2008
Archives
January 2008
Thursday, January 3rd
tony conrad + m.v. carbon
If Tony Conrad’s powerful sound has its roots in “minimalism”, M.V. Carbon’s music introduces a more contemporary but equally aggressive practice. Meeting as they do with violin and cello above a unifying drone, Conrad and Carbon explode the space we normally think of in connection with string quartets, waltz music, and country fiddlin’. Chaotic parameters are bent and rigorously sculpted using techniques that have been revealed through enduring experimentation. Their tangles of sounds incite a tumbling clash of traditions. The interplay of their approaches reflects the split personality of today’s listeners, who want to discover the thrill of music in a rich sonic imbroglio.
8 pm $10
Friday, January 4th
ISSUE Project Room’s Theremin Society
rob schwimmer +david simons +dorit chrysler +scott burland and frank schultz
Tonights performance features 2 new works for theremin PELLUCID DREAMS by Rob Schwimmerand ASSENT David Simons for theremin, tuba, cello and voice commissioned by The Department of Cultural Affairs for ISSUE Project Room.
Also featured is new work by Dorit Chrysler in collaboration with Danish Artist Jesper Just and new members to the Society, Scott Burland and Frank Schultz and their duet for theremin and lapsteel
8 pm $10
Saturday, January 5th
mv + ee
“It’s gwine to be fine to be back near the Gowanus once again to air some tonal hash. We’ll be rollin’ in with the golden road, core duo exchange of mv & ee augmented with Samara Lubelski, Willie Laneand John Moloney. Psyched to jam with real time presentation of the ‘Gettin’ Gone’ song cycle and other tone petals. Hope to see ya in the tapers pit blossoming, until that time…” mv
8pm $10
Thursday January 10th
shawn onsgard + maguire x clearvor x halvorson
shawn onsgard
Piano & Organ
Brooklyn pianist and composer Shawn Onsgard presents fresh selections
from his avant jazz compositions arranged for solo piano and Hammond
organ.
Through composition and performance Onsgard seeks an epistemology in
music practice which might inform new and meaningful life
experiences. He is currently developing an improvisatory solo piano
repertoire that explores imbalanced harmonic structures inspired by
Alexander Scriabin and Vijay Iyer. When not at the piano, he composes
for all sound-producing things from ice cream trucks, to hundred
meter piano wires, to snoring grandparents, and everything in between
exploring politics, metaphor, narrative, and perception of space
through sound.
His work has been performed and exhibited internationally, and he has
worked with composers Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier; film makers
Pierre Huyghe, and Jane & Louise Wilson; choreographer Mollie
O’Brien; and media artists Aaron Davidson & Melissa Dubbin, and Woody
Vasulka. He has received grants from Meet the Composer, NYSCA
Independent Media Artist award, NYFA Special Opportunity Stipend; and
he received his MA in experimental music composition from Wesleyan
University, CT.
Maguire x Cleaver x Halvorson
“Then I reflected that all things happen to oneself, and only in the
present; countless men in the air, on the land and sea, yet everything
that truly happens, happens to me….”
This decidedly unbalanced trio of drums, electric guitar, and exposed
Rhodes integrates extended sections of exact notation with
improvisational passages to create a vivid aural landscape of textural
diversity and rhythmic sensuality.
Mary Halvorson is a guitarist, composer and improviser living in
Brooklyn. She grew up in Boston and studied jazz at Wesleyan University
and the New School. Since 2000 she has been performing regularly in New
York with various groups and has toured Europe and the U.S. with the
Anthony Braxton Quintet (Live at the Royal Festival Hall, Leo Records)
and Trevor Dunn’s Trio-Convulsant (Sister Phantom Owl Fish, Ipecac
Recordings). She has also performed alongside Joe Morris, Nels Cline,
John Tchicai, Elliott Sharp, Andrea Parkins, Marc Ribot, Tony Malaby,
Oscar Noriega and Jason Moran. Current projects which Mary composes for
and performs with include a chamber-music duo with violist Jessica
Pavone ( On and Off, Skirl Records, 2007); The Mary Halvorson Trio with
John Hebert and Ches Smith; and the avant-rock band People (Misbegotten
Man, I & Ear Records, 2007). She also performs regularly in ensembles
led by Taylor Ho Bynum, Ted Reichman, Tatsuya Nakatani, Jason Cady,
Matthew Welch, Brian Chase and Curtis Hasselbring.
Gerald Cleaver, born and raised in Detroit, is a product of the city’s
rich music tradition. Inspired by his father, John Cleaver, also a
drummer, he began playing the drums at an early age. He also played
violin in elementary school and switched to trumpet during junior high
and high school. While in his teens, he gained early working experience
with Ali Muhammad Jackson, Lamont Hamilton, Earl Van Riper, and Pancho
Hagood and later with Marcus Belgrave, Donald Walden, Rodney Whitaker,
A. Spencer Barefield and Wendell Harrison. Cleaver earned a B.A. in
music education from the University of Michigan. During his studies he
was awarded an National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship to
study with drummer Victor Lewis. After graduating he began teaching in
Detroit, and later joined the jazz faculty at the University of
Michigan and Michigan State University. He relocated to New York in
2002. Cleaver has worked with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Jacky
Terrasson, Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Mario Pavone, Charles Gayle,
Matthew Shipp, Reggie Workman, Joe Morris, Craig Taborn, Ralph Alessi,
Eddie Harris, and Miroslav Vitous, among others.
Carl Maguire grew up in Madison, Wisconsin where his early piano
teachers included Jacquelyn Patricia, Ellsworth Snyder, and Joan
Wildman. He continued on to the University of Wisconsin, studying
improvisation with Roscoe Mitchell. Moving to New York in 1995, Carl
engaged in a curriculum of liberal arts at Hunter College, Schenkerian
analysis at Mannes, and post-tonal theory at CUNY Graduate Center. He
studied piano with Fred Hersch, Marilyn Crispell, and Ursula Oppens,
and of particular importance, composition with Mark Dresser. Carl
performs on piano and Rhodes, with both traditional and
less-traditional techniques, and sometimes on accordion. He has
performed or recorded with the Carter Thornton Assembly; Brett Sroka’s
Ergo; Tyshawn Sorey Quartet; The Wau Wau Sisters; Laura Andel
Orchestra; Barbez; Ben Gerstein Collective; Momenta Quartet; and was a
featured soloist in Butch Morris’ New York Skyscraper.Since 2001, Carl
has led Floriculture with Chris Mannigan, John Hebert, and Dan Weiss.
The band plays exclusively Maguire’s compositions. Donald Elfman says
“These are exceptional players, but each man’s every note is at the
service of making brilliant, involving music.” In 2006, Floriculture
released its first album on Between The Lines, to critical acclaim.
8pm $10
Friday, January 11th
the holy experiment + corridors + ateleia
Byron Westbrook is a sound/intermedia 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 energy distilled from sound and light. In solo performances under the nameCORRIDORS, a system of multiple amplifiers is used in conjunction with PA speakers to create a dynamic space within a space using sound and video projection. He has also collaborated with Rhys Chatham in the drone metal group Essentialist (Table of the Elements), as well as performed in the ensembles of Phill Niblock, Chatham, Glenn Branca and Jonathan Kane. Releases are forthcoming in 2008 for both Corridors and Essentialist.
www.byronwestbrook.com
www.myspace.com/corridors
The Holy Experiment is the solo performance of Brooke Hamre Gillespie, who was born in Ely, Minnesota in 1979. She plays bells, Tibetan singing bowls, suling flutes, recorders, electric violin, electric guitar, and uses her voice to navigate the new worlds created through the sounds. Gillespie writes. “My work is intended to reach not only those in the immediate area who listen, but consciousness is given to the sounds and vibrations produced with insight into the idea that all vibration is interactive and that every sound created eventually makes its way through the cosmos…”
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
8 pm $10
Saturday, January 12th
jim pugliese’s phase III
cd release party
Drums, Christine Bard
Bass, Kato Hideki
Alto sax, Michael Attias
Guitar, Marco Cappelli
Percussion/drums/mbira/conducting, Jim Pugliese
Join Jim Pugliese’s Phase III with many special guests celebrating the release of their newest CD on the Italian label “Improvvisatore Involontario”.
“Phase III” is Jim Pugliese’s newest project and is a continuation of his ongoing quest to combine his diverse performing experiences into a single new sound with its base in rhythm. The music skirts and shifts along the edges of free improvisation, deep groove and African influenced Rhythms. It reflects Jim’s 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. The Band includes some of downtowns most astounding musicians
8 pm $10
Wednesday, January 16th
the trojan pony tour
The Trojan Pony Tour, presented by Specific Recordings, features films and live music by artists and musicians from the fabled city of Troy, New York. Featured in the show is infectious, charming, and subversive live music from Specific Recordings artists Ross Goldstein and Jesse Stiles, sexy/patriotic short videos and the debut of Sittin’ on a Million, a surprisingly funny new documentary about a famous Troy madam by Penny Lane and Annmarie Lanesey. The program raises questions about memory and nostalgia in the construction of our shared national narratives - in a ridiculously fun way.
About Specific Recordings - Specific Recordings specializes in audio recordings that are unique as a result of historical circumstances or other unusual factors. They represent singular moments that cannot be recreated and are presented here in the highest quality possible.
Ross Goldstein is an American Musician and Artist/Photographer. His “United States of Belt” recording project is a subliminal exploration of the American landscape/mindscape, combining field recordings, experimental music, and studio magic. Goldstein resides in Troy, NY where his collection of hand-painted signs play a vital role in keeping the public bewildered about what the hell is going on.
Jesse Stiles is a composer, multimedia artist, and sound designer. Stiles received a Watson Fellowship in 2000 to compose electronic music while traveling in India, Australia, and the UK for one year. His MFA thesis performance in Troy, New York opened the historic Gasholder Building to the public for the first time in 25 years, immersing hundreds of attendees in a performance of improvised electro-acoustic music and computer-controlled LED sculptures. He has performed and exhibited multimedia artwork internationally.
Penny Lane is an independent filmmaker and video artist living in Troy, NY and Northampton, MA. Her collaborative and solo experimental, narrative and documentary videos have screened at AFI FEST, Int’l Film Festival Rotterdam, San Francisco Int’l Film Festival, Seattle Int’l Film Festival, Women in the Director’s Chair, Santa Fe Art Institute, MOMA, and DUMBO Art Under the Bridge. Her award-winning documentaries The Abortion Diaries and Independent Media in a Time of War (the latter made with Hudson-Mohawk Indymedia) are regularly screened in classrooms, community centers and microcinemas across the U.S. and internationally on Free Speech TV and Yes! Television. And yes, that is her real name.
8 pm $10
Thursday, January 17th
totem
Totem is a noise rock free improvisation trio that ventures from walls of sound to exploring microscopic sound worlds.
Andrew Drury grew up near Seattle (USA) and works primarily in avant-jazz and free improvisation, with regular forays into other genres and media. He has performed in Europe and North America, made four CDs as a bandleader, and appeared on about 20 others. He is an acclaimed leader of percussion workshops. Drury has collaborated with artists that include Jason Kao Hwang, Myra Melford, Wadada Leo Smith, John Tchicai, Kenny Wolleson’s Himalayas, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and many more. Drury currently leads four groups that play his compositions. The Andrew Drury Trio, Content Provider, Breathe, and his latest project is a percussion quartet that features Jim Black, Mike Pride, and Michael Sarin. His music for dance has been presented at DTW, Joyce Soho, NW New Works Festival, and five cities in Romania. Drury has received 18 grants for his work from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Seattle Arts Commission, the Artist Trust, the Puffin Foundation, and others.
Bruce Eisenbeil is a composer, improviser, and guitar instrumentalist who has dedicated his life to the advancement of modern guitar techniques through the growth and evolution of modern improvised music. He has seven CD’s released and has performed throughout the USA, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Brasil, and at many festivals. Eisenbeil has performed, recorded and collaborated with some of the best musicians in the world, including Cecil Taylor, David Murray, Milford Graves, Evan Parker, Ellery Eskelin, Andrew Cyrille, William Parker, and Katsuyuki Itakura. Critics have compared him not only with guitarists such as Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt, Grant Green, Billy Bauer, Derek Bailey, Sarnie Garrett, Sonny Sharrock, Curtis Mayfield, John McLaughlin, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck but also with saxophonists John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman and pianists McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor. His ensemble writing has been associated with that of Miles Davis, Don Cherry, Brian Ferneyhough, Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Revolutionary Ensemble.
Tom Blancarte is a bassist, improviser and composer living and working in New York City. He has performed his music across North America, Europe and Japan. His primary focus is on improvisational music and finding new roles for the bass in a variety of musical contexts. He is an active performer in a variety of ensembles in the New York area, his most active groups being the hyperactive duo Sparks with trumpeter Peter Evans, Dave Smith’s Who Put The Bad Mouth On Me, and the Peter Evans Quartet. Blancarte has toured extensively throughout Europe and has received critical acclaim for his work on the self-titled Peter Evan Quartet CD released by Firehouse12 records.
blackberg/Hernandez/evans/lipton
Blacksberg/Hernandez/Evans/Lipson is a collective ensemble that plays improvised music. In this music, we strive to call on as much of our personal and shared experiences in every moment. We do this to challenge ourselves to explore our relationships with each other to find new spaces of communication and to bring joy.
Daniel Blacksberg is a trombonist who is working inside and outside the boundaries of jazz, creative and new music and Jewish music. He has performed with Joe Morris, Toshi Makihara, Bobby Zankel and the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, Sonic Liberation Front, Taylor Ho Bynum, Gene Coleman and many others. In the world of Jewish music, he has played with Michael Winograd, Frank London, Aaron Alexander, Susan Watts, Michael Alpert, Alicia Svigals, Hankus Netsky, and others in Philadelphia, New York and Krakow, Poland.
