S. Fulbright grant (2004) to the Institute of Sonology, The Hague, the Netherlands, for research in algorithmic composition system design. His research in generative music systems and computer-aided algorithmic composition has been published in journals and presented at numerous national and international conferences, and is made available through the open-source, cross-platform software athenaCL. His music, software, and research are distributed via flexatone h.f.p.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, April 21
nick rosen trio + invert
Nick Rosen Trio with Mary Halverson and Ches Smith
The Nick Rosen group was founded on the principle of bringing joy to
people through the wonders of sound. The group focuses on bringing music to
all people and not just musicians or avid music fans. The music is all
original material and is heavily influenced by soul music, gospel music,
jazz, and nature. The music is new and innovative while at the same time
completely grounded and easy to understand, anyone can appreciate it. If the
band can put smiles on more peoples faces then its mission has been
accomplished.
Nick Rosen is a freelance bassist/composer/improviser that resides in Los
Feliz, CA. In 2002, Nick played a major role in helping jazz legend Henry
Grimes back onto the jazz scene after a 35 year break; Nick was Henry’s only
student and also played in a band with Henry that featured Nels Cline (of
Wilco) and Vinny Golia. Nick has been featured in many major publications,
including: The Hollywood reporters, the LA Times front page, Jazz Times,
the LA Weekly, and Vanity Fair; there is also a script about Nick’s life
currently in development. Nick was a featured soloist at the 2003 vision
festival in New York City playing with bassist William Parkers big band.
Currently Nick leads his own group, the Nick Rosen Ensemble, the plays all
his compositions and arrangements and is also a member of the Pan Afrikan
Peoples Arkestra, The Arthur Blythe Group, The Michael McDaniel quartet
featuring Sonhip Theus, Adam Rudolph’s Organic Orchestra, as well as many
projects with producer Carlos Nino (including Build an Ark and the Life
Force Trio), and collaborating with award winning writer Chris Abani (Nick
is co-producing/writing for Chris’s debut album). Nick has recorded with
Ndugu Chancelor, Big Black, Pharoah Sanders, X-Ray Dog music, and has
performed with Billy Bang, Joe LaBarbera, The Chris Walden Big Band, Bennie
Maupin, Bobby Bradford, Sherman Ferguson, Ches Smith, Garrett Smith, Nels
Cline, Wadada Leo Smith, Adam Benjamin and has had his compositions
recorded in numerous countries including France, Italy, Germany, Japan, and
the US. One of Nick’s compositions is featured on the upcoming Build an Ark
album “Dawn” (August, 2007) which features Big Black, Pharoah Sanders, Ralph
“Buzzy” Jones, Jesse Sharps, and many more. Nick currently studies privately
with Charlie Haden, Darek Oles, and Peter Rofe.
Invert, the “upside down” string quartet featuring cellists Steven Berson
and Chris George, violinist Helen Yee, and violist Chris Jenkins, will be
performing at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, New York on April 21, 2007 to
kick-off the release of their new full length third CD. Entitled “The Strange
Parade,” Invert’s latest release is a fresh departure, even for this already
alternative string quartet. The CD includes fourteen pieces that showcase Invert’
s distinctive mix of compositions and improvisations by members of the band,
and their own arrangement of Japanese composer Shigeru Umebayashi’s “Yumeji’s
Theme.” What sets “The Strange Parade” apart from their previous
recordings is the inclusion of two cuts that feature Roberto Juan Rodriguez on
drums.
Invert’s often groove-driven music gets an extra rhythmic boost from
Rodriguez (who has performed with Joe Jackson, Paul Simon, Paquito D’Rivera, Ruben
Blades and Marc Ribot among numerous others) on the songs “Dog Days” and “The
Peak.”
Invert’s unconventional approach to chamber string performance challenges the
repertoire and revises the structure of traditional string quartets. Since
coming together in 1999, the group has created its own brand of chamber music by
blending numerous genres into its compositions and performance style.
Drawing from diverse, eclectic musical backgrounds, Invert’s members defy tradition
by being firmly rooted in rock, jazz and world musics rather than the
classical upbringing typical of most string players. The group’s compositions range
from moody pieces evocative of expressionist cinema soundtracks to driving
melodic works, often leaving open sections for improvisation that add to the
excitement of their live performances.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Wednesday, April 25
littoral:
rick moody +
wingdale community singers
About The Wingdale Community Singers:
Formed in 2002 by Rick Moody (acoustic guitar, vocals) and Hannah Marcus (acoustic guitar, piano, fiddle, vocals). David Grubbs, of the Red Krayola, Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and many other bands, joined in 2003. He plays many instruments, though mostly the electric guitar, and sings sometimes. Nina Katchadourian (acoustic guitar, accordion, recorder, tomato, vocals) joined in 2006, as did Abe Streep (fiddle, mandolin). The Wingdale Community Singers play folk music that could have been written any time in the last sixty years. It’s Old Time, it’s High Modernist, it’s experimental, it’s resistant to interpretation, it’s funny sometimes, it’s full of dread other times. One aspect remains throughout: there’s a lot of singing. And a lot of harmony.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, April 26
Music for music boxes, glass instruments, mbiras, and pianos
Composers John Morton and Miguel Frasconi present an
evening of solo and duo music for re-configured and
de-evolved musical instruments with electronics.
These two composers share a unique interest in going
beyond the intended use of simple sound making devices
to reveal striking new compositions. Featured on the
program will be Teetines, a collaboration using
processed music box comb (Morton) plus mbiras and toy
pianos (Frasconi) and works for music boxes and
electronics from Morton’s recently released CD on
innova, Solo Traveler. Also presented will be a new
collaboration for piano and music boxes, and new work
by Miguel Frasconi for his collection of struck,
blown, and bowed glass instruments.
For the past several years, John Morton has focused on
the manipulation, alteration, and electronic
processing of music boxes. He has constructed
large-scale music boxes as well as outdoor sound
sculptures. Besides performing in concert on his music
box instrument, Morton has created site-specific works
including a music box sound installation for the
Hudson River Museum. He received NYFA Fellowships in
2002 and 2006, and his first CD on innova, Outlier,
was the subject of a feature on National Public Radio
(NPR). He is currently working on SonicHudson, a
sound installation for the Piermont, NY Library funded
by the New York Music Fund.
Miguel Frasconi uses glass objects, electronics,
keyboards, and “de-evolved” instruments to create
music that sounds from a uniquely imagined tradition.
His glass instruments have been called “a beautiful
menagerie of pealing contraptions” (Time Out NY),
while his music has been called “lyrical and stormy”
(New York Times). His recent activities include a new
score for choreographer Alonzo King, performances with
electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick, a newly
commissioned work for Gamelan Son of Lion, and
concerts with the composers collective Ne(x)tworks.
He is currently artist in residence at Harvestworks
electronic media studios.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, April 27
evidence — iris
dvd release party
Come celebrate the release of Iris, the new DVD collection of
collaborative pieces by Evidence and twelve of their favorite video
artists.
Tonight, Evidence will perform two live sets, joined by two of the
featured video artists: Madeleine Gallagher and Benton-C Bainbridge.
IRIS, the second CD release from the duo Evidence (Stephan Moore and
Scott Smallwood) on the Deep Listening label, is also their first
video release. The DVD has the same sonic material as the music on
the CD, but it features video pieces by the duo’s favorite live-video
performers, including Benton-C Bainbridge, Betsey Biggs, Fi$h2000,
Madeleine Gallagher, Dawn Haleta, David Lublin, Jonathan Lee Marcus,
Olivia Robinson, skfl, Diana Reed Slattery, Jack Turner and Walter
Wright. These pieces emphasize the spontaneity of the artists’ live
performances, the practice of using “found” materials, and suggest
the emergence of a regional aesthetic stemming from the recent hotbed
of media performance centered around Troy, New York. The DVD was
produced with a generous grant from mediaThe, inc.
8:00 p.m.; $10, or $25 including a copy of the DVD (regular DVD price $21)
Saturday, April 28
First set
Loren Connor solo
Second set
Sean Meehan and Taku Unami duo
Loren Connors has improvised and composed original guitar music for
about three decades. His music – which combines the aesthetics of blues,
Irish airs and other music genres – has been recorded on Family
Vineyard, Drag City, Table of the Elements, RoadCone and other labels. He
has performed with Alan Licht, Jim O’Rourke, Derek Bailey, John Fahey,
Keiji Haino, Thurston Moore, Suzanne Langille, poet Steve Dalachinsky,
and other artists
8:00 p.m.; $10
ISSUE Project Room honors “Women’s Work,” curated by IPR Artistic Director, Suzanne Fiol, in a month long program during May 2007. Participating women artists will present works that address the range of topics, politics and emotion found in contemporary performance today. Women’s Work will be an open dialog between the participating artists and their projects, presented in an effort to help liberate the definition of “Women’s Work” in the arts.
Thursday, May 3
littoral
reading series
christine schutt
diane williams
mary caponegro
musical guest tba
Christine Schutt is the author of the novel “Florida” and two collections of short stories, “Nightwork” and most recently “A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer.” Her work has garnered O’Henry and Pushcart Prizes. She is a senior editor of the literary annual, Noon. Schutt lives and teaches in New York.
Diane Williams is the author of six books of fiction. Her newest book, “It Was Like My Trying To Have A Tender-Hearted Nature,” is due out from FC2 in the fall. She is the founding editor of Noon.
Mary Caponegro is the author of “Tales From the Next Village,” “The Star Cafe,” “Five Doubts,” and “The Complexities of Intimacy.” She has received a General Electric Award, the Rome Prize in Literature, the Bruno-Arcudi Award, and a Lannan Literary Residency. Caponegro is the Richard B. Fisher Family Professor of Writing and Literature at Bard College and has previously taught at Brown University, RISD, The Institute of American Indian Arts, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Syracuse University.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, May 4
First set
Du Yun with John Mannion and Jeremy Nissan
obliteration ( composed by Du Yun – 2007)
Obliteration was written for the Festival Internacional Cervantino (Mexico) where Du Yun, Jeremy and John are invited to appear as a group.
As a group, we are trying to play the subdued within the loudness.
Du Yun -processed Chinese zither, voice
John Mannion- laptop
Jeremy Nissan- live electronics, voice
Du Yun’s music spans from writing for concert halls, experimental theaters to improvising at avant-garde venues. Her approach to music, regardless its formation, has always aimed to be ultimately visceral and corporeal. She continues to explore the definition of genre-defying.
Jeremy Nissan plays solo under the name of Teeny Bopper. He is also in bands such as Yellow Tears, Halflings and Anamnesis. Jeremy is dedicated to making extreme music.
Aside from John Mannion’ own solo music project, he also plays in The Cathode Terror Secretion and Anamnesis.
Both John and Jeremy are with the noise label, Accretion Disk.
Second set
harvey mars
rebecca moore and friends
a mysterious and abstract project featuring Rebecca and members of her Prevention of Blindness ensemble .performing new works
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, May 5
angela jaeger
jutta koether
GRACE / WING will be performed by Angela Jaeger through voice - text - drawings, accompanied by tapes and a snare drum.
Angela Jaeger is a New York-based singer who has recorded and performed with a diverse group of musicians including PigBag, The Drowning Craze, Bush Tetras, Billy McKenzie, David Cunningham, Amy Rigby, Jim Sclavunos and Alan Licht. She recently gave a debut joint reading of her Punk Diary project with writer/journalist Byron Coley at Issue Project Room and is currently shaping this material into book form.
METALIST MOMENT (extended version 2007), a presentation with text, music and video-projection by Jutta Koether
Jutta Koether is a New York-based German painter, writer, rock and art critic, musician and performance artist, with projects often interlacing all of these assumed roles. She has exhibited widely at a range of international galleries including Galerie Daniel Buchloz (Cologne), Reena Spaulings Fine Art (New York), White Columns (New York), Kunstlerhaus Vienna, The Swiss Institute (New York), and is a contributor to publications such as Artforum and Afterall. Koether regularly collaborates with Kim Gordon on installations and performance projects.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, May 10
Poetry reading series
betsy andrews
BETSY ANDREWS hosts Nada Gordon, Sharon Mesmer, Susan Briante, Cathy Eisenhower, Jennifer Bartlett, Brenda Ijima, Akilah Oliver, and Kristen Prevallet, all of whom read from new books published in 2007.
Betsy Andrews is the author of “New Jersey,” the winner of the 2007 Brittingham Prize (University of Wisconsin Press). She is also author of the chapbook, “She-Devil” (Sardines Press, 2004) and “In Trouble” (Boog, 2005), and the artist’s book, “Supercollider,” a collaboration with artist Peter Fox. Her work has appeared most recently in Twenty-Six, Five Fingers Review, PRACTICE, O Poss, and Torch. Andrews considers herself a Brooklynite.
Jennifer Bartlett has recently published her poems in How2, Dirt, Ratapallax, and WSQ. She was a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow. Her first collection of poetry, “Derivative of the Moving Image,” is forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press, Nov. 2007. She is the editor of Saint Elizabeth Street: A Journal for Poetry and writes a poetry and poetics blog on the website: saintelizabethstreet.blogspot.com
Cathy Eisenhower is a poet-librarian living in Washington, DC. She runs the Interrupting Cow, a chapbook press, and translates the work of Argentine poet Diana Bellessi. Her first full-length collection, “Clearing Without Reversal,” comes out with Edge Books in 2007.
Brenda Iijima is the author of “Around Sea” (O Books) and three forthcoming titles: “Animate, Inanimate Aims” (Litmus Press), “Eco Quarry Bellwether” (Outside Voices) and “Rabbit Lesson,” a chapbook. She is the publisher of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs which is currently assembling a collection of writings that centers on how writing, poetry specifically, contends with issues of environmental duress. Iijima is also a visual artist and lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
Susan Briante is the Assistant Professeur of Aesthetic Studies at UTexas. She is the author of “Pioneers in the Study of Motion” (Ahsahta).
Sharon Mesmer is the author of “Annoying Diabetic Bitch” (ComboArts).
Kristin Prevallet is a poet, critic and educator living in Brooklyn. She is the author of “I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time,” (Essay Press, Spring 07), “Shadow Evidence Intelligence” (Factory School, 2006) and “Scratch Sides: Poetry, Documentation and Image-text Projects” (Skanky Possum, 2003). The Helen Adam Reader, which she edited and introduced, is in production with the National Poetry Foundation.
Nada Gordon is the author of four poetry books: “Folly” (just released on Roof Books), “V. Imp,” “Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?,” “foreign bodie” (with Gary Sullivan) and an epistolary techno-romantic non-fiction novel called, “Swoon.” Visit her blog at http://ululate.blogspot.com.
Akilah Oliver is the author of “the she said dialogues: flesh memory” (Smokeproof/Erudite Fangs, 1999), a book of experimental prose poetry. Her chapbooks include “a(A)ugust” (Yo-Yo Labs, 2007), “Corruptions” (Belladonna, 2006) and “An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet” (Farfalla Press, 2004). She is on faculty at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program and has previously taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Oliver currently lives in Brooklyn.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, May 11
vanessa skantze
LUCIFER originally premiered at Zeitgeist Theatre Experiments in New Orleans, 2001, recreates the mysteries and covenant of this extraordinary creature. Inflamed by a radical reading of Milton and filtered through the study and experience of spiritual exile, a sound trio with Vanessa Skantze, Celadon and Natasatan of In the Deep Museum, will augment the descent of Lucifer. The piece is a movement/voice work with sound accompaniment that ranges from being assaultive to haunting.
Vanessa Skantze is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work embraces butoh dance, voice, percussion, writing and spoken word performance, along with metal and stone sculpture. She has practiced and taught butoh dance since 2001 when she co-founded the ensemble Death Posture in New Orleans with experimental guitarists Donald Miller and Rob Cambre and dancer Alex Haverfield. She trains and performs yearly with her teacher Atsushi Takenouchi, creator of Jinen Butoh, which embraces life and death in a body always dancing at its limit.
Celadon plays the soundscapes, noise, bass and keyboards. An industrial - electronic musician, Celadon (Eric Maia) has recently released a CD titled Post-Industrial Delicacies. Celadon crafts intricate soundscapes from found sounds, feedback, and other sonic sources. He also provides engineering and recording for In the Deep Museum’s projects.
Natasatán plays the guitar, noise and percussion. Natasatán’s metal background is revealed in his early band, cure for god. His guitar performance with In the Deep Museum ranges from delicate to eerie to thunderous.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, May 12
miya masaoka
joan labarbara
A duet with two extraordinary musicians, MIYA MASAOKO (koto) and ANTHONY COLEMAN (piano)
Miya Masaoka is a musician, composer, and sound artist, who has created works for koto and electronics, Laser Koto, field recordings, laptop, video and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestras and mixed choirs. In her pieces she has investigated the sound and movement of insects, as well as the physiological response of plants, the human brain and her own body. Within these varied contexts her performance work investigates the interactive, collaborative aspects of sound, improvisation, nature and society. Her on-the-job training has been with: Steve Coleman, Fred Frith, George Lewis, Ornette Coleman, and Dr. L Subramaniam. She has been a koto soloist with Berkeley Symphony and Toshiko Akiyohsi’s Jazz Orchestra and has led her own ensembles. In addition, she has worked with: Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman, Pamela Z, Amir El Safar, Gerry Hemingway, Joan Jeanrenaud, Joelle Leandre and India Cooke, Peter Kowald and John Butcher, to name a few. Recently, Masaoka has composed for Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet.
PASSING ANGELS, a new work composed and performed outdoors by Joan La Barbara (multiple voices: one live and many pre-recorded), will be utilizing IPR’s special 16-speaker array, engineered by Stephan Moore.
Joan LaBarbara is composer, performer and sound artist who has created sound scores for film, video and dance. She is considered “one of the great vocal virtuosas of our time” (San Francisco Examiner) and has received the following: the Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition, DAAD Artist-in-Residency in Berlin, NEA grants and numerous commissions. Her recordings include: “ShamanSong” (New World) and “Voice is the Original Instrument” (Lovely Music), hailed as one of The Wire’s 10 best reissues. “73 Poems,” her collaboration with text-artist Kenneth Goldsmith, was included in The Whitney Museum American Century Part II: SoundWorks. La Barbara is currently composing an opera inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, May 17
an evening with ipr’s artist-in-residence audrey chen
AUDREY CHEN (cello, voice, electronics)
MV CARBON (voice, electronics)
MARINA ROSENFELD (turntables, electronics)
KATHERINE LIBEROVSKAYA (video)
Spring 2007 Artist-in-Residence Audrey Chen will perform her third concert in this new collaboration for IPR’s “Women’s Work.”
Audrey Chen is a Chinese-American musician and performance artist born outside of Chicago in 1976. Using the cello, voice and analog electronics, Chen’s work focuses on the combination and layering of traditional and extended techniques. A large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is often extremely personal and visceral. Her performance work incorporates sound, movement and simple visual/sculptural concepts. Chen performs solo and in collaboration with a wide number of musicians and dancers. Some current projects include duos with Gianni Gebbia, Tatsuya Nakatani, Alessandro Bosetti and Nate Wooley. The SILO trio with Nate Wooley and Leonel Kaplan. and Trockeneis with Andy Hayleck, Dan Breen, Catherine Pancake and Paul Neidhardt. Chen has performed in Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan and the USA. She is currently based in Baltimore, MD USA where she is member of the Red Room and High Zero Collective, an on-going series and festival devoted to experimental music. www.redroom.org, www.highzero.org, www.audreychen.com
M.V. Carbon is a Brooklyn based musician, composer and filmmaker who uses fragmented field recordings, analog synthesizers, samplers, tape manipulations, and photosensitive oscillators to assimilate structural chaos and decomposition. She creates eerie and unsettling compositions using her voice as an instrument and processing it through tape machines. While playing cello through tape loops and guitar pedals, 16mm film imagery serve as a backdrop in her performances. Carbon is concerned in the structural decomposition and fragmentation that occurs within architecture, landscape, human physiology and perception. She has studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has displayed her paintings and installations in galleries and sites in Chicago, New York, and Pittsburgh. In addition to collaborating with an array of amazing musicians, she is a member of Metalux, Bad Faces, Foamula and the now defunct Bride of No No. Upcoming Release of her new solo album, “Sidewalk Scrape,” will be coming out on Shinkoyo Records this winter.
Marina Rosenfeld is an artist, composer and turntablist based in New York City. Her work has explored the social and situational contexts of music-making and digital/analogue culture in a variety of formats, including performance, installation, composition, photography and video. Her music includes large, multi-player performances involving custom playing techniques, graphic scores, visual elements, costumes and improvisation by both musicians and non-musicians; electro-acoustic sound installations for multiple speakers; and solo and ensemble compositions involving acoustic instruments, turntables and electronics. Rosenfeld exclusively plays her own custom acetate records or ‘dub plates’ and is a frequent performer in the improvised music scene of New York and Europe. She has been on the faculty of the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College since 2003.
Katherine Liberovskaya is a video and media artist based in Montreal,
Canada, and New York City. She has been working predominantly in
experimental video since the late eighties. Over the years, she has produced
many single-channel videos, video installation works and video performances
which have been presented at a wide variety of artistic venues and events
around the world. As of recent years her work - in single-channel and
installation video as well as performance - mainly revolves around
collaborations with new music composers/sound artists, notably Phill
Niblock, Al Margolis/If,Bwana, Hitoshi Kojo, Zanana, and David Watson. Since
2003 she is active in live video mixing exploring improvisation with
numerous live new music/audio artists including: Margarida Garcia, Barry
Weisblat, o.blaat, murmer, André Gonçalves, Monique Buzzarté, Anthony
Coleman, Giuseppe Ielasi, Renato Rinaldi, Alessandro Bosetti, Audrey Chen,
among others. In addition to her art practice she has concurrently been
involved in the programming and organization of diverse media art events,
notably with Studio XX in Montreal (programming coordinator 1996-1998,
president 2001-2003), Espace Vidéographe, Montreal and Experimental
Intermedia, NY (Screen Compositions 2005, 2006, 2007) as well as the
OptoSonic Tea series at Diapason in NYC.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, May 18
ashley paul
phantom orchard: ikue mori & zeena parkins
OLD HUNTER: Ashley Paul leads this tiny unit combining noise driven sax and drum improvisations, damaged electronics and split second shifts of texture. Featuring Paul’s intense multi-reeds, detached vocals and Eli Keszler’s fierce drums, and bowed percussion, these two move fluidly from Paul’s dreamy melodies to wall of sound drones.
Ashley Paul is a Boston based multi-reedist/vocalist and composer who uses a wide range of sound varying from potent attacks to whispered melody. She is currently working on a solo record of tape compositions performing on reeds, crotales, electronics and voice. She is a founding member of award wining quartet Everything’s A Little Glorious and has performed most notably with Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble of Chicago), Clark Terry, Ran Blake, Jose Luis Martinez (founding member of Los Van Van), George Russel, and balafonist Famoro Dioubate.
Eli Keszler is a Boston based composer/multi instrumentalist who primarily uses percussion to create his sound, which balances droning harmonics created from bowed percussion and intense fast free rhythms. He has performed, recorded or collaborated with a number of diverse and important artists such as Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble of Chicago), Geoff Mullen (Last Visible Dog), Steve Pyne (Redhorse), T Model Ford (Fat Possum Records), Jamaican music legend Lyn Taitt and pianist Ran Blake. Keszler has recently released a solo record on REL records, and is planning a release on Geoff Mullen’s Rare Youth label with his group Redhorse.
Phantom Orchard
Ikue Mori is considered a legendary composer and musician of the downtown scene. Soon after arriving to New York from her native city of Tokyo in 1977, she became drummer/co-founder/co-composer of the seminal punk/no-wave band DNA with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. Mori has developed a unique and innovative technique of combining modified drum machines and triggered samplers. She continues to be recognized and awarded for her cutting-edge electronic music that includes works with musicians: Bill Frisell, Christian Marclay, John Zorn, Tom Cora, Derek Bailey, Zeena Parkins, Anthony Coleman, Kato Hideki, Sylvie Courvoisier, Susie Ibarra, Kim Gordon and Aki Onda, to name a few.
Zeena Parkins was born in Detroit, MI and is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improvisor, well-known as a pioneer of the electric harp, who has extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of digital and analog processing. She was a member of three experimental rock bands: No Safety, News from Babel and Fred Frith’s review band, Keep the Dog. In addition to her solo recordings, she has recorded or performed with Björk, John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Tin Hat Trio, Jim O’Rourke, Fred Frith, Lee Ranaldo, Nels Cline, Pauline Oliveros, and others. She has also worked with choreographers including Neil Greenberg, Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh, Jennifer Lacey, and video artist Janene Higgins.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, May 19
zoe beloff
min xiao fen trio
zoe beloff
charming augustine
Stereo pic 16mm B/W Film Sound 40 minutes.
Cast: Tea Alagic, Greg Mehrten, Josh Stark, Steven Rattazi, Kevin Maher, Eileen White, Eliza Fernbach. Original Music: Miguel Frasconi
Augustine was the most extensively photographed of the young women hysterics at the Salpêtrière in Paris of the 1870’s She was ‘the Sarah Bernhardt’ of the asylum. This is her story
Zoe Beloff grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1980 she moved to New York to study at Columbia University where she received an MFA in Film. Her work has been exhibited in museums, cinemas and galleries internationally. For example her films have been screened at: MoMA, The New York Film Festival, Rotterdam Film festival, and Pacific Film Archives. She participated in the 1997 and 2002 Whitney Museum of American Art Biennials. Her interactive works are in the collections of the Kiasma Museum of Modern Art Helsinki and the Pompidou Center in Paris.
Zoe works with a variety of cinematic imagery: film, stereoscopic projection performance, interactive media and installation. Her projects are philosophical toys, objects to think with. More and more she finds herself fascinated by phantoms, by images that, “are not there”. She would like to think of herself as an heir to the 19th century mediums whose materialization séances conjured up unconscious desires, in the most theatrical fashion. Though lacking psychic abilities she confesses to relying on cinematic illusionism or one could say the cinematic “medium”.
Zoe is engaged in re-invigorating technologies such as stereoscopic imagery and dioramas that have largely been abandoned since the invention of the cinema. Sometimes she uses archaic apparatuses, sometimes, new analog/digital hybrids. She works with film, live 3-D projection performance, interactive cinema on CD-ROM and video installation. Each project aims to connect the present with the past, to create new visual languages where modern media will once again be invested with the uncanny. She is currently working on a series of projects under the title of “A Hundred Years of Hysteria” which investigate the history of hysteria in relation to performance, cinema and art.
She has collaborated with artists from other disciplines. In 1994 she created Life Underwater with composer John Cale, a live show performed at St. Ann’s that brought together film, 3-D slides, music and the spoken word. In 1996 the Wooster Group Theater invited her to make her CD-ROM “Where Where There There Where”, in conjunction with their play “House Lights”. Sound artist Ken Montgomery performed live with Zoe in her multimedia show “A Mechanical Medium”.
Zoe has been awarded fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation (2003), The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (1997) and NYFA (1997, 2001). She has received individual artist grants from NYSCA (1996, 2001, 2004) The Jerome Foundation (1998, 2000), Experimental Television Center Finishing Funds Award (1996, 2000, 2002, 2004) She has had residences at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts and Hallwalls in Buffalo. Her recent installation “The Ideoplastic Materializations of Eva C.” won a prize for best installation/new media work at the Images Festival in Toronto 2005.sco
min xiao fen blue pipa trio
okkyung lee, cello, satoshi takeishi, percussion and electronics,
Min Xiao-Fen
Pipa soloist and composer Min Xiao-Fen, internationally known for her virtuosity and fluid style, has received high acclaim for her classical, new music and jazz performances. A native of China, Ms. Min was a pipa soloist with famed Nanjing Traditional Music Orchestra of China. She has worked with composers John Zorn, Philip Glass and Tan Dun and many others. Her piece “The Loneliest Monk” was commissioned and played with House Blend at the Kitchen. Recent highlights include appearances with her Blue Pipa Trio at the JVC Jazz Festival and a guest appearance on Björk’s new album, Volta. Min was also a featured composer and performer for the American Composers Orchestra’s “Composer Out Front” project. Min is also a founder of Blue Pipa, Inc. (www.bluepipa.org).
Satoshi Takeishi
Satoshi Takeishi, drummer, percussionist, and arranger is a native of Mito Japan. He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Since moving to New York in 1991 he has performed and recorded with many musicians such as Ray Barretto, Carlos “Patato” Valdes, Eliane Elias, Marc Johnson, Anthony Braxton, Mark Murphy, Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band, Erik Friedlander, Lalo Schifrin and Pablo Ziegler to name a few. He continues to explore multi-cultural, electronics and improvisational music with local musicians and composers in New York.
Okkyung Lee
A native of Korea, Okkyung lee has been developing her own voice in a contemporary cello performance, improvisation and composition. using her solid classical training as a springboard, she incorporates jazz, sounds, korean traditional music, noise with extended techniques and create her unique blend of music. Okkyung has released the following albums under her name: her debut album, Nihm on Tzadik; a duo recording with christian marclay on My Cat is an Alien label’s split LP series; 30-minute companion cd of her own compositions in collaboration with artist colin stinson for his art book Dust to Dust, and a solo cello album I saw the Ghost of an Unknown Soul and it Said… to be releassed on thurston moore’s Ecstatic Peace labe in 2007.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, May 24
isa freeling
mm serra
tessa hughes freeland
isa freeling
I CAN’T READ GERMAN, read by Isa Freeling, is an excerpt from her novella-in-progress which is a story about a one hundred year old woman who wakes up from a nap and finds that she is dead.
Isa Freeling has a long history in the arts. She was an actress and later became a filmmaker. In the late 90’s she partnered with Bruce Weiss of Ironworks Productions doing development and acquisitions. Over the years she has written in several mediums including television and film. She is proud to mark her debut as a fiction writer at Issue Project Room with “I Can’t Read German”.
mary magdalene presents: the pride of perversion
screening four films 3, 16mm films and her new DVD.
MM Serra is a filmmaker, writer, teacher, curator and director of the Film-Makers’ Co-op, who has been central to the East Village experimental film scene for nearly a decade and a half.
Tessa Hughes-Freeland is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and co-founder of the New York Film Festival Downtown. Her films have screened internationally in museums, alternative spaces and seedy bars, while her articles have appeared in numerous books and magazines such as Paper Magazine, Filmmaker Magazine, G.Q., Film Threat and The East Village Eye. Hughes-Freeland has also collaborated on numerous live multiple projection performances with Ela Troyano including John Zorn’s “Elegy.” She also curated films for “East No Village U.S.A.” at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Recently she contributed to the book “No Focus: Punk Film” and is currently editing a film called “The Bug.”
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, May 25
mv carbon
marina rosenfeld (turntables + dub plates)
with special guest J.G. Thirlwell (vocal)
M.V. Carbon is a Brooklyn based musician, composer and filmmaker who uses fragmented field recordings, analog synthesizers, samplers, tape manipulations, and photosensitive oscillators to assimilate structural chaos and decomposition. She creates eerie and unsettling compositions using her voice as an instrument and processing it through tape machines. While playing cello through tape loops and guitar pedals, 16mm film imagery serve as a backdrop in her performances. Carbon is concerned in the structural decomposition and fragmentation that occurs within architecture, landscape, human physiology and perception. She has studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has displayed her paintings and installations in galleries and sites in Chicago, New York, and Pittsburgh. In addition to collaborating with an array of amazing musicians, she is a member of Metalux, Bad Faces, Foamula and the now defunct Bride of No No. Upcoming Release of her new solo album, “Sidewalk Scrape,” will be coming out on Shinkoyo Records this winter.
Marina Rosenfeld is an artist, composer and turntablist based in New York City. Her work has explored the social and situational contexts of music-making and digital/analogue culture in a variety of formats, including performance, installation, composition, photography and video. Her music includes large, multi-player performances involving custom playing techniques, graphic scores, visual elements, costumes and improvisation by both musicians and non-musicians; electro-acoustic sound installations for multiple speakers; and solo and ensemble compositions involving acoustic instruments, turntables and electronics. Rosenfeld exclusively plays her own custom acetate records or ‘dub plates’ and is a frequent performer in the improvised music scene of New York and Europe. She has been on the faculty of the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College since 2003.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Wednesday, May 30
an evening of video/film works in dialogue with new music by women, curated by katherine liberovskaya and ursula scherrer
BETSEY BIGGS
NATHALIE BUJOLD
MELISSA CLARKE
ANGIE ENG
SANDRA GIBSON
JANENE HIGGINS
CHIKA IIJIMA
KATHERINE LIBEROVSKAYA
JENNIFER REEVES
URSULA SCHERRER
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, May 31
jessica pavone
JESSICA PAVONE (Composer)
TILL BY TURNING:
ERICA DICKER (violin)
AMY CIMINI (viola)
TBA (cello)
KATHERINE YOUNG (bassoon)
EMILY MANZO (piano)
QUOTIDIAN is a four movement suite for violin, viola, cello, bassoon and piano intended to interpret four different points that occur within a day, everyday. This piece stems from a belief that the shifting balances between light and dark, as well as other environmental changes such as weather, are constantly affecting us regardless of how conscious of them we are. Different times of day and different weather patterns affect moods and feelings and therefore, in a sense, have ultimate control over all living beings.
Jessica Pavone is a string instrumentalist and composer who has performed in and written for a variety of chamber, experimental and pop ensembles. She has worked with seasoned musicians such as Anthony Braxton, William Parker, Mary Halvorson, Taylor Ho Bynum, Matana Roberts, Matt Bauder, Matthew Welch, Loren Dempster and Jason Cady. Her music has been documented via her self-run label Peacock Recordings, which was recently awarded a grant from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording Program, and her growing discography and list of works can be witnessed via her web site, www.jessicapavone.com
Till by Turning is a collective endeavor of five performers, educators, improvisers, writers, and composers — Emily Manzo (piano), Amy Cimini (viola), Sarah Biber (cello), Katherine Young (bassoon), and Erica Dicker (violin). Till by Turning believes in the cultural relevancy and emotional, intellectual immediacy of challenging and experimental new music, and they perform and promote chamber music by both established and emerging musical artists. For more information seewww.tillbyturning.com.
Amy Cimini is a violist and musicologist based in New York City, where she performs improvised, experimental and contemporary classical music. She is a founding member of Till by Turning Chamber Music Collective and improvising duo Architeuthis Walks on Land, whose first record is due out this June on the Set Projects label.
Erica Dicker is a violinist presently based in Chicago who actively performs throughout the United States and Germany.
Emily Manzo, a pianist, currently resides in New York where she performs regularly as a classical solo and chamber musician, and with her group, Christy & Emily. She has an ongoing collaboration with video artists, Paul Rowley and David Phillips, based around the piano music of John Cage from the ’40s. Emily is a founding member of the new music ensemble, Till by Turning.www.tillbyturning.com, www.myspace.com/christyandemily
Katherine Young is a bassoonist for contemporary chamber music, improvised music, and rock ‘n’ roll, and she is pursuing her graduate studies in composition at Wesleyan University.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Women’s Work has been sponsored in part by the Independence Community Foundation
June
This month, Artistic Director Suzanne Fiol and guest Stephan Moore curate “Points in a Circle 2007”. In this performance series, selected composers from diverse musical languages and methodologies confront the possibilities of ISSUE Project Room’s sixteen-channel hemisphere speaker system. The resulting projects create immersive sonic landscapes, explore spacial acoustics and experiment with a liberated control over location as a musical dimension.
Friday, June 1
annea lockwood &
dion workman +
barry weisblatt
Annea Lockwood is known for her explorations of the world of natural acoustic sounds and environments, in works ranging from installations, through performance art to concert music. Many of her works for acoustic instruments draw on the performer’s personal sonic vocabulary, as in “Duende” with baritone Thomas Buckner, a longtime collaborator; or they draw on personal history, as in “Ceci n’est pas un piano” which is centered on pianist Jennifer Hymer’s feelings about her hands and pianos she has owned and is combined with images of Lockwood’s ‘Piano Burning’ and other piano transplants. Currently she is working on “Jitterbug,” a project in which David Behrman and John King interpret rocks, transforming them into sound
through their own rich vocabularies.
Dion Workman + Barry Weisblatt: “Qing Zhong” a piece for pre-recorded “singing” bowls and 16-channel playback.
Dion Workman is a native of New Zealand based in New York. His rare solo work has gained him international recognition in the form of prizes, commissions and reviews. Recently, Workman’s sound work has manifested as collaborative and anonymous large scale sound “interventions” in public spaces. The premiere performance of Chen Jung is a rare opportunity to hear one of Workman’s “compositions.”
Barry Weisblatt works extensive experiments with electro-magnetic devices, solar technology and homemade and modified circuits for application in sound generation/manipulation, audio engineering and photography.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Sunday, June 3
miya masaoka
nicolas collins
Miya Masaoka is a musician, composer, and sound artist, who has created works for koto and electronics, Laser Koto, field recordings, laptop, video and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestras and mixed choirs. In her pieces she has investigated the sound and movement of insects, as well as the physiological response of plants, the human brain and her own body. Within these varied contexts her performance work investigates the interactive, collaborative aspects of sound, improvisation, nature and society. Her on-the-job training has been with: Steve Coleman, Fred Frith, George Lewis, Ornette Coleman, and Dr. L Subramaniam. She has been a koto soloist with Berkeley Symphony and Toshiko Akiyohsi’s Jazz Orchestra and has led her own ensembles. In addition, she has worked with: Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman, Pamela Z, Amir El Safar, Gerry Hemingway, Joan Jeanrenaud,
Joelle Leandre and India Cooke, Peter Kowald and John Butcher, to name a few. Recently, Masaoka has composed for Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet.
Nicolas Collins: electronics
“Searching for the Perfect Beep” will strew sound richly throughout the space, aided by trailing-hilt of technology and, perhaps, unwitting members of the audience.
Nicolas Collins was born in a borough north of Brooklyn, so long ago that the language spoken in his grade school served him well during his years as Artistic Director of STEIM in Amsterdam. Currently on sabbatical from the Department of Sound at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he is enjoying the Einstein-like title of “Visiting Fellow” in the Music Department at Princeton University. He has performed and recorded with several good friends of Miya Masaoka.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Wednesday, June 6
littoral
lit·to·ral:
adj. Of or on a shore, especially a seashore: a littoral property; the littoral biogeographic zone.
n. A coastal region; a shore; the region or zone between the limits of high and low tides.
n. A new performance series curated by Tony Antoniadis and Suzanne Fiol, featuring writers and musicians whose work dissolves boundaries between language, sonority and art.
Gary Lutz is the author of Stories in the Worst Way (Knopf, 1996; 3rd bed, 2002) and I Looked Alive (Black Square Editions, 2004). He has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
Eugene Marten is the author of “In the Blind,” which came out in 2003 from Turtle Point Press. He lives in Harlem.
Norman Lock is the author of A History of the Imagination (a novel, from Fiction Collective Two), ‘The Book of Supplemental Diagrams’ for Marco Knauff’s Universe (a novella, from Ravenna Press), The Long Rowing Unto Morning (a novel, from Ravenna Press), Two Plays for Radio (from Triple Press), and, writing as George Belden, Land of the Snow Men (a novella from Calamari Press). Two short-prose collections – Joseph Cornell’s Operas and Émigrés – were published by Elimae Books and subsequently issued, in Turkish, by an Istanbul publisher
as part of its New World Writing series. Together with Grim Tales, they were brought out by Triple Press as Trio. Cirque du Calder, a hand-made artist’s book was presented by The Rogue Literary Society and is due out from Spuyten Duyvil later this year.
Paul Flaherty, musical artist.
“Flaherty’s playing is febrile, his tone mercurial. It rises and falls
through timbres resonating with history. His tone on alto is broad, at times Johnny
Hodges-gorgeous, until it explodes with Ayler’s unhinged glossolalia. On
tenor, Flaherty moves at moments with the muscular pathos and sentimentality of
Sonny Rollins, at others he burns with brusque, untutored fire of Archie Shepp.
Yet his playing is more than just a string of descriptive touchstones, as he
guides these timbres into a titanic flow.”
–Dusted Magazine on Flaherty and Chris Corsano’s album “Steel Sleet & Last
Eyes”
8pm; $10
Friday, June 8
donkey
lee ranaldo
lea singer
Donkey is LA synthesizer player Hans Fjellestad and NYC sound manipulator Damon Holzborn. The duo has been building intensive noise structures for over 15 years. “El Burro” is set to release a new live cd recorded at The Stone in NYC…coming Spring ‘07 on Accretions Records.
Hans Fjellestad, a Los Angeles musician and filmmaker, tours and records extensively as a solo artist and in collaboration with numerous players on the experimental music scene in well over a dozen countries. An “innovative musician” (All About Jazz) and “mad scientist improviser” (IDJ), his music has been described as “unbridled sonic freedom… raw, almost shamanic energy that embodies the true essence of unrestricted music” (XLR8R) and a “spicy concoction… refusing to behave itself, it screams, throws things and makes a mess” (The Wire). A classically trained pianist, these days Hans concocts most of his unbridled sound messes with analog synthesizers and vacuum tubes.www.hansfjellestad.com, www.myspace.com/hansfjellestad
Damon Holzborn is an improviser and composer working primarily with electronics. His performances make the familiar unrecognizable, manipulating sound sources such as guitar and field recordings with custom instruments, untraditional effects and interactive processes. Currently pursuing his doctoral degree in composition at Columbia University, Holzborn has
presented his work in the U.S., Mexico, Europe, South Africa and Japan and has collaborated with many innovative musicians and dancers. www.damonholzborn.com
Lee Ranaldo is a member of the group Sonic Youth. Text of Light, his “other group” with Alan Licht, Christian Marclay, Tim Barnes and others, have just released the 3xCD “Metal Box” on UK label Dirter Productions. With Visual work by Leah Singer
8:00 p.m.; $10
Sunday, June 10
big four
BIG FOUR:
Max Nagl: alto sax
Steven Bernstein: trumpet
Noel Akchoté: guitar
Brad Jones: bass
The austrian musician Max Nagl has played at many Jazzfestivals in Europe with his own projects and bands. As a composer he works for Theatre, Dance Performances, Radio Plays and chamber ensembles. He has also toured in USA, Taiwan, Australia and North Africa. www.maxnagl.at
Steven Bernstein is a trumpeter/slide trumpeter, bandleader, arranger, and composer who lives outside of musical convention. He has recently released three critically acclaimed CDs – Diaspora Soul, Diaspora Blues (featuring the SamRivers trio), and his most recent, Diaspora Hollywood. He is a member of Sex Mob and the Millennial Territory Orchestra.
Noel Akchoté is currently playing his solo series entitled “Joseph” and collabroating since with David Grubbs, Luc Ferrari, David Sylvian, Jim G.Thirlwell, Max Nagl, Andrew Sharpley or Earth´s Dylan Carson. Producing albums for labels Winter & Winter, Bluechopsticks, member of the redaction in the austrian music magazine “Skug“ and working for films with Thierry
Jousse.
Brad Christopher Jones’ solid, inventive, and versatile playing on both the electric and acoustic bass has established him as one of the most sought-after musicians in the business. Once a member of The Jazz Passengers, he has since gone on to record, perform, and tour around the world with a diverse array of artists that include Ornette Coleman, Elvis Costello and David Byrne. As a leader, Brad has recorded three CDs: “Uncivilized Poise” (Knitting Factory Records) with his band, Aka Alias, “Pouring My Heart In” (Senoj Music) with the Brad Jones Quartet, and the soon to be released follow-up to the first Aka Alias recording entitled” The Embodiment”.
8pm; $10
Thursday, June 14
elliot sharp + audrey chen
will be the final performance in the series of four concerts as part of Chen’s residency at the ISSUE PROJECT ROOM between march and june. this evening will include a new collaboration with guitarist, elliott sharp. and a set with her quintet from baltimore, trockeneis (dry ice, voice, percussion, and bowed metals).
audrey chen (cello/voice/electronics)
elliott sharp (guitar)
trockeneis:
audrey chen (voice)
catherine pancake (dry ice)
paul neidhardt (percussion)
andy hayleck (bowed metal)
dan breen (bowed metal)
**www.trockeneismusic.com
Audrey Chen (cello/voice/electronics)
audrey chen is a chinese-american musician and performance artist born outside of chicago in 1976. using the cello, voice and analog electronics, chen’s work focuses on the combination and layering of traditional and extended techniques. a large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is often extremely personal and visceral. her performance work incorporates sound, movement and simple visual/sculptural concepts. chen performs solo and in collaboration with a wide number of musicians and dancers. some current projects include duos with gianni gebbia, tatsuya nakatani, alessandro bosetti and nate wooley. the SILO trio with nate wooley and leonel kaplan. and Trockeneis with andy hayleck, dan breen, catherine pancake and paul neidhardt. chen has performed in europe, russia, australia, new zealand, china, japan, taiwan and the USA. She is currently based in Baltimore, MD USA where she is member of the red room and high zero collective, an on-going series and festival devoted to experimental music. www.redroom.org, www.highzero.org,www.audreychen.com
Elliott Sharp (guitar)
ELLIOTT SHARP - Composer/multi-insrumentalist/sound artist Elliott Sharp leads Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane. His compositions have been performed by the Symphony of the Hessischer Rundfunk, The Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Rezonanz, Continuum, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Flux Quartet, Sirius Stirng Quartet, and Zeitkratzer and collaborators have included qawaali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, blues legend Hubert Sumlin; playwright Dael Orlandersmith, cello innovator Frances-Marie Uitti, sci-fi writers Pat Cadigan and Lucius Shepard; jazz greats Sonny Sharrock, Jack deJohnette, and Oliver Lake; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians of Jahjoukah. His composition “Quarks Swim Free” was premiered at the Venice Biennale in September 2003 and his chamber opera EmPyre was premiered at the 2006 Biennale. He has recently completed the scores to the feature-films “What Sebastian Dreamt”", “Commune” by Jonathan Berman, and “Spectropia” by Toni Dove.
Paul Neidhardt (percussion)
Paul Neidhardt is a very accomplished rock, jazz, free jazz and experimental percussionist from the Baltimore MD area. He performs in a variety of musical projects and also teaches percussion for a living. His ability to trade extremely tight traditional chops with very focused sound-oriented techniques such a doweling, bowing, suction etc has made him a favorite in improv circles.
Dan Breen (bowed metal)
Dan Breen is an well-known multi-instrumentalist in Baltimore and other East Coast cities. His wandering, eccentric style of playing and living brings joy to the many who know and love him. He performs with a range of musical projects from the funk band, The Financial Group, to the un-categorizable and tasty electronics/drums group - Snacks.
Andrew Hayleck (bowed metal)
Andy Hayleck is quickly becoming a nationally known sound artist and musician. His extensive touring and field-recordings (ice, crabs etc) are well-known in experimental music scenes across the US. He has performed in local and national festivals and participated in radio broadcasts in the US and GB. Andy is also a professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Catherine Pancake (dry ice)
Catherine Pancake is a film-maker, musician, and cultural organizer based in Baltimore MD. Her films have been shown nationally at the Philadelphia International Film Festival, Millenium Theater - NYC, Contemporary Museum - Baltimore, Ohio State University, VA Tech, and more. As a musician she has traveled internationally in Asia and Canada collaborating with Audrey Chen, Susan Alcorn, Le Quan Ninh, Oluyemi Thomas, and the group Trockeneis. She is a founding member of the RedRoom Collective, High Zero Foundation, Charm City Kitty Club (GLBT arts venue,) and the Transmodern Festival.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, June 15
keith fullerton Whitman +
ikue mori
Keith Fullerton Whitman is a composer/performer obsessed with electronic music from its mid-century origins in Europe through its contemporary worldwide incarnation as “digital music.” At 33, living in Somerville, MA, Whitman has been working towards implementing a complete system for live performance of improvised electronic music that incorporates elements from
nearly every era: a reel-to-reel tape machine, a selection of small jerry-rigged” / “circuit-bent” battery-powered sound-producing boxes, an analog modular synthesizer, an early “consumer” home-computer, and at the core, a contemporary computer running a custom-built Max-MSP based modular system that both controls these elements and acts as a central conduit into
which their sounds are captured/collected, processed, then diffused to up to eight separate channels/speakers/amplifiers. Presently, he is composing a piece for Egyptian Oud, Serge and Doepfer Analog Modular Synthesizers, and computer control/processing. It is his first through-composed long-form work.
Ikue Mori is considered a legendary composer and musician of the downtown scene. Soon after arriving to New York from her native city of Tokyo in 1977, she became drummer/co-founder/co-composer of the seminal punk/no-wave band DNA with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. Mori has developed a unique and innovative technique of combining modified drum machines and triggered samplers. She continues to be recognized and awarded for her cutting-edge electronic music that includes works with musicians: Bill Frisell, Christian Marclay, John Zorn, Tom Cora, Derek Bailey, Zeena Parkins, Anthony Coleman, Kato Hideki, Sylvie Courvoisier, Susie Ibarra, Kim Gordon and Aki Onda, to name a few.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, June 16
bruce tovsky + richard garet
tim hecker
BRUCE TOVSKY: laptop, induction mics, theremin, kalimba, ukelele, contact mics
RICHARD GARET: laptop
TIM HECKER: solo drone, noise and contorted harmonics
RADIUS: Sound artists Bruce Tovsky and Richard Garet do a rare duo sound performance on the hemispheric speaker installation in tribute to Issue’s final days on the Gowanus canal.
Bruce Tovsky is a visual/sound artist, who began painting at the age of 7 and started playing with tape recorders at the age of 10. Ever since then he has been figuring out ways of putting sound and pictures together. For the past several years, he has been creating live video and sound improvisations with artists such as John Hudak, David Linton and Kim Cascone at spaces such as Diapason, Experimental Intermedia, Issue Project Room and his own installation space 106BLDG30 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. www.skeletonhome.com
Richard Garet is a sound artist, a video artist, and a painter. He’s interested in the phenomena found and produced in aural and visual time-based media, in nature’s processes, and the observation of the relationships between nature and human beings. Though Garet’s work suits the standard gallery environment, many of his other activities as an artist explore the various practices of experimental sound and video performance. All of these modes are additional examinations of the ways in which Garet’s work exposes the visitors to visual and physical acoustic sensory perception.
Tim Hecker is a Canadian-based musician and sound artist, born in Vancouver. Since 1996, he has produced a range of audio works for Mille Plateaux, Kranky, Alien8, Force Inc, Staalplaat and Fat Cat. His works have been described as “structured ambient”, “tectonic color plates” and “cathedral electronic music”. More to the point, he has focused on exploring the intersection of noise, dissonance and melody, fostering an approach to songcraft that is both physical and emotive. The New York Times has described his work as “foreboding, abstract pieces in which static and sub-bass rumbles open up around slow moving notes and chords, like fissures
in the earth waiting to swallow them whole”. His Radio Amor was recognized as a key recording of 2003 by Wire magazine. Last year’s “Harmony in Ultraviolet” on Kranky, was in the top 20 of Pitchfork’s best of 2006. His work has also included commissions for contemporary dance, sound-art installations and various writings. He is also an acclaimed producer of techno, having toured and produced under the name Jetone. Tim has presented his work in a live setting around the world, including performances at Sonar (Barcelona), Mutek (Montreal), Impakt Festival (Utrecht), Victoriaville in (Quebec), IDEAL (Nantes), Vancouver New Music Festival (Vancouver) and Transmediale (Berlin). He currently resides in Montreal.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Wednesday, June 20
ateleia
david behrman
ATELEIA will perform live computer music with video projections by Sadek Bazaraa.
Ateleia is Brooklyn resident James Elliott. His music combines crystalline pulse with submerged aquatic drones and subtle ghost melodies, evoking the grand echo of “My Bloody Valentine” and the long-standing tradition of psychedelic minimalism while informed by contemporary electronic music. “Hypnotically gorgeous…” - Jon Dale, Stylus Magazine
DAVID BEHRMAN: several stringed instruments
STEPHAN MOORE: multi-channel sound distribution & interactive controls
LONG THROW is a piece for 4 players and computer commissioned recently by the Cunningham Dance Company, presented here in a paired-down version for 2 people.
NERVES OF BRASS is a piece designed to explore the 16-channel sound system which Stephan Moore has installed at IPR.