Katt Hernandez recently moved to Philadelphia, after living in the Boston area for nine years, playing the violin, running spaces, and producing shows. She has collaborated with a magnificently variegated sea of musicians, dancers, and others including- but certainly not limited to- Joe Maneri, Zack Fuller, David Maxwell, John Voigt, Joe Burgio, Vashti Bunyan, Eric Rosenthal, Jeff Arnal, Andrew Neumann, and Hans Rickheit. She has twice been invited to perform on the Autumn Uprising , High Zero and Improvised and Otherwise festivals. She has been a guest artist at MIT, Harvard, and the New England Conservatory, performed in a vast slew of local venues and- to date- any number of subway passages, urban grottos, and troglyditical performace places, as well as other experimental and life-making places throughout the Bos-Wash metropolii.
Bassist Evan Lipson draws on his varied experience as a performer to create imaginative free improvisation. Evan has performed in a variety of alternative ensembles. His improvisation credentials include participation in the NoNet Festival and performing with Stuart Dempster, Andy Hayleck, Matthias Kaul, Stanley Schumacher, Todd Whitman, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and many others. Evan has received both the American Composers Forum SUBITO grant and Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections grant. He studied string bass with Michael Formanek and Robert Kesselman and attended Peabody Conservatory and Temple University.
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, and 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, Toronto Dance Theatre and Peter Zummo.
8 pm $10
Friday January 18th
an evening with dj olive and special guests:
marina rosenfeld, toshio kajiwara, and barry weisblat
8pm $10
Friday February 1 and Saturday February 2
Apestaartje / Incunabulum Festival :
*The Apestaartje and Incunabulum labels present 2 nights of music focusing on the use of traditional instrumentation (lute, acoustic guitar etc) and styles (Baroque Music, Folk forms etc) in combination w/ contemporary experimental practices and adaptations.
Fri Feb 1st
james blackshaw
mountains
byron westbrook
Sat Feb 2nd
tetuzi akiyama
jozef van wissem
chris forsyth
James Blackshaw
Initially inspired by the folk/classical guitarists of the 60’s Takoma label to teach himself fingerpicking, James Blackshaw writes long-form pieces primarily for solo 12-string guitar that are heavily influenced by minimalist composers and European classical music and which use drones, overtones and repeating patterns alongside a strong inclination for melody to create music that is both intelligent, hypnotic and emotionally charged.
Born in London, England in 1981, Blackshaw has so far released five solo studio albums, one live recording and has also appeared on numerous compilations. “O True Believers” (2006, Important Records/Bo’weavil Recordings) and “The Cloud of Unknowing” (2007, Tompkins Square) received huge critical acclaim from printed and online publications including Pitchfork, The Wire, The Observer, The Times, Uncut, The Rolling Stone, Magnet and Acoustic Guitar Magazine. “The Cloud of Unknowing” was also listed as one of the 50 best albums of 2007 by The Wire (no. 24), Pitchfork (no. 34) and Uncut.
Blackshaw has toured the UK, Europe, Japan and U.S, most of Jose Gonzales, and has also played with Espers, Brightblack Morning Light, Sir Richard Bishop, Simon Finn, Marissa Nadler, Josephine Foster, Glenn Jones and many more. He has improvised live with Seiichi Yamamoto (ex-Boredoms) and recently released a collaboration with composer/lutist Jozef Van Wissem under the moniker “Brethren of The Free Spirit”.
www.jamesblackshaw.com
www.myspace.com/jamesblackshaw
Mountains is an ongoing collaboration between Apestaartje co-founders Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp. Having worked in parallel and often overlapping contexts within their respective solo projects, ‘Mountains’ was created as an outlet for live performance. They have released two critically acclaimed albums and toured throughout the US and Europe performing everywhere from festivals, art galleries, and museums to basements, hippie communes, churches, and rock clubs. Mountains has performed with Fennesz, Tony Conrad, Greg Davis, Minamo, Tape, Nicholas Collins, Carsten Nicolai, Lichens, Supersilent, Alog, etc. They have also been included in several exhibitions, most notably at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. There current 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. ‘Mountains Mountains Mountains’, a new LP only release will be out on the Catsup Plate label in early 2008. “Infinite sheets of grainy sound build and renew themselves to immensely pleasing effect.”
www.staartje.com
www.myspace.com/apestaartjemountains
Byron Westbrook is a composer/sound artist living in Brooklyn, NY. He performs solo under the name CORRIDORS using a system of multiple amplifiers and video projections to create a dynamic space within a space using sound and light. He has performed with Sawako, Tony Conrad, Lichens, Anette Krebs, Soft Circle among others. He has also collaborated with Rhys Chatham in the drone metal group Essentialist (Table of the Elements), as well as performed in the ensembles of Phill Niblock, Chatham, Glenn Branca, and Jonathan Kane.
This performance will premiere a multi-channel sound piece called *68 Footsteps (x8)*, which explores the use of an acoustic guitar to unify dissimilar location recordings broadcast within a space.
www.byronwestbrook.com
Tetuzi Akiyama is a highly unique and experimental guitarist heavily applying free improvisation and noise. Besides guitar, he also plays electronics, viola, and self-made instruments.
Akiyama became an enthusiastic hard rock fan when he was eleven years old, and started playing electric guitar at the age of thirteen. Later, he also came to be very interested in free improvisation and classical music. He formed the improvised music band Madhar in 1987. He also started playing classical viola, and formed the Hikyo String Quintet in 1994. The band,
which played avant-garde improvised classical music, consisted of a viola, two cello, and two violin players, and included Taku Sugimoto on cello.
Sugimoto soon left the band, which thus became a quartet. Later that year, Akiyama and Sugimoto launched their guitar duo, Akiyama-Sugimoto. They played gigs in New York in 1995, and in the Midwest (including Chicago and Detroit) in ‘96. For about a year starting in early 1994, Akiyama was also a member of Nijiumu, one of guitarist Keiji Haino’s bands.
Recently Akiyama has two improvised music projects: Sutekina Tea Time, a duo with Takashi Matsuoka (guitar, vocal); and Mongoose, a trio with Sugimoto and Utah Kawasaki (analog synthesizer). Since 1998, together with Sugimoto and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-imput mixing board), he has been organizing an inspiring monthly concert series, The Improvisation Meeting at Bar Aoyama (renamed The Experimental Meeting in ‘99, and Meeting at Off Site in 2000). www.japanimprov.com/takiyama
Composer/lute player Jozef Van Wissem is renowned for his unusual approach of the Renaissance lute. He cuts and pastes classical pieces, reverses melodies, adds electronics and processed field recordings The unusual wedlock of composition and improvisation creates an unheard amalgam of contemporary folk and late Renaissance music Van Wissem probably plays the most unlikely instruments in the world of contemporary improvised music: the Renaissance and Baroque lute and has accomplished the strange feat of bridging the idiom of seventeenth century lute literature and twenty-first century free improv of the silent type. Although he uses subtle electronic sound manipulation, he has largely stayed faithful to the particular timbre, resonance and playing technique of the lute. Van Wissem first came to be noticed a few years ago because of his radical conceptual approach to Renaissance lute music: he deconstructed existing compositions, for instance by playing them backwards. He also composed his own pieces for lute, using palindromes and mirrored structures. His music therefore does not have a traditional linear progression, nor leads to a climax, it rather stays on the same level of intensity. His music is quiet and not so much demands concentrated listening, as it will bring the listener in a state of concentrated listening – an aspect that makes Van Wissem a natural ally of the current post-reductionist improvising musicians. He also runs the Incunabulum label, and performs regularly around the world in duo with guitar-wizard of Captain Beefheart-fame, Gary Lucas. He also works with M.B./ Maurizio Bianchi, James Blackshaw, Chris Forsyth, Tetuzi Akiyama and Elliot Sharp.
www.*jozef**van**wissem*.com
www.myspace.com/ *van**wissem*
Chris Forsyth is perhaps best known as a guitarist and founding member of the group Peeesseye, who have been described in various quarters as “the most remarkable smorgasbord of back porch minimalism, sound poetry and urban decay of recent memory,” “ritual music balanced precariously between the sacred and the profane,” and “Situationist field recording rock.”. Their constantly evolving music has been documented on 6 CDs, and Peeesseye has performed throughout the US and Europe since their formation in 2002.
Forsyth also performs solo, and his first solo CD is forthcoming in 2008 on the Inculcatum label from Holland. Other projects include the electro-acoustic drone/noise quartet Phantom Limb & Bison; the deconstructed cover band Dirty Pool; lead guitar duties for cabaret art rockers Condor Moments; and past collaborations with other artists including Jozef van Wissem (Holland), Alessandro Bosetti (Italy), Chris Heenan (US), Nate Wooley (US), Burkhard Beins (GER), Tetuzi Akiyama (JP), and Ernesto Diaz-Infante (US). He is also active as a composer in contemporary dance, having worked with choreographer Miguel Gutierrez at Abrons Arts Center (NYC), Dance Theater Workshop (NYC), the Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis, MN), and Springdance Festival (Utrecht, Holland). A forthcoming project with choreographer RoseAnne Spradlin will premiere at the Kitchen in NYC in fall 2008. In addition to composing and performing music, Forsyth has been publishing challenging music on the Evolving Ear label since 2000. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, USA. www.evolvingear.com
8pm $10
February celebrates the individuality of instrumentation with a week of horns, percussion, string and voice. ISSUE Project Room’s artistic director Suzanne Fiol curates in collaboration with 4 outstanding musicians, Chris McIntyre for a week of horns, Billy Martin for a week of percussion, Zach Layton for a week of strings and Sarah Ibrahim for a week of voice.
A WEEK OF HORNS
Curated in collaboration with Chris McIntyre
Wednesday, February 6
TILT SIXtet
Russ Johnson & Nate Wooley - trumpet
Curtis Hasselbring & Chris McIntyre - trombone
John Altieri & Joe Exley - tuba
John King - laptop
TILT Brass Band’s SIXtet project reconvenes for opening night IPR’s Horn Week with music from composer, guitarist and Cunningham Co. music co-director John King, TILT’s own Chris McIntyre, and improvisations featuring its stellar roster of brass players.
New York-based TILT Brass Band is a collective of creative brass and percussion artists. Its music nods in all directions, fearlessly taking on works from the fringes of experimental concert music, arrangements of left-of-center pop tunes, blatant and oblique political pieces, full-band improvisations and beyond. TILT negotiates its tastes with programs ranging from far-flung aesthetic combinations to singular thematic and conceptual investigations, often dealing with the fusion of written and improvised material. More info at www.tiltbrass.org.
Chris Jonas’ The Sun Spits Cherries
Chris Jonas - compositions, soprano sax, Molly Sturges - voice, Joe Fiedler - trombone, Christopher Washburne - bass trombone, Andrew Barker - percussion
A deeply nuanced world — distinctive, accessible, simple and achingly beautiful. (Michael Kremer, Jazziz).
Started in NYC in 1997, the Sun Spits Cherries consists of soprano saxophone (Jonas), tenor and bass trombones (Joe Fiedler and Christopher Washburne) and percussion (Andrew Barker). Neither pure improvisation, nor entirely composed, these pieces braid cues and conducting techniques to layer and juxtapose composed materials, improvisations, and scored forms in order to disrupt and modify habits and place focus on space, color, timbre and interaction. This will be the first concert of the group since Jonas’ departure from NYC in 2001 and will include partner, Molly Sturges on extended vocals.
Throughout the 1990s in NYC, Jonas was long term member of bands led by Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, William Parker, the Brooklyn Sax Quartet, Butch Morris conduction ensembles and his own critically acclaimed ensemble, the Sun Spits Cherries. During this period he traveled to cities worldwide guest conducting and composing for orchestras and creative ensembles. Since his move to Santa Fe in 2001, Jonas has worked primarily as a composer and video artist, receiving numerous commissions and awards and has written numerous scores for motion pictures, new operas (as Artist in Residence at the Santa Fe Opera), intermedia installations and live soundtracks to silent films. Currently, Jonas leads a number of regular New Mexico-based ensembles including Rrake and, along with partner, Molly Sturges, BING (www.worldofbing.com). Jonas is faculty at the College of Santa Fe’s Contemporary Music Program and co-founder of Littleglobe, a Santa Fe-based performance non-profit that creates intermedia community-dialog projects. More info: www.littleglobe.org, www.chrisjonas.com, www.worldofbing.com
8pm $10
Thursday February 7th
herb robertson + sara schoenbeck + matt bauder
herb robertson
Robertson’s jazz and new music improvisation combines a thorough command of traditional and extended techniques with a prodigious imagination yielding an utterly original voice. Along with Paul Smoker and Kenny Wheeler, Robertson is among the most innovative improvising trumpeters of the last 25 years. Born and raised in New Jersey, he attended the Berklee School of Music before playing in various jazz and rock bands, eventually joining both saxophonist Tim Berne’s band and bassist Mark Helias’ groups in early 1980’s New York.
In 1985, Robertson recorded as a leader for the first time. Transparency featured Berne, guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Lindsey Horner, and drummer Joey Baron and was followed by four more recordings for the important JMT label. He recently began his own record label, Ruby Flower Records, with Ana Isabel Ordonez.