David Behrman has been active as a composer and artist since the 1960s. He makes installations as well as compositions. Recordings of his works are available on the XI, Lovely Music, Alga Marghen and Classic Masters labels.
Stephan Moore is a composer, audio artist, and sound designer in New York City. His creative work centers around the collection and use of real-world sound, the creation and perception of sonic environments, and technological manifestations of improvisation and interactivity. Recent performances and installation artworks make use of his 16-Channel Hemispherical Speakers
design at IPR. He performs regularly as half of the electronic duo Evidence and with a variety of musicians, live-video artists, and dancers. Moore has also created custom music software for a number of composers and artists, and has taught courses in sound art and electronic music at Maryland Institute College of Art, Peabody Conservatory, Massachusetts College of Art, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Simon’s Rock College of Bard. He is currently the Sound Supervisor of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, June 21
scott smallwood
brad garton + terry pender
Scott Smallwood was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up at 10,000 feet in elevation in the Colorado Rockies. When Smallwood was 10 years old, his father gave him a cassette tape recorder, and ever since he has been fascinated by the possibilities of recorded sound. His work deals with real and abstracted soundscapes based on a practice of listening, improvisation and phonography. He has worked with a variety of artists and ensembles, including Cor Fuhler, Mark Dresser, Ensemble SurPlus, The BSC and Pauline Oliveros. His work has been presented worldwide, including recent presentations at Roulette in NYC, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the 2006 Sonic Circuits festival in Washington DC, and the Kulturhaus E-Werk in Frieberg, Germany. His work has been released on Autumn Records, Deep Listening, Televaw, Simple Logic, Static Caravan, and Webbed Hand Records.
Brad Garton current work includes focused research on the modeling and enhancement of acoustic spaces as well as the modeling of human musical performance on various virtual “instruments”. His most recent work includes writing “Looching” apps: jlooch (JSyn) and mlooch (Max/MSP). The point of all this work is to continue to make fun new pieces of music, which he does every day. Garton is currently on the Music Faculty of Columbia University, where he serves as Director of the Computer Music Center (formerly the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center). He received his PhD. from Princeton in 1989, studying primarily with Paul Lansky and Jim Randall. His dissertation was the development of a natural language/learning system for doing loosely-described signal processing tasks, along with a series of compositions realized using the system. He is also the primary developer (with Dave Topper) of RTcmix, a real-time music synthesis/signal-processing language.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, June 22
stephan moore
david linton
Stephan Moore is a composer, audio artist, and sound designer in New York City. His creative work centers around the collection and use of real-world sound, the creation and perception of sonic environments, and technological manifestations of improvisation and interactivity. Recent performances and installation artworks make use of his 16-Channel Hemispherical Speakers
design at IPR. He performs regularly as half of the electronic duo Evidence and with a variety of musicians, live-video artists, and dancers. Moore has also created custom music software for a number of composers and artists, and has taught courses in sound art and electronic music at Maryland Institute College of Art, Peabody Conservatory, Massachusetts College of Art, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Simon’s Rock College of Bard. He is currently the Sound Supervisor of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
David Linton entered the downtown NY experimental music scene through the art punk garage door at the tail end of the 1970’s. Initially on drums, he performed and recorded with Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Lee Ranaldo, Elliott Sharp, as well as his own collaborative band Interference, among others. He then moved on to electro-acoustic improvisation and live solo performance on his own customized proto electronic drum kit, while producing dozens of
works in sound score design for dance and theater, among these scores were for The Wooster Group and for choreographers Karole Armitage and Stephen Petronio. Most recently, Linton has performed solo audio-visual work with “The Bicameral Research Sound and Projection System,” drawing on his over 25 years of experience in the multi-media arts to mark the reaffirmation of the pre-eminent organic values embodied in real-time analog processes in the worlds of sound and visual media.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Wednesday, June 27
michelle nagai
ursula scherrer
byron westbrook
MICHELLE NAGAI: electronics, voice
URSULA SCHERRER: video
SYNTHETIC HAND HOLDING v.2 is a continuing exploration of intimacy and shared space, mediated by technology and some artificial bells and whistles. This evening’s work is less about how it sounds, and more about how it feels.
Michelle Nagai is a Brooklyn-based composer who utilizes sound, physicality and concept to create site-specific performances, installations, radio broadcasts, dances and other interactions that address the human state in relationship to its setting. Nagai’s work has been presented throughout the US, Canada and Europe. She has been supported by the American Composers
Forum, Eyebeam, Harvestworks, the Jerome and McKnight Foundations, Meet the Composer and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Ursula Scherrer is a video artist and photographer living in New York. Her videos have been shown in festivals and galleries internationally, and she had solo shows with her photographs at the Kentler International Drawing Space and at Studio Five Beekman. Scherrer’s work has been shown at the New York Video Festival 2004, BAC 36th International Film and Video Festival,
Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Chelsea Art Museum, and Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Dissonanze Festival in Rome, 9e Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement, Saint-Gervais Geneve, Galerie Rachel Haferkamp, Cologne, among others.
BYRON WESTBROOK’S Corridors:
CORRIDORS is the solo audio/video performance project of Byron Westbrook. Tonight’s performance pieces will incorporate piano, flute, live guitar feedback and video as well as wind chimes and field recordings as source material. The two pieces will use IPR’s 16-Channel Hemispherical Speaker System in addition to auxiliary amplifiers.
Byron Westbrook is a composer/sound artist living in Brooklyn, NY. His work involves performance of processed instrumental and environmental recordings through a multi-channel environment with a focus on redistributing distilled energy of sound and light.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Thursday, June 28
o.blaat
phil kline
KEIKO UENISHI (o.blaat): powerbook, wireless microphone, controllers
Uenishi continues her exploration of various relationships occurring in space (objects including human, sounds, natural and synthetic conditions, etc.) in ‘FEED ALL THE HIVES,’ by detecting, accumulating, distributing, and observing sounds captured within the silo of IPR’s space. The silo will resemble the intimate interior of beehives.
Keiko Uenishi (aka o.blaat) is based in Brooklyn, New York, sound artist, composer, core member of SHARE, o.blaat is known for her sound works formed through experiments in restructuring and analyzing one’s relationship with sounds via kinesthetic response as well as
aural cognition in sociological and environmental context. She has performed at various venues worldwide, including recent Ultrahang 07 festival, Budapest, Hungary; Netmage 06 festival and Interferenze Festival 2006 in Italy; City Sonic 07 festival in Belgium; Skolska Gallery and National Gallery as a part of Prague Biennale 2005 in Czech Republic; Tate Britain and Fortescue Avenue Gallery in UK. Uenishi has collaborated with numerous artists including: Ikue Mori, DJ Olive, Miguel Frasconi, Eyvind Kang, Sachiko M, Aki Onda, Toshio Kajiwara, Christine Bard, Kaffe Matthews, Ralph Steinbrüchel, Anthony Coleman, Kurt Ralske, Lukasz Lysakowski, HC Gilje, Eric Redlinger, Klaus Filip, Karlheinz Essl, Nobukazu Takemura, Ryuichi Sakamoto, among others. http://obla.at + http://myspace.com/oblaat
PHIL KLINE (soundtrack) + JAMES NARES (video): Premiere of music video “GLOBE”
Phil Kline is a composer and installation artist, known for his panoramic works for massed boomboxes, as well as songs and chamber music. Recent Works include “Zippo Songs” and the choral Mass “John the Revelator.” His music is available on the Cantaloupe label. www.philkline.com
James Nares brings an inventor’s mind to his painting, sculpture and photography, often devising and building the tools he uses to make his work. As the director of “Rome 78,” he was one of the instigators of New York’s downtown film scene. “Globe” is his first publicly exhibited film in decades.
8:00 p.m.; $10
Friday, June 29
richard chartier
betsey biggs
Richard Chartier, sound/installation artist and graphic designer, has created critically acclaimed recordings for labels such as 12k/LINE (USA), Trente Oiseaux (Germany), Spekk (Japan), Mutek_rec (Canada), DSP (Italy), and ERS (NL), and Fallt (Ireland), including collaborations with artists Taylor Deupree, William Basinski, COH, and *0 and has appeared on numerous international compilations. His digital minimalist work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, and the act of listening.
Betsey Biggs is an artist and composer working with sound, video, interactivity, installation and performance. Her work aims to engage the audience, to expose the beautiful in the mundane, and to explore the tension between spontaneity and form. Biggs studied creative writing and music at Colorado College, performing with Stephen Scott’s Bowed Piano Ensemble and various rock bands. After several years working in film and video she returned to Mills College to study music and sound with Pauline Oliveros and Fred Frith. She is currently completing her Ph.D. at Princeton University, where she is researching the uses and meanings of sonic participation in new media art. Upcoming projects include an instructional piece for orchestra; an
interactive audiovisual installation, “You That,” which revisits a Bob Dylan anti-war song; and a series of audiovisual portraits of a small town, Trinidad, Colorado.
www.betseybiggs.org
8:00 p.m.; $10
Saturday, June 30
share
SHARE (http://share.dj) celebrates ISSUE Project Room’s final night in their current location – the unique silo on the banks of the Gowanus Canal. To celebrate IPR’s time in the silo and their move to a new space, SHARE will run a multimedia open-jam, inviting everyone and anyone to join, including those who have performed at, visited, or simply love IPR. It will utilize Stephan Moore’s 16-Channel Hemispherical Speaker System and IPR’s cylinder structure for visual projections both inside and outside the space. Please come to play, hang out, or participate in many toasts!
SHARE is for all lovers of new-culture, including the musical and visual digitarati, acoustic musicians, and all sorts of performers. In an open jam, participants bring their portable equipment or instruments, plug into SHARE’s central amplification and projection system, and create live improvisations in response to each other. SHARE is held every Sunday from
7P.M. to 1A.M. at Reboot Bar and Restaurant, located at 37 Avenue A (between 2nd and 3rd Streets) in Manhattan.
Coming for Audio Jamming? Be part of prepared and spontaneous music from eight-plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project, try that new max patch/software setup, or perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system. Bring your noisemaker of choice (we welcome not just laptops and electronics, but all instruments and
objects!) and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable.
Coming for Video Jamming? Be part of multi-user, live-video synthesis. Help generate an immersive visual environment in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new video software, bring your clips or camera or laptop or Amiga, and bring a VGA, S-Video, or RCA cable. Bring your films or slides too (but please bring projectors necessary for the films &/or slides!) http://share.dj
8:00 p.m.; free to share participants suggested donation $10 for audience
Points in a Circle has been sponsored in part by the Mary Flagler Cary Trust’s Contemporary Music Fund
July
All events this month are hosted by XØ Projects Inc at The (OA) Can Factory, an historic, six-building, industrial and arts complex located at 232 Third Street at the corner Third Avenue in Gowanus Brooklyn.
Tuesday, July 3
littoral:
joe wenderoth w/
musical guest gibby haynes
Joe Wenderoth is the author of the poetry collections Disfortune and It Is If I Speak, both from Wesleyan University Press; the novel Letters to Wendy’s and the nonfiction collection The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written For John Ashcroft’s Secret Self, from Verse Press; and the forthcoming No Real Light, from Wave Books. He was born in Baltimore, MD, teaches at UC-Davis, and does readings that frequently incorporate film and music.
Gibby Haynes, was the frontman of the immortal butthole surfers. Tonight he collaborates on laptop with Joe Wenderoth.
8pm; $10
Wednesday, July 11
“decomposed rocks:
electronics, found objects, ether realities”
a night selected by mv carbon
IDM THEFTABLE
Portland, Maine
With Skot Spear. Sometimes drawing ideas from dreams, IDM Theftable creates elaborate performances using electronics, cryptic machines, everyday objects and humans to form amazing, imaginative compositions.
BAD FACES
Brooklyn, NY
With M.V. Carbon & Luke Calzonetti. Duo synths, samplers and found objects pulsate, weave and discharge metallic melodic waves that you can almost tread on. You may be tempted to dance but perhaps will hesitate for the land mines are present.
IMAGINARY PEOPLE
Brooklyn, NY
With Nicholas Emmet, Lala Harrison & Hira Lesea. These colorful crumblers break down formalities with heavy beats, guitars and vocals as angels drag heavy molten rocks through flutes, bells and charms. They will take you spelunking in a neon cave.
8pm; $10
Thursday, July 12
an evening w/ bradford reed & friends
jane scarpantoni
neil feather
geoff gersh
bill bronson
Bradford Reed is a composer, member and producer of bands including King
Missile, multi-instrumentalist and inventor of the Pencilina www.pencilina.com
Jane Scarpantoni’s cello playing is very special and rocking. Her work with
the Lounge Lizards, Patti Smith, Lou Reed and many others is enjoyed the
universe over.
Sound Mechanic Neil Feather has been creating radical and unusual
musical instruments for thirty-five years. More about his music can be
found at www.neilfeather.org
Geoff Gersh is a guitarist/composer and has been collaborating with dancers,
visual artists as well as other music makers for quite some time. He uses the
guitar to get sounds that one would not normally associate with the guitar.
Bill Bronson played fat ass moog and bass in the Dream Lovers, The Gunga Din, Swans, Angels of Light, Congo Norvell and the Spitters.
8pm; $10
Friday, July 13
loren connors + geoff mullen
Best known as a composer and improviser on acoustic and electric guitar, Connors has released over fifty albums, on commercial record labels such as Table of the Elements and Father Yod as well as on his own St. Joan, Black Label and Daggett self publishing imprints. They include spare solo and duo blues, ensemble experimental jazz, noise, drones, and bleak folk music.
Connors is a prolific collaborator who has worked with artists including Jandek, Alan Licht, Thurston Moore, Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke, Smog and John Fahey.
Hailing from Providence, RI, Geoff Mullen is a guitarist / sound manipulator who has consistently surprised and challenged the ears of his ever-growing fan base. Repeated listens slowly reveal his natural ability to maintain a balance between control and freedom: constantly suggesting loose composition but managing to keep the listener completely focused on each ring of his guitar, or banjo for that matter. Open spaces of silence are attacked, whirling with windy melodic gestures contrasted by distortion and feedback. Geoff’s live performances are variations on his recorded material, incorporating improvisation and exploration while building tension with dynamics and atmosphere. He has toured extensively and has performed along side such artists as James Blackshaw, Fursaxa, and Cul De Sac’s Glenn Jones. Geoff has released solo albums on various labels including Last Visible Dog, Keith Fullerton Whitman’s Entschuldigen label and a 7-inch on Geoff’s own Rare Youth label. Recently, he was featured on the Barge Recordings “INNATURE” compilation.
8pm; $10
Wednesday July 18
pure horsehair +jenny quilter +ed pastorini
Pure Horsehair, is based on the songs of singer/guitarist Garrett
Devoe and the multi-instrumental talents of Shahzad Ismaily.
Initially, bare bones acoustic music accompanied by free form
improvised percussion, their sound has evolved into hypnagogic
amalgamations of Americana, folk and eastern influences.
Late 2005, saw to the completion of Pure Horsehair’s first full
length cd, ‘Aubade’, initiated by the gift of four blank reels of tape
and the loaning of an eight track 1/2″ recording studio. The album was then recorded by Garrett in his Brooklyn apartment and was later mixed by Joe Blaney (producer/engineer of White Magic, The Clash), whom they are currently finishing their follow up with.
Together, they has been performing and recording regularly since
2003 and has shared bills with Alec Ounsworth (clapyourhandssayyeah), Viking Moses, Carla Bozulich, T.K. Webb, PG Six, and Richard Buckner. In 2006, they opened for Laura Veirs on her European tour. The last performance of that tour, at Rouen Sainte Pelletiers, was recorded by the french label ad-luna and is set to be released in sometime in 2007.
Jenni Quilter is a writer and owner of (picnic,
lightning) press, which is devoted to the art of making beautiful (and unusual) limited edition books. Five titles have been printed in ‘Fabric’ (2007), “Carol’ (2007) and ‘Cottage Industries’ (2007) with another, ‘Two by Two’ forthcoming in the next two months. One of the intentions of this press is to explore the relationship between text and image / sound through different forms of collaboration. For instance, ‘Fabric’ (not surprisingly perhaps) is printed on fabric and includes drawings by artist Johanna Lovett that offer a baroque set of visual patterns to accompany a story about the business designs of a brother and sister employed in sewing the clothes for their village. ‘Cottage industries’, a story about children in remote
communities, includes drawings by children at a primary school in Oxford,United Kingdom, that were made in response to visual and musical prompts. The most relevant collaboration in relation to this night’s performance is ‘Carol’, a story about relationships and the arrival of aliens, for which Shahzad Ismaily wrote and recorded a series of pieces to accompany the reading of the book. The activities of this press is supported by Jenni’s appointment as a Lecturer in English Literature at Oxford University and a forthcoming appointment as a Lecturer at NYU this fall. Her academic research has been on collaborations between writers and artists in New York from the 1950s to the present day, focusing in particular on John Ashbery, Joe Brainard, Trevor Winkfield, Jane Hammond, Jane Freilicher and Henry Darger. She has just begun writing a book for Parlor Press on collaboration between writers and artists in New York from the 1950s to the present day. This should be available December 2008.
Thursday, July 19
new randy + hannah marcus
New Randy is radically simple: two women’s voices - one telling tales and one singing songs that are ‘nimbly worded, charmingly executed, and completely bereft of Family Values. As always.’
Lyrics+ spoken word: Holly Anderson - anthologized in Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992 (NYU Press 2006) Unbearables (Autonomedia 1995) Eleventh Assembling (1981) First Person Intense (Mudborn Press 1979) other books incl. Lily Lou (Purgatory Pie Press 1986) and Sheherezade (1988) A Pushcart Poetry Prize VIII nominee she’s been published in magazines including Rampike, Raddle Moon, Redtape, Benzene, Conduit and written texts for Choreographers Bebe Miller, Wally Cardona, and narrative dance pioneers Kinematic, as well as lyrics for Mission of Burma, Consonant, and Rhys Chatham.
Music + voice: Lisa B. Burns - her s/t lp on MCA was a study in high romantic Spector wall of sound. Lisa Burns sharp smoky voice enables her to snake through soul ballads as no white singer has done in quite some time. (Rolling Stone) As Velveteen, Burns and partner Sal Maida (Roxy Music, Sparks) wrote and produced the darker, danceable ‘After Hours’ for Atlantic Records. Burns and Maida then spent a decade deconstructing traditional country music as The Lovin’ Kind. On Burns’ more recent ‘Unadorned’ -Lisa sings with a touching resonance centred round her gritty Americana voice. (Phil Manzanera). Last year Lisa completed music studies with Elise Kermani and is currently recording new work on her laptop at her dining room table.
Hannah Marcus is a songwriter who lives in Brooklyn. Her most recent
and forthcoming CD were both recorded in Montreal with members of
Godspeed You Black Emperor. She is also a member of The WIngdale
Community SIngers along with Rick Moody, David Grubbs and Nina
Katchadourian. She’s also worked closely with producer Tim Mooney
of American Music Club, and her friend Adam Klein of The Size Queens.
Her first demos were produced by Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters).
8pm; $10
Friday, July 20
Demian E. Richardson - trumpet
Kristian Borysevicz - live sound art and pocket trumpet
Albey Balgochian - bass
Dave Ross - guitar
Federico Ughi - drums
Daniel Carter - alto and tenor saxophones, flute, trumpet, clarinet
Daniel Carter is a musician, writer, visual artist, conversationalist, and all-around inspirational spirit based in New York City who has been creating freely improvised music since the early 1970s. He performs most often on alto and tenor saxophones, trumpet, clarinet, and flute, though he also plays drums, guitar, and sings. While Carter is probably most well-known for his key role in long-standing free jazz collectives such as Other Dimensions in Music and Test, he also regularly collaborates with rock bands, abstract noisemakers, singer-songwriters, and more. These projects include some relatively famous outfits, but most often involve countless others who are less familiar to the general public. It’s probably safe to say that he has collaborated with thousands of
musicians over the years. - 50 Miles of Elbow Room
Demian E. Richardson:
Demian is a very talented and prolific composer/trumpeter of unlimited enthusiasm, energy, vision, and determination, against all odds. Watch him. Listen to what he’s doing. After all, he’s impossible to ignore. He has played with Timo Shanko, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, William Parker, Allen Ginsberg, The Late Philip Wilson, Joe Maneri, Ran Blake, Dennis Charles, and now plays with Ed Schuller, Shayna Dulberger, John Blum, Chris Welcome, Sean Moran.
Kristian Borysevicz:
Kristian’s work to date has been both solo and collaborative. A recent project was a collaboration with photographer Nan Goldin “1972-74 and The Other Side”. He is constantly looking for new possibilities of amplifying what he hears and extensively investigating all of them. he has played live with Jordan McLean, Demian Richardson, Christian Nowakowski, Daniel Carter, Bruno Montané, Gaspar Lukács and Jupiter Jones in a variety of NY locations and in Barcelona. Joel Thome has been a constant mentor since May 2005. Kristian is a bright new spirit vibration, transcending scenes, and genres!
Albey Balgochian:
“An impressive new voice on bass, without being too over-the-top….the current contrabassist in the Cecil Taylor TrioŠhe does a great deal of bowing and exploring a wide range of sounds on his bassŠbending notes inside out, making them talk, sing and squeal, yet his playing is most often melodic, never too far outŠeach piece tells a short story, bringing images of animated characters walking, dancing or just having fun.”
- Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
Dave Ross:
Dave is a composer/guitarist who’s ideas and manifestations range over a wide
and deep spectrum of sound, imagination, intuition, and humor. from “noise”, to
funk and rock, to the most subtle, profound, and nuanced lyricism. He has played with: Shayna Dulberger, Ras Moshe, Sabir Mateen, Rashid Bakr (currently
known as Charles Downs), Yuko Fujiyama, Matt Lavelle. Walden Wimberly, David
Gould, Cliff Jackson.
Federico Ughi:
Federico Ughi is an artist based in New York with a particular interest in improvisation. He has performed or recorded as a composer, drummer, and electronic musician with such artists as: Daniel Carter, William Parker, Steve Swell, Steve Dalachinsky, Fantastic Merlins, Nathan Hanson, Matt Lavelle, Reuben Radding, Sayuri Goto, in New York and Cinematic Orchestra (Ninja Tune), and Bloody Riot in London, the UK and Italy.
8pm; $10
Tuesday, July 24
anthony coleman explains some of it to you
An overview of recent work. A lecture-demonstration (with musical examples - live and recorded) looking at inspiration, influences, questions and answers, failures and successes. Audience participation will be encouraged.
Anthony Coleman is a 2006 Artist Fellowship recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). This presentation is co-sponsored by Artists & Audiences Exchange, a NYFA public program
“An artist of undeniable stature Coleman has always defied defition”
- Steve Smith, Tme Out New York
“Coleman’s playing has a unique, minimalistic, angular style reminiscent of Thelonious Monk’s later work. But Coleman is also privy to moments of beautiful melodic exploration”
-Marc Gilman, All Music Guide.
7pm; Admission free (donations accepted)
Wednesday, July 25
first set
talibam
Talibam! returns from a deep month in Europe investigating all forms of soup
and sandwiches in airports, bus stations, train depots and houses. At their return
they find three different records to be released. The first is ‘Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts’ on Azul Discografica. This record is an ensemble album
with special guests Cooper-Moore, Michael Evans, Peter Evans, Anders Nilson, and more! They also have a trio LP on Pendu Sound Recordings, and a CD on a french label named ‘Gaffer Records’
“…spastic, impossibly octopoidal drum splatter is all over this disc, a stuttering spastic free jazz soundscape dense and impenetrable. Above this tangled percussive squall, the synth and the sax do battle. And this is a serious fucking knock down drag out battle to the death. The synth seems to come out on top turning what could have been more of a free jazz record into a seriously fucked up freenoise record.
Mottel is like Keith Emerson on a serious PCP bender, spitting out thick snarling sheets of synth buzz, spraying it like machine gun fire, melodies are tangled and complicated little knots hurled into the fray like cannonballs made out of steel string and roof nails. The sax is all over the place, adding tonal color, mad squawking, chittering chirps and deep fuzzy moans, this is a massive chaotic free for all.”
-Aquarius Records
“The music matches the mania of the packaging perfectly as the trio let loose a… blast of sonic sludge that gleefully destroys everything in it’s path, as if on a mission.”
- Edwin Pouncey, The Wire
second set
Sutherland/McManus/Lesley
total high engery players,duo saxophones and drums,skronky tonk sounds,
randylee sutherland - on reeds,thin
ensemble/pricelessredskeleton/control r workshop aliacensis
trio/blackbottles/SOTAK/VHOLTZ/sword+sandals……high notes and heavy
swings.- founder of GSSD/FREAKTHOUTTH recordings………HEAR IT LIVE!
nick lesley - improvising percussionist, spirit electronics. Necking /
Gunung Sari / Black Lion White Devil / Jazzhandzz / Orbis Tertius
Ensemble…..full body rock freedom www.neckandtongue.com
michael orion mcmanus - in new york via portland, ore. seen with the
likes of sword + sandals chasing tiger fever and bopping
(achromatically) to blips and bleeps across the porches of portland.
8pm; $10
July 26th
hototogisu + prurient + sunroof + zaÏmph
Hototogisu
Marcia Bassett, a New York resident, and Matthew Bower, a resident of the United Kingdom, began collaborating under the name Hototogisu in 2003, releasing a number of monstrous drone works that defy gravity and echo through layers of flesh-on-steel strung through an array of black boxes.
Prurient
Born in 1997, Prurient is a noise outfit conceived by Dominick Fernow. In terms of sound, emphasis is placed on processed vocals, organic electronics, field recordings, and heavy use of feedback. The meaning of the word ‘prurient’ an obsessive/unhealthy lewd interest (sometimes sexual), Fernow’s intent – conceptually – is a recontextualization of this original meaning; applied to such mundane imagery as furniture, interior architecture, religious iconography – hence an unhealthy interest in everyday life.
In a live situation, the project is at it’s most confrontational with a ‘ bliztkreig attack’ of physical contortions, body response to feedback and guttural vocalization ranging from 1 – 20 minutes. Not an attack on the audience, but an attack on himself that the audience is witnessing. The end result is a rich, minimal, piercing sound, both physically and aurally – creating an atmosphere reminiscent of the old school ‘industrial noise’ pioneers, something few have been able to reproduce in this digitally occupied age.—Excerpt of Prurient Biography by Jon Borges of Pedestrian Deposit/Monorail Trespassing
Sunroof!