As a leader and sideman, Robertson has performed with Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis, Bobby Previte, David Sanborn, Barry Guy, Agusti Fernandez, Evan Parker, Bill Frisell, and Paul Motian among many. He tours Europe several times yearly, is featured regularly on many of their major festivals and media broadcasts, and also composes music for dance and theater. For more information, see http://www.herbrobertson.com/
matt bauder
Matt Bauder is a saxophonist and composer who has studied with Ed Sarath, Anthony Braxton, Ron Kuivila and Alvin Lucier. In the past ten years he has been an active member of the new music scenes in Ann Arbor, Chicago, Berlin and New York, where he has performed with, among others, Braxton, Rob Masurek, Jeff Parker, Taylor Ho Bynum and Ken Vandermark. He appears on recordings with Jason Ajemian (Locust Music), Warn Defever (Perforate My Heart), Neil Michael Hagerty (Drag City), His Name is Alive (4AD/TimeStereo), Saturday Looks Good to Me (Polyvinyl) and Bill Brovald (Tzadik). His recordings as a leader on 482 Music and I & Ear Records have received wide critical acclaim.
sara schoenbeck is a bassoonist who dedicates herself to expanding the sound and role of the bassoon in the worlds of contemporary notated and improvised music. The Wire places her in the “tiny club of bassoon pioneers” at work in contemporary music today and the New York Times has called her “riveting, mixing textural experiments with a big, confident sound.” From being a member of creative music ensembles, like Wayne Horvitz’s Gravitas Quartet, Anthony Braxton’s 12+1tet and Vinny Golia’s Large Ensemble to backing Mos Def in Dakah hip hop orchestra and backing Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder in the Mancini Orchestra, Sara continues to defy categorization as an artist. She has also also shared the stage in improvised music performances with Yusef Lateef, Fred Frith, John Butcher, Mark Dresser, Pauline Oliveros, Wadada Leo Smith and Nels Cline among many others. A recent transplant from Los Angeles, she spent a portion of her time there recording and also as adjunct faculty at California Institute of the Arts. Feature films she has worked on include the Matrix Trilogy, Spanglish and Dahmer. She performs regularly at jazz festivals and venues throughout North America and Europe, notably the Du Maurier Jazz Festival in Vancouver, B.C., the Improvised Music Fest in Antwerp, Belgium and the Berlin Jazz Festival. Sara has received grants from Meet the Composer and the Durfee foundation for outreach work and composition.
8pm $10
Friday February 8
nmperign: bhob rainey - soprano saxophone, greg kelley – trumpet + daniel carter + Marianne Giosa
nmperign has been hailed the world over as the leading purveyors of whatever that strange thing they do is. Their palette of sounds makes laptops seem as flexible as doorbells, and their precise but wildly unpredictable improvisations would have you at the edge of your seat if you weren’t so afraid of the noise you would make getting there. Fierce and fragile, lush and fractured, nmperign is tough to pin down and all the better for it.
“(nmperign’s) attention to the architecture of improvisation, control over a huge palette of sonic material, and ability to explore the extremes of music-making with subtley and wit mark them as two of the most original thinkers in free improvisation today.” Ed Hazel, Boston Phoenix
“nmperign’s music seems to unwind as two parallel soundtracks being put in line by a kind of Leibnizian god. The duo has a disturbing (turmoil) serenity; they seem to have been set up in this new monadology for an eternity.
For me, there is nothing to be called ‘minimal’ in their music, in their choice of low and dangerously weak sounds. It would be nonsense to call this music ‘minimal’; on the contrary, their way of making music refines our senses and gives precision to a double movement of internalization and openmindedness. So space is opened and landmarks disappear.” Philippe Alen, Improjazz
nmperign has collaborated with Le Quan Ninh, Gunter Mueller, Jason Lescalleet, Jerome Noetinger, Lionel Marchetti, Gino Robair, Vic Rawlings, Mike Bullock, and many others.
Daniel Carter
Over the past three decades-plus, Daniel Carter has performed with: Sun Ra, Billy Bang, Roger Baird, William Parker, Roy Campbell, Sabir Mateen, Simone Forti, Joan Miller, Thurston Moore, Nayo Takasaki, Earl Freeman, Dewey Johnson, Nami Yamamoto, Matthew Shipp, Wilber Morris, Denis Charles, MMW (Medeski, Martin, & Wood), Vernon Reid, Raphé Malik, Sam Rivers, Sunny Murray, Hamiet Bluiett, Cecil Taylor, David S. Ware, Karl Berger, Don Pate, Gunter Hampel, Alan Silva, Susie Ibarra, D.J. Logic, Margaret Beals, Douglas Elliot, Butch Morris, TEST, OTHER DIMENSIONS IN MUSIC, ONE WORLD ENSEMBLE, SATURNALIA STRING TRIO, LEVITATION UNIT, WET PAINT, THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS, and many many many many others (meaning more every week or day practically).
MARIANNE GIOSA (sound and movement artist)
trumpet, conch, and small percussion
Native born New Yorker, is trained in musical, kinesthetic, visual and healing arts. She received a BA in Fine Arts from Queens College in 1984 and picked up the trumpet which was her childhood instrument in 1995. Studied music in various New York City schools including Mannes College, School of Jazz, and the classical division of Manhattan School of Music. She has performed musically in many different settings from orchestra to free jazz. In the late 90’s, she worked in City Center Orchesta and The Doctors Orchestra. She also worked with Hot Lavendar Big Band. She met the legendary Daniel Carter in 1999 and became immersed in the improvised world of music.
Trained in dance in early childhood, she also returned to the dance world in 1987 where she become immersed in West African Dance and music. Traveled to West Africa both in 1993 and 1999 and studied with core members of Les Ballets Africains (Guinea) and Sing Sing Rythm (Senegal). She currently works as a guest teacher with Toukounou under the direction of Sidiki Conde. She joined Cilla Vee Movement Project in 2005 and began to explore movement and breath in improvised setting. Coupled by her dedication to healing and yogic practices she has become immersed in somatic awareness, movement and breath.
Presently working with Brandish , muscians Daniel Carter and Todd Nicholson with sculptor Alain Kirili, “it is a meeting point where dance music and a visual space come together”. She is also performing with other improvisational groups including Open Music Ensemble, MMP, and Cilla Vee Movement Project.
8pm $10
Saturday February 9th
matana roberts solo +marty ehrlich’s four alto (s)
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Chicago native Matana Roberts is a reedist, composer,and improviser who tries to expose in her music the mystical roots and spiritual traditions of African-American creative expression. She is a member of the AACM — Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and currently resides in New York City where she is an in demand freelancer and leader of many of her own projects. www.matanaroberts.com
marty ehrlich four alto(s)
w/ Michael Attias, Marty Ehrlich, Andy Laster, and Ned Rothenberg
alto saxophones
Call it a conceit. One times Four into One. An orchestra of its own.
A chance to compose for these inimitable dramatic personae.
A song and a dance.
8pm $10
A WEEK OF PERCUSSION
Curated in collaboration with Billy Martin
Wednesday February 13th
billy martin + the iktus percussion quartet
Billy Martin is best know for his band Medeski Martin and Wood, and performing/recording with John Zorn, John Scofield, Cibo Mato, Iggy Pop and Cyro Baptista.
Iktus Percussion Quartet is a funky-frenetic Percussion/ New Music group on a mission to change the way music is perceived by the lay listener. Influenced by a broad range of world music and instrumentation, and committed to playing fresh new compositions from up and coming artists, Iktus is on the cutting edge of the percussion genre. In addition to performance, we are also available for educational programs ranging from school age workshops to master classes. Let us inspire you! Projects in the works: Concert of “New Works” with Random Access Music(RAM), “Dance & Beat” Collaboration with Modern Dance. Endorsed by: Mike Balter Mallets www.mikebalter.com, & Grover Pro Percussion www.groverpro.com
8pm $10
Thursday February 14th
raz mesinai + amir ziv
This evening Mesinai will premier several exciting new works for percussion and electronics featuring the versatile drummer Ches Smith among others TBA.
RAZ MESINAI
Composer and multi instrumentalist Raz Mesinai was born in Jerusalem in 1973. His first two decades were spent in frequent transit between Jerusalem and New York City, where he became immersed in both the worlds of traditional Middle Eastern music, and the dub and hip-hop scenes of the eighties and earlynineties in New York City. Mesinai’s electronic and electro-acoustic music exists at the crossroads of composition, sound design and modern studio production. Raz was a featured artist in the “Next, Next Wave” festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and opened for Nubian master musician Hamza El Din at Lincoln Center, a personal highlight. Raz has received commissions from the Lincoln Center Festival in both 2000 and 2001, and In 2004, following his developing interest in visual narrative and storytelling in music, Mesinai was a Fellow at the Sundance Composer’s Lab. This year Mesinai was commissioned to compose works for Ethel, Maya Beiser, VIA, and The Kronos Quartet.
“Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick” drum & percussion pieces by Amir Ziv & Steve Honoshowsky with special guest, Billy Martin
AMIR ZIV
“The astounding drum work of Amir Ziv may convince even the most ruff-neck kids that they’re in the hands of a master.” URB - Chris Muniz
Since arriving in the US in 1990 from his native country of Israel, Amir Ziv has emerged as one of the country’s most forward-thinking & visionary drummers, setting deep marks in both the Nu-Jazz as well as the “live” electronica scenes. His work with his band Droid featuring the work of Miles’ musical director/producer/synthesist – Adam Holzman, bassists Tim LeFebvre and Yossi Fine and trumpeter Jordan McLean, produced some of NYC’s most on-the-edge “live” electronica. Amir’s other band that he leads is KOTKOT, featuring percussionist to the stars Cyro Baptista, NYC’s “down-town” guitar-God Marc Ribot and bassist Shahzad Ismaily. Notable sideman credits such as Trey Anastasio, Cibo Matto, Beat The Donkey and Graham Haynes and his educator status has brought recent demand for his musical skills the world over.
STEVE HONOSHOWSKY
Steve Honoshowsky has been a percussionist for almost fifteen years and has professionally performed on drums and percussion for almost nine years. Steve teaches private instruction and is a facilitator of the TRAP (The Rhythmic Arts Project) program. He has performed for audiences all over the country in a variety of different musical groups ranging from jazz, funk and metal to many solo drum performances as well. One of the many groups he has performed in called No Use For Humans has had very positive reviews from many international music publications such as Progression, READ, and High Times magazines among many others. No Use For Humans have performed throughout the tri-state area and have opened for Skeleton Key, Captured By Robots, and The Legendary Pink Dots. In addition,
Steve’s has studied with Chris Pennie (Dillinger Escape Plan/Coheed and Cambria) and Billy Martin (Medeski, Martin & Wood).
8pm $10
Friday February 15th
susie ibarra + talujon
Susie Ibarra solo percussion
performing music from her recent release , Drum Sketches, on Innova Records
Susie Ibarra, percussionist and composer lives in New York City. She received a music diploma from Mannes College of Music and B.A. from Goddard College. Susie Ibarra studied Kulintang with Danongan Kalanduyan and drum set with Buster Smith, Vernel Fournier and Milford Graves.
As a percussionist, she has performed southeast Asian gong music, jazz, avant-garde, improvised and solo concert works. She has performed with many great artists such as John Zorn, Dave Douglas Pauline Oliveros, Derek Bailey, Ikue Mori, Sylvie Courvoisier, William Parker, Dr. L Subramaniam, Kavita Krishnamurti, John Lindberg, Wadada Leo Smith, Mark Dresser, Thurston Moore, Savath and Savalas, Prefuse 73, Yo La Tengo, among others.
Susie Ibarra has taught across the U.S and attended. Artist Residencies including: The Walker Art Center, Mills College, Bard College, Swarthmore College, Fundacio Joan Miro, University of Michigan, Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, The New School.
She was nominated “Best Drummer” in the Village Voice, Downbeat, Jazziz, The Wire. Susie Ibarra is a Yamaha, Paiste & Vic Firth Artist.
She currently performs solo works and with Susie Ibarra Trio with Jennifer Choi & Craig Taborn; Mephista, collective electro-acoustic trio with Sylvie Couvoisier & Ikue Mori; Shapechanger with poet Yusef Komunyakaa; Mark Dresser & Susie Ibarra Duo; Mundo Ninos children’s music; and Filipino trance music, with Roberto Rodriguez, Electric Kulintang.
Tal (tal) adj. having to do with rhythmic cycles in Indian music
Lujon (loo-zhon) n. a metal log drum
Talujon (tal-loo-zhon) n. a four-member drum ensemble
that performs classic and new music using traditional
– and not-so-traditional — instruments
Described by the New York Times as an ensemble
possessing an “edgy, unflagging energy”, the Talujon
Percussion Quartet has been mesmerizing audiences
since 1990. With an annual schedule of more than 60
concerts, including a dozen premieres, Talujon is
thoroughly committed to the expansion of the
contemporary percussion repertoire as well as the
education and diversification of its worldwide
audience. Recent Talujon commissions include quartets
by Ralph Shapey, Wayne Peterson, Julia Wolfe, Ushio
Torikai, Louis Karchin, Steven Ricks and Chien Yin
Chen. Performances have included collaborations with
James Tenney, Chou Wen Chung and Tan Dun.
Based in New York City, Talujon performs regularly at
Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, the Kitchen,
and the Knitting Factory. Talujon has appeared in
universities and concert halls throughout the U.S.,
and on such festivals as Taipei’s Lantern Festival,
BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Chautauqua, California’s
Festival of New American Music, and Bang on a Can.
For the Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts series,
Talujon developed the program “A World of Influences”,
which incorporates Talujon group compositions
featuring homemade instruments and traditional
instruments from six continents. The group has also
given Master classes/workshops at institutions such as
the Juilliard School, Stanford University and the
University of Oregon.
Talujon’s new CD, “…the speed of the passing
time…”, features the works of Xenakis, Harrison,
Rzewski, Shapey and Talujon. The group’s first CD,
“Hum”, includes live performances of works by Reich,
Cage, Drummond, and Talujon. Visit talujon.org for
more information.
Percussionist Michael Lipsey has performed at
festivals in Berlin, Mexico City, Taipei, Macao,
Tokyo, La Jolla, New York, Moscow, Bogota and Lille,
France. Michael is the founding member of Talujon
Percussion and has also performed with the Lincoln
Center Chamber Music Society, Tan Dun, Steve Reich
Ensemble, New York New Music Ensemble and Riverside
Symphony. He has recorded for Sony Records, Red Poppy
Records, Nonesuch, Albany, Capstone and Mode. As a
soloist, Michael Lipsey has performed on the Sonic
Boom Festival in New York, Festival of the Arts in
California and at the Percussive Arts Society
International Convention in Nashville. He has given
master classes at Juilliard School of Music,
California School of the Arts, Purchase College of
Music, University of Maryland at Baltimore and many
universities around the country. Michael has also
worked with many musicians from around the world. He
has studied other musical languages and worked with a
diverse blend of musicians like Subash Chandran,
Ganesh Kumar, Glen Velez, Carlos Gomez, Antonio Hart
and most recently he formed a duo with percussionist
River Guerguerian. He has received funding from the
PSCUNY-36 Award for a solo CD which was released in
October, 2006. The music on the CD contains recently
commissioned works for solo hand drums and includes
composers Mathew Rosenblum, Arthur Kreiger, Eric Moe,Dominic Donato, David Cossin and David Rakowski.
Michael is a full-time professor at the Aaron Copland
School of Music at CUNY Queens College. I am the
Director of the Percussion Program and the Director
the New Music Ensemble
______________________
David Cossin is a specialist in new and experimental
music, Cossin has managed to stretch the boundaries of
percussion performance by incorporating new media
across a broad spectrum of musical and artistic forms.
David Cossin has recorded and performed
internationally with composers and ensembles including
Bang on a Can All-Stars, Steve Reich and Musicians,
Philip Glass, Yo-yo Ma, Meredith Monk, Tan Dun, Cecil
Taylor, Don Byron, Talujon Percussion Quartet,
Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and Bo Didley.. Numerous
theater projects include collaborations with Blue Man
Group, Mabou Mines, and the director, Peter Sellars.
David was featured as the percussion soloist in Tan
Dun’s Grammy and Oscar winning score to Ang Lee’s film
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
David has performed as a soloist with orchestras
through out the world including, Los Angeles
Philharmonic, Radio France, Saint Paul Chamber
Orchestra, Sao Paulo State Symphony, Sydney Symphony,
Gothenburg Symphony, Hong Kong Symphony, and the
Singapore Symphony.
Through composition, inventing new instruments, and
music production David has ventured into other art
forms creating sonic installations that have been
presented in the US, Germany, and Italy. This summer,
he was invited to be the curator for the Sound Res
Festival in southern Italy.
8pm $10
Saturday Fevruary 16th
cyro baptista + billy martin
tonight Baptista and Martin will perform their magic in a mix of duets and music to films
Since arriving in the U.S. in 1980 from his native country Brazil, Cyro Baptista has emerged as one of the premier percussionists in the country. Coinciding with the rise in the public’s interest of world music, Cyro has managed to record and tour with some of music’s most popular names. His mastery of Brazilian percussion and the many instruments he creates himself, have catapulted him into world renown.
With his own project, the percussion and dance ensemble known as ‘Beat the Donkey’ Cyro gives free reign to his imagination, mixing his tremendous musical skills, his natural humor and theatrical ways with instruments from Brazil, Middle East, Indonesia, Africa and US.
Cyro’s credits read like a “Who’s Who” of modern music. He toured extensively with Yo-Yo Ma’s Brazil Project, Trey Anastasio’s Band (of Phish), John Zorn’s Electric Masada, Herbie Hancock’s Grammy award winning “Gershwin’s World” , Sting and Paul Simon’s “Rhythm of the Saints”.
The wide range of artists Cyro Baptista has performed and recorded with include: David Byrne, Kathleen Battle, Gato Barbieri, Dr. John, Brian Eno, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Robert Palmer, Melissa Etheridge, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Michael Tilson Thomas, Daniel Barenboin, Bobby McFerrin, Wynton Marsalis, Yo-Yo-Ma, Medeski Martin & Wood, Spyro Gyra, Trey Anastasio from Phish, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Santana and Sting. He has also played with many respected Brazilian artists such as Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso, Ivan Lins, Marisa Monte, and Nana Vasconcelos.
8pm $10
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 17
Brave New World Reperatory Theatre
5th annual play reading salon series.
FOOD, WINE AND A READING
WITH SOME OF BROOKLYN’S BEST PROFESSIONAL ACTORS
Returns to Issue Project Room with
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE’S NO EXIT
Directed by Royston Coppenger
With Karl Greenberg, Claire Beckman*, Chris-Lindsay-Abaire*, Damon Pooser* and Alvin Hippolyte
*indicates members of actors equity association.
BRUNCH 12:30; READING 1:00.
Director’s note:
No Exit was first performed at the Vieux-Colombier in Paris in May 1944, just a few months before the city was liberated by the Allies. Perhaps the experience of living in occupied France influenced Sartre’s portrait of the doomed trio locked in an eternal prison, with nothing to do but tear each other down. Sartre’s glum antihero Garcin is often seen as a kind of wry self-portrait of the author, filled with a mixture of grandiose desire and bitter self-contempt. The women who surround him, Estelle and Inez, are themselves mutually exclusive contradictions: Estelle eternally addicted to love and romance, Inez eternally addicted to destroy what she can’t possess. In the play Sartre shows us that imprisonment isn’t created by the prison itself; it’s what you do with the boundaries you’re given. Or, to quote the play’s most famous line, “Hell is other people”.
A WEEK OF STRINGS
Curated in collaboration with Zach Layton
Wednesday February 20th
music on a long thin wire
A sound installation by Alvin Lucier
Installed by Ben Manley
Extend a long metal wire… Drive the wire with a sine wave oscillator…(to produce) nodal shifts, echo trains, noisy overdrivings,rhythmic figures at low frequencies, phase-related time lags, simple and complex harmonic structures, larger self-generative cyclic patterns, stops and starts, and other audible and visible phenomena. (from the score, 1977)
Alvin Lucier was born in 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He was educated in Nashua public and parochial schools, the Portsmouth Abbey School, Yale, and Brandeis and spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship. While at Yale he studied music theory with Howard Boatwright and composition with Richard Donavan, David Kraehenbuehl and Quincy Porter; at Brandeis with Arthur Berger and Harold Shapiro. During summers of 1958-60 he studied orchestration with Aaron Copeland and composition with Lukas Foss at Tanglewood. From 1962 to 1970 he taught at Brandeis, where he conducted the Brandeis University Chamber Chorus, which devoted much of its time to the performance of new music. In 1966 he co-founded, with Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, The Sonic Arts Union, which, until 1979, gave numerous concerts in the United States and Europe. Since 1970 he has taught at Wesleyan University where he is John Spencer Camp Professor of Music.
Lucier’s early electronic music includes the use of brain waves in live performance (Music for Solo Performer, 1965); the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media (The Queen of the South, 1972), and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes (Vespers, 1969, and I am sitting in a room, 1970). His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which rhythms and spatial phenomena are created by means of close tuning.
His most recent instrumental works include Coda Variations for 6-valve solo tuba; Twonings for cello and piano; Canon, commissioned by the Bang on a Can All Stars, and Music with Missing Parts, a re-orchestration of Mozart’s Requiem, premiered at the Mozarteum, Salzburg in December 2007.
Alvin Lucier has collaborated with John Ashbery and Robert Wilson and is currently working with Italian artist Maurizio Mochetti on an exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, in October 2008. His recent sound installation, 6 Resonant Points Along a Curved Wall, accompanied Sol LeWitt’s enormous sculpture, Curved Wall, in Graz, Austria, and in the Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University in January 2005.
Mr. Lucier has participated in numerous festivals and residencies including the DAAD Kunster Program in Berlin, New Music Days, Ostrava, Czech Republic; June in Buffalo, and the Sparks Festival at the University on Minnesota. In April 1997, Lucier presented a concert of his works on the Making Music Series at Carnegie Hall. In March 2008 he will present a concert of his works on the musicadhoy Festival in Madrid.
Lucier regularly contributes articles to books and periodicals. Reflections/Reflexionen, a bi-lingual edition of Lucier’s scores, interviews and writings, is available from MusikTexte, Köln. In addition, several of his works are available on Antiopic (Sigma Editions), Cramps (Italy), Disques Montaigne, Source, Mainstream, Mode, New World, CBS Odyssey, Lovely Music, Nonesuch and Wergo.
In 2006, Alvin Lucier was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States and in December 2007 received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth, England, during the Dartington College of the Arts Awards.
—
Composer and experimenter Ben Manley explores the natural variability of wind, amplified small vibrations, and resonant objects to generate dynamic musical environments. Manley has worked extensively in music and audio in New York City and has presented solo performances and installations of light and sound across the country and overseas. Manley has collaborated with Sean G. Meehan, Connie Crothers, Ursula Scherrer, Jim Staley, Dan Evans Farkas, Jens Brand, Linda Austin, the Manley Family Trio, and has appeared with Composers Inside Electronics at the Lincoln Center and with Essential Music and the Downtown Ensemble. He has installed realizations of works by Alvin Lucier, including The Queen of the South and Music on a Long Thin Wire, at Studio Five Beekman, Greenwich House Music School, Subtropics 18 in Miami, and MFA, Boston. As a curator, Manley has presented festivals of experimental music at the Jack Tilton Gallery and elsewhere including House Mix: 19 Pianos, 19 Improvisers & 19 Microphones (a collective performance/recording/playback event), Electro-Whammy (w/ Ron Kuivila, Ben Manley, Matt Rogalsky), and say YES! to experimental music (w/ Jens Brand, Dan Evans Farkas, Ben Manley, Phill Niblock). As an audio engineer for concert events, Manley has recorded over 1,000 performances in more than 200 NYC venues and serves as technical consultant to arts organizations, recording studios, architects, and visual/media artists.
8pm $10
Thursday February 21st
ha-yang kim + dan joseph
Composer/cellist Ha-Yang Kim explores naturally occurring acoustical phenomena in a set of meditative pieces for solo amplified cello with electronics. Gorgeous difference tones, beating patterns, sound transformations through extended string techniques and much more are illuminated in pieces by Kim, Lucier, and Tenney.
Ha-Yang Kim- Lens
Alvin Lucier- Indian Summer
James Tenney- Cellogram
Born in Seoul, Korea, Ha-Yang Kim made her professional solo debut at age 16 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. A cellist, composer, and improvisor, she has developed a unique language of extended string techniques and has created her own music based on this work. Her musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, jazz and improvised music, to non-western musical sources. She is the founder of Odd Appetite, a cello-percussion duo which performs and commissions new contemporary works alongside original works and improvisations. In seeking new musical experiences, Ha-Yang has performed traditional and new Balinese music, studied Karnatic music concepts, and has worked with many diverse musicians and bands such as Evan Ziporyn, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Christian Wolff, Lee Hyla, The National, Louis Andriessen, Alvin Lucier, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Lukas Ligeti, Larry Polansky, and Stefan Poetzsch, in addition to collaborations in dance, theatre, film, and multi-media. Ama, a CD of her own compositions is released on Tzadik. She has also recorded for New World, Cold Blue, Beggars Banquet, New Albion, Karnatic Lab and Bridge Records. She has toured the US, Europe, Russia, Cuba, Bali , Turkey, and has appeared as a soloist at Carnegie Hall. Kim is also a frequent artist- in- residence at universities. Currently, she is composing a new program of works to be presented at Roulette later this Spring. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Brooklyn-based composer/performer Dan Joseph presents a new work-in-progress for solo hammer dulcimer and electronics that offers a new perspective on this ancient and largely unknown instrument. Employing state-of the-art digital processing and unconventional playing techniques, Joseph creates slowly unfolding harmonically rich sound fields that engage the heart and mind.
Dan Joseph is a free-lance composer based in New York City. He began his career as a drummer in the vibrant punk scene of his native Washington, DC. During the late 1980s, he was active in the experimental tape music underground, producing ambient-industrial works for independent labels in the U.S. and abroad. He spent the ‘90s in California where he studied at CalArts and Mills College. His principal teachers include Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran and Terry Riley. 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.
8pm $10
Friday February 22nd
Alex Waterman, Kenta Nagai
+ todd reynolds, Satoshi Takeishi, Luke Dubois
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, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Ned Rothenberg, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, and Michael Finnissy. Alex performs with Either/Or Ensemble in New York, and has performed as guest musician with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d’Action-Antwerp, Q-O2-Brussels, and Black Jackets Company-Brussels. As a curator he has organized events at Les Bains:Connective in Brussels, OT301 in Amsterdam, Miguel Abreu Gallery and The Kitchen. His project with the Bach Cello Suites has toured in Switzerland, Italy, Holland, and the Opera of Monaco. In 2007 Alex curated two exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agap_ (June 2-July 28th, 2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery; and the other on graphic notation, Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music (September 7-October 20, 2007) at The Kitchen in Chelsea. Alex is presently working on his PhD in musicology at NYU as well as writing a book about the composer Robert Ashley with the designer and writer Will Holder. Alex’s writings have been featured in FoArm Magazine, Dot Dot Dot, and Artforum. ( www.alexwaterman.com )
Kenta Nagai is a sound and visual artist based in New York City. He works with acoustic and electronic sound, visual media and live performance. After completing undergraduate studies at Berklee College of Music in Boston (BA, 1996) Nagai moved to New York City. He began his NY career as a fretless guitarist playing on the streets, in subway stations and at clubs. His most recent compositional work, entitled Long, Long, Long, is an ensemble piece for traditional Asian instruments. It was presented at Roulette, in NYC, in October 2006. Nagai’s fretless guitar playing is featured on Eugene Chadborne’s album “Guitar Festival Summer 1999″ with Sonic Youth members Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo and Jim O’Rourke plus Joe Morris, Lauren Mazzacane Connors, David Watson and others. Nagai is also a featured performer on two recordings by the composer Laura Andel, “Somnambulist” (Red Toucan Records, May 2003, RT9322) and “In::tension:” (Rossbin Records, October 2005, RS022). As a performer on the shamisen, a traditional Japanese string instrument, Nagai has appeared in numerous concerts at venues including Sculpture Center in Long Island City and Carnegie Hall. From 1999 until 2002 Nagai was a composer in residence at The Cave Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In addition to his work as a guitarist, Nagai is also involved in creating multi-media, interactive performance and installation and has collaborated with artists from various fields. These projects include a long-standing collaborative relationship with choreographer Boaz Barkan documented by filmmaker Miana Grafals in the short film “A Moving Portrait” that features the movement and sound of Barkan and Nagai. “A Moving Portrait” was presented at Dance Theatre Workshop in NYC as part of the 2005 Dance on Camera Festival. More recently, Nagai worked with the photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto on the silent film “The Water Magician” (1933, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi) composing film score and performed at Japan Society, NYC and Hershhorn Museum at Smithsonian Institute. In 2005 and 2006, Nagai performed in “Flight of Mind ” with choreographer Jennifer Monson. He continues his collaboration with Monson in 2007 through a multi-season project set in the Highland Park Reservoir in NYC.