Matthew Bower, a veteran musician and noise ritualist, first appeared on the
early 80’s industrial scene of London with his performance/power electronics
group Pure. His backlog of projects: Pure, Skullflower, Total, Sunroof!,
Hototogisu, and a handful of phantom group names, follow a trajectory from the
school of Viennese Actionist performance work - power electronics – Stoner Rock - devotional drone works - obsessive maximallist overload –to blissed-out
monolithic noise. He has never discarded one form for the other, but instead
builds upon experience to reach new heights that pierce through an examination
of the present state– one that returns to a state of euphoria through
blackness.
ZaÏmph
Marcia Bassett is a founding member of Double Leopards and co-collaborator in
various improvised noise projects. With Zaimph, she uses guitar, effects,
organ and prerecorded sounds to create layers of drone coupled with dissonant
strands and searing texture. Her exploration in creating collages of sound
deliver the listener into a field of disembodied electricity.
8pm; $10
Friday, July 27
evolving ear presents
Chris Forsyth - 12 string guitar - Peeesseye guitarist flies free with acoustic songs and drones
Sean Meehan + Matt Heyner - double drumset duo - sunday at sam ash bedlam
Bryan Eubanks - electronics - miniature jackhammers on glass and
other audio mirages
8pm; $10
August
Wednesday, August 1
ashley paul + eli keszler + anthony coleman
In duo, this tiny unit combines noise driven saxophone, drums, damaged electronics and split second shifts of texture. Featuring Paul’s intense multi-reeds, detached vocals and electronics and Eli Keszler’s drums, bowed percussion, and guitar. These two move fluidly from Paul’s dreamy melodies to walls of sound drones.
Ashley Paul, based in New York, is a multi-reedist, vocalist and composer who uses a wide range of sounds varying from screeching wails to whispered melodies. She is currently working on a solo record collaging field recordings with floating vocals, reeds and an assortment of other instruments from Rhodes to harmonium. Her recently released self-titled 3” mini CDR was picked as one of the top 10 new releases in the month of June by WZBC Boston’s Rare Frequency. She is a founding member of award winning quartet Everything’s A Little Glorious and has performed most notably with Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble of Chicago), Joe Maneri, Ran Blake, Anthony Coleman and George Russell.
Eli Keszler is a New York based composer/multi instrumentalist who primarily uses percussion to create his sound, which balances droning harmonics created from bowed percussion with intense and fast free rhythm. In addition to his solo releases and performances, he has performed, recorded or collaborated with a number of important artists such as Jandek, Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble of Chicago) Greg Kelley, Geoff Mullen (Last Visible Dog), Steve Pyne (Redhorse), Anthony Coleman, T Model Ford (Fat Possum Records) pianist Ran Blake and legend of Jamaican music Lyn Taitt. Keszler has recently released his second solo record on REL records, and is planning another on REL in addition to a tape on Geoff Mullen’s Rare Youth label with his group Redhorse.
Anthony Coleman
Composer-keyboardist Anthony Coleman performs, records, and inspires throughout the world. Whether as a bandleader, a sideman, or solo pianist, the work of Anthony Coleman forms an important contribution and has helped to shape and influence the course of New York’s Downtown Music scene over the last two decades.
8pm $10
Thursday, August 2
aethr myth’d + esteban chapela
The year 2005 brought on many changes for many of us. As a means to
consider and accept personal changes PAUL LABRECQUE and RON
SCHNEIDERMAN, both continuing active participants in SUNBURNED HAND OF
THE MAN’s larger activities, set off on a short tour of Europe with
solo artist JOSHUA BURKETT in the early spring. While the duo had been
spending long winter nights playing in a Vermont warehouse, the project
did not take a full step into light until these travels, dubbed the
BROKEN WINGS TOUR. The years since have also brought many changes,
clearly these changes have come from the explorations within and
outside of the AETHR MYTH’D. The band now operates internationally. In
Europe Labrecque has added FONAL recording artist IGNATZ to the mix,
and toured the continent. In the Vermont hills the project now includes
full time members JOE MOTIKA and DON JENKS, with occasional drop-ins
from other local musicians. New, mind-splintering, recordings will soon
be made available.
esteban chapela is a composer and guitarist from Mexico City. For the last
decade, he has explored different combinations of contemporary and popular
music, going from chamber music to electronic rock and funk, as in his project
Zap Master. One of his main interests is to find a balance where accessibility
and sound exploration can meet and coexist.
He will be premiering acousmaric music for the Issue Project Room hemispherical
sound system.
8pm $10
Friday, August 3, 2007
elliott sharp - nels cline duo cd release party
Celebrating the release of their new duet CD “Duo Milano” on the Longsong label from Italy, Elliott Sharp and Nels Cline perform a set of acoustic and electric duets. Two intense and visionary composer/guitarists join forces! The sound ranges from intimate to
apocalyptic. Nels Cline leads the Nels Cline Singers and is a member of Wilco. E# leads Orchestra Carbon and Terraplane
For more info: http://www.longsongrecords.com/
8pm $10
Wednesday, August 8
“art can be anything” – an evening with tanya selvaratnam
Tanya Selvaratnam will present new work created during a recent six-week residency at Yaddo. She will read from “Profound Contempt” (a multimedia performance about Mata Hari and Einstein) andParadise, Paradox (a collection of stories and poems about Sri Lanka and Las Vegas). Inspired by a quote from Pina Bausch (“Art can be anything. The cosmos is large. I am just a discoverer.”), Tanya has brought together friends and collaborators working in a variety of media (music, dance, film, theater and literature) to present their work as well. Winsome Brown will read from her novel;Francesca Harper will dance; Angela McCluskey will sing; Honor Molloy will read from her fictional memoir; and Jennifer Reeves will screen her short film Shadows Choose Their Horrors, part of which was shot at Issue Project Room. Please join us for what is sure to be an exciting event.
Tanya Selvaratnam is a writer, actor, producer and activist. She has presented her solo work at Thread Waxing Space, Tonic and Lincoln Center among others. As a Company Member of The Builders Association and an Associate of The Wooster Group, Tanya has performed at dozens of venues around the world. She was a member of the Institute on Arts & Civic Dialogue and has been a frequent guest performer at New Dramatists. Her film productions have shown at the Sundance, Tribeca and Berlin Film Festivals among others and on the IFC Channel. So far this year, Tanya has appeared in The Builders Association/dbox production of “Super Vision,” Rotozaza’s “Double Think” (PS 122), and a few readings at New Dramatists. She is a 2007-8 resident at Yaddo and the Blue Mountain Center to develop a new multimedia performance and a collection of stories and poems.
Winsome Brown is a New York-based writer, performer, and director. Film credits include Shadows Choose Their Horrors (New York Film Festival, 2005), which she co-wrote with director Jennifer Todd Reeves; Heights, dir. Chris Terrio (Seattle Weekly Two-Minute Oscar). Most recently, she performed in Heather Woodbury’s “Tale of 2Cities: An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks” (Obie Award, Best Ensemble Acting). Upcoming projects include a new film and music collaboration with Jennifer Todd Reeves, composer Dave Soldier, and violinist Rebecca Cherry, a theatre piece with longtime friend and collaborator Tanya Selvaratnam, and a novel.
Jennifer Todd Reeves is a New York-based filmmaker whose films and live film/music performances have been shown the world over, from the Berlin, Sundance, Toronto, New York, and Rotterdam International Film Festivals to the Sundance Channel, the Whitney Biennial and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Reeves has directed twenty film-based works to date. Her debut experimental feature The Time We Killed (2004) earned numerous honors including the Fipresci Critics Prize, Berlin Film Festival; Best NY, NY Narrative Feature, Tribeca Film Festival; and Best Film, The Village Voice Film Critics’ Poll. Her silent film, Shadows Choose Their Horrors, premiered at the Bard Music Festival in 2005 with the American Symphony Orchestra’s live performance of Aaron Copland’s Grohg (Leon Botstein, conductor) and screened at the New York and Vancouver Film Festivals. In 2007, she received residencies at MacDowell and The Wexner Center.
Angela McCluskey hails from Glasgow, Scotland. In 1991, she headed out to Hollywood, leaving behind a career as a publicist with EMI, and became a singer. In 1992, she and Paul Cantelon formed a band called The Wild Colonials. McCluskey has lent her voice to many film soundtracks, among other projects, and to work with an eccentric list of artists, including Telepopmusik, Dr. John, Cyndi Lauper, Deep Forest, Joe Henry, The The’s, Matt Johnson, and Triptych (featuring the two brilliant beauties Sara Sant’ambrogio and Lilli Hayden, as well as her husband, the singular Paul Cantelon). Her Manhattan Records debut “The Things We Do” is available now.www.myspace.com/angelamccluskeymusic
Honor Molloy is an alumna of New Dramatists. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. She will read from O DARK HUNDRED: A Fictional Memoir about her Dublin childhood.
Francesca Harper blends original choreography, dance, music and film to create groundbreaking stage works that are bold and category-defying. Harper was raised in New York City, where she studied at the School of American Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet School, The Ailey School and under Madame Darvash and Barbara Walczak. After performing with the Dance Theater of Harlem, she danced as a principal in William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt from 1994-1999. Since returning to the States in 2000, Francesca has performed in several Broadway productions including “Fosse,” “The Producers,” “The Frogs,” “The Color Purple” and “Sweet Charity.” She has choreographed works for Ailey II, Tanz Graz and her own company The Francesca Harper Project. Her original hybrid work was first seen in 2000 at the Cherry Lane Theatre, as part of 50 minutes with Harriet and Phillis, a collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Margo Jefferson and composer Paul Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky. She premiered her critically acclaimed one-woman show The Fragile Stone Theory at the 2002 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.
Reservations
8pm $15
Thursday, August 9
jenny lin + tomas ulrich
jenny lin (piano) + fung chern hwei (violin): works by james tenney and john king
Jenny Lin is one of the most respected young pianists today, admired for her adventurous programming and charismatic stage presence. The New York Times writes: “No one who has heard [her] will need to be told that Ms. Lin has a gift for melodic flow” and “remarkable technical command,” and Gramophone magazine has hailed her as “an exceptionally sensitive pianist.” Her performances have taken her to venues such as Carnegie Recital Hall, Kennedy Center, Miller Theatre, MoMA, the Whitney Museum, and MCA Chicago, as well as Chopin, BAM’s Next Wave, Archipel, Flanders, Divonne, and Ars Musica Festivals, with groups such as Ensemble Contrechamps, Elliott Sharp’s Orchestra Carbon, the SWR German Radio Orchestra, and Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI. She is also featured in the new documentary, “Zahara”, by Elemental Films Spain, and records for Hänssler Classic, BIS, Koch, and Aeon.
Born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Fung Chern-Hwei has been freelancing as a violinist/violist in New York City since he finished his graduate studies in violin performance at Queens College. Interested in a variety of styles, Chern-Hwei is also active in jazz, rock, and hip-hop performance. His band, Project Taming Sari, was formed earlier this year, playing his own compositions. He debuted at Carnegie Hall last year and was recently part of Vision Festival’s Memorial Tribute to Leroy Jenkins. He will appear this summer at Lincoln Center Out of Doors and at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Art Center performing a series of concerts as well as conducting violin and improvisation workshops. Chern-Hwei has worked with musicians and ensembles such as hip-hop artists Akim Funk Buddha and Pete List, the Bach Vespers at the Holy Trinity Church, cellist Marcy Rosen, composers Paul Chihara, Mikael Karlsson and Zhou Tian, and rock group This Ambitious Orchestra, among others.
Tomas Ulrich’s Kargo Kult featuring Rolf Sturm and Mike Bisio
The Songs and Soliloquies Project: This unique string trio, made up of three of the finest improvisers in the New York new music/jazz scene, explores a vast array of traditional song forms and original compositions interspersed with solo musical meditations from each member of the ensemble.
Cellist/composer Tomas Ulrich has performed and recorded with such artists as Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, Herb Robertson, Uri Caine, and Dave Douglas. He is also a member of the Diller-Quaile String Quartet, which premiered his Quintet for Trumpet and Strings (featuring guest soloist Herb Robertson) in May of 1996. JAZZ NOW has characterized him as “the total package…incredible chops, great imagination, and superb pitch. He fulfills the roles of bassist, guitarist, and additional horn player and is endlessly talented and creative.” Ulrich has written music for theater, film, and instrumental performance and can be heard on over 70 CDs in a wide variety of musical styles and settings.
Guitarist Rolf Sturm has performed and/or recorded with Dave Douglas, Tony Trischka, Giora Feidman, David Johansen, Loudon Wainwright, and members of the Grateful Dead. He leads his own NYC area bands Feed the Meter and Just Cause. Rolf has toured North America and Europe, performing at the World Expo 200 in Hanover, Germany, at the Lincoln Center and Town Hall in NYC, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He has performed on soundtracks for both film and TV and his music has been featured on NPR’s “All Songs Considered.” Rolf has released two CDs on the Water Street Music label (including two solo guitar recordings).
Michael Bisio invariably astounds his audience with the beauty of his tone as well as the intensity of his very personal musical language. He has received four stars from Downbeat and Signal to Noise has said “Bisio is one of the few musicians that has managed to meld [a] high-concept sense of physicality with the soulful charge of jazz. His fiddle-high, scraped overtones create a tangled choir that is impossible to resist, his expressiveness with the bow is unmatched. Having whirled the listener into a transportive state, he gently shows the way out…”
8pm $10
Friday, August 10
alex waterman
An evening with cellist Alex Waterman
And special guests
8pm $10
Wednesday, 15 August
littoral series with writers mike topp, tao lin, + musical artists brown wing overdrive
Mike Topp lives and works for the FBI in New York City. He celebrates his 75th birthday this Christmas. Come celebrate the publication of his new book SHORTS ARE WRONG from Unbearable Books/Autonomedia, with artwork by David Berman, William Wegman, and Will Yackulic.
Tao Lin:
Tao Lin is the author of a novel, EEEEE EEE EEEE, and a story-collection, BED, which were published simultaneously by Melville House in May, 2007. Tao is also the author of a poetry-collection, YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM, published by Action Books in November, 2006. His web site is called READER OF DEPRESSING BOOKS.
Chuck Bettis, Mikey IQ Jones, and Derek Morton are mad jugglers of atypical musical entities. Processed banjo, shamanistic chants, and countrified electronics are set up against lattices of stuttered beat boxing and found-object percussion to confound and delight.
Bettis and Morton met in Washington DC, crossing paths as participants in the city’s burgeoning experimental music community. Upon relocating to New York City, the two began collaborating as a duo before IQ Jones joined them in early 2007. IQ’s alarm clocks, duck calls, and array of unlikely sound devices provide a lively counterpoint to Bettis’ machine noise and Morton’s chaotic circuits.
In the 90’s, Chuck Bettis shook up Washington DC with no-wavers the Metamatics, his solo electronics moniker Trance and the Arcade, and the genre-traversing collective All-Scars before relocating to New York in 2002. He has since collaborated with John Zorn, Fred Frith, and Ikue Mori (among others), and has recorded with Nautical Almanac, Yellow Swans, and Measles Mumps Rubella.
Vocalist/percussionist/one-man bomb squad Mikey IQ Jones has presented frankensteined collusions of performance art theatrics, mutant soul harmonies, beat box and extended vocal technique, kitchen-sink live sampling aesthetics, and onomatopoeic wordplay in solo performances since 2003. His otherworldly rhythms, created exclusively with the sounds of IQ’s voice and a small handful of household objects, have captivated crowds and crossed genre-lines, resulting in performances from CBGB’s and the downtown improv school to uptown hip-hop block parties and choreography collaboration.
Derek Morton has generated and manipulated sound since the early 1990’s, relentlessly investigating the possibilities of audio in all contexts. He is equally interested in live improvisation, studio research, exploratory composition, and electronic reconfiguration. Morton’s sound experiments have attacked everything from cutting-edge technologies like surround-sound to reinvented tools like handheld video game consoles and controllers. Mikroknytes, Morton’s duo with violinist John Coursey, has released four full-length CDs.
8pm $10
Thursday August 16
101crustaceans
This seminal outfit has been compared to a crumbling silo, meticulously
recorded - and, in its more pristine moments, lichen. Crush together
Tristano, Beatles, Ligeti and Peggy Lee and you might get a porridge like
this. Embarrasingly specific lyrics, bizarre time displacements, melodies
divorced from harmony, pleonasms - you name it, they got it.
Ed Pastorini, Indigo Street, Oren Bloedow, Ben Perowsky.(or a subset there of)
Oh, and bring your own trivet.
8pm $10
Friday, August 17
min xiao-fen trio + brandon seabrook
Min Xiao-Fen / Kathryn Woodard / Satoshi Takeishi
Min Xiao-Fen, a native of China, was a pipa soloist with famed Nanjing Traditional Music Orchestra of China. She has worked with composers John Zorn, Philip Glass, Tan Dun, and many others. Her piece, “The Loneliest Monk,” was commissioned and played with House Blend at the Kitchen. Recent highlights include appearances with her Blue Pipa Trio at the JVC Jazz Festival and a guest appearance on Björk’s new album, Volta. Min was also a featured composer and performer for the American Composers Orchestra’s “Composer Out Front” project. Min is also a founder of Blue Pipa, Inc. (www.bluepipa.org).
Pianist Kathryn Woodard specializes in repertoires and collaborations that explore cross-cultural exchange. Her performances have taken her to China, Korea, Turkey, and the central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan. She has worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ge Gan-ru, Huang Ruo, the Shanghai Quartet, and eighth blackbird. She is also a member of the electro-acoustic duo, ouisaudei, with Paula Matthusen.
Satoshi Takeishi, drummer, percussionist, and arranger, is a native of Mito, Japan. He has performed and recorded with many musicians such as Ray Barretto, Carlos “Patato” Valdes, Anthony Braxton, Mark Murphy, Erik Friedlander, Lalo Schifrin and Pablo Ziegler to name a few. He continues to explore multi-cultural, electronics and improvisational music with pianist/composer Shoko Nagai, in his current project “VORTEX”.
Brandon Seabrook grew up in Foxboro, Massachusetts. After graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music he moved to Brooklyn, NY. He has performed throughout the states and Europe including “All Tomorrow’s Parties” Festival, U.K., Warsaw Jazz Festival, Krakow Culture Festival, and as artist in residence at the Borderland Foundation for Avant Culture in Segjy, Poland and SFB Radio Kultur in Berlin. He performs regularly in ensembles in Brooklyn led by Briggan Krauss, Peter Evans and Curtis Hasselbring and has performed alongside noted improvisers such as Roswell Rudd, Anthony Coleman, Roger Miller, Jack Wright, Andrew Drury, Jessica Pavone, Andrew D’Angelo and many others. He will be performing his own compositions for solo guitar inspired by Roscoe Holcomb and D. Boon as well as some by Olivier Messian and Duke Ellington.
8pm $10
Tuesday August 21
matthew welch and jeremiah cymerman
Utilizing some of the very best young performers in New York’s improvising community Matthew Welch and Jeremiah Cymerman present an exciting evening of graphic scores and and small group configurations over the course of 2 sets at Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room. Within the context of a creative orchestra, Welch & Cymerman (who have collaborated on many projects) are embracing the sense of community that exists within New York’s underground and are excited to celebrate it at Issue’s new space in Brooklyn. More info
TBA
Matthew Welch: Bagpipes, Sax
Jeremiah Cymerman: Clarinet
Josh Sinton: Sax & Bass Clarinet
Nate Wooley: Trumpet
Taylor Ho-Bynum: Cornet
Sam Kulik: Bass Trombone
Trevor Dunn: Bass
Tom Blancarte: Bass
Shelley Burgon: Harp
Christopher Hoffman: Cello
Jessica Pavone: Viola
Mary Halvorson: Electric Guitar
Aaron Siegel: Drums
Jeremiah Cymerman is a composer and clarinetist living in New York City. The bulk of the music that he plays is improvised (i.e. not written or composed
prior to performance). He is very interested in solo performance and extended technique, and as contrived as it sounds, is interested in creating, or at least contributing to, a new language for clarinet. He has
performed with many incredible musicians, some famous and some not so. Having self-released several cdr’s, he released his first cd as a leader, “Big Exploitation”, in 2007 on the Solponticello record label of Athens, GA.His next cd, “Silence & Solitude” will be available in the fall of 2007.
Matthew Welch (b.1976) holds two university degrees in Experimental Music Composition, a BFA from Simon Fraser University (1999), and an MA from Wesleyan
University (2001), studying with noted composers such as Barry Truax, Rodney Sharman, Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton. The eclectic breadth of his interests in Scottish bagpipe music, Balinese gamelan, minimalism, improvisation and rock converge in compositional amalgams ranging from traditional-like bagpipe tunes to electronic pieces, improvisation strategies and fully notated works for solo
instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra and non-western instruments.
8pm $10
Thursday, August 23
ny phonographers meeting II, 2007 with:
scott smallwood
seth cluett
ben owen
sawako
civyiu kkliu
The NY Phonographers Meetings are a series of annual concert’s presenting un-processed or raw location and field recordings in a collaborative immersive listening environment.
Gilles Aubry
Gilles Aubry is a Swiss sound artist & musician based in Berlin since 2002.
His work is at the crossroad of improvisation, installation and performance integrating the use of field recordings, surround sound and random processes.
Gilles will present a solo set of his ongoing work Berlin Backyards, a sound piece based on field recordings of several backyards made in Berlin during the winter of 2006. The live version of the piece uses improvisation and random processes to create a dreamy soundscape at the border of space representation and musical abstraction. Far from being spectacular, Berlin Backyards aims at attracting the attention of the listener on the sonic qualities of the space itself and on micro-variations in the peripheral sound environment.
www.soundimplant.com/gilaubry/BERLIN_BACKYARDS.html
8pm $10
Friday August 24th 2007
an evening with catherine jauniaux and friends
hahn rowe+ned rothenberg+marc ribot+david linton
Catherine Jauniaux has vocalized with some of the world’s great improvisers, including her late husband Tom Cora, Fred Frith, Tim Hodgkinson, Barre Phillips and Ikue Mori. She makes a rare NYC visit and will be joined by an illustrious cast of friends:
first set with Hahn Rowe, guitar. and electronics and Ned Rothenberg, reeds
second set with Marc Ribot, guitar. and electronics and David Linton, electronics and projections
“Catherine Jauniaux is sublime, Her power draws from the dizzying, unplumbed depths of the psyche… no one has so convincingly summoned the legion of conflicting voices within each of us; the ability to selectively mute them is a working definition of sanity”. David Krasnow, Village Voice
8pm $15 both shows
Wednesday, August 29
kato hideki’s tremolo of joy
Charlie Burnham: violin Briggan Krauss: alto sax Kato Hideki: double bass Calvin Weston: drums
Kato Hideki is a Japanese born composer, bassist & multi-instrumentalist. He is the co-founder of Death Ambient with Fred Frith and Ikue Mori. His composition, Tremolo of Joy (a Native American’s vocal cry prior to a hunt or fight), borrows from a few American art forms from Native American myths of love, life and death, to screenplay and jazz formats. Melodies correspond to actions, as does improvisation to dialogues, while stories are being told without words. Tonight, Kato invites some innovative voices to perform this piece. All the musicians have known each other for many years, yet they have never played together until now.
Charlie Burnham is a member of James Blood Ulmer’s Odyssey band and Steven Berstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra.
Briggan Krauss is a founding member of Sex Mob.
Calvin Weston has worked with Ornette Coleman, James Blood Ulmer, David Murrey & John Zorn.
8pm $10
Friday, August 31
c. spencer yeh+ paul flaherty
C. Spencer Yeh was born in Taipei, Taiwan, moved to the US in 1980; and is now 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. Collaborations live and in studio have included various contemporary groups including Comets on Fire, Dead Machines, Double Leopards, Dream/Aktion Unit, the Hototogisu, Smegma, MV+EE, Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio All-Stars, the New Humans w/ Vito Acconci, as well as individuals including Thurston Moore, John Olson, Okkyung Lee, Tatsuya Nakatani, Audrey Chen, Nate Wooley, Pete Nolan, Larry Marotta, and many others. Currently when possible, Yeh plays in a trio with Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty, as a guest member of Graveyards (led by John Olson), and is currently in deep collaboration with John Wiese. Yeh has played in various projects at events including Victoriaville (Canada), SONAR (Spain), Frieze Arts/Music at London Hippodrome (UK), SXSW (US), All Tomorrow’s Parties at Butlins Holiday Centre (UK), , LAMPO at University of Chicago (US), the Destijl/Freedom From (US) and the ongoing No Fun festivals (US), among others. He has also had works in the Harry Smith Anthology Remixed (alt.gallery, Newcastle UK), Leaderless: Underground Cassette Culture Now (Printed Matter, New York, NY) and Music Show II (Publico Gallery/Shake It Records, Cincinnati OH).
Paul Flaherty, musical artist.
“Flaherty’s playing is febrile, his tone mercurial. It rises and falls through timbres resonating with history. His tone on alto is broad, at times Johnny Hodges-gorgeous, until it explodes with Ayler’s unhinged glossolalia. On tenor, Flaherty moves at moments with the muscular pathos and sentimentality of Sonny Rollins, at others he burns with brusque, untutored fire of Archie Shepp. Yet his playing is more than just a string of descriptive touchstones, as he guides these timbres into a titanic flow.”
–Dusted Magazine on Flaherty and Chris Corsano’s album “Steel Sleet & Last Eyes”
8pm $10
September
SEPTEMBER: LAPLANDIA
Laplandia is supported through a generous grant from The Department of Cultural Affairs
Thursday, September 6th
o.blaat + toshio kajiwara
Based in Brooklyn, New York, sound artist, composer, and core member of SHARE (http://share.dj - an emergent art community and forum), o.blaat (Keiko Uenishi) is known for her sound works formed through experiments in restructuring and analyzing one’s relationship with sounds via kinesthetic response as well as aural cognition in sociological and environmental contexts. She has performed and made installations at venues and festivals worldwide. Upcoming projects include a concert curated by Christian Marclay at ICA Philadelphia, and a residency with Binauralmedia.org in Nodar, Portugal in October ‘07. She has collaborated with artists such as Ikue Mori, Christian Marclay, DJ Olive, Miguel Frasconi, Eyvind Kang, Sachiko M, Aki Onda, Toshio Kajiwara and Anthony Coleman, among many others.
http://obla.at http://myspace.com/oblaat (firefox only)
http://cronicaelectronica.org http://share.dj
Toshio Kajiwara was born in Tokyo and raised in Hong Kong, London and New York. Since the early 90’s he has been performing as a sound artist. In 1999 he began organizing an experimental sound event series and music label phonomena based in NYC. With his partner Gregor Asch (DJ Olive), phonomena has presented over 500 international artists in search of global interaction and communication through sound performance. Extensive collaborations with Tim Barnes, Okkyung Lee, Christian Marclay, DJ Olive, Marina Rosenfeld, Barry Weisblat amongst others.
8pm $10
Friday, September 7th
mitchell akiyama + bruce tovsky and shimpei takeda
Toronto born, Montreal based Mitchell Akiyama has carved a niche for himself as one of Canada’s premier avant-garde electronic musicians. He incorporates traditional instruments and real world sound sources in his compositions, fusing the organic and the digital. The results can be beautiful and lush, jarring and abrasive, but are, above all, always moving. ‘Hope that lines don’t cross’ on Alien8 Recordings’, sub label Substractif, was lauded by critics and became a staple on college/alternative radio charts in North America and Europe. He has also recently finished a collaborative album with Cincinnati based Joshua Treble. The project, ‘Desormais’, is rooted in experimental, noisy terrain but is full of jagged beauty. In addition, Akiyama’s new solo album, ‘Temporary music,’ will be released early this year on prestigious German label Raster-Noton. The record is a collection of fragments - shards of pianos, pieces of field records, and digital interruptions. Akiyama has played extensively in Europe and North America at festivals such as Sonar and Mutek alongside the likes of Oval, Francisco Lopez,
Bruce Tovsky is a visual/sound artist, who began painting at the age of 7 and started playing with tape recorders at the age of 10. Ever since then he has been figuring out ways of putting sound and pictures together. For the past several years, he has been creating live video and sound improvisations with artists such as John Hudak, David Linton and Kim Cascone at spaces such as Diapason, Experimental Intermedia, Issue Project Room and his own installation space 106BLDG30
Shimpei Takeda (b.1982), is an artist working with photography, video, and improvisational performance. Originally from Japan, Takeda currently lives and works in New York City. Primarily self-taught, Takeda began shooting pictures at the age of 18. Later on, he expanded his unique vision and sensitivity to the other mediums . He experiments with the aesthetic, optical and poetic possibilities between abstraction and concreteness.
His work has been presented at the Essl Collection of Contemporary Art, Austin Museum of Art, Weisman Art Museum, Schenectady Museum & Suits-bueche Planetarium, and throughout New York City venues including: Issue Project Room, the Tank, and Experimental Intermedia.
8pm $10
Saturday, September 8th
COLORFIELD VARIATIONS
curated by: Richard Chartier (www.3particles.com)
This program, curated by renowned sound artist Richard Chartier, is a collection of audio/visual works reinterpreting the Color Field movement by an international array of critically acclaimed sound and new media artists including: Frank Bretschneider, Alan Callander, Chris Carter + Cosey Fanni Tutti (Chris&Cosey/Throbbing Gristle), Sue Costabile, Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand, Mark Fell (SND/Blir) + Ernest Edmonds, Tina Frank + General Magic, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Stephan Mathieu, Steve Roden, and Bas Van Koolwijk. Colorfield Variation includes new works especially created for this program.
Color Field painting, an abstract style that emerged in the 1950s following Abstract Expressionism, is characterized by canvases painted primarily with stripes, washes and fields of solid color. The first serious and critically acclaimed art movement to originate in the nation’s capital, Washington Color School was central to the larger Color Field movement. As a reaction to the emotional energy and gestural surface of Abstract Expressionists, the Color Field artists and members of The Washington Color School turned away from the individual mark in favor of color itself becoming the content of the work. Breaking painting down to the fundamental formal elements, the Color Field artists created pure simplified, large-format, color-dominated fields on a large monumental scale.
During the early sixties, Color Field painting was the term used to describe younger artists whose work were related to second generation abstract expressionism yet clearly pointed toward a new direction in American painting. Artists such as Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Leon Berkowitz, Frank Stella and others eliminated recognizable imagery from their canvas and presented abstraction as an end in itself with each painting as one unified, cohesive, monolithic image.
This program in its original form was created for Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran (www.wpac.org) as part of the city wide Colorfield Remix events which took place in April-June 2007 in Washington, DC.
AUDIO/VIDEO SCREENING program:
STEVE RODEN (US)
“dark over light earth” / 13:00 / 2007
www.inbetweennoise.com
ALAN CALLANDER (US)
“CF01” / 5:00 / 2007
www.visionload.com
FRANK BRETSCHNEIDER (DE)
“looping i-vi (excerpt)” / 12:00 / 2004-5
www.frankbretschneider.de
STEPHAN MATHIEU (DE)
“Orange was the color of her dress” / 10:00 / 2007
www.bitstream.de
SUE COSTABILE (US) + BEEQUEEN (NL)
“AMP_SWELL” / 3:49 / 2005
www.sue-c.net / www.beequeen.nl
TINA FRANK + GENERAL MAGIC (AT)
“Chronomops” / 2:00 / 2006
www.frank.at
BAS VAN KOOLWIJK (NL)
“FDBCK/AV - Silver” / 3:29 / 2007
www.umatic.nl
CHRIS CARTER + COSEY FANNI TUTTI (UK)
“Chronomanic Redux” / 10:00 / 2007
www.cartertutti.com
RYOICHI KUROKAWA (JP)
“Scorch” / 3:04 / 2005
www.ryoichikurokawa.com
EVELINA DOMNITCH + DMITRY GELFAND (RU/US)
“Ten Thousand Peacock Feathers in Foaming Acid” / 8:00 / 2007
www.portablepalace.com
ERNEST EDMONDS (AU) + MARK FELL (UK)
“Broadway One”(excerpt) / 2:00 / 2004-5
www.markfell.com / www.ernestedmonds.com
LIVE PERFORMANCE:
SAWAKO (JP/NY) (20:00)
www.troncolon.com
LIVE PERFORMANCE:
“SPECIFICATION.FIFTEEN” (40:00)
RICHARD CHARTIER + TAYLOR DEUPREE
www.12k.com
www.3particles.com
For this collaboration, sound artists Richard Chartier and Taylor Deupree were invited by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, to create a new live work inspired by the Seascapes series of renowned Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto on the occasion of his retrospective exhibition. The result is this live recording, Specification.Fifteen. This work premiered on March 30, 2006 in front of the curved panoramic window of the Museum’s Lerner Room as the sun set across the city’s skyline. Specification.Fifteen evokes the stillness and opposing yet related spaces of Sugimoto1s Seascapes, which suggest infinitesimal change and variation under a seemingly uniform surface.
A second performance for Transmediale.07 at the Akademie der Kuenste [Berlin, Germany], where the work was also exhibited and awarded one of five Honorable Mentions from the Jury. For this live performance a new video work was created utilizing the 13 Sugimoto Seascape images which had been present in the Hirshhorn exhibit. Over 45 minutes the perfectly aligned still images transition and dissolve between and over each other in an often barely noticeable 3 minute hazy and hallucinatory shift.
“Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention and yet they vouchsafe our very existence.
Mystery of mysteries, water and air are right there before us in the sea. Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.” - Hiroshi Sugimoto
8pm $10
Friday, September 14th
shelley burgon + koen holtkamp
shelley Burgon + rachel wood salley
Utilizing the sounds of the harp, birds and other surprising creatures, Shelley Burgon will venture once again into the world of spatialized, real-time live processing and will collaborate with the visual artist Rachel Wood Salley in what will be Shelley Burgon’s third piece for Stephan Moore’s 16-channel hemispherical speaker system at Issue Project Room.
Shelley Burgon lives in Brooklyn and plays harp and computer in the avant-chamber ensemble Ne(x)tworks and the avant-rock band Stars Like Fleas. Her duo with bassist Trevor Dunn recently released a full-length, improvised, live record for Skirl Records titled Baltimore. In September 2007 Stars Like Fleas will release their highly anticipated second album for Talitres titled The Ken Burns Effect. For the 2008-2009 season Shelley will join seven other stellar musicians in a collaboration with the legendary Merce Cunningham Dance Company as part of the Dia: Beacon Events series. Shelley has spent many years improvising in and around New York City and has had the pleasure to play and record with many legendary people associated with the vibrant New York downtown scene. Currently she is working on two records, one of original chamber music and one of new songs in which she will be playing a variety of instruments.
www.myspace.com/shelleyburgon
www.nextworksmusic.net
www.myspace.com/starslikefleas
Koen Holtkamp co-founded the apestaartje collective/label in 1998 while studying at The Art Institute of Chicago. Since then the label has relocated to Brooklyn and released CDs from artists from Japan, Germany, Austria, Australia, France, and the US. Holtkamp has released two solo albums as Aero and two albums as Mountains, a duo project with Brendon Anderegg. He has toured throughout the US and Europe performing everywhere from festivals, art galleries, and museums to basements, hippie communes, churches, and rock clubs. Holtkamp has performed with Tony Conrad, Greg Davis, Minamo, Tape, Nicholas Collins, Supersilent, Alog, etc. He has also been included in several exhibitions, most notably at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His current solo performances utilize acoustic instruments and objects played through a series of both analog and digital electronics to create an extremely gradual and hypnotic listening experience. ‘Field Rituals’, his first solo album under his own name will be released by UK based Type records in early 2008.
myspace: www.myspace.com/koenholtkamp
apestaartje: www.staartje.com
8pm $10
Wednesday, September 19th
KIOKU CD Release Party
KIOKU is an experimental trio consisting of taiko and percussion (Wynn Yamami), live electronics (Chris Ariza), and saxophones (Ali Sakkal). KIOKU will begin its residency at Issue Project Room with two full sets and a CD release party of “Both Far and Near” on Quiet Design Records.
Wynn Yamami is a taiko drummer, percussionist, and composer whose work recontextualizes Asian traditional music. He has collaborated with such artists as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Badal Roy, Giovanni Hidalgo, and Arturo O’Farrill, and has performed in Europe, Japan, and across the US. He currently lives in Manhattan, where he practices Japanese dance, performs with the traditional group Soh Daiko, and leads the Japanese street music band HAPPYFUNSMILE.
Christopher Ariza is a composer and programmer of sonic structures and systems. He has composed for theatre, film, concert hall, and interactive media, and has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, awards, and commissions. His web-based media and systems include the babelcast, the telequalia, Post-Ut, algorithmic.net, and envl.net. His music, software, and research are distributed via www.flexatone.net.
Saxophonist Ali Sakkal draws from a dynamic blend of musical influences. He has studied with Branford Marsalis, Oliver Lake, classical virtuoso Greg Dufford, and European free-jazz pioneer Evan Parker. Active in both San Francisco and New York City, he has performed nationally and internationally with Heftpistole, fAt kiD, HAPPYFUNSMILE, and Fish Knuckle. Ali has spent the past few years as a music educator in New York City.
www.alisakkal.com
www.kiokugroup.com
www.myspace.com/kiokugroup
8pm $10
Thursday, September 20th
thomas ankersmit + andrea parkins
Thomas Ankersmit
alto saxophone, analogue modular synthesizer, computer.
Thomas Ankersmit (1979) lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam. His work has been presented across Europe, North America and Japan, in solo concerts and exhibitions as well as together with artists such as Phill Niblock, Kevin Drumm, Jim O’Rourke and Axel Dörner.
Faulty (acts) is a multi-channel audio composition activated and performed by Andrea Parkins. The artist will perform “structural interventions” — achieved through the use of live generative processing — on sonic materials that (in part) explore the specificity of objects – collected, invented or implicated (faked potatoes, and electronic feedback from an unknown source) – as they are set into motion and then ultimately come to stasis. Multiple chains of audio events dispersed through Issue’s space via its 16-channel hemispherical speaker system will arrive at an indeterminate sonic outcome meant to point to evocative and playful connections/tensions between materiality, language, and performance.
Andrea Parkins is a New York-based sound artist, composer and electro multi-instrumentalist who also makes/arranges objects, images and (sometimes) words. Known for her dynamic timberal explorations on the electric accordion and inventive use of customized generative sound processing, Andrea has appeared on more than 50 recordings on labels such as Hatology, Atavistic, and Creative Sources. She has performed worldwide as a soloist, and with artists including Nels Cline, Thomas Lehn, Fred Frith, Otomo Yoshihide, and Anne Wellmer, among many others. Locally, Andrea’s audio works and performances have been presented at the Whitney Museum of America Art, The Kitchen, Experimental Intermedia and Diapason Gallery for sound and intermedia, among other venues. Currently, Andrea continues to develop and perform a series of Max/MSP based audio/visual works inspired by Rube Goldberg’s circuitous contraptions.
8pm $10
Friday, September 21st
zach layton + jesse stiles
Zach Layton is a composer, curator and new media artist based in New York. His work investigates complex relationships and topologies created through the interaction of simple core elements like sine waves, minimal surfaces and kinetic visual patterns. Zach’s work has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and he has performed and exhibited at the Kitchen, the New York Electronic Art Festival, St. Mark’s Ontological Hysterical Theater, Dumbo Arts Festival, New York Digital Salon, Monkeytown, and many other venues in New York and Europe. He has collaborated with Luke Dubois, Vito Acconci, Jonas Mekas, Patrick Hambrecht, Angie Eng and Chika Ijima among many other artists, filmmakers and musicians. Zach is also the curator of Brooklyn’s monthly experimental music series “Darmstadt: classics of the avant-garde.” He is also co-curator of the PS1 warm-up summer music series.
Jesse Stiles was born in 1978 in Boston, MA. Stiles performs music with a device he has assembled called a “hacked briefcase.” His briefcase houses modified input devices and an unseen computer that runs Stiles’ custom-built software. About his sound, Jesse once said: “Drums flow physically through my blood, and my flesh is a single, changing sound. I am not the creator of this body, I am the body itself, Jesse Stiles.” Stiles has performed at a wide variety of new music venues such as Lincoln Center, The Galapagos Art Space, Joe’s Pub, and The Deep Listening Space. Stiles also performs at dive bars and rock clubs and actively participates in the development of underground venues.
8pm $10
Saturday, September 22nd
stephan moore + madeleine gallagher + curtis bahn + dean sharp
Stephan Moore and Madeleine Gallagher will perform a series of compositions in sound and image using analog equipment (tape and film) as part of the source. This work is about starting over and reexamining the beginning influences so that new ideas can take flight. The images created for this project were made with the Oxberry animation stand, the optical printer and hand painted 35. Transferred to video, the films will be manipulated live. The audio aspect of these compositions stems from Stephan’s desire to use bolder colors, exploring overlapping rhythmic patterns and harmonic progression from the perspective of the more nuanced textural pieces he has made in recent years. Stephan’s music meets Madeleine’s visuals in the realm of patterns of dots and lines.
Stephan Moore is a composer, audio artist, and sound designer in New York City. His creative work centers on the collection and use of real-world sound, the creation and perception of sonic environments, and technological manifestations of improvisation and interactivity. Recent performances and installation artworks make use of a large multi-channel array of his hemispherical speakers. He performs regularly as half of the electronic duo Evidence, and with a variety of musicians, live-video artists, and dancers.
Madeleine Gallagher is an artist formally trained as a painter and a sculptor, and for the past ten years has been working with video in a variety of ways, mostly in the realm of experimental single channel video and multimedia installation. She uses her work to explore and deconstruct physical, visual and aural sensation, endurance, perceptual thresholds and phenomenology. Since 2004 she has been experimenting with different methods of live video performance. She has grown tired of computers and this summer she began working with film for the first time. She has a fondness for small animals, electronic music and video synthesis.
Curtis Bahn and Dean Sharp
Ranging from raga to raucous, Curtis and Dean will explore electronic/acoustic grooves and sonic landscapes for percussion, sensor-extended sitar and dilruba (an Indian cello-like instrument).
Curtis Bahn is a composer and improviser who specializes in live interactive electronic performance. His music has been presented at venues including Lincoln Center, India International Centre - Delhi,
Sadler’s Wells - London, Palais Garnier - Paris, Grand Theatre de la Ville - Luxembourg, Gammage Hall - Tempe AZ, Colourscape - England, the Monaco Dance Forum, as well as numerous festivals, academic conferences and small clubs. Curtis recently completed a major
residency project entitled “Motione,” combining interactive dance and graphics with the work of Choreographer Trisha Brown and Visual Artists Paul Kaiser, Marc Downey and Shelly Eshkar at Arizona State University Arts Media and Engineering Program. He has released recordings of live electronic performance on his extended string bass including “R!g,” available on the EMF label, a duo recording entitled “./swank” with Dan Trueman on the cycling 74 label, and a DVD with Trueman, Pauline Oliveros and Tomie Hahn on the Deep Listening label.
Currently Curtis is studying Indian music with the American Bansuri virtuoso and composer Steve Gorn, and applying his studies to both traditional Hindustani musical performance, and extended performance
interfaces for the Dilruba and the Sitar.
Dean Sharp has played and/or recorded with an array of creative artists as diverse as Moby, Brad Mehldau, Stephen Vitiello, Elliott Sharp, Joe Lovano, John Stubblefield, Liz Gorrill (aka Kazzrie Jaxen), jazz legend Hugh Brodie, Tony Levin, Mark Ribot, Steve Swallow, Carter Burwell, David Arner and Jane Siberry. He has written and recorded with notorious loop-miester David Torn (SPLaTTeRCeLL project), colead his own ensembles….earmight (w/ Dean Jones, David Hofstra, Russ Johnson and Ken Mcgloin) and trio loCo (w/ Marc Dzuiba and studioStu)….and is presently the creative catalyst for::SONic 150 (trio w/ trumpet notebender Russ Johnson and bass wizard Michael Bisio), scribbleScrabbLe (duo w/ videographer Thomas Moore), 3:2:1 (w/ Ken Mcgloin and Russ Johnson) and sanDwich (w/ fellow percussionist Harvey Sorgen and mystery “third person du jour’!)
As a producer/remixer, sharp’s sonic palette has no boundaries. He has ‘pushed the envelope’ for a wide variety of projects including records with Indian flutest Steve Gorn, cellist Stephanie Winters, klezmer/world artist Zoe B Zak, bassist Steve Rust’s PULSAR and indie faves Louise Taylor and Stoneboat…. all the while continuing to be active in the soundscape world of art installations (w/ Stephen Vitiello), film/videography (Nam June Paik, Tom Moore) and jingle
scoring. Sharp has played a vital role in the recordings and live performances of such innovative singer/songwriters as Rachael Sage, Greg Brown, Donna Lewis, MIMI (goese), Noe Venable and Jill Sobule and is on call for Todd Sickafoose’s Blood Orange. http://diggadiggamuse.com
8pm $10
Wednesday, September 26
ikue mori + william fowler collins
Ikue Mori is considered a legendary composer and musician of the downtown scene. Soon after arriving to New York from her native city of Tokyo in 1977, she became drummer/co-founder/co-composer of the seminal punk/no-wave band DNA with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. Mori has developed a unique and innovative technique of combining modified drum machines and triggered samplers. She continues to be recognized and awarded for her cutting-edge electronic music that includes works with musicians: Bill Frisell, Christian Marclay, John Zorn, Tom Cora, Derek Bailey, Zeena Parkins, Anthony Coleman, Kato Hideki, Sylvie Courvoisier, Susie Ibarra, Kim Gordon and Aki Onda, to name a few.
Originally from rural New England and now living in New Mexico, William Fowler Collins (b.1974) is a musician whose work explores and synthesizes both musical and extra-musical elements. Improvisation, field recordings, electric guitar, lap steel guitar, laptop computer, processed recordings, micro-cassette tape recorders, and home-made electronic devices all play roles in the creating, performing, and recording of his music.
http://www.williamfowlercollins.com
http://www.myspace.com/williamfowlercollins
8pm $10
Thursday, September 27th
littoral launch with writers daniel borzutzky, shelley jackson, and deb olin unferth + musical guest lance blisters
Daniel Borzutzky is a Chicago based poet, fiction writer, and translator. He is the author of two books: The Ecstasy of Capitulation (BlazeVox, 2007) and Arbitrary Tales (Triple Press, 2005). His translation of Port Trakl by Chilean poet Jaime Luis Huenún is forthcoming from Action Books, and his translations of early twentieth century Chilean fiction writer Juan Emar have appeared in several publications, including Conjunctions, Fence, and Words Without Borders. Daniel’s own writing has appeared in dozens of print and online publications.
Shelley Jackson is the author of Half Life, The Melancholy of Anatomy, hypertexts including Patchwork Girl, My Body, and The Doll Games, and author/illustrator of several children’s books, including The Old Woman and the Wave and Sophia, and The Alchemist’s Dog. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Conjunctions, The Paris Review, Bookforum, The Believer, The LA Times, The Village Voice and Cabinet Magazine. She is the author of SKIN, a story published in tattoos on the skin of 2095 volunteers, and co-founder (with artist Christine Hill) of The Interstitial Library. The recipient of a Howard Foundation grant and a Pushcart Prize, she has degrees from Stanford and Brown and has taught at the New School University, Brown, MIT, Pratt Institute, and the European Graduate School. She lives in Brooklyn.
Deb Olin Unferth’s fiction has appeared in Harper’s, Conjunctions, NOON, the Pushcart Prize anthologies, and elsewhere. Her first collection, Minor Robberies, will appear as one volume of three from McSweeney’s.
Lance Blisters performs LIVE Jungle, Breakcore, Punk, and Noise with MIDI Guitar and Microphone, using custom software to create cutup political anthems. LIVE synchronized visual transcriptions of the songs’ subjects. Lance Blisters was initiated in 2003 to SMASH THE STATE with a show that will ROCK YOUR FACE OFF!
8pm $10
Friday, September 28th
david Weinstein + janene Higgins and mari kimura
David Weinstein is a Brooklyn based composer and multimedia artist whose musical and site-specific installation works have been shown worldwide. His musical works juxtapose sound effects, traditional and non-traditional instruments, synthetic sound, and ancient and exotic tunings and noise. As a keyboardist Weinstein has recorded and performed with musicians including Shelley Hirsch, Elliott Sharp, John Zorn, Ned Rothenberg, Rhys Chatham and many others from Arto Lindsay to Zeena Parkins. Weinstein also makes theatrical, installation and site-specific multimedia pieces, and is an expert in computer assisted audio and animation including streaming and interactive media. A founder of the New York new music series Roulette, he co-directed the day-to-day operations from 1978 to 1994. He is currently Director of Programs for P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Managing Director of their Web radio station Art Radio WPS1.org, and Curatorial Director of the summer Warm Up concert Series.
Janene Higgins has directed numerous short videos and several installations, which have been presented internationally at a variety of festivals and galleries. In the realm of live video performance, she has collaborated with many of New York’s preeminent composers and improvisers of new music, including Elliott Sharp, Ikue Mori, Mari Kimura, Alan Licht, Nurit Tilles, Aki Onda, Okkyung Lee, and Zeena Parkins.
http://www.echonyc.com/~myrakoob
Composer/violinist Mari Kimura has been hailed by The New York Times as “a virtuoso playing at the edge.” Ms. Kimura is widely admired for her revolutionary extended technique “Subharmonics” and for her diverse solo performances including her works with interactive computer music. She has won numerous awards both in her native Japan and in the U.S., and has been invited to give solo performances in international festivals around the world including Spring in Budapest, Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, International Bartok Festival, Festival Cervantino in Mexico, ISCM World Music Days, and at IRCAM, Paris. Since September 1998, Ms. Kimura has been teaching a graduate class in Computer Music Performance at The Juilliard School in New York City.
http://www.marikimura.com
8pm $10
Saturday, September 29
an evening with william basinski
William Basinski is a musician, composer, auteur who has worked in experimental media for over twenty years in NYC, expanding the boundaries of the aural landscape. A classically trained clarinetist, he studied jazz saxophone and composition at North Texas State University in the late 70’s. In 1978, inspired by minimalists such as Steve Reich and Brian Eno, he began developing his own vocabulary using tape loops and old reel to reel tape decks. He developed his meditative, melancholy style experimenting with short looped melodies played against themselves creating feedback loops. His early studies with piano and tape, from 1980 82, Variations: A Movement in Chrome Primitive, is scheduled for release for the first time on David Tibet’s London label, Durtro in September 2003. In 1982, he began experimenting with pulling sound from the airwaves. By sampling short melodies from Muzak radio onto tape loops of varying lengths, slowing them down, and mixing them together with a symphony of shortwave radio static in real time, he created his Shortwave Music series. A selection of these pieces was released to critical acclaim in 1998 by Carsten Nicolai’s German avant-garde label, Noton. The culmination of these studies, the 1983 masterwork, The River, a 90-minute “music of the spheres” was released on Raster-Noton in Dec 2002. Using current available cheap technology, Basinski created an “instant” 90 minute video for The River, by running the music through the audio-visualizer program, ArKaos that came with his Apple Powerbook, videotaping the animation off the screen and editing in I-movie. This was shown at Voxxx Galerie in Chemnitz, Germany (home of raster-noton) from May 26-June 17,2002 to launch the release of the 2 CD box set. Basinski’s Watermusic, was released on his own label, 2062, in February 2001. A 60-minute, tranquil, shimmering ambient piece created on the Voyetra Synthesizer over a period of months spanning the turn of the century, Watermusic has received critical acclaim and is available through distributors in America, Europe and Japan. His new pieces, The Disintegration Loops, were created in August 2001. In the process of archiving and digitizing old loops, Basinski discovered a group of bucolic loops that began to disintegrate during the recording process. These pieces seem to portray the life and death of the American pastoral landscape. The 6 pieces are being released in sequence on 4 CD’s, starting in June 2002. As of April 2003, Disintegration Loops 1 and 2 have been released to rave reviews as well as Watermusic II, and a compilation of loop pieces from the early eighties, Melancholia. A 63 minute video with Disintegration Loop 1.1 had its world premiere at the 2002 Rotterdam International Film Festival. It consists of one static shot of lower Manhattan shot from his roof in Brooklyn on the evening of September 11th, 2001, as that fateful day turned to night. His collaboration with artist, James Elaine, a thirty minute ambient film study Variations, was previewed at Tribeca Temporary Gallery in November 2001 and its world premiere at Rotterdam. These two films are currently touring the festival circuit. Another very early tape loop piece from 1979, A Red Score in Tile, was released on Christoph Heeman’s 3 Poplars in limited edition LP in May 2003.