Todd Reynolds is a long-time member of the Steve Reich Ensemble and Bang on a Can, a member of The Silk Road Project and a founding member of the string quartet known as ETHEL. A veteran of both New York and international performing arts scenes, his rock club and concert hall performances are a hybrid of acoustica and electronica, employing technology as an essential and driving element in a compositional style rooted in improvisation. The past two years since his departure from the string quartet world have seen a rise in educational focus, with six week-long residencies nationally, and two tours opening for and playing with indie-sensations, The Books. With a CD due on the Innova label later this year, he is sequestered in his studio when he’s not on tour teaching or playing. Season highlights include tours of The Zippo Songs and Meredith Monk’s Songs of Ascension, week-long performance/teaching residencies in Colorado and Indiana, Meet The Composer’s Soloist Champions project, and performances as soloist with The Albany Symphony and Theo Bleckmann.
Satoshi Takeishi, drummer, percussionist, and arranger is a native of Mito Japan. He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. While at Berklee he developed an interest in the music of South America and went to live in Colombia following the invitation of a friend. He spent four years there and forged many musical and personal relationships. One of the projects he worked on while in Colombia was “Macumbia” with composer/arranger Francisco Zumaque in which traditional, jazz and classical music were combined. With this group he performed with the Bogota symphony orchestra to do a series of concerts honoring the music of the most popular composer in Colombia, Lucho Bermudes. In 1986 he returned to the U.S. in Miami where he began work as an arranger. In 1987 he produced “Morning Ride” for jazz flutist Nestor Torres on Polygram Records. His interest expanded to the rhythms and melodies of the middle east where he studied and performed with Armenian-American oud master Joe Zeytoonian. 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, Eddie Gomez, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Anthony Braxton, Mark Murphy, Herbie Mann, Paul Winter Consort, Rabih Abu Khalil, Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band, Erik Friedlander 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.
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.
8pm $10
Saturday February 23rd
dave soldier w/rebecca cherry and winsome brown
+ Elliott Sharp’s All-String SyndaKit
Rebecca Cherry performs excerpts from “The Compleat Victrola Sessions” scored to film collage in collaboration with composer Dave Soldier.
Brilliant young violinist Rebecca Cherry, formerly principal violin in the London Symphony, will present selections from The Complete Victrola Sessions, a collaboration with composer Dave Soldier, with pianist Jerome Tan - an evocation of the allure and danger of addiction in the 1920’s, using black and white silent film with nostalgic, surreal virtuoso music.
Dave Soldier lives two lives: as neuroscientist and as composer, violinist guitarist, and producer. He founded the the first orchestra for animals, the Thai Elephant Orchestra of Lampang, in 2000, His collaborative music with 2-10 year old children in Brooklyn (the Tangerine Awkestra) and East Harlem (Da Hiphop Raskalz) can be heard on releases from Mulatta Records, of which he is founder. He founded the seminal punk chamber group, the Soldier String Quartet, in 1985, pioneering the use of amplified instruments and a repertoire that erased boundaries between classical and popular music and now leads the Andalusian band the Spinozas, and the Delta punk group, the Kropotkins. Mr. Soldier’s compositions include The People’s Choice Music, based upon poll results of musical likes and dislikes of the American population, in collaboration with artists Komar & Melamid; collaborations with Kurt Vonnegut; and repertoire performed on specially designed instruments by songbirds and pygmy chimpanzees. Soldier has recorded, composed, and arranged for television and film (Sesame Street, I Shot Andy Warhol), for pop and jazz acts including John Cale, David Byrne, Guided by Voices, Bo Diddley, and for orchestra and opera. As Dave Sulzer (his real name) he is professor in the Neurology and Psychiatry departments at Columbia University. Head of a neuroscience laboratory, he is credited with a discoveries in brain disease and synaptic function underlying learning, among them the molecular mechanism of action of amphetamine.
Elliott Sharp’s All-String SyndaKit
performers include:
Eszter Balint
Reuben Radding
Dave Hofstra
Ron Lawrence
Kevin Ray
Jessica Pavone
Judith Insell
Alex Waterman
HaYang Kim
MV Carbon
E#
SyndaKit was premiered in 1998 for Elliott Sharp’s Orchestra Carbon and has since been performed by the German group Zeitkratzer, the Beijing New Music Ensemble and ensembles in Vienna, Palermo, Tubingen, Bratislava, Los Angeles, plus many more.
Constructed of 144 composed cores and a set of simple instructions for their manifestation and manipulation by the players, SyndaKit creates an ever-shifting rhythmic matrix, a pulse bristling with vibrating detail based on the activities of flocking birds, African drum choirs, cellular automata, hunting packs, and recombinant amino acids. The sum effect is that of a lifeform that lives to loop and groove, always mutating.
There have been versions of SyndaKit for all guitars, all brass and all percussion but this perfromance presents for the first time SyndaKit for an ensemble of twelve strings: violins, violas, cellos, bass.
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.
8pm $10
A WEEK OF VOICE
Curated in collaboration wih Zach Layton and Sarah Ibrahim
Tuesday February 26th
ROBERT ASHLEY:
A LAST FUTILE STAB AT FUN
8pm, $20
Issue Project Room is honored to present Robert Ashley in a rare solo concert for voice.
Program notes:
“A LAST FUTILE STAB AT FUN is a “lecture to be sung” with accompanying sounds. The text was written in 1979 as a lecture for the Walker Art Center and has not been done since or otherwise. I have always been fond of it because the subject of the commission, post-modernism vs.
modernism, so fashionable then, always seemed to me to be such a silly
argument. And my take on it produced a kind of what-are-we-talking-about set of logical conclusions that came from I don’t know where. It digressed into other questions of things I was thinking about then. Finally in 2008 I got it into a metered form as a “lecture to be sung.” So, this is [in fact] a premiere …”
Bio:
Robert Ashley, a distinguished figure in American contemporary music, holds an international reputation for his work in new forms of opera and multi-disciplinary projects. His recorded works are acknowledged classics of language in a musical setting. He pioneered opera-for-television.
The operatic works of Robert Ashley are distinctly original in style, and distinctly American in their subject matter and in their use of American language. Fanfare Magazine calls Ashley’s Perfect Lives “nothing less than the first American opera…”, and The Village Voice comments, “When the 21st Century glances back to see where the future of opera came from, Ashley, like Monteverdi before him, is going to look like a radical new beginning.” A prolific composer and writer, Ashley’s operas are “so vast in their vision that they are comparable only to Wagner’s Ring cycle or Stockhausen’s seven-evening Licht cycle. In form and content, in musical, vocal, literary and media technique, they are, however, comparable to nothing else.” (The Los Angeles Times).
Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1930 Robert Ashley was educated at the University of Michigan and the Manhattan School of Music. At the University of Michigan, he worked at the Speech Research Laboratories (psycho-acoustics and cultural speech patterns), and was employed as a Research Assistant in Acoustics at the Architectural Research Laboratory.
During the 1960s, Ashley organized the ONCE Festival, the annual festival of contemporary performing arts in Ann Arbor which, from 1961 to 1969, presented most of the decade’s pioneers of the performing arts. He directed the highly influential ONCE Group, a music-theater ensemble that toured the United States from 1964 to 1969. During these years Ashley developed and produced the first of his mixed-media operas, notably That Morning Thing and In Memoriam…Kit Carson, and he composed the sound tracks for films by George Manupelli.
In 1969, Ashley was appointed Director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College (Oakland, California), where he organized the first public-access music and media facility. From 1966 to 1976 he toured throughout the United States and Europe with the Sonic Arts Union, the composers’ collective that included David Behrman, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma. With the support of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, Ashley produced and directed, Music with Roots in the Aether: video portraits of composers and their music, a 14 hour television opera/documentary about the work and ideas of seven American composers, which premiered at the Festival d’Automne à Paris in 1976 and has since been shown worldwide in over 100 television broadcasts and closed-circuit installations.
The Kitchen (New York) commissioned Perfect Lives in 1980, an opera for television in seven half-hour episodes. The opera was co- produced with Great Britain’s arts network, Channel Four, in August 1983. First broadcast in Great Britain in April 1984, Perfect Lives has since been seen on television in Austria, Germany, Spain and the United States and has been shown at film and video festivals around the world. It is widely considered to be the pre-cursor of “music-television.”
Staged versions of the operas Perfect Lives, Atalanta (Acts of God), and the tetralogy, Now Eleanor’s Idea, have toured throughout Europe, Asia and the United States. Ashley and his company have been presented at the Avignon Festival, the Festival d’Automne à Paris, Musica Strasbourg, the Almeida Festival (London), the Festival de Otono (Madrid), New Music America (New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Philadelphia), the Inventionen Festival and the Hebbel Theater (Berlin), by the Gaudeamus Foundation (The Netherlands), the USIS Interlink Festival (Japan), the Next Wave Festival (New York) and Site Santa Fe.
Wednesday February 27th
eric mingus w/catherine sikora and michael evans+ sarah ibrahim
Eric Mingus was born in New York. He grew up through a maze of twists and turns, some musical, some just bizarre. There was the teenage gig as a lighting and stage director for a “Borscht Belt” resort hotel, an early stint as an amateur boxer, and of course, three months spent as house martini mixer in the boardroom of the Old Grandad whiskey company. All along, music was a staple. After studying voice and bass with various luminaries of the music world and a brief semester at Berklee college of music, Eric sought the education of the road, touring as a vocalist. The artists he worked with included Carla Bley and Karen Mantler. This was also the period where Eric made his first recordings. Karen Mantler And Her Cat Arnold (XTRAWATT) and Mingus Dynasty Next Generation (Columbia). Moving to London in 1994, Eric met trumpeter Jim Dvorak and they formed a poetry based duet which resulted in the recording of This Isn’t Sex (SLAM Records UK). Eric worked in many major European venues, including The Jazz Cafe, London; Quasimodo, Berlin; and Momontra, Copenhagen. He also played at all of the major European jazz festivals. Additionally, Eric taught vocal improvisation classes and a Charles Mingus workshop at London’s Community Music House. Upon returning to the United States in 1996 Eric was signed to the independent label Some Records, culminating in the release of the CD Um…Er..Uh… Eric toured successfully several times in support of this release highlighted by his billing at the Olympia in Paris. Known for featuring performers from history such as The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Eric has also gained notoriety for working with famed producer Hal Willner on such projects as The Poe Project, two benefits for the Poetry Project (The Music of Doc Pomus and the writing of the Marquis De Sade) and A Tribute to Harry Smith (in support of the Harry Smith archives) having performed in these concerts (including one at the Royal Festival Hall) Eric was able to collaborate with an eclectic group of musicians, Marianne Faithful, Beck, Todd Rundgren, Jarvis Cocker, Nick Cave, Beth Orton and Elvis Costello to name but a few. Eric Mingus has been featured in Vibe, Rolling Stone, Paper, and Bass Player magazines. The New York Daily News named Eric one of “50 New Yorkers To Watch in 2001″. Currently Eric is working with musician Elliott Sharp, they can be heard together on many of Elliott Sharp’s Terraplane recordings. Elliot produced Eric’s second CD. Too Many Bullets, Not Enough Soul (released in Europe May 2002 by Some Records). Eric can often be heard playing with his quartet in New York City at such clubs as Joe’s Pub, The Knitting Factory, Tonic and The Cutting Room.. Eric Mingus comes by innovation honestly. He is bold and unafraid to mince words. Echoing Marvin Gaye crooning about death and taxes, or Gil Scott”Heron looking for “Whitey on the Moon”, Mingus is bleakly sweet, slyly political, pissed off and informed. Eric Mingus’ music surely shows influences from many forms of music.. You will find blues.. hints of jazz.. A touch of electronics.. A dash of R&B And a bit of wailing rock.. He sings deep and soulful.. Sweet and innocent.. Harsh and devilish Speaks words written from his soul Honest an unafraid to show his wounds, but able to heal himself.
Catherine Sikora is from Ireland, and spent some time in Leeds, England (at University) and in Berlin, Germany before moving to New York, where she embarked on a serious study of abstract/chromatic improvisation. Currently, in addition to her own projects, she is honored to be working with Eric Mingus, fulfilling a lifelong dream of working with a poet. She spends her time practicing, reading poetry and hitting things. Sikora believes that even when she is not playing the saxophone, she is always playing the saxophone, and also that she is never playing the saxophone. It’s very simple, really.
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.
Sarah Ibrahim is a sound designer/composer and vocalist based in Los Angeles. Using her powerful soprano voice, she creates structured improvisations layered with amplified overtones and digital noise. She has performed at Issue Project Room and the Kitchen in New York and at Dangerous Curve in Downtown LA. Her sound and video work has also appeared in plays in New York and at CalArts, where she is currently working towards an MFA in Sound Design and Integrated Media.