8pm $10
October
Tuesday, October 2nd
monsturo + bryan eubanks
David Kendall- solo electronic
Monsturo-solo
Bryan Eubanks- solo electronics
David Kendall and David Rothbaum (Monsturo) are both active and well-known figures in the Los Angeles experimental music community. Tonight they are joined by Bryan Eubanks of Brooklyn and they will each present their current
solo work with their respective idiosyncratic instrumentation. David Kendall
works with software and physical interfaces, David Rothbaum works with a
modular synth, and Bryan Eubanks works with open-circuit feedback and
samplers. Kendall is an infrequent visitor to the East Coast and this will
be David Rothbaum’s first visit to NYC to present his music. Monsturo
recently released F-44, a solo LP, on Rasbliutto Recordings and has been
receiving steady praise for the album. The music won’t be easy tonight and
the room will be full of sound.
David Rothbaum performs on analog modular synthesizer. Current projects include Monsturo (solo) and Dirty Modelz (with Albert Ortega). Since 2003 he has run the record label emr-records, which specializes in putting out music he likes.
www.davidrothbaum.com
David Kendall is from Southern California. He began by experimenting with multi-track audio and degraded sound sources in the early nineties. Kendall’s practice explores the essential, monadic aspects of music-making materials. Improvisation, found electronics, amplification, the self-referential, recursion, and resonance form the basis for much of Kendall’s music. Collaboration has been a central focus of his liveperformance. Groups include or have included the Invisible Music Production Ensemble, Improvisatyrs, Honeycomb Wheels, Others, The Kentucky Knobs, and many others. Collaborators include Jeremy Drake, Jessica Catron, Sandor Finta, Bob Bellerue, Jonathan Zorn, Akihiro
Shimizu and many others. He has albums released, or in
production, on the EMR, P-Tapes, Bastardised, Alienation, Helicopter, and
Anarchymoon labels.
www.davidkendall.net
Bryan Eubanks (b. 1977) is originally from the Pacific Northwest. He works with the Soprano Saxophone and an instrument that integrates open-circuit electronics and samplers which he has been developing since 2002 . After casual studies of music as a child, and the serious study and practice of photography, he began playing music in 1998 while living in Portland, Oregon. Since then he has presented concerts across the US and Europe in real-time and improvised settings. He focuses on collaborative and solo musical projects, and has recently been developing multi-channel sound installations. He has released recordings on Rasbliutto <http://www.rasbliutto.net/index.html>, a label he co-founded in 2001, as well as Jyrk, Creative Sources, Super Unity, EMR, and Little Enjoyer. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
http://www.rasbliutto.net/artists/bryaneubanks.html
8pm $10
Thursday october 4
skif++
The electronic audio-visual trio SKIF++ is a collaboration of Jeff Carey (laptop SuperCollider), Robert van Heumen (laptop LiSa) and Bas van Koolwijk (laptop Max/MSP/Jitter). Sound gets processed into video and back, ranging from sonic bursts to melodic melancholy, using joysticks and selfmade controllers to keep it all in line (most of the time). Every SKIF++ performance is improvised, but based on structures that give each set its distinct character. SKIF++ is part of the N Collective.
The SKIF++ video is generated live with a digital application that was inspired by the workings of the 1972 Rutt/Etra scan. processor The Rutt/Etra scan processor was essentially an analog computer which allowed for electronic real-time manipulation of the deflection signals that generate the television raster. The SKIF++ digital application uses audio signals for input and scans the incoming data to produce its characteristic graphics, delivering a very tight connection between the three players. The SKIF++ audio is generated by SuperCollider3 and LiSa X – SC3 delivers highly complex synthesized audio blocks while LiSa takes care of magnifying sampled material into territories unknown – all in a highly responsive environment. While the interaction from audio to video is digital, the counterpart is the musical response of the players to the green thing projected on the screen.
Jeff Carey http://www.radiantslab.com/87central
Electronic music composer Jeff Carey, based in the US and in the Netherlands, has been working with experimental, improvised and composed electronic, electro-acoustic, and acousmatic music since the early 90’s. Originally from the suburbs of Washington DC, he has performed a handful of hardcore bands and has played electronic music or presented pieces and installations in the US and Europe at festivals and venues such as Boralis (NO), Gaudeamus Music Week (NL), Chelsea Museum of Art (US), Transmediale (DE), NuMusic(NO), Sonic Acts (NL), Ekko Festival (NO), Cave 12 (CH), DNK-Amsterdam (NL), Trondhiem Matchmaking (NO), MOCADC (US), The Network (BE), and Placard (UK). Having studied Audio Technology at American University (1994), and computer music composition at the Instituut voor Sonologie in the Koningklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag (2002), his work has evolved from an interest in no-inputmixer and field recordings to include a focus on non-standard synthesis, algorithmic composition and digital instrumentalism. Apart from purely acousmatic and electro-acoustic composition, he is focused on performative aspects of computer music and improvisation. He has played in the groups 87 Central, Office-R(6), SKIF++, USA/USB, N-Ensemble, and collaborated or performed with Francis Marie Uitti, Gert-Jan Prins, Cor Fuhler, Oren Ambarchi, Tobias Delius, Jaap Blonk and the numerous members of the NCollective to name a famous few. Recent compositions include the acousmatic pieces ‘Blueshift’, ‘Music for Broken Flute and Stolen Computer’, and ‘Point Source 01′ for Double Bass and computer. Carey builds custom electronic instruments for musicians (most notably, MoHa!) and teaches courses in the synthesis programming language SuperCollider 3, recently at new media/arts institutions including NoTAM, BEK, TEKS (NO), STEIM (NL), and ITP (US). He is one of many founding members of the N-Collective, a pan-European music collective, and works to promote and present N-Events in the Americas.
Robert van Heumen http://hardhatarea.com
Robert van Heumen is working with electronic, experimental, improvised and composed music, musictheater and sound art. Recent works include 5.1 surround compositions ‘12 Bullets’ and ‘Fury (after anger)’ and the audio-visual sound art piece Solitude (with multi-media artist Arnoud Noordegraaf) based on a book by Paul Auster. As a musician he uses STEIM’s live sampling software LiSa and real-time audio-synthesis and algorithmic composition software SuperCollider. He is active as a member of the electro-acoustic sextet
OfficeR (with Koen Nutters cs.), electronic audio-visual trio SKIF++ (with Jeff Carey & Bas van Koolwijk), scratchband RKS (with Keir Neuringer & dj sniff), Shackle (working with Anne LaBerge on restriction), founding member of the N Collective, and has shared the stage with Tom Tlalim, dj sniff (Takuro Mizuta Lippit), Michel Waisvisz, Richard Barrett, Oguz Buyukberber, Luc Houtkamp, Guy Harries, Morten J. Olsen, Daniel Schorno, Roddy Schrock, Audrey Chen and Nate Wooley. His soundworld is a mixture of digital crackles, environmental sounds, voices, sounds from kitchen appliances, half of the time smashed beyond repair. Next to all of this he is Managing Director of the STEIM foundation in Amsterdam, curator of the Local Stop concert series and member of STEIM’s Artistic Committee. In a previous life he was a mathematician, trumpet player and software programmer. He still reads L.E.J. Brouwer.
Selected Works: Solo semi-improvised piece ‘They Would Get Angry Sometimes’, Ambient CD Silent on the Fridgesound label (2007), 5.1 electronic composition ‘Fury (after anger)’ for Sonic Circuits (2006), headphones sound composition for the audiovisual production ‘Solitude’ (2005), cds ‘N - Live at STEIM’ and ‘N Collective - News from Holland’ - with various groups of the N Collective, compositions for choreographies ‘Amour Fou’ (2003), ‘Drink me’ (2004), ‘STAU’ (2004), ‘Derivatives’ (2005) by Anouk van Dijk
Bas van Koolwijk http://www.umatic.nl/info_bas.html
Video and audio artist Bas van Koolwijk analyses the disturbances produced by video, transforming them into numeric code, in order to produce a visual and acoustic sequence in which sounds and images vigorously interact. His video works can be seen as an aggressive attack on the illusion of the medium itself. Through a rigorous and formalistic approach, Van Koolwijk exposes the face of the machine which lives behind the often-placating veil of the televised image.
Distributed by the Netherlands Media Art Institute, his videos are regularly screened at international video art festivals, museums and art galleries. Next to producing single screen works and installations, Van Koolwijk creates performances with realtime audio/video applications, solo as well as with others. His performances have been hosted by numerous festivals and events including MUTEK (Montreal CA), Netmage (Bologna IT), Club Transmediale (Berlin DE), Avanto (Helsinki FI), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam NL), Dissonanze (Rome IT). Recent collaborations include projects as SYNCHRONATOR with Gert-Jan Prins, N-collective’s SKIF++ and YOKOMONO/VIDEO with Staalplaat Soundsystem.
http://hardhatarea.com/SKIF++.html http://www.umatic.nl/SKIF++/ http://n-collective.com
8pm $10
Friday, October 5th
sylvie courvoisier + ben perowsky
Pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, best know for her work with Mark Feldman, Ikue Mori, John Zorn, Yusef Lateef , Fred Frith and her own group Abaton and
drummer Ben Perowsky, best know for his work with Uri Caine, Joan As Police Woman Dave Douglas ,John Zorn and John Scofield present new music…
8pm $10
Thursday, October 11th
matana roberts’ gens de couleur libre ( chapter 1 of the coin coin continuum)
Matana Roberts– reeds
Jessica Pavone–viola
Shoko Nagai-piano
Thomson Kneeland- bass
Tomas Fujiwara- drums
Daniel Givens—Visual Projections
Chicago bred A.A.C.M. saxophonist /composer Matana Roberts presents a new workshop of Gens De Couleur Libre, an in progress musical narrative which pays homage to her New Orleans, Cane River, Louisianan roots in a beautiful evening concert at Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room. This will be the first time this work will be performed in Brooklyn.
COIN COIN explores the defining moments of an extraordinary, yet classic, African American history using the traditions of jazz, and improvisatory inspired music as well as original compositions and various ensemble and multi media configurations. It tells the stories and myths of a people who wove a legacy that grew a tremendous family tree that, despite knarled roots, still remains standing. COIN COIN is in essence a musical monument to the human experience.
Short post concert Q and A discussion with Matana Roberts after performance.
8pm $10
Friday, October 12th
john ingle/dan joseph duo + duo (ing)
John Ingle/Dan Joseph duo New music for saxophone and hammer dulcimer
Duo (Ing)
Matt Ingalls-clarinets
John Ingle- saxophones
Tim Perkis- electronics
Jane Rigler- flute and electronics
Since 1998, John Ingle (San Francisco) and Dan Joseph(New York) have been developing a unique style of pattern-based improvisation and collaborative composition. With the unusual instrumentation of alto saxophone and hammer dulcimer, their music is built upon fixed modes and simple melodic patterns from which they develop and improvise their collaborative works. With a sound combining elements of minimalism, free jazz and Indian raga, they have developed a devoted following in the Bay Area where their collaboration began. They have appeared at New Langton Arts, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Berkeley Arts Center, Knitting Factory Los Angeles and other California venues. They have performed in New York on the Roulette series at Location One, the Bowery Poetry Club, and at the Issue Project Room. Their CD “Trancepatterns” was recorded at Boomtown in Sausalito in 2000, and includes live concert recordings with guests India Cooke, violin, and Miya Masaoka, laser-koto. Available from the Deep Listening Catalog, iTunes and at emusic.
Duo (Ing) is a project of clarinetist/computer musician Matt Ingalls and saxophonist John Ingle. They are the founding members of San Francisco’s sfSoundGroup and have helped to produce over 50 concerts of new and experimental music in the S.F. Bay Area. About sfSoundGroup the San Francisco Classical Voice writes, “Among all the area’s new music ensembles, this group has evolved an aesthetic that most vividly brings to mind the Bay Area’s long history of experimentation and boundary-crossing.”–they also have been referred to as the “headbangers of classical music…” by the same publication. Tonight’s concert at the Issue Project Room features a combination of new electro-acoustic works for Duo (Ing) with special guests Bay Area impov electronics pioneer Tim Perkis and New York’s own Jane Rigler on flute and electronics. Expect a rare coexistence of New Complexity, electro-acousmatic, classic minimalism, improvisation, and “lower-case” (sic) music, including works by David Behrman, Ingle, Ingalls, and an arrangement of Phillip Glass’ “Two Pages” for saxophone and clarinet.
Dan Joseph (b. 1966) is a free-lance composer based in New York City. As an artist who embraces the musical multiplicity of our time, Dan works simultaneously in a variety of media and contexts, including instrumental chamber music, free improvisation, and various forms of electronica and sound art. Since the late 1990s, the hammer dulcimer has been the primary vehicle for his music. As a performer he is active with his own chamber ensemble, The Dan Joseph Ensemble, as well as in various improvisational collaborations and as an occasional soloist. He has collaborated with a variety of creative artists including Miya Masaoka, Pamela Z, Loren Dempster, JD Parran, Pauline Oliveros, India Cooke, and William Winant. His work has been presented at Merkin Concert Hall, Roulette, Deep Listening Space, The Kitchen, and New Langton Arts among other venues. He has received commissions from several ensembles and performers, including Gamelan Son of Lion, the SF Sound Group, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Martelle and Matt Ingalls. His most recent CD Archaea (2006) is available from the Mutable Music label.
http://danjoseph.org/
John Ingles, saxophonist/composer/improviser, is originally from Memphis, TN and now resides and works in San Francisco. He is a founding member of the sfSound Group, collaborates with electronics innovator Laetitia Sonami, and is an active member or the San Francisco Bay Area improv scene. John’s solo saxophone music emphasizes multiphonics, vocal harmonics and subtle control of extended saxophone techniques, while his chamber music explores such musical parameters as spiral time, linear pulse, and non-linear harmony, and indulges in both simple resonance as well as complex timbre and auditory sleights-of-hand. He has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Fred Frith, Douglas Ewart, David Berhman, and Eliane Radique. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts and recieved the New Lantgon Arts Bay Area Music Award. Recent concerts include a premier of his “mobiles#3.2-5.2″ at Merkin Hall in New York with sfSound, performances with Dan Joseph at the Issue Project Room and Roulette, and a solo concert in Sao Paulo, Brasil.
http://www.sfsound.org/~john
Matt Ingalls is a clarinetist, composer, improviser, and computer musician from Oakland, California. He “is one of the most accomplished, most creative clarinetists on the bay area scene” [Doom - KZSU Stanford Radio]. Perhaps known more for his dynamic yet “composerly” free improvisations, he is equally active in more traditionally notated new music. In addition to being an award-winning, internationally recognized composer, Matt has premiered over 50 works by other composers, many of which are unaccompanied solo pieces written specifically for his unique sound and performance style. Just what is this unique sound? The sounds and textures he is able to produce on the clarinet are often brittlely “electronic,” but most striking about his performances is how he often structures rhythmic and formal elements in a way that clearly resembles computer music. Matt is the founder of the sfSound Group. He has also performed with Jack Wright, Toshi Makihara, Sean Meehan, Andrew Voigt, John Raskin, Marco Eneidi, and Chris Brown among many others. Some of Matt’s recent performances have included: The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, The Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, Opus415 New Music Marathon, The Seattle Improvised Music Festival, The Monterey Rock and Art Festival, and The F.U.N. (Festival of Ugly New Music). http://www.sfsound.org
Tim Perkis has been working in the medium of live electronic and computer sound for many years, performing, exhibiting installation works and recording in North America, Europe and Japan. His work has largely been concerned with exploring the emergence of life-like properties in complex systems of interaction.In addition, he is a well known performer in the world of improvised music, having performed on his electronic improvisation instruments with hundreds of artists and groups, including Eugene Chadbourne, Fred Frith, Yoshi Ichiraku, Elliott Sharp, Leo Wadada Smith and John Zorn. Ongoing groups he has founded or played in include the League of Automatic Music Composers, the Hub, Rotodoti, the Natto Quartet, Fuzzybunny, All Tomorrow’s Zombies and Wobbly/Perkis/Antimatter. Recordings of his work are available on several labels: Artifact,Limited Sedition, 482, Lucky Garage, Praemedia, Rastascan and Tzadik(USA); EMANEM(UK); Sonore and Meniscus(France); Curva Minore and Snowdonia(Italy); XOR(Netherlands); Creative Sources(Portugal). He is also producer and director of a feature-length documentary on musicians and sound artists in the San Francisco Bay area called NOISY PEOPLE to be released in 2007.
http://www.perkis.com
Jane Rigler is a flutist, composer, improviser, teacher and producer. She is an active featured performer in contemporary, improvisation and experimental music festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe, presenting both acoustic and electroacoustic shows as a soloist as well as within ensembles. Her compositions have been reviewed as, “dazzling musical epics, the visual imagery came in waves of electrifying fantasy….” And “[she] artistically and effectively transcends traditional flute performance to tell a vivid musical story” (GBFA, The Gazette, Boston, 2005). Her collaborations with dancers, actors and videoartists have also provided possibilities to further develop her work. She is currently Teaching Artist for the Lincoln Center Institute, St. Luke’s Orchestra and the Manhattan New Music Project. Besides performing and teaching, her interests stretch into producing concerts, organizing festivals and creating playing opportunities for other musicians and artists as well, such as the Relay ~ NYC! held in MoMA in 2005 and the Spontaneous Music Festival in 2006. Jane is the recipient of several awards and artist residencies: Brooklyn Arts Council 2006), Harvestworks (2004), Art Omi (2006) and Create @ iEar (2006).
http://www.janerigler.com
8pm $10
Saturday, October 13th
Tim Perkis-electronics
Matt Ingalls- clarinet
Liz Allbee- trumpet
John Ingle- saxophones
Miya Masaoka- koto
Aaron Siegel-percussion
San Francisco Bay Area based improvisers Tim Perkis, Matt Ingalls, John Ingle, and Liz Allbeecelebrate their upcoming vanity CD by coming to Brooklyn and checking in with New York based composer and koto performer Miya Masaoka and percussionist Aaron Siegel. Expect virtuosic improvisations that echo a range of new music, complex textures, fine and subtle instrumental control without austerity, dynamic extremism, and composerly forms.
8pm $10
Wednesday, October 17th
mario diaz de leon + nathan davis + panayiotis kokoras
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE),
described recently by the New York Times as “one of
the most adventurous and accomplished groups in new
music,” is a chamber group comprised of dynamic a
versatile young performers dedicated to the music of
our time. Through innovative programming, multimedia
collaborations, commissions by young composers, and
performing in nontraditional venues, ICE brings
together new music and new audience. The winner of
the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous
Programming, ICE will give over sixty concerts this
season, and will be featured on new releases from the
Naxos, Bridge, and New Focus labels. For its Issue
Project Room debut, ICE proudly presents a program of
new electro-acoustic works by three young composers
whose work the ensemble is performing this season as
part of ICE’s 21st Century Young Composers’ Project:
New York-based composers Mario Diaz de Leon and Nathan
Davis, and Greek composer Panayiotis Kokoras. All
three composers will be on hand to run the electronic
components of their works at the event. The 21st
Century Young Composers Project is made possible from
the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
8pm $10
Thursday, October 18th
donald breckenridge + matthew rohrer+ musical artist david linton
Donald Breckenridge is the fiction editor of The Brooklyn Rail, coeditor of the web-based Intranslation site, editor of The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology (Hanging Loose Press ‘06) and was recently nominated for a PEN/Nora Magdin Award. He is the author of more than a dozen plays as well as the novella Rockaway Wherein (Red Dust’98) and the novel 6/2/95 (Spuyten Duyvil ‘02). His second novel Arabesques for Sauquoit is forthcoming from Autonomedia. His third novel, Many Parts is also forthcoming from Starcherone.
Matthew Rohrer is the author of RISE UP, published by Wave Books in
2007; A Green Light (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the
2005 Griffin Poetry Prize; and Satellite (Verse Press, 2001). He is
also the co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of Nice Hat. Thanks. (Verse
Press, 2002), and the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel
of Beauty. He has appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “The
Next Big Thing.” His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas was
selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994. He
lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches in the undergraduate writing
program at NYU.
David Linton entered the downtown NY experimental music scene through the art punk garage door at the tail end of the 1970’s. Initially on drums, he performed and recorded with Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Lee Ranaldo, Elliott Sharp, as well as his own collaborative band Interference, among others.He then moved on to electro-acoustic improvisation and live solo performance on his own customized proto electronic drum kit, while producing dozens of
works in sound score design for dance and theater, among these scores were for The Wooster Group and for choreographers Karole Armitage and Stephen Petronio. Most recently, Linton has performed solo audio-visual work with “The Bicameral Research Sound and Projection System,” drawing on his over 25 years of experience in the multi-media arts to mark the reaffirmation of the pre-eminent organic values embodied in real-time analog processes in the worlds of sound and visual media.
8pm $10
Friday, October 19th
KIOKU
Daniel Levin + Rob Brown + Michael Evans
As part of its artist-in-residency at Issue Project Room, KIOKU will be hosting and collaborating with Daniel Levin and saxophonist Rob Brown.
First set
Daniel Levin + Rob Brown + Michael Evans
Daniel Levin - cello
“Cellist Daniel Levin is a major new voice on his instrument and in improvised music.”
–Ed Hazell
Daniel Levin was born in 1974 in Burlington, Vermont. He began playing the cello at age six. He has performed and/or recorded with Billy Bang, Borah Bergman, Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Rob Brown, Whit Dickey, Mark Dresser, Joe Morris, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Warren Smith, and others. Daniel has recorded as a sideman on Clean Feed Records, EMANEM, Not Two, and RogueArt, and as a leader, on Riti Records and HatHut.
Rob Brown - alto sax
Rob was born in Hampton, VA in 1962. He has been playing the saxophone since the age of 11. He moved to NY in 1984 and since then, has been actively leading groups or working as a sideman with Matthew Shipp, Wiliiam Parker, Joe Morris, Whit Dickey.
Others that Rob has performed and/or recorded with are Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Denis Charles, Bill Dixon, Butch Morris, Reggie Workman, Henry Grimes, Roy Campbell Jr., Hamid Drake, Fred Hopkins, et. al, as well as various dance groups, poets, and performance artists. He has toured Europe extensively. He is a 2001 CalArts/Alpert/Ucross Residency Prize winner and has received many Meet The Composer Fund grants. In 2006 Rob was awarded a Chamber Music America New Works grant.
Michael Evans - percussion
Michael Evans is an improvising drummer/composer whose work investigates and embraces the collision of sound and theatrics. As well as being a drum set player, his work with unusual sound sources includes found objects, homemade instruments,various digital and homemade analog electronics.
He has worked with a wide variety of artists including Samm Bennett, Jac Berrocal, EasSide Percussion, Fast Forward(Gobo), God is my Co-Pilot, Alexander Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten), Susan Hefner, Skip LaPlante’s Music for Homemade Instruments, Sean Meehan, Gordon Monahan, Joe Morris, Evan Parker, William Parker, LaDonna Smith, Toronto Dance Theatre and Peter Zummo.
Second set
KIOKU + Daniel Levin and Rob Brown
KIOKU is an experimental trio consisting of taiko and percussion (Wynn Yamami), live electronics (Chris Ariza), and saxophones (Ali Sakkal).
http://www.kiokugroup.com
http://www.myspace.com/kiokugroup
Wynn Yamami is a taiko drummer, percussionist, and composer whose work recontextualizes Asian traditional music. He has collaborated with such artists as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Badal Roy, Giovanni Hidalgo, and Arturo O’Farrill, and has performed in Europe, Japan, and across the US. He currently lives in Manhattan, where he practices Japanese dance, performs with the traditional group Soh Daiko, and leads the Japanese street music band HAPPYFUNSMILE.
Christopher Ariza is a composer and programmer of sonic structures and systems. He has composed for theatre, film, concert hall, and interactive media, and has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, awards, and commissions. His web-based media and systems include the babelcast, the telequalia, Post-Ut, algorithmic.net, and envl.net. His music, software, and research are distributed via www.flexatone.net.
Saxophonist Ali Sakkal draws from a dynamic blend of musical influences. He has studied with Branford Marsalis, Oliver Lake, classical virtuoso Greg Dufford, and European free-jazz pioneer Evan Parker. Active in both San Francisco and New York City, he has performed nationally and internationally with Heftpistole, fAt kiD, HAPPYFUNSMILE, and Fish Knuckle. Ali has spent the past few years as a music educator in New York City.
http://alisakkal.com
8pm $10
Saturday, October 20th
yellow swans + mouthusYellow Swans play a constantly evolving mass of psychedelic noise that intends to be both physically arresting and psychically liberating. Their music is a powerful rendering of free rock, black electronics, and white light vibrations.
Consisting of Pete Swanson (vocals and electronics) and Gabriel Mindel Saloman (guitars and electronics), Yellow Swans create a dense ocean of sound using various analog and digital machines, all locked in a spiraling web of feedback. Having spent two years in Oakland, CA, they are now based once again in Portland, OR, where they originally formed in the Fall of 2001.
They are currently working on their third studio album, to be released in October, 2007 on LOAD Records.
www.jyrk.com/yellowswans
www.narnackrecords.com/bands/yellowswans.asp
Based in Brooklyn for the last four years, “off-rock” duo
Mouthus have perfected a method of distilling the finest acid rock,
harsh noise, industrial, and free music into a dark, sludgy brew
with ritualistic overtones that leaves the listener disoriented,
dehydrated and nauseous until well into tomorrow’s brunch. They began this project with carelessly aged guitars, drums, keyboards and various other trinkets, which are hextuple-processed through a carefully chosen
chain of vintage and contemporary effects devices until a sound
resembling the copulation of metallic dinosaurs is produced. By
this method, they extract from their instruments a volatile, mercurial
balsam referred to in the trade as “jam” which is infused with
groaning, indecipherable vocals for extra dimensionality and then
enjoyed live or carefully waxed and stored for further aging in the
cellars of many of todays finest and most reputable purveyors of
craft brewed sound, including the likes of Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! records, Troubleman Records, Important Records, and soon, Load Records. Over the past few years Mouthus have held live tastings at such diverse sites as Brooklyn’s No Fun Fest, Quebec’s Earthunder and Glasgow’s Subcurrent Festival, as well as across North America and continental Europe. They have also swapped trade secrets with renowned brewmeisters such as Double Leopards, The Skaters and Axolotl. In the immediate future they plan to bring their unique brand of intoxication to Australia, Spain and this December’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival.
www.ecstaticpeace.com
www.importantrecords.com
www.psych-o-path.com
8pm $10
Tuesday October 23rd and October 24th
keith rowe + julien ottavi
Keith Rowe and Julien Ottavi meet for a very rare and special two-night program. Rowe has been pointing the way to the future in electro-acoustic improv for more than four decades, from his work in AMM (which he cofounded in 1965) to his recent work with MIMEO, Toshi Nakamura, Christian Fennesz, Oren Ambarchi, and countless others. Ottavi studied sound and photography at the art school of Nantes. He is a founding member of Formanex, an electroacoustic quartet performing graphic scores from the 20th and 21st centuries, including works by Cardew, Cage, Wolff, Feldman, Brown, and Ralf Wehowsky, as well as the founder of the Nantes-based experimental music organization Apo33 (responsible for running the label Fibrr among numerous other activities). Rowe and Ottavi currently live near each other in France, and work together in the N:Q quartet. Tonight each will play solo and then they will play only their second duo set ever.
8pm $10
Friday, October 26th
ike yardIke Yard plays new electro acoustic song forms from their upcoming release.
Ike Yard’s minimalist funk pulse surfaced in 1981 with the Night After Night Ep on the Belgian Crepescule label. They changed modes a bit with electroid tech innovations on the Factory America Album in 1982 and performed with Suicide , Lydia Lunch’s 13:13, The Del - Byzanteens ,Factory’s Section 25 and with New Order at Ukrainian National Home. The Acute Records “Ike Yard : 1980 -’82 Collected ” re-release last year, combined with the IY tracks on London’s Soul Jazz post - No wave / proto - electro collection New York Noise 3 made conditions ripe for the group to reactivate and begin creating new sounds, songs and music. Original members Stuart Argabright , Kenneth Comptonand Michael Diekmann on the synths , keyboards , drum machinima , vocals , Korg Vocoder , bass and guitars
http://www.myspace.com/ikeyardhttp://demedo.blogspot.com/
8pm $10
Saturday, October 27th
marc zegans + edwin torres
wanda phipps + joel schlemowitz
Marc Zegans is a poet, playwright and author. His current work explores waking dreams and the experience of human fragility in the post-industrial landscape. His spoken word Album Night Work was released by Philistine Records in August 2007. In February 2007 Marc premiered a performance piece entitled Women, Waking, Danger: An Experiment in Combination with multi-media artist Aki Onda. He also recently completed the manuscript for Pillow Talk: A Collection of Erotic Haiku to be released by G-Spot press. Presently, Marc is completing a book of poems entitled Danger and Abandon. In 2005 he began the “Question Book Project” which circulates hand-made books throughout the world inviting individuals to add an ever-growing web of questions to their pages. Noted graphic artist and foam-board engineer, Eric Edelman is developing nesting structures for the question books, so that they may grow in physical depth and complexity as they expand in content. Marc’s poetry appeared in broadside as part of “The Art of Self and Recovery” a 2007 exhibition in Great Barrington Massachusetts sponsored by the Elizabeth Freeman Center. His play Mum and Shah was the Boston Globe “Pick of the Week.”
Edwin Torres, from New York City, is a bilingualist rooted in the languages of both sight and sound. His performances intermingle the textures of poetry, vocal and physical improvisation and visual theater. His books include “The PoPedology Of An Ambient Language” (Atelos books), “In The Function Of External Circumstances” (Spuyten Duyvil Press) and “The All-Union Day Of The Shock Worker” (Roof Books). His debut CD “Holy Kid” (Kill Rock Stars) was included in The Whitney Museum Of American Art’s exhibition, The Last American Century. He has taught at Naropa University’s Summer Writing program, Bard College, and St. Marks Poetry Project. He is currently co-editor of the poetry DVD journal Rattapallax.
wanda phipps + joel schlemowitz
Wanda Phipps is a writer/performer living in Brooklyn, NY, the author
of Wake-Up Calls: 66 Morning Poems (Soft Skull Press), Your Last
Illusion or Break Up Sonnets (Situations), Lunch Poems (Boog
Literature), the Faux Press issued e-chapbook After the Mishap and
CD-Rom Zither Mood. Her poetry has been published over 100 times in a
variety of publications, including the anthologies Verses that Hurt:
Pleasure and Pain From the Poemfone Poets (St. Martin’s Press) and The
Boog Reader (Boog Lit). She has received awards from the New York
Foundation for the Arts, the Meet the Composer/International Creative
Collaborations Program, Agni Journal, the National Theater Translation
Fund, and the New York State Council on the Arts. As a founding member
of Yara Arts Group she has collaborated on numerous theatrical
productions presented in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Siberia, as well as
in New York City at La MaMa, E.T.C. She’s also curated several reading
and performance series at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church as
well as other NYC venues and written about the arts for Time Out New
York, Paper Magazine, and About.com. For more info. check out her
website: www.mindhoney.com.
JOEL SCHLEMOWITZ has made over forty short experimental films, and numerous film installation pieces. He has received grants from the Jerome Foundation and New York State Council on the Arts. His work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, Anthology Film Archives, Millennium Film Workshop, Berks Filmmakers, and at various festivals including the London Film Festival, the Sydney Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Denver Film Festival, the New York Underground Film Festival, and elsewhere. His short filmReverie was broadcast on the Sundance Channel in the “Underground Shorts” series. Another short work, Moving Images - the Film-Makers’ Cooperative relocates, received Honorable Mentions from the Thaw02 Film & Video Festival and NY Short Film Expo, and was awarded a silver plaque from the Chicago International Film Festival. He has received Best Short Documentary awards at the Chicago Underground Film Festival in 2004 and 2005. He teaches filmmaking at the New School, and is President of ACT-UAW, Local 7902, union of adjunct and part-time faculty at New School and NYU.
8pm $10
November
Thursday November 1
neptune
Neptune’s origins trace to 1994 as a student art project by sculptor/musician Jason Sanford, who, in order to create a new music medium, forged heavy, menacing-looking guitars and drums out of circular saw blades, gas tanks, oil drums, bike parts, VCR casings and miscellaneous scrap metal found in the trash. Neptune was assembled to showcase these contraptions in the winter of the same year and has evolved into a full time band that traverses the US and Europe several times. The early guitars were haphazard and untunable, resulting in the atonal garage clamor of the early recordings. With several different members and collaborators over the years, the music has evolved with the instruments blending the traditional sounds of Rock & Roll with what sounds like mistake day at the ball bearing factory. The current three-piece lineup relies as heavily on homemade electronics as it does on its signature scrap metal instruments. With less guys and more gear, Neptune rocks like The Fall, clangs like Neubauten and drones like Faust with improvised and not-so-improvised songs that you can almost dance to.
http://www.neptuneband.com
http://www.neptuneband.com/press/press.html
Saturday November 3
dan kaufman + barbez record release party
Force of Light is a series of songs (and a new Tzadik release) inspired by the Romanian-Jewish Holocaust poet, Paul Celan, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. Celan, a visionary who remade and reshaped the German language to try and encompass his suffering, was born in 1920 into a Jewish family in Czernowitz. His parents were killed in a concentration camp in Ukraine, and he spent nearly two years in a series of labor camps. In 1970 he committed suicide. These songs, written by Dan Kaufman, interweave Celan’s words with instrumental music performed by Brooklyn’s avant-cabaret pioneers, Barbez. This evening celebrates the release of Force of Light and will feature the following musicians: Pamelia Kurstin on theremin, Danny Tunick on vibes and marimba, Dan Kaufman on guitar and lap steel, Peter Hess on clarinet, Peter Lettre on guitar, Andrew Jones on bass, and John Bollinger on drums. There will also be a few special guests, including noted Scottish theatre director and language poet Fiona Templeton, who will be reading Celan’s words.
“The language remained, not lost, yes in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its own answerlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and gave back no words for that which happened: yet it passed through this happening. Passed through and could come to light again.”–Paul Celan
Barbez is a Brooklyn-based ensemble working at the cross-section of experimental rock and Eastern European folk. The band was formed in 1997 and has toured widely across the United States and Europe. The group includes the following members: founder Dan Kaufman (guitar) who also plays with Rebecca Moore and Prevention of Blindness; Pamelia Kurstin (theremin) who has performed and recorded widely, including with John Zorn, David Byrne, and Jim Thirwell. Pamelia also appears in the documentary Moog, giving a theremin lesson to electronics pioneer Bob Moog; Danny Tunick(marimba and vibraphone) a classically trained percussionist who has performed with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Elliott Sharp, and the SEM ensemble; Peter Hess (clarinet) who plays with a variety of groups including the new classical troupe Anti-Social Music and the Slavic-inspired Balkan Beat Box;Peter Lettre (guitar and bass) a musician and actor; Andrew Jones (bass), and John Bollinger(drums).
The group has also collaborated with several dance and theatre pieces including One, a dance choreographed by Juliette Mapp presented at Danspace at St. Mark’s church and the experimental serial play Change in a Void Moon by MacArthur-winning theatre director John Jesurun.
Thursday November 8
the noisy meditation band
The Noisy Meditation Band is a work in progress comprising core and rotating membership; a group directed by composer/bandleader Peter Zummo; as well as a collective musical enterprise. The compositions
provide material so that ensemble members are not put in the position of having to make arbitrary decisions but rather feel free to engage in their own personal activities of choice. Notations are reworked,
and sketches, which can be graphically evocative, are copied into templates for experimenting with variations. The grouping, which includes acoustic and electric instruments and live electronic processing, favors a texture filled with noise, the better to arrive at a state where each can hear something new and express in a manner possibly critical of the way our world is being run.
Ernie Brooks (bass guitar) has played with Modern Lovers, Love of Life Orchestra, David Johansen, Jean-Francois Pauvros (French godfather of grunge), Arthur Russell, Elliott Murphy, Gary Lucas, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Jerry Harrison, Chris Spedding, and
others as bassist in rooms and recording studios in various places around the world in a path that has lead from rock to pop and more.
Michael Evans is an improvising drummer/percussionist/thereminist/
composer whose work investigates and embraces the collision of sound and theatrics. As well as being a drum set player, his work with unusual sound sources includes found objects, homemade instruments,various digital and homemade analog electronics.
He has worked with a wide variety of artists including Samm Bennett, Jac Berrocal, EasSide Percussion, Fast Forward(Gobo), God is my Co-Pilot, Alexander Hacke, Susan Hefner, Skip LaPlante’s Music for
Homemade Instruments, Sean G. Meehan, Gordon Monahan, Joe Morris, Evan Parker, William Parker, LaDonna Smith, Toronto Dance Theatre and Peter Zummo.
David First has had a musical career filled with opposites and extremes. At the age of twenty he played guitar with renowned avant-jazz pianist Cecil Taylor in a legendary Carnegie Hall concert. Two years after that he was creating electronic music in studios at
Princeton University and leading a Mummer’s String Band in local parades. He has played in raucous drunken bar bands and in pin-drop quiet concert halls with classical ensembles. As a composer First has
created everything from finely crafted pop songs to long, severely minimalist drone-works. His performances often find him sitting trance-like without seeming to move a muscle, unless he is playing with his recently re-formed psychedelic punk band, Notekillers, at
which time he is a whirling blur of hyperactive energy. First has been called “a fascinating artist with a singular technique” in The
New York Times, and “a bizarre cross between Hendrix and La Monte Young” in The Village Voice.
Yvette Perez is the singer/songwriter/bandleader for New York’s avant-pop/jazz quintet Birdbrain. Yvette also plays keyboards and sings in H.E.R. with Peter Zummo and percussionist Danny Tunick. Their debut
cd “Songs About the Mysteries of Housework and Nature” is due for release Nov 2007 on Persian Cardinal Recordings.
Peter Zummo has been composing for ensemble since 1967, and for trombone since 1971, in pursuit of the evolving boundary of music-making and brass culture. From 1975 to the present, he has performed and recorded for composers, ensembles, bands, film, theatre groups,
and dance companies worldwide. As a professor of music at Ohio Wesleyan University, he teaches in the New York Arts Program, a program of the Great Lakes Colleges Association. Since 1978, he has been artistic director of The Loris Bend Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit presenter of music, dance, and media. Professional studies were with Carmine Caruso, Stuart Dempster, James Fulkerson, Dick Griffin, Makanda Ken McIntyre, Roswell Rudd, and Sam Rivers.
Friday November 9th
susan mckeown + honor molloy + yvonne molloy
Out of Goosetown and Evening of Irish Stories and Songs
Susan McKeown is a vocalist from Dublin who lives in Manhattan. A prolific recording artist, she has released ten albums of original and world music, and tours internationally. In 2004 she received a BBC Folk Award nomination and in 2007 the Klezmatics album Wonder Wheel on which she was special guest vocalist, won the Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album. Susan is the vocalist in the OBIE-award-winning Mabou Mines production Peter & Wendy. She has appeared on various NPR programs—All Things Considered, A Prairie Home Companion, New Sounds Live, Mountain Stage and The Infinite Mind—and has worked with such luminaries as Natalie Merchant, Linda Thompson, Pete Seeger, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Billy Bragg, Arlo Guthrie, Andy Irvine, Flook, Lunasa and the Scots fiddle master Johnny Cunningham. She is delighted to work with Honor Molloy again.
An alumna of New Dramatists, Honor Molloy is a Dublin-born storyteller and playwright who is a veteran of WOW Café, the Knitting Factory, BACA Downtown, LOW Bar, and Brooklyn’s Union Hall. She has received fellowships from the NEA, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Susan performed in her plays Maiden Voyages and Tongues of Stone. Honor has just completed a memoir Oh Dark Hundred—an imaginative portrait of Dublin in the 1960s.
Yvonne Molloy grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania and set off to get her Ph.D. at Trinity College, Dublin in 1954. While there, she produced the first Synge Drama Festival—directing all six plays by John Millington Synge. During the 1950s and 1960s, she wrote for Irish radio and television while producing and directing comic revues. She also had six kids—one of them is Honor Molloy.
Saturday November 10th
aunt dracula + high places
AUNT DRACULA is a three piece psychedelic, “all over the map brilliant”, pop trio from Philadelphia, Pa that consists of Scott Daly (vocals, guitars. samples,auto harp, kalimba chimes, percussion), Dan Pell (percussion, vocals, keyboards, samples) and Ash Andrien guitars, samples, and vocals). Often compared to bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Animal Collective and the Velvet Underground, Aunt Dracula combines bubbling, slippery electronics, brutal poly-rythyms and shimmery, rippling guitar textures to great effect. Top it off with their knack for vocal acrobatics and you end up with a live performance that is nothing short of a spectacle. Tapping into genres such as Tropicalia, Folk, Punk, Free Jazz, Minimalisim, No Wave, and Electronica, Aunt Dracula’s feverish stage energy and wild, yet lock-tight experimental arrangements have been garnering a steady stream of buzz since their first performances earlier this year. The band will be wrapping up a 25 plus date tour in support of their debut full length, “Face Peel” due out on Uniform Records in the US on November 6th. Often incorporating visual projections or performance art, live shows are always a surprise and have in the past including surreal guests such as a waffle making werewolf.
www.myspace.com/auntdracula
Thursday November 15th
littoral with susan daitch + amy hempel +jim shepard + musical artist elliott sharp
Susan Daitch has written two novels, L.C. (which was a Lannan Foundation Selection and an NEA recipient for their Heritage/Preservation award) and The Colorist. She has also written a collection of stories, Storytown. Her work was the subject of a “Review of Contemporary Fiction” featured with David Foster Wallace and William Vollman. Her short stories have appeared in Bomb, failbetter.com, McSweeney’s, Tin House, The Brooklyn Rail, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction.
Amy Hempel is the author of four collections of stories, which were published together as one volume in 2006. THE COLLECTED STORIES was a finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award, won the Ambassador Book Award, and was one of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. Her stories have appeared in many anthologies, including The Best American Stories, The Pushcart Prize and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Hempel teaches at Sarah Lawrence, Princeton and Bennington. She lives in New York City.
Jim Shepard is the author of six novels, including most recently
Project X (Knopf, 2004) and three story collections, including most
recently Like You’d Understand, Anyway (a finalist for the 2007
National Book Award) and Love and Hydrogen (Vintage, 2004). His short
fiction has appeared in, among other magazines, Harper’s, McSweeney’s,
The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Granta, the New
Yorker and Playboy, and he is a columnist on film for the magazine The
Believer. A third story collection, Like You’d Understand Anyway,
and a collection of his film essays, Heroes in Disguise, will appear
in 2007. He teaches at Williams College and in the Warren Wilson MFA
program.
Elliott Sharp - Composer/multi-insrumentalist/sound artist Elliott Sharp leads Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane. His compositions have been performed by the Symphony of the Hessischer Rundfunk, The Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Rezonanz, Continuum, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Flux Quartet, Sirius Stirng Quartet, and Zeitkratzer and collaborators have included qawaali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, blues legend Hubert Sumlin; playwright Dael Orlandersmith, cello innovator Frances-Marie Uitti, sci-fi writers Pat Cadigan and Lucius Shepard; jazz greats Sonny Sharrock, Jack deJohnette, and Oliver Lake; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians of Jahjoukah. His composition “Quarks Swim Free” was premiered at the Venice Biennale in September 2003 and his chamber opera EmPyre was premiered at the 2006 Biennale. He has recently completed the scores to the feature-films “What Sebastian Dreamt”", “Commune” by Jonathan Berman, and “Spectropia” by Toni Dove.
Friday November 16
lary 7 + michael evans
a very special evening of visuals and sound
Lary 7 minister of audiology : operating in the realm somewhere between
science & music performs w/ recycled detritus from yesteryear
frankensteined together to create labyrinths to randomly explore in a
kind of auditory spelunking where posibilities & limitations are beyond
his control.
Michael Evans has been actively performing, recording and composing for many years. As well as being an accomplished drummer and percussionist, he works with unusual sound sources including homemade instruments, found objects and items not normally used musically.
A self proclaimed lover of many different styles of music, his latest obsession is to research the history of one- man bands, and eventually create one himself. With this as his inspiration, he has spent a lot of time developing his virtuosity as a solo percussionist.
Saturday November 17
newton armstrong, robin hayward, anthea caddy + david watson
The tuba player Robin Hayward, has been based in Berlin since 1998. Through a combined conceptual and empirical approach he has radically extended the tuba’s potential in both the areas of noise and microtonality. His compositions for other instruments reflect a similar medium-specific approach. As an interpreter his specific playing ability has been utilized by leading composers such as Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff and Peter Ablinger. He has toured extensively both solo and in collaboration. His research to date has been documented in his solo CD Valve Division and numerous collaborative releases. Active in many contemporary music ensembles including Phosphor, Ictus and Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, in 2005 he founded Zinc & Copperworks for continued research into brass instruments.
Anthea Caddy is an Australian cellist who applies a distinctive and idiosyncratic set of techniques to her instrument. Exploiting the cello’s textural, spatial and dynamic capabilities she draws reference points from electro-acoustic and contemporary compositional approaches to inform her practice. Interested in the relationship between electronic and acoustic sound, she seeks to consolidate both the conceptual and practical aspects of these two media, articulating techniques and concepts indigenous to digital spatialisation in her performances and recordings. She has toured nationally and internationally performing in festivals and series solo and in collaboration within a diversity of contexts.
Newton Armstrong is an Australian composer and performer working mostly with electronic instruments. In recent years his work has focused on the development of enactive and situated approaches to performance with self-built digital instruments. He has collaborated with a diverse group of musicians, writers, dancers, choreographers, and sound, film, video and installation artists, and has toured and appeared at a number of festivals across Australia, Europe and the United States. He currently teaches in the Electroacoustic Music program at Dartmouth College.
As a part of New York’s downtown community in the early ‘90’s, David Watson came to a fork in the road and took the less traveled. He set aside explorations on the guitar to create a new music language for the highland bagpipe. He has worked with many musicians, notably Lee Ranaldo, Tony Buck, Shelly Hirsch, Ikue Mori and Chris Mann. This year has seen two new releases that have been considerable time in the making. “Throats,” his CD of bagpipe music with two guest vocalists, released in April on Ecstatic Peace, and “Fingering an Idea,” a double CD released in August on XI. Both have been met with acclaim, and possibly a little surprise. This concert at Issue Project Room celebrates their life in the world.
Wednesday November 28
kioku + local lingo
As part of its artist-in-residency at Issue Project Room, KIOKU will be hosting and collaborating withJason Kao Hwang and Sang Won Park of Local Lingo.
The music of Local Lingo is an expression of innate instinct. Through empathic listening, instincts guide a dialogue where cultural traditions are wholly transmuted. This is the creative journey Sang Won Park (kayagum, ajang, voice) and Jason Kao Hwang (violin, composer) have traveled over the past sixteen years, first with The Far East Side Band, and now, as a duo. The compositions of Jason Kao Hwang inspire revelatory improvisations with Sang Won Park, creating a dynamic American music that is their Local Lingo.
Jason Kao Hwang (composer, violinist) has created works ranging from jazz, classical, “new” and world music. Mr. Hwang’s new CD of his jazz quartet, EDGE (Asian Improv Records), has received glowing reviews. His chamber opera, The Floating Box, A Story in Chinatown (New World Records), was named one of the top ten opera recordings of 2005 by Opera News. Mr. Hwang’s seminal ensemble (1990-2004), The Far East Side Band, released two CDs, Urban Archaeology (Victo Records) and Caverns (New World Records). They performed at World Music Institute (NYC), Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf Konfrontationen (Austria), the duMaurier Ltd. International Jazz Festival (Canada) and many others. As a violinist, he has performed on recordings including Anthony Braxton’s 1996 Sextet (Istanbul) and 1995 Octet (NYC), Dominic Duval’s The Navigator (Leo); Henry Threadgill’s Come Save the Day (Columbia) and many more. Over the years, he has performed with numerous artists including Vladamir Tarasov, Borah Bergman, William Parker, Sirone, and Makanda Ken MacIntyre. As composer, he has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts and New Jersey State Council on the Arts. (jasonkaohwang.com)
Sang Won Park (kayagum, ajang, voice), a native of Seoul, was a founding member of the Far East Side Band with composer/violinist Jason Kao Hwang, recording two acclaimed CDs, Caverns(New World Records) and Urban Archaeology(Victo Records). Mr. Park made his western debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1979, followed by a tour of both the U.S. and Europe. Les Amis De L’Orient and Sono Disc in Paris have produced an album entitled Le Kayagum de Park Sang Won. He has recorded with Henry Kaiser, Charles K. Noyes(OAO/Celluloid) and Laurie Anderson(Warner Brothers). He was featured in Rhythm of the World, a documentary produced for BBC-TV and Improvisation. His life and music have been documented in Old Tradition and New Sound, a program narrated by Judy Collins for National Public Radio. He has also appeared in Nam Jun Paik’s acclaimed satellite spectacular Bye Bye Kipling on PBS. (www.sangwonpark.com)
KIOKU is an experimental trio consisting of taiko and percussion (Wynn Yamami), live electronics (Chris Ariza), and saxophones (Ali Sakkal).
Wynn Yamami is a taiko drummer, percussionist, and composer whose work recontextualizes Asian traditional music. He has collaborated with such artists as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Badal Roy, Giovanni Hidalgo, and Arturo O’Farrill, and has performed in Europe, Japan, and across the US. He currently lives in Manhattan, where he practices Japanese dance, performs with the traditional group Soh Daiko, and leads the Japanese street music band HAPPYFUNSMILE.
Christopher Ariza is a composer and programmer of sonic structures and systems. He has composed for theatre, film, concert hall, and interactive media, and has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, awards, and commissions. His web-based media and systems include the babelcast, the telequalia, Post-Ut, algorithmic.net, and envl.net. His music, software, and research are distributed via www.flexatone.net.
Saxophonist Ali Sakkal draws from a dynamic blend of musical influences. He has studied with Branford Marsalis, Oliver Lake, classical virtuoso Greg Dufford, and European free-jazz pioneer Evan Parker. Active in both San Francisco and New York City, he has performed nationally and internationally with Heftpistole, fAt kiD, HAPPYFUNSMILE, and Fish Knuckle. Ali has spent the past few years as a music educator in New York City.
8pm $10
Thursday, November 29th
bob bellerue + acre + zaimph
Bob Bellerue :: halfnormal is a noise artist, theater designer, writer, composer and curator. His work utilizes electronics and custom programming for live performance, sound installation, and prepared ambient (public & private) field recordings. Bellerue has a background in punk / acid rock, Balinese and Javanese gamelan, and Tibetan Buddhism. Over the last 20 years he has played in various percussion / rock / improvised projects, created original sound scores for many performance art, dance, theater and film pieces, and released dozens of recordings. He has collaborated with many powerful members of the west-coast noise / improvisation community, including Smegma, Raven Chacon, Albert Ortega, Circuit Wound, Frozen Body, and Tullan Velte. His work has been presented in Indonesia, across Europe, and throughout the United States, including the Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival, Centre de Cultura Contemporànea de Barcelona, Beyond Music Sound Festival, Olympia Experimental Music Festival, Dairy Center for the Arts, Machine Project, 7Hz, the Il Corral, the Smell, Kill Radio, Stanford University, Naropa University (BA 1995), and the California Institute of the Arts (MFA 2003). Visit halfnormal
ACRE plays heavy minimal drones by way of feedback from equalizer pedals and reverb, creating a minimal but massive wall of sound. It is similar to the likes of Phil Niblock, Sonic Boom, and Earth. ACRE also spent the last 5 years in Olympia, Washington playing in the power drone duo DEAD.WEATHER.RADAR, the Black Metal Lords of Lightspeed (pre Wolves in the Throne Room/post Behead the Prophet), and booking noise/ experimental shows at the historic Lucky 7 House. Acts included, Burning Starcore, Growing, Yellow Swans, Whip, Emil Beaulieu, Thrones, and so many others . ACRE was also involved in the short-lived Exploder Tapes label. ACRE’s alter ego Aaron Davis is currently playing bass in the bay area band Gowns.