8pm $10
Thursday February 28
dean bowman + lisa karrer
dean bowman - solo
Without a doubt an important contributor to the NYC downtown music scene in jazz, rock, and avant-garde, Dean Bowman has recorded with Don Byron, Lester Bowie, Dewey Redman, and Jane Bunnett among many others. For tonight’s performance, Dean sings solo unaccompanied (a cappella) traditional folk songs of the Black Americas.
www.DeanBowman.com
“… Go see him. If he doesn’t fill you with joy and make you want to cry at the same time, then your soul must be a sad place…”
Lisa Karrer will perform an eclectic set for solo voice, piano, electronics and video, featuring guest artists Stephanie Griffin/viola and David Simons/percussion, jawharp. In addition to English (and pseudo-Slavic), Lisa will sing in Batak Indonesian and Pre-Columbian languages. Her compositions include texts by Olive Schreiner, Mark Leyner, Ariel Dorfman and Sitor Situmorang.
Lisa Karrer is a composer, vocalist, performance and video artist, and collaborates with numerous musicians, artists and ensembles. She sings in a variety of languages and is an accomplished stilt dancer. Lisa has produced CDs for ensembles such as Music For Homemade Instruments and Gamelan Son of Lion, and with co-composer David Simons recorded and released their chamber opera “The Birth of George” on Harvestworks’ TELLUS label. Over the years she has received numerous grants to support her multi-arts projects in the U.S. and abroad. In ‘03 Lisa presented her wayang opera “Woman’s Song: The Story of Roro Mendut” at the Kitchen in co-production with World Music Institute; and in ‘07 she premiered her solo project “Schismism: Fractured America” at The Flea Theater’s Music With A View series. Lisa continues to develop multi-arts projects such as “Mary’s SITE”, a video with accompanying composition for live chamber ensemble, based on the animated sculpture of visual artist Mary Ziegler. She is currently mastering several of her compositions for Gamelan Son of Lion’s upcoming CD on Innova Records. http://www.simons-karrer.com
“The one-woman wonder Lisa Karrer creates a vividly staged multi-media re-telling of a 17th century Javanese folktale.” The New Yorker
“Lisa Karrer is a living example of how eastern and western tradition and experimental spirit in music creates innovative qualities.” Evi Arujaru, Postimees, Estonia
“A fluid vocalist…I especially admired Lisa Karrer’s emotively quicksilver vocal techniques.” Kyle Gann, Village Voice
8pm $10
Saturday March 1st
sem ensemble
About SEM
Founded in 1970 by Petr Kotik, S.E.M. Ensemble is dedicated to the
performance and advancement of new music. Kotik established The
Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble in 1992, with its Carnegie Hall
performance of “A Tribute to John Cage.” Since this concert, SEM
Orchestra has toured Europe five times and, in 1997, performed at the Toru Takemitsu Memorial Concert in Tokyo. In New York, the orchestra has presented major concerts at Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, and Willow Place Auditorium in Brooklyn. SEM Orchestra has released recordings on Wergo, Asphodel, and Dog w/a Bone labels.
Since 1999 S.E.M. has been collaborating with the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the 5 major orchestras of the Czech Republic.Together they have created a repertoire of works for 3 orchestras,which includes Gruppen by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Nest by Martin Smolka, Modules I,II,III by Earle Brown, and Diamonds by Alvin Lucier. These pieces were performed at the Prague Spring Festival, the Warsaw Autumn Festival and the Ostrava Days 2001 Festival, featuring the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra, and conductors Petr Kotik, Christian Arming, and Zsolt Nagy.
Over the past ten years, the repertoire of SEM has included
compositions by Brown, Wolff, Lucier, Cage, Feldman, Kotik, Phil
Niblock, Somei Satoh, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Muhal Richard Abrams, Leroy Jenkins, Robin Haller, and Sinan Savaskan. This repertoire, much of it written specifically for the orchestra,
represents the core of SEM’s artistic and intellectual pursuits.
8pm $10
Thursday March 6th
an evening of Cage
John McDonough and Kurt Gottschalk present a night of John Cage’s music, in preparation for their upcoming CD of Cage’s compositions for radio, to be released in 2009 on Mode Recordings.
Indeterminacy / Variations I
(For two guitars and voice, using text by Gertrude Stein. Performed by Twiceband: Kurt Gottschalk, Kristen Persinos and Russell Scholl)
Cartridge Music
(For four phonograph needles)
Radio Music
(For 1 to 8 radios)
Landscape Under Construction
(For between 1 and 45 CD players playing John Cage CDs)
Kurt Gottschalk writes about music and plays music on stringed instruments and, occasionally, the radio. His music journalism is regualry published in All About Jazz, Signal to Noise, Time Out and Wire, as well as publications in Canada, France, Portugal and Russia. He plays guitar, banjo, bouzouki and other stringed instruments, and his duo Ecstasy Mule has released two CDs on the Batterrie label. A longtime fascination with the music of John Cage led him to organize Twiceband as a way to work through and explore the scores.
Kristin Carney plays for the Gotham Girls Roller Derby’s Queens of
Pain, enjoys yowling with the Original Punk Metal Karaoke Band at Midway, and is the hair-covered owner of three cats.
Robert Hardin is a member of the improvising group caledonia & laughing bag, as well as being a member of an industrial band called Church of the Toad of Light. He records solo albums as Laughing Bag and DJs as Grandmaster Pwca. In his spare time, he makes art and is a graphic designer.
New Jersey guitarist Barry Chabala, influenced as much by Jimmy Page and Pat Metheny as he is by Derek Bailey, plays music that mixes equally melodic invention with atonal free play. Past partners range widely from electronic artist John Hajeski to Hail/Snail & and lots of stops in between. Currently collaborators include pianist Dan DeChellis, contrabassist Reuben Radding, multi-wind free jazzer Matt Lavelle as well as being a founding member of The Philadelphia Company.
Scott Lydon took piano lessons when he was younger, which was the groundwork for an interest in ways to avoid traditional music. He is comfortable with pieces that involve turning knobs and moving levers and has the utmost respect for the musicians who spent years studying theory to get to this performance, even though he will somehow go home with the same amount they will. When possible, he prefers to write.
John McDonough is a composer/improviser/trumpeter based in NYC. He was born and raised in Pelham, NY. He received his B.S. in Jazz & Commercial Music in 1990 from Hofstra University, where he studied composition with Herb Deutsch and jazz arranging with Dave Lalama. He studied briefly at Manhattan School of Music with David Berger and Ludmila Ulehla. Since running out of money for higher education, he has tried his hand at a number of projects. His main focus is Brilliant Coroners, a band that plays Thelonious Monk songs in a wide variety of styles, including punk, funk, heavy metal and techno. Their eponymously titled debut album appeared on Yeah Man records in 2001. He has a number of improvisational outfits, including McDonough Warren & Sparke (trumpet/guitar/drums), phYsYcacKle (trumpet/cello/keyboards) and Dr. Benstock (turntable duo). He has played with Joe Gallant’s Illuminati and Drew Gardner’s Flash Orchestra. He was also a regular at the Punk Rock/Heavy-Metal karaoke at Arlene Grocery, where he usually sang Bad Brains songs.
Recent compositions/arrangements have been an arrangement of Mingus’ Goodbye Porkpie Hat, Tracheotomy for 8 vocalists, Landscape Under Construction, for between 1 and 42 CD players playing John Cage CDs and a piece for solo viola. He has worked with Anthony Braxton recently recorded a duo CD this past July. He is currently working on a piece for 25 saxophones, an album of standards, and is collaborating with Canadian singer-songwriter Tony Hightower. He has played at a number of venues in NYC including the Blue Note, the Knitting Factory, Northsix, Arlene’s Grocery, Chashama Theater’s window (on 42nd between 6th & Broadway), and ABC No Rio.
Disillusioned Boston University acting major turned jaded rock star wanna be turned…whatever is next, Kristen Persinos is happy to conspire with fellow Springfield High School graduate Kurt Gottschalk. Go Solons.
Tubist/Composer/Improvisor Jay Rozen has played in many diverse groups. From 1977-1980 he was the principal tubist with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. During his ‘Texas years’ (1984-1999), he performed regularly with the Creative Opportunity Orchestra (jazz ensemble), the Austin Klezmorim, and the European Tuba Quartet. Rozen has played at such eclectic venues as the Bang-On-A-Can Marathon Concert in NY and the Zappanalle Festival in Germany where it was his pleasure to perform with ex-Zappa band members Ike Willis and Jimmy Carl Black, as well as Frank’s sister Candy . A long-time champion of new music, Rozen has had works written for him by many composers including Virgil Thomson and David Lang. He is a published composer and arranger and has appeared on over 25 CDs, including his own Killer Tuba Songs, , David Lang’s Are You Experienced? (on which he plays the electric tuba) and Anthony Braxton’s mega- 9 CD/1 DVD set 9 Compositions (Firehouse 12 Records).
Since moving to New York Rozen has played with the Orchestra of the SEM Ensemble, his tuba trio Three, the Lennon/Tobacco/Zappa Band and the PJs with clarinetist Perry Robinson and drummer Jay Rosen. He has also performed with such jazz luminaries as Ray Anderson, Charli Persip, Hamiett Bluiett, Wadada Leo Smith, Butch Morris and Burton Greene. He currently plays with Anthony Braxton.
Russell Scholl has recorded with 99 Hooker’s pop music project, Generica along with producing pieces and touring with rev.99 (Olympia Experimental Music, Portland, San Francisco), and is a member of the bluegrass band The Brooklyn Playboys. He also curates and screens film/video programs on a wide variety of subjects (the history of animation; early jazz shorts; burlesque; educational and propaganda films; etc.) at venues in and around New York City.
Paul Spencer has played music in a variety of styles for 25 years, from Broadway standards to rock ‘n roll. Usually he is behind the turntables but can also be found playing alto saxophone, guitar, vocals and occasionally theremin. He has played many stages around New York including Tonic Underground, the Pourhouse, Downtown Beirut II, Roulette and the indestructible ABCnoRio, with groups ranging from the infamous Death in a Box to current favorites Floyd and Lula and Dr. Benstock. Paul is currently helping make a number of short film subjects and is a notary public for New York State.
Gregory John Wildes is a graduate of Wesleyan University where he studied with composers Ron Kuivila and Alvin Lucier. He was the founding member of electro-acoustic improv groups the Ski-A-Delics and Gas Tank Orchestra. Mr. Wildes is currently Director of Exhibits at the Staten Island Children’s Museum.
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.
8pm $!0
Friday March 7th
ensemble one + shelley burgon
Ensemble One plays music utilizing both improvised and
predetermined elements. We are continually developing
materials, playing systems, and forms that help us
work towards the realization of a group language. For
this concert at Issue Project Room we will present one
piece.
Ann Adachi-flute
Andrew Raffo Dewar-soprano saxophone
Adam Diller-tenor saxophone
Tucker Dulin-trombone
Bryan Eubanks-soprano saxophone
Andrew Lafkas-bass
Maria Mykolenko -violin
Greg Paulus-trumpet
Dave Ruder-clarinets
Kenny Wang-viola
Katerine Young-bassoon
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.
8pm $10
Saturday March 8th
jenny lin + members of VERGE ensemble + daisy press
VERGE ensemble hails from Washington, DC where it is the new music ensemble in residence at the Corcoran Gallery of Art,specializing in the interaction between acoustic instruments and technology. Highlight of the program will feature such a pure force - a piece based on a Pablo Neruda poem by composer Steve Antosca. Special guests include acclaimed author Nick Antosca and cellist Collin Oldham, premiering his electronic instrument inventions, the Cellomobo and Radio Tape Knife.
Steve Antosca, composer and computer
Lina Bahn, violin
Jenny Lin, piano
Collin Oldham, composer and cellomobo
Nick Antosca, reader
Steve Antosca is Artistic Director and composer member of VERGE ensemble, new music ensemble in residence at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The ensemble has recently been described as putting “modern classical music in front of the public with more dedication and skill than any other group in Washington.” In 2007, Mr. Antosca was awarded a McKim commission from the Library of Congress and a Fromm commission from Harvard. As Artistic Director of VERGE, he was awarded an NEA grant to present a festival of new music in Washington. His work One becomes Two, premièred by violinist Lina Bahn at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC in March 2007, was described by the Washington Post as “the afternoon’s most exciting composition.” One becomes Two received its European première in Paris at the Festival de musique Américaine in May 2007.
Lina Bahn is violinist in the award-winning Corigliano Quartet, which served as lecturers at Indiana University and has had residencies at the Juilliard School and Dickinson College. Their travels have brought them to festivals and performances around the world, and throughout the United States, in venues including: The Library of Congress, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Recital Hall, Ravinia, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, and Lincoln Center’s “Great Performance Series”. As a soloist, Ms. Bahn has appeared with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, La Orquesta Sinfonica de la Serena (Chile), and the Malaysian National Symphony Orchestra. She has performed recitals, concerts and in festivals such as the Costa Rican International Chamber Festival, the Sierra Summer Festival, the Grand Canyon Music Festival, the Garth Newel Music Series, and the Festival de Música de Cámara de San Miguel de Allende. Ms. Bahn holds a Doctoral degree from Indiana University, a Masters degree from Univeristy of Michigan, and she completed her undergraduate studies under Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School.