Zaimph is the solo project of Marcia Bassett. Her work freely moves within walls of sonic distortion, layers of heavy drone and blurred riffs that loop into warm blurs before crumbling away into decay. She has worked on a number of collaborations with Tom Carter, Spencer Yeh, Carlos Giffoni; Dominick Fernow, and is a member of GHQ, Hototogisu and Double Leopards.
Friday, November 30th
zach layton + ray sweeten + jessica pavone
MATA Interval
A new bi-monthly series
An evening of recently commissioned chamber music, electronic sounds
and abstract video with Zach Layton, Ray Sweeten and Jessica Pavone.
www.zachlaytonindustries.com
www.raysweeten.com
www.jessicapavone.com
Ray Sweeten b.1975. In ‘98 he acquired a residency
at Fabrica spa, Italy, where he collaborated with Michael
Galasso (ECM), Robert Wilson, and Chieko Mori (Tzadik). He also
produced music for MTV Japan and Italy, as well as Benetton, and
performed frequently throughout Italy and Europe solo and
with FabricaMusica. Ray moved to New York City in 2000, where he received the
Van Lier Residency for experimental electronics and
oscilloscope graphics. He was also a member of the Plantains,
a multi-media synth-pop outfit, and released work on Suction
Records, Kinetic Media, They Shoot Homos Don’t They, Ghostly,
and Colette. Sweeten has performed and screened at The
Kitchen, Monkey Town, Millennium Film Project, The New York
Underground Film Festival, CinemaTexas, Liverpool Biennial,
Pacific Film Archive, Chicago Filmmakers, Aurora Picture Show
and Angel Orensantz.
New York native Jessica Pavone is a string instrumentalist and
composer based in Brooklyn who holds degrees in viola performance,
music education and composition. Most recently, she tours Europe and the United States with The AnthonyBraxton Sextet and Twelve+1tet and in a collaborative duo with Mary Halvorson (guitar, viola, and voice). She currently leads twoensembles; The Pavones and Quotidian and improvises in groups led byWilliam Parker, Taylor Ho Bynum, and Matana Roberts. She plays bass
guitar with; Minnows, Christy and Emily, and Jason Cady and the
Artificials. She has performed at a number of international music festivals
including, The Banlieues Blues Festival in Paris, and All Tomorrows Parties in
England. As a composer, she has received commissions to write chamber music for The Eastern Winds and Till by Turning. Since 2000, she has documented her music via her self-run label Peacock Recordings, which was recently awarded a grant from The AaronCopland Fund for Music Recording Program, and her growing discography and list of works can be witnessed via her web site,
www.jessicapavone.com.
Zach Layton is a composer, curator and new media artist based in New
York with an interest in biofeedback, generative algorithms,
experimental music, biomimicry and contemporary architectural
practice. His work investigates complex relationships and topologies
created through the interaction of simple core elements like sine
waves, minimal surfaces and kinetic visual patterns. Zach’s work has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and he has performed and exhibited at the Kitchen, Roulette, Art Forum Berlin, the New York Electronic Art Festival, the St. Mark’s Ontological Hysterical Theater, Dumbo Arts Festival, New York Digital Salon, Monkeytown, and many other venues in New York and Europe. He has collaborated with Luke Dubois, Vito Acconci, Bradley Eros, Marissa Olsen, Angie Eng, Chika Ijima and Ray Sweeten among many other artists, filmmakers and musicians. Zach is also the curator of Brooklyn’s monthly experimental music series “darmstadt: classics of the avant garde” and is also
co-curator of the PS1 warmup summer music series. He has received
grants from the Netherlands America Foundation, Turbulance and the
Jerome Foundation.
December
Thursday Dec 6
marc ribot and kjell bjorgeengen
Norwegian visual artist Kjell Bjorgeengen uses simple and fundamental flicker video to explore the interaction of noise, architecture, and decay. Shades of darkness, given from the outside as a simple pairing of the binary experience, counteract an easy approach to viewing visual art. Black and white flicker images, while often harsh and difficult for the viewer, create a necessary threshold to overcome. The works resist the viewer, or often, the other way around. Still images will read like minimal works but once set in motion will create the opposite effect.
At Issue Project Room, Kjell will be joined by Marc Ribot for an evening of improvised music and video.
Marc Ribot (pronounced REE-bow) was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1954. As a teen, he played guitar in various garage bands while studying with his mentor, Haitian classical guitarist and composer Frantz Casseus. In 1978, Ribot crossed the river to New York City, where he served as sideman for such musicians as jazz organist Jack McDuff and legendary soul shouter Wilson Pickett. Ribot began his five-year stint as a member of the Lounge Lizards (John Lurie’s innovative and influential Downtown jazz ensemble) in 1984.
Ribot also composed and recorded his own brand of Downtown soul music with his bands, Rootless Cosmopolitans and Shrek. In 1996 his recording DON’T BLAME ME, a solo reinvention of American standards, received praise from the Village Voice as “a record filled with savory and unlikely amusements.” In 1998 Atlantic Records released the critically acclaimed MARC RIBOT Y LOS CUBANOS POSTIZOS, featuring Ribot’s beautifully slanted interpretations of material by the great Cuban songwriter Arsenio Rodriguez. In 2001, Atlantic released SAINTS, a solo work where Marc turned well known tunes such as The Beatles “Happiness is a Warm Gun” and Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” into left of center spacey sound collages.
Today, Marc continues to perform with his own bands, including the hard rocking Ceramic Dog and an Albert Ayler influenced group Spiritual Unity. Marc continues to be an active studio musician, prominently featured on Tom Waits’ latest release “Real Gone,” Medeski Martin and Wood’s “End of the World Party,” a solo record by T Bone Burnett and scores for “Walk the Line,” “Everything is Illuminated” and “The Departed.” Marc has also recently composed original scores for the PBS documentary “Revolucion: Cinco Miradas,” and the film “Drunkboat,” starring John Malkovich and John Goodman.
8pm $10
Friday December 7
exceptor +stars like fleas + zs
8pm $10
Saturday December 8
The New “New Winds”
robert dick, ned rothenberg, peter evans
Since the early 1980s Ned Rothenberg and Robert Dick have concertized internationally with J.D. Parran and later Herb Robertson as the trio New Winds. This concert will feature a new third member, the brilliant trumpeter Peter Evans.
With equally deep roots in classical music and free improvisation, Robert Dick has established himself as an artist who has redefined the flute. Known worldwide for creating revolutionary visions of the flute’s musical role, listening to Robert Dick play solo has been likened to the experience of hearing a full orchestra. His performances typically include flute(with his invention, the Glissando Headjoint), piccolo, alto flute, and bass flutes in C and F.
Peter Evans is a trumpet player, improvisor, and composer based in New York City since 2003. His activities range from free improvised music to fully composed works (old and new), from large ensemble down to solo concerts. For more info visit myspace.com.peterevanstrumpet.
Ned Rothenberg composes and performs on saxophones, clarinets, flute and shakuhachi (an end blown Japanese bamboo flute). He has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 25 years in North and South America, Europe and Asia. Collaborators have included Sainkho Namchylak, Paul Dresher, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Yuji Takahashi and Evan Parker.
8pm $10
Sunday, December 9th
4pm
Special OptoSonic Tea event, fundraiser for Issue Project Room
Chika IIjima (live visuals) + Haeyoung Kim (live sound)
Zarah Cabañas (live visuals) + Paul Amitai (live sound) Marie-Helene Parant (live visuals) + Jim Bell (live sound) (Montreal, Canada) David Linton (live visuals + sound) Katherine Liberovskaya/Peter Shapiro (live visuals) + Hitoshi Kojo (live sound) (Japan/Switzerland) Ursula Scherrer (live visuals) + Kato Hideki (live sound)
Invited artist/respondent-moderator: Bruce Tovsky
4pm $15
Thursday December 13
ki + holy floors with visuals by tesuji
KI
Fritz Welch::
Percussionist/vocalist Fritz Welch is a founding member of The Peeesseye
and peeinmyfacewithsurgery. He has also played with W!77iN6, Irritating
Horse Eye, Three Day Stubble, and the live video performance group Naval
Cassidy and the Hands of Orlak. His approach to improvisation ranges
from the absurd to the prophetic in a framework of blistering density
and earthbound invisibility.
Michiko ::
One of member of No Neck Bluce Band.and MASK (Sabir Mateen and other).
She played with many more musicians. She plays piano alto sax etc..,
also performs Butoh dance.
Shiraishi Tamio::
Originally from Japan. mainly play alto sax. Performers with whom he
played include Keiji Haino, Crash Worship, Alan Licht, and many more.
Also he performed with many Butoh dancers in Japan. Recently he often
performs outdoor.
Holy Floors with visuals by Tesuji
Born within the walls of IPR, Holy Floors are a Post-everything Guitar duo. Brad Frost and Niall Van Dyke wield their instruments in search of new sonic territories. Rocking the Space-time continuum and Crafting otherworldly sounds through a myriad of effects, the journey is one of continued exploration for all taking part in their voyage.
8pm $10
Friday December 14
KIOKU + Bradford Reed and Ravish Momin
Please join us for a very special evening at Issue Project Room. We’ll be collaborating with two artists: instrument-maker and inventor of the pencilina, Bradford Reed, and percussionist Ravish Momin. Come check out the last concert in our residency at IPR
KIOKU is an experimental trio consisting of taiko and percussion (Wynn Yamami), live electronics (Chris Ariza), and saxophones (Ali Sakkal).
Wynn Yamami is a taiko drummer, percussionist, and composer whose work recontextualizes Asian traditional music. He has collaborated with such artists as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Badal Roy, Giovanni Hidalgo, and Arturo O’Farrill, and has performed in Europe, Japan, and across the US. He currently lives in Manhattan, where he practices Japanese dance, performs with the traditional group Soh Daiko, and leads the Japanese street music band HAPPYFUNSMILE.
Christopher Ariza is a composer and programmer of sonic structures and systems. He has composed for theatre, film, concert hall, and interactive media, and has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, awards, and commissions. His web-based media and systems include the babelcast, the telequalia, Post-Ut, algorithmic.net, and envl.net. His music, software, and research are distributed via www.flexatone.net.
Saxophonist Ali Sakkal draws from a dynamic blend of musical influences. He has studied with Branford Marsalis, Oliver Lake, classical virtuoso Greg Dufford, and European free-jazz pioneer Evan Parker. Active in both San Francisco and New York City, he has performed nationally and internationally with Heftpistole, fAt kiD, HAPPYFUNSMILE, and Fish Knuckle. Ali has spent the past few years as a music educator in New York City.
8pm $10
Saturday, December 15th
Topography: African Feedback record and book release event, an Errantbodies press evening.
alessandro bosetti - video and sound performance
brandon labelle - video and sound performance
jarrod fowler - live set
The three artist will present new sound and video performances celebrating, commenting, betraying and re-interpreting the original African Feedback idea. A discussion and party will follow.
About African Feedback: Through a process of listening and speaking, African Feedback documents an exchange between artist Alessandro Bosetti and residents of villages throughout West Africa. Playing music by various experimental and avant-garde composers to people met in villages, Bosetti records their responses, asking them what they are hearing, and how they relate to the music and sounds. Composing their responses, with field recordings made throughout his travels, African Feedback is a musical portrait of cultural translations, misunderstandings, different voices and languages. Including an audio CD and the transcriptions of the listening sessions, along with an introduction by the artist, African Feedback is a beautiful and beguiling work cutting across the ongoing questions of cultural difference. Alessandro Bosetti was born in Milan, Italy in 1973. He is a composer and sound artist working on the musicality of spoken words and unusual aspects of spoken communication, producing text-sound compositions featured in live performances, radio broadcastings and published recordings. Field research and interviews build the basis for abstract compositions, along with electro-acoustic and acoustic collages, relational strategies, trained and untrained instrumental practices, vocal explorations and digital manipulations.
Brandon LaBelle is an artist and writer working with sound and the specifics of location. Through his work with Errant Bodies Press he has co-edited the anthologies 3Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear2, 3Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language2, 3Surface Tension: Problematics of Site2 and “Radio Territories”. He initiated and curated the Beyond Music series and festivals from 1997 - 2002 at Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Los Angeles, and in 2001 he organized 3Social Music2, a radio series for Kunstradio ORF, Vienna. His installation work has been featured in exhibitions and festivals internationally, including “Sampling Rage”(1999) Podewil Berlin, 3Sound as Media2(2000) ICC Tokyo, “Bitstreams”(2001) Whitney Museum New York, 3Pleasure of Language2(2002) and his writings have been included in various books and journals, including 3Experimental Sound and Radio2 (MIT) and 3Soundspace: Architecture for Sound and Vision2 (Birkhäuser). He presented a solo exhibition at Singuhr galerie in Berlin (2004), and an experimental composition for pirate drummers as part of Virtual Territories, Nantes (2005). His ongoing project to build a library of radio memories, 3Phantom Radio2, was presented fall 2006 as part of Radio Revolten, Halle Germany. He is the author of 3Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art2 (Continuum 2006).
The work of Jarrod Fowler is a series of analytical investigations into the nature of musical thought and practice. These investigations-as-music question both assumptions and instabilities present in music. They also explore the role of ethnological, institutional, psychological and social contexts. Through variable methods of construction, Fowler studies rhythm, representation, perception and meaning. Fowler currently resides and teaches percussion and rhythm in Massachusetts, USA.
8pm $10
Wednesday, December 19th
littoral
kenneth goldsmith with alan licht + c. spencer yeh
Kenneth Goldsmith accompanied live by Alan Licht
Kenneth Goldsmith will be singing the classics of theory, accompanied live by Tianna Kennedy and Friends.
Kenneth Goldsmith’s writing has been called some of the most “exhaustive and beautiful collage work yet produced in poetry” by Publishers Weekly. Goldsmith is the author of nine books of poetry, founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb (http://ubu.com), and the editor of “I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews,” which is the basis for an opera, “Trans-Warhol,” premiered in Geneva in March of 2007. An hour-long documentary on his work, “sucking on words: Kenneth Goldsmith” premiered at the British Library in 2007. Kenneth Goldsmith is the host of a weekly radio show on New York City’s WFMU. He teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania, where he is a senior editor of Penn Sound, an online poetry archive. More about Goldsmith can be found on his author’s page at the University of Buffalo’s Electronic Poetry Center:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith.
C. Spencer Yeh was born in Taipei, Taiwan, moved to the US in 1980; and is now 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. Collaborations live and in studio have included various contemporary groups including Comets on Fire, Dead Machines, Double Leopards, the Hototogisu, Smegma, MV+EE, Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio All-Stars, as well as individuals including Thurston Moore, John Olson, Okkyung Lee, Tatsuya Nakatani, Audrey Chen, and many others. Currently when possible, Yeh plays in a trio with Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty, as a guest member of Graveyards (led by John Olson), and is currently in deep collaboration with John Wiese. Yeh has played in various projects at events including Victoriaville (Canada, Frieze Arts/Music at London Hippodrome (UK), SXSW (US), All Tomorrow’s Parties at Butlins Holiday Centre (UK), and the ongoing No Fun festivals (US), among others. He has also had works in the Harry Smith Anthology Remixed (alt.gallery, Newcastle UK), Leaderless: Underground Cassette Culture Now (Printed Matter, New York, NY) and Music Show II (Publico Gallery/Shake It Records, Cincinnati OH).
8pm $10
Thursday 20 December 2007
Tony Conrad + C. Spencer Yeh
Emeralds + Carlos Giffoni
Sam Goldberg
Tonights very special set is a duo of C. Spencer Yeh and
minimalist pioneer Tony Conrad. Though Yeh has crossed Conrad’s
continuum a handful of times in the past, this will be their first
time in collaboration.
Tony Conrad teaches on the media study faculty of SUNY at
Buffalo. Over the last twenty years he has been especially active in
video. His work with music composition and performance started while
he was a mathematics student, after which he was associated with the
founding of “minimal” music and “underground” film. His movie The
Flicker is one of the key early works of the “structural” film
movement. His art videotapes are widely seen, and he has produced
more than 250 programs for public access cable in Buffalo. Conrad
performs his recent music regularly at festivals, clubs and new music
venues in the US and Europe.
C. Spencer Yeh was born in Taipei, Taiwan 1975, moved to the US in
1980, and is now 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 physically
and aurally available surrounding a work as elements key to a unified
experience. He is concerned not only with the sensual aspects of
sound, but the gestural qualities as well. Yeh has collaborated with a
deep and ever-growing list of individuals and groups and has performed
across the U.S.A. and Europe. He has also had selected visual art and
video works presented internationally.
Emeralds are a synthesizer and guitar-based improvised drone trio from
Cleveland, Ohio. In only two years, they have become one of the most
talked about groups in the Midwest. Although they are often
categorized as “noise” group, their music isn’t harsh at all. Emeralds
concoct a heady ethereal sound that is rich in melody and ambient
textures. Emeralds are on tour in support of “Solar Bridge”, their
debut LP on Hanson Records. In 2008, Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace
will release an LP featuring Emeralds and fellow Ohioans, Tusco
Terror. Emeralds will be touring with Sam Goldberg, a solo musician
who also comes from Cleveland’s fertile music scene.
For this evening, Emeralds will be doing a special collaboration with
Brooklyn-based synthesizer operator Carlos Giffoni; beyond his varied
solo works and collaborations, he is also best known as the organizer
and curator of the annual No Fun Fest in New York City.
Sam Goldberg uses an electric guitar to make music that is best described as being minimal psychedelic drone. Currently, Goldberg’s music can only be found on a handful of
cassette releases from several small independent labels including Cleveland’s Wagon label and Chicago’s Catholic Tapes.
8pm $10
Friday December 21st
Littoral with
billy martin & calvin weston with special guest paul auster
Billy Martin: drums and percussion
G. Calvin Weston: drums, percussion, trumpet and vocals
Billy Martin and G. Calvin Weston met in 1988 during a rehearsal with John Lurie’s legendary “downtown” band the Lounge Lizards (NYC). That day sealed the percussive rhythm section for the Lounge Lizards and the great -but short lived- avant garde trio, The John Lurie National Orchestra. They toured Europe and Japan as well as some historic performances in NYC. They were featured in Blue in the Face, a Paul Auster/Wayne Wang film a continuation of the feature film project Smoke (Mirimax) both films about a cigar shop in Brooklyn.
In 1995 Martin formed his independent label Amulet Records and released Percussion Duets, the highly acclaimed first CD release with Martin and Weston as a duo. Last year they released a second release Live at Houston Hall also on Amulet and was recorded live on the 10th anniversary since the release of Percussion Duets.
This 2007 North East US fall tour is a continuation of their ongoing creative explorations as composers and performers. This extraordinary improvisational duo will include new music for gongs, mbiras, balaphones, trumpet, voice, bamboo, wood, metal, drums, found and handmade instruments.
Billy Martin is best know for his band Medeski Martin and Wood, and performing/recording with John Zorn, John Scofield, Cibo Mato, Iggy Pop, Cyro Baptista and Chuck Mangione.
Grant Calvin Weston has played with many including Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time, James Blood Ulmer and James Carter.
8pm $10
Saturday, December 22nd
amy kohn + black arrow productions “the life of onions”
Amy Kohn-piano, accordion, voice
Luca Dipierro-video, black arrow productions
Rachel Bradley-video, black arrow productions
Peter Hess-flute, clarinet, saxophone
Greg Glassman-trumpet
Karen LeBlanc-saw
Tom Gavin-guitar, banjo
Ben Rubin-bass
Jeff Davis-drums
Amy Kohn’s highly charged, intricate art songs meld with The Life of Onions: Black Arrow Productions videos of objects and actions, created for this night. Inspired by a recent Italian tour, she alternates her new “extra-lusso” arrangements from her album-to-be with songs from her more serene first album The Glass Laughs Back, & her 2006 release I’m in Crinoline (aired on BBC Radio 6’s Freak Zone and Radio 3’s Mixing It, WNYC’s Spinning on Air, Kyle Gann’s Postclassic Radio, the Netherlands’ Concertzender, and beyond). With a voice as “idiosyncratic as they come…which is all part of the fun” (Pitchfork Media Feature), Amy gives us songs that are “not like much else you’ve ever heard” (Three Weeks, Scotland). She’s working on a commission from the string quartet ETHEL, and her piece Corset for pianist Guy Livingston’s 60-seconds project just premiered in Paris.www.amymusic.com
Black Arrow is an independent press and studio created by Luca Dipierro & Rachel Bradley. Black Arrow’s films start from curiosity for people, books and objects. Whether it is a writer speaking about his work, a seventy year-old dancer dancing, a typewriter, or an old photograph, the subject is always the surface of things. “It is only after you have come to know the surface of things that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible” -Italo Calvinowww.blackarrowpress.com.
Luca Dipierro is a writer, filmmaker and illustrator. Born in the Alps in Northern Italy, Luca now lives and works in the U.S. After many years of independent publishing, in 2007 he created Black Arrow Studio & press with his wife Rachel Bradley. He edited the anthology Santi: Lives of Modern Saints. A collection of his short stories, Breakfast in America will be published in 2008. I Probably Should Have Changed My Shirt, a DVD collecting his first short films, is available through Black Arrow. He is currently working on two full-length films, Cheese & Cranes, a visual essay about drawing, and And He Died With His Eyes Open, a documentary about crime fiction writer Derek Raymond.www.lucadipierro.com
Rachel Bradley is a visual artist, designer and photographer. Departing from a background of traditional b/w photography, her work has evolved into more complex multimedia forms involving found objects, assemblage and handcraft. Rachel’s art playfully explores the concepts of identity and intimacy, combining objects and images to form provocative landscapes. Rachel recently curated an exhibition Objects of Adoration at MAP in Baltimore, MD and is currently illustrating and designing Santi: Lives of Modern Saints, published by Black Arrow. www.rachelbradley.net
AMY’S BAND BIOS
Peter Hess (flute, clarinet, saxophone) plays woodwinds in Brooklyn, NY. He tours the world with Balkan Beat Box, Barbez, and the World/Inferno Friendship Society, coleads the neo-balkan quartet Guignol and the Collide Saxophone Quartet. He is also a member of AntiSocial Music, Steve Griesgraber’s Redhooker, and the Justin Mullens Delphian Jazz Orchestra, and collaborates with the indie bands the Hold Steady and Son Volt.
Greg Glassman (trumpet) is emerging as one of NYC’s hottest creative young jazz artists. He has chalked up over 1000 performances over 4 continents; Not bad for a 30 yr. old. Greg has shared the stage and studio with some of the world’s great musical voices including Clark Terry, Roswell Rudd, Marcus Belgrave, Sheila Jordan, Jane Monheit, Oliver Lake, Sherman Irby, as well as The Skatalites, Bad Brains, The Strokes and more. His playing puts forth what he stands for as an artist and human: freedom, compassion, joy and truth.
Karen LeBlanc (saw) has been playing the saw for five or so odd years. Its sweet and haunting wails resonate in her soul and soothe her world-weary senses. She hopes it does the same for all who hear its bewitching song. She is delighted and honored to be playing tonight with Amy Kohn and her band.
Tom Gavin (guitar, banjo) The worst musician in the Amy Kohn band, Tom also performs on a variety of fretted instruments with Moore and Sons, Pete Galub and the Annuals, Ro Agents, Lee Feldman, Dina Dean, Erin O’Hara, and his own group. His newest album, “Into the Weeds”, has just been released this fall. Other recent projects include the films “Sicko” and “Day Zero”.
Ben Rubin (bass) Over the past decade, Brooklyn-based bassist and producer Benny Cha Cha (aka Ben Rubin) has played and recorded with a who’s who of music greats in many musical styles. From Wu-Tang Clan rapper Killah Priest to legendary singer-songwriter Marshall Crenshaw to jazz greats like Ronnie Cuber, Bill Frisell and Herb Geller, Benny demonstrates an expansive musical depth and knowledge that he brings to all genres. Whether playing upright bass with the Dred Scott Trio or Michael Blake or remixing tracks for international recording artists like Karsh Kale and Brazilian Girls, Benny creates organic music accessible to all. With singer Marilyn Carino, Benny leads the genre-bending Brooklyn band Mudville. Their brand-new record, Iris Nova, produced by Benny, boasts a diverse cast of guests including R.E.M’s Mike Mills, Karsh Kale, the maverick string quartet Ethel (with arrangements by Ben), pedal-steel guitar great Buddy Cage, and Forro in the Dark percussionist Mauro Refosco.
Jeff Davis (drums) is an energetic and spirited player who, since moving to New York in 1999, has been making a name for himself on the local and international Jazz scene. His drumming has been described by reviewers as ‘textural’ and ‘effortless’ in such hailed ensembles as Fresh Sound recording artists Eivind Opsvik Overseas and Kris Davis’ The Slightest Shift. Jeff has performed with such artists as Tony Malaby, Chris Speed, Gebhard Ullmann, Brad Shepik, and Reggie Workman. Jeff has toured Europe and China and has performed at several prominent jazz festivals, including the North Sea Jazz Festival, Oslo Jazz Festival, the Vancouver Jazz Festival, and the Ear Shot Jazz Festival. Jeff performs and has recorded with a number of creative ensembles in New York, including the Kris Davis Quartet, Eivind Opsvik’s Overseas, Tone Collector, the Pedro Giraudo Jazz Orchestra, the Jesse Stacken trio, the Peter Van Huffel Quintet, the Jostein Gulbrandsen Quartet, RIDD Quartet, and Jon Irabagon’s OUTRIGHT! Davis is currently leading and composing for his own ensemble, the Jeff Davis Band, featuring Tony Barba, Kirk Knuffke, Jon Goldberger, Kris Davis and Eivind Opsvik.
8pm $10
Monday December 31
ISSUE New Year’s Eve celebration
an evening of short performances and revelry featuring:
phill niblock + katherine liberovskaya+ bradley eros; visuals + matthew welch’s blarvuster+zach layton; visuals+ tom dexter live film performance and other very special guests
8pm - late $20