Jenny Lin is one of the most respected young pianists today, admired for her adventurous programming and charismatic stage presence. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Miller Theatre, MoMA, the Whitney Museum, Chopin Festival, BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, with orchestras such as Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI and SWR German Radio Orchestra. She records for Koch International Classics, Hänssler Classic, BIS Records and is the subject of the documentary, “Zahara”, by Elemental Films Spain. She is a member of the Verge Ensemble and resides in New York City. www.jennylin.net
Collin Oldham began exploring electronic music in 2005, at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA,) moving his studio to the klangquadrat in Berlin in 2006. He studied cello at Northwestern University, University of Louisville (where he was a Louisville Orchestra Fellow), Moscow Conservatory, and the University of Southern California, where he studied with Ron Leonard. He has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington Opera. With violinist Lina Bahn, he founded the Mount Pleasant Chamber Music Players, which was awarded an NEA grant. He first performed with the Verge Ensemble in 2003. The cellomobo is a computer music instrument that attempts to model the behavior of a bowed string. It gives haptic feedback to the bow at audio rate to simulate the stick-slip action of a bowed string. This feedback stream finds it way back into the audio stream, creating a unique hybrid of digital and analog synthesis.
Nick Antosca’s stories and essays have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Nerve, The New York Sun, Identity Theory, The New York Tyrant, The Antietam Review, Hustler, Opium, elimae, and others. His first novel, Fires, was published in 2007 by Impetus Press, and his second, Midnight Picnic, will be published in fall 2008.
DAISY PRESS: Morton Feldman’s THREE VOICES
w Video by Zach Layton
A specialist in the field of contemporary music, Daisy Press, soprano,
is performing for the second time in her career Morton Feldman’s Three
Voices this evening. The studio recording of Ms. Press’ version of
this piece will soon be released. Most recently, she performed
George Crumb’s Unto the Hills with So Percussion at Miller Theater.
She has also performed Steve Reich’s Drumming and Music for 18
Musicians with So Percussion at the same venue.
Additional credits include being the featured soloist for the New York
premiere of Phillipe Leroux’s Voi(rex) at Miller Theater alongside
IRCAM; Apparition by George Crumb at the Bang on a Can Marathon, where
Daisy Press has appeared with the VOX vocal ensemble. She is currently
on faculty at Manhattan School of Music, where she received her
Masters degree. She also holds academic degrees from Sarah Lawrence
College and Oxford University, and she has studied voice in the
studios of Trish McCaffrey and Hilda Harris, and North Indian ragas
with Michael Harrison.
Ms. Press was for two years singer-in-residence; Attila-Joszef
Fragments by Kurtag at Symphony Space; and excerpts, with the composer
in attendance, for Elliot Carter’s Of Challenge and of Love. She has
also appeared in Ireland with the Argento Ensemble in Earl Kim’s
Exercises en Route and was hailed for her “calm naturalness” by The
New York Times for her performance of early and late Webern song
cycles.
Having been raised on a rock and roll tour (literally under the
stage), she has recently been seen performing at Irving Plaza with the preeminent Neil Diamond cover band, Super Diamond.
daisypress.net
8pm $10
Thursday March 13th
an evening of peacock recording artists
jessica pavone …no way to say goodbye + anti social music
…No Way to Say Goodbye is a collection of songs for string quartet that substitutes a second violin for a double bass.The music is influenced by an interest in the simplistic beauty of folk songs and a belief that one’s ability to accompany oneself in song as one of the more natural expressions of music.
Jessica Pavone - composition, viola
Tom Swafford - violin
Loren Dempster - cello
Reuben Radding - double bass
Brooklyn based string instrumentalist/composer Jessica Pavone, has been active in New York City for the past eight years. She is best known for her work performing all over the world with Anthony Braxton in his current septet and twelve+1tet and for her duo project with guitarist, Mary Halvorson, whose music has been described as“distinct and beguiling…its core is steely, and its execution clear” (The New York Times)
As a composer, Pavone has received grants from The American Music Center and commissions to write chamber music from the MATA foundation and the chamber music collectives; Till by Turning and The Eastern Winds. She has been noted as having the “ability to transform a naked tonal gesture into something special” (The Wire). She currently leads and plays bass guitar and viola in her 60’s soul inspired band The Pavones (trumpet, alto, tenor, bari, guitar, bass guitar, and drums), plays viola and composes for… No Way to Say Goodbye, and a CD of her indeterminate works for solo viola was recently released by the Nowaki label in Paris, France.
As an instrumentalist, she improvises in bands led by William Parker, Taylor Ho Bynum, and Matana Roberts and has interpreted new music by Glenn Branca, James Fei, Elliot Sharp, Butch Morris, David Grubbs, Matthew Welch, Aaron Siegel, Loren Dempster and Tristan Perich
Since 2000, she has documented her music 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, Jessicapavone.com.
ANTI SOCIAL MUSIC
Music by Andrea La Rose, Pat Muchmore, John Wriggle, and Peter Hess.
Performed by Andrea La Rose, Jeff Hudgins, Ken Thomson, Hubert Chen,
Pat Muchmore, and friends.
8pm $10
Friday March 14th
til by turning + invert
Till by Turning is the collective effort of Amy Cimini, Erica Dicker,
Emily Manzo Sarah Biber, and Katherine Young.
Working as performers, educators, improvisers, scholars, composers,
and song-writers — Till by Turning performs new chamber music by
established and emerging artists and develops creative educational
programs.
“There’s an old Shaker dance number, written in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett, that likely serves as inspiration for…Till by Turning.
It’s called “Simple Gifts,” and what it describes is a kind of
serendipitous joy in movement through time and space: “When true
simplicity is gain’d / To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d / To
turn, turn will be our delight / Till by turning, turning we come
round right.”
The group belongs to a new generation of adventurous musicians
bringing contemporary music to clubland….the players dip into the
modern canon…and give breath to new works by their peers.” - Steve
Dollar, Time Out Chicago
The members of Till by Turning met while studying instrumental
performance at Oberlin Conservatory. Inspired in part by a unique
instrumentation (violin, viola, cello, bassoon, and piano), our first
concert was a program of Sofia Gubaidulina’s music.
Since then, we have commissioned and premiered music by Jessica
Pavone, Aaron Siegel, Sabrina Schroeder, Alex Ness, and Katherine
Young. Our repertoire also includes pieces by Morton Feldman, Olivier Messiaen, Harold Meltzer, James Tenney, and Christian Wolff. Our dedication to challenging and experimental new music goes hand in hand with our commitment to educational programs.
Invert is a unique New York City based string quartet performing original new music composed by its members, and their own arrangements of other composers’ works. Invert’s name is taken from their literal inversion of the traditional string quartet format - they feature two cellos instead of the usual two violins. The group’s members are cellists Steven Berson and Chris George, violinist Helen Yee, and violist Chris Jenkins.
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 musicalbackgrounds, 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 soundtracks from expressionist cinema, to driving melodic works, often leaving open sections for improvisation that add to the excitement of their live performances.
This return performance at Issue will feature pieces from their most
recent CD “The Strange Parade” as well some old favorites, some brand new works and an extended group improvisation.
8pm $10
Saturday March 15th
silent music
curated by dan joseph
Tonight’s program focuses on so-called “silent music,” dramatically reductive chamber music that hovers on the edge of audibility. With strong roots in Cageian aesthetics, the principal exponents of this music are the members of the multi-national collective of composer/performes known as the Wandelweiser Group. Tonight’s program features two Wandelweiser composers, the American trombonist and composer Craig Shepard and the Dutch flutist/composer Antoine Beuger ntoine. The acclaimed pianist Joseph Kubera will also contribute several short piano works by Morton Feldman, perhaps the best known composer of quiet music and an important colleague of Cage. The remarkably quiet acoustics of the current Issue Project space in the (OA) Can Factory provides an extremely favorable environment in which to experience silent music.
‘We get so caught up in everything we “have” to do. And what we do when we aren’t doing what we “have” to do is so often an escape. I’m looking for something that’s not an escape from someting, but an escape to something.’
– Craig Shepard
Program:
Lines -Craig Shepard
Christian Kesten, performer
Peckinpah Trios - Antoine Beuger
Christian Kesten, harmonica, Craig Shepard, trombone, Jeremy Lamb, cello
November - Craig Shepard
Joseph Kubera, piano
piano works tbd - Morton Feldman
Joseph Kubera, piano
Silent Music: Pieces on the program are on the edge of audibility.
Craig Shepard was born in 1975 in Connecticut. Performances of his compositions have been called “touchingly beautiful” (Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Berliner Zeitung) and “ab-original” (Tanja Hell, Westdeutch Zeitung). On the trombone, he has performed with Christian Wolff, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Jürg Frey, and Collegium Novum Zürich. On the sacbut, he has recorded with the Münchner Vokal Ensemble. He lives in Weehawken, New Jersey.
Antoine Beuger was born in 1955 in Oosterhout, Netherlands. He studied composition with Ton de Leeuw at Sweelinck Conservatory, Amsterdam. In 1992, he founded Edition Wandelweiser with Burkhard Schlothauer, of which he has been the managing director since 2004. Since 1994 he has been the artistic director of the concert series Klangraum at the Kunstraum Düsseldorf. His work has been performed throughout Europe and North America.
A graduate of the Peabody Institute, Jeremy Lamb has been an active orchestral cellist, playing with the Columbus, Akron, Youngstown and Mansfield Symphony Orchestras. In 2003, he was the winner of the Baltimore Music Club Competition. He has performed in masterclasses with Lynn Harrell, David Finckel and Wu Han, Matt Haimovitz, and Amidt Peled, He currently resides in New York City, where he studies privately with Alan Stepansky, former associate principal of the New York Philharmonic.
Christian Kesten lives in Berlin, Germany and works as composer, stage director, performance artist and vocalist; performances worldwide.He is member of the ensemble “Maulwerker” and has been performing Cage’s Song Books throughout Europe for the past 17 years; he co-directed and performed in a complete version at Theater Bielefeld in 2001. Recently composers like Chico Mello, Iris ter Schiphorst, Alessandro Bosetti and Makiko Nishikaze wrote operas, music theatre pieces or vocal solos for him.
About Wandelweiser (pronounced (VOHN-dell-vizor):
The Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble is an international group of composers/performers. It was founded in 1992 by Dutch-born flautist Antoine Beuger and German violinist Burkhard Schlothauer. In 1993 Swiss clarinetist Jürg Frey was invited to join, followed by American guitarist Michael Pisaro, Swiss pianist Manfred Werder, Austrian trombonist Radu Malfatti the following year, American trombonist Craig Shepard, and others. The group runs its own publishing operation, Edition Wandelweiser, and its own record label Wandelweiser Records. What holds the Wandelweiser together is a love of the music of John Cage and a commitment to continue work in experimental classical music. At the center of the group is an exchange; the composer/performers periodically come together to perform each other’s music. Some of the music that has come out of this exchange so far has included long periods of silence, sounds at the edge of audibility, and using the experience of time as a musical element.
8pm $10
Wednesday March 19th
gerry hemingway w/ alex waterman + wolter wiebos +
ashley paul + eli keszler
Gerry Hemingway, Alex Waterman & Wierbos
Together with very special guest Wolter Wierbos from Holland, Gerry
Hemingway and Alex Waterman present a set of trio music. Coming out of work in the larger Quintet setting, tonight’s music will be more
conversational and languid without holding back the virtuosic energy
of these three musicians. These three can weave fascinatingly
intricate passages together, using the timbral differences of their
instruments to create an incredible balance and sound.
BIOS:
Wolter Wierbos is considered one of the world’s leading trombone
players. He has played throughout Europe, Canada, USA and Asia.
Wierbos has many awards to his name, including the Podiumprijs for
Jazz and Improvised music and the most important Dutch jazz award,
the VPRO Boy Edgar Prize.
Like many Dutch brass players Wierbos started out in a
‘fanfare’ (brass band), switching from trumpet to trombone when he
was 17. “It looked good, and the trombones walk in front….” His
interests range from precise chamber jazz to throbbing post punk and
contemporary composed and improvised music.
Described as “a phenomenon, both a humorous importer of every style into his template-free, fat-backed sound, and a tireless spy in the house of brass”, he is equally at home using the classic trombone vocabulary or enthusiastically giving a round-trip tour of his horn, from buzzing mute mutations and grizzly blurts to purring
multiphonics. He is also “a very good instant composer, good at
keeping it moving and not taking it too seriously”.
Since 1979 he has played with numerous music ensembles: Cumulus (with Ab Baars and Harry de Wit), JC Tans & Rockets, Theo Loevendie Quintet, Guus Janssen Septet, Loos (Peter van Bergen), Maarten Altena Ensemble and Podiumtrio. He led his own band Celebration of Difference, and has been involved in theater, dance, television and film projects. He has been invited to play with the EX, Sonic Youth, Gruppo Sportivo and the Nieuw Ensemble (led by Ed Spanjaard).
He has also played with Henry Threadgill, The Berlin Contemporary
Jazz Orchestra (led by Alexander von Schlippenbach), the European Big Band (led by Cecil Taylor), the John Carter Project, Mingus Big Band (Epitaph, directed by Gunther Schuller).
He is currently active with Misha Mengelberg’s ICP (Downbeat Poll
winner 2002, Talent Deserving Wider Recognition), Gerry Hemingway Quintet, Franky Douglas’ Sunchild, Bik Bent Braam, Albrecht Maurer Trio Works, Nocando, Carl Ludwig Hübsch’s Longrun Development of the Universe, Frank Gratkowski Quartet, Available Jelly and Sean Bergin’s MOB.
Wierbos also maintains a solo career. He has a running project under
the name Wollo’s World, where he brings together different artistic
combinations, ranging from duos with tap-dancer Marije Nie and
bassist Wilbert de Joode to a quartet with Misha Mengelberg, Mats
Gustafsson and Wilbert de Joode. In the future Wollos’ World hopes to feature such interesting musicians as Simon Nabatov, Hamid Drake and Jim Black.
Gerry Hemingway has been making a living as a composer and performer solo and ensemble music since 1974. He has led numerous groups, including (since 1997) his quartet with Ellery Eskelin, Herb Robertson and Mark Helias as well collaborative groups with Mark Helias & Ray Anderson (BassDrumBone) celebrating its 30th year anniversary in 2007, Reggie Workman & Miya Masaoka (Brew), Georg Graewe & Ernst Reijseger (GRH trio), WHO trio with Swiss pianist Michel Wintsch and bassist Baenz Oester, his duo w/Thomas Lehn, and also w/John Butcher. Mr. Hemingway is a Guggenheim fellow and has received numerous commissions for chamber and orchestral work including “Terrains”, a concerto for percussionist and orchestra commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony. He also completed a production of “Songs”, two year recording project for the the German label, between the lines. He is well known for his eleven years in
the Anthony Braxton Quartet, and his many collaborations with some of the world’s most outstanding improvisers and composers including Evan Parker, Cecil Taylor, Mark Dresser, Anthony Davis, George Lewis, Derek Bailey, Leo Smith, Oliver Lake, Kenny Wheeler, Frank
Gratkowski, John Cale, Marilyn Crispell, Michael Moore and many others.
http://www.gerryhemingway.com/promoters.html]
Alex Waterman is one of the most active musicians in New York
combining activities as a cellist, writer, curator and composer. He
is a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels
and London, specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. In
New York he performs with the Either/Or Ensemble. Alex has worked
with musicians such as Richard Barrett, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Elliot Sharp, Ned Rothenberg, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, Gerry Hemingway, and Michael Finnissy. He has performed with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d’Action-Antwerp, Q-O2-Brussels, Ig Henneman
Stringquartet, Maartje ten Hoorn String Quartet, Jon Rose’s STRUNG
project. As a curator he has organized events at Les Bains:Connective in Brussels, OT301 in Amsterdam, Miguel Abreu Gallery and The Kitchen. His project with the Bach Cello Suites has toured in Switzerland, Italy, Holland, and the Opera of Monaco and will appear in New York as a Joyce Theater production in July of 2008. In 2007 Alex curated two exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agapê (June 2-July 28th, 2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery; and the other on graphic notation, Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music (September 7-October 20, 2007) at The
Kitchen in Chelsea. Alex is presently working on his PhD in
musicology at NYU as well as writing a book about the composer Robert Ashley with the designer and writer Will Holder. Either/Or Ensemble’s recently formed String Quartet will perform the music of Helmut Lachenmann in collaboration with the composer here in New York at the Goethe Institute in March. Also in March, Alex’s new composition and installation will appear in the Armory Building in collaboration with Dexter Sinister, as part of this year’s Whitney Biennial.
Ashley Paul and Eli kezsler
Livingston
A collaborative composition using bowed percussion, clarinet, soprano saxophone, drums, guitar and tape. A slowly developing piece dealing with the interaction of sustained tones and resulting harmonics from the horns, percussion and recordings. Slowly developing from small fragments of material to large masses of sound, where each player functions as a independent part of the structure to create a whole.
Ashley Paul
Residing on a farm in upstate New York, multi-reedist,
vocalist and composer Ashley Paul finds daily inspiration in the sounds and often the silences surrounding her. Using whispered and distorted melodies, wailing reeds and subtly explored overtones Ashley creates lyrical, often haunting moments equally involved in high volumes and the nearly inaudible. She is currently working on a solo CD patch-working field recordings with floating vocals, assorted reeds, bells, guitar and keyboards to be released early 2008 on REL Records.
In addition to her solo projects, Ashley can be found in duo with Eli
Keszler and in trio with Anthony Coleman and Keszler recently recording with Coleman for his December, 2007 release on New World Records. Ashley has collaborated or performed with Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble of Chicago), Ran Blake, Joe Maneri and George Russell and has performed at venues such as The Stone, Issue Project Room, Brooklyn Summer Stage and Jordan
Hall.
Eli Keszler is a Hudson Valley 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 artists such as Jandek, Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble of Chicago), Anthony Coleman, Geoff Mullen (Last Visible Dog), Steve Pyne Redhorse), Greg Kelley, T Model Ford (Fat Possum Records), Jamaican music legend Lyn Taitt and pianist Ran Blake. Performing at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Irving Plaza, Issue Project Room, The Stone and The Knitting Factory (NYC and LA). In addition to his work as a performer he put up a installation last Spring at the Boston Cyber Arts Festival. Keszler has recently released a solo album on his own imprint REL records, and has completed a soon to be released solo LP on Geoff Mullen’s Rare Youth label.
8pm $10
Thursday March 20th
gamelan son of lion
performing works by:
Laura Andel: Apsis - gamelan with trumpet Taylor Ho
Bynum and keyboard Carl Maguire
David Demnitz: Specious Association - from his suite
“Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
Miguel Frasconi: Telling Time - gamelan with glass instruments
Lisa Karrer: Hard Rain - Dylan meets gamelan
Laura Liben: Jesus Autem Transiens- adaptation of a renaissance round by Wylkynson
David Simons: Music for Theremin and Gamelan - with
guests Rob Schwimmer and Stephanie Griffin
8pm $10
Friday March 21st
HAYDN’S 7 LAST WORDS OF CHRIST
The Transfiguration Ensemble will mark Good Friday with Joseph Haydn’s deeply emotional string quartet version of The Seven Last Words of Christ, op. 51 nos. 1–7, with reflections by seven wide-ranging scholars and writers selected by Sam Haselby (PhD, Columbia University; current member of the Harvard Society of Fellows). The evening will also feature an original video work by the Canadian artist John Gurrin.
In 1785, Joseph Haydn received a commission to write instrumental music for a Good Friday service in a cavern converted into a subterranean oratory by a wealthy Spanish cleric. From Haydn’s own description of the event, it had the elements of a multi-media performance. Transported to Brooklyn, New York more than 200 years later, the atmosphere of the work’s premiere will be evoked by John Gurrin’s video art coupled with the austere beauty of the Sanctum at the Great American Can Factory. While the original Good Friday service featured sermons about each of Christ’s last words before each related movement of Haydn’s piece, this performance honors the spoken word through the perspectives of scholars from diverse backgrounds and fields including American history, classical philosophy and Middle Eastern studies. By removing Haydn’s work from its religious context, these scholars will highlight the universal message behind the seven last words of Christ.
The Transfiguration Ensemble is Song-a Cho and Naho Tsutsui, violins; Stephanie Griffin, viola; and Joanne Lin, cello. Among the speakers are Sam Haselby, Evan Haefeli, Tamer el-Leithy and Jennifer Griffin.
Bios:
An ardent performer and a founder of the Transfiguration Ensemble, violinist Song-A Cho is a winner of the Guderyahn String Competition and has toured extensively in the United States, Europe, and Asia as a soloist and chamber musician. She has held concertmaster positions in the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, New York String Orchestra, Bach Aria Festival Orchestra, and the Juilliard Orchestra. She is currently concertmaster of the Peconic Chamber Orchestra and a member of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra in Connecticut.
Japanese violinist, Naho Tsutsui has given numerous solo and chamber music recitals in the United States, Japan, Germany and Bulgaria. Her live performances have been broadcasted internationally and she was a featured recitalist on Bulgarian National Television in 2003. She is a member of the Hyperion String Quartet based in Saratoga Springs, NY and serves as violin faculty at the Bloomingdale School of Music in New York City and the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont.
Canadian violist Stephanie Griffin performs regularly as a soloist and with a wide range of ensembles, including the Argento Chamber Ensemble, Continuum, the Momenta Quartet, the conductorless String Orchestra of New York City (SONYC) and the avant-jazz band Floriculture. For the past ten years, she has made annual visits to Indonesia to collaborate with the composer Tony Prabowo.
Joanne Lin, cellist, is an avid chamber musician, performing with the Momenta Quartet in the New York metro area and the conductorless New Century Chamber Orchestra in her native San Francisco Bay Area, along with Transfiguration. As a proponent of new music, she helped to found the Argento Chamber Ensemble, plays with such groups as the Wet Ink Ensemble and New York New Music Ensemble, and is a regular cellist for composers’ groups such as the Long Island Composers’ Alliance and League of Composers/ISCM.
John Gurrin is a filmmaker, photographer, and sound designer. His projections were recently shown in Singapore and Jakarta and he has exhibited video and computer work in New York, Toronto, Montreal, Columbia and Venice. He teaches at New York University’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television.
Sam Haselby graduated from Columbia University with a Masters in Philosophy and a PhD in American History. His particular area of expertise is the origin of American religious nationalism. Dr. Haselby has taught at Columbia University and the New School, and has been in residence at the New York Historical Society. He is currently a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.
Jennifer Griffin graduated from Queen’s University, Canada and King’s College London, UK where she specialised in Ancient Greek Philosophy and 20th Century Phenomenology and Hermeneutics. She followed her academic career with a career in public broadcasting, having trained and worked as a television producer with the BBC and Channel Four in London, specialising in comedy and documentary. She is currently Executive Producer, Comedy Development for RTE Television in Dublin, Ireland.
8pm $10
Thursday March 27th
THE BROOKLYN SCHUBERT’S LIVING ROOM
A night of great classical and contemporary chamber music with duets, trios, quartets and quintets with:
Marco Cappelli - guitar
Hayang Kim - cello
Shelley Burgon - harp
Marc Ribot - guitar
Conrad Harris and Christina Courtin - violins,
Nick Cords - viola
Hayang Kim - cello
Ayodele Maakheru, mandolin
Music by Boccherini, Cage, Henze, Krenek, Stravinsky, and…more
8pm $10
Friday and Saturday March 28th and 29th
elizabeth brown
Piranesi and Other Works
Composer/performer Elizabeth Brown and visual artist Lothar Osterburg
join forces for two evenings of Chamber Music and Art
Elizabeth Brown, theremin, shakuhachi, alto flute
Lothar Osterburg, video
Momenta String Quartet: Annaliesa Place and Sharon Roffman, violins; Stephanie Griffin, viola; Joanne Lin, cello
Ben Verdery, guitar
Flute Force:
Elizabeth Brown, Sheryl Henze, Rie Schmidt, and Wendy Stern
John Gurrin, video and sound design
Featuring the world premiere of Piranesi, for theremin and string quartet, and video, inspired by the visionary etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The theremin, with its unearthly vocal quality and seemingly magical playing technique, portrays the dramatic, exaggerated architectural world created by Piranesi (1720-1778) in his etchings. Lothar Osterburg, an artist in residence at The Old American Can Factory, who shares Piranesi’s October 4th birthday and is himself a Master Printer in etching and photogravure, will create the video, in which the musicians’ physical gestures will bring Piranesi’s etchings to life. On view will be Osterburg’s sculpture and photogravures, including the models for Piranesi. The program will also include Brown’s Atlantis, for guitar and theremin, The Baths of Caracalla, for four alto flutes and recorded sound, and a new work for shakuhachi and string quartet. Also on the program: Tony Prabowo’s Music for Multiple Violas B-A-C-H 2004, performed by Stephanie Griffin, with video by John Gurrin; and Ben Verdery’s Ghosts of Cordoba.
Elizabeth Brown, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, combines a succesful composing career with an extremely diverse performing life, playing flute, shakuhachi, theremin, and dan bau (Vietnamese monochord) in a wide variety of musical circles. Her chamber music, shaped by this unique group of instruments and experiences, has been called luminous, dreamlike and hallucinatory. Brown’s music has been heard in Japan, the Soviet Union, Colombia, Australia and Vietnam as well as across the US and Europe. She has received grants, awards and commissions from Orpheus, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Newband, the Asian Cultural Council, the US/Japan Friendship Commission, the Cary Trust, the Barlow Foundation, and NYFA. A solo CD, “Blue Minor: Chamber Music by Elizabeth Brown” is available from Albany Records.
http://www.ElizabethBrownComposer.com
Lothar Osterburg is a sculptor, photographer, and printmaker specializing in photogravure. He is the foremost teacher of photogravure in the US, and also collaborates with other artists as a Master Printer. Osterburg’s images of forgotten or imagined times show the remains of human presence: empty cities, obsolete transportation devices and machines, and the traces of civilization, altered by memory and imagination.
To learn more about the photogravure process, and to see some of Lothar Osterburg’s photogravures:
http://www.LotharOsterburgPhotogravure.com
Celebrated for its eclectic programming, the Momenta Quartet (Annaliesa Place and Sharon Roffman, violins; Stephanie Griffin, viola; and Joanne Lin, cello) has performed in venues as diverse as Tonic, Symphony Space’s Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater (for the League of Composers/ISCM), and the Austrian Cultural Forum’s Mozart Festival. The quartet has performed Tony Prabowo’s Pastoral in Jakarta, Indonesia and in Singapore. In residence at Temple University since its inception in 2004, Momenta presents concerts of works by students and faculty, gives seminars on various elements of string-writing, introduces the students to a wide range of contemporary compositions, and records extensively.
http://www.MomentaQuartet.com
Musical America has called Flute Force “an extremely persuasive advocate for the flute quartet medium: four top-quality players in a perfectly balanced and expressive ensemble.” Currently celebrating its 25th anniversary season, the group has performed and recorded extensively. Flute Force has received recording, commissioning and residency grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer/Reader’s Digest Commissioning Program, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Manhattan Community Arts Fund and the American Composers Forum.
http://www.FluteForce.com
Called “an American original, an American Master” by Guitar Review magazine, guitarist Ben Verdery performs and teaches internationally, is a prolific composer, and has released some 15 CDs of his own, in addition to performing and recording with such diverse musicians as Frederic Hand, William Coulter, Jessye Norman, Andy Summers (of the Police), Paco Pena, Herman Prey, and John Williams. He is chairman of the guitar faculty at the Yale School of Music.
http://www.BenVerdery.com
Violist Stephanie Griffin has performed internationally as soloist and a chamber musician, and is a member of the Momenta Quartet, Argento New Music, SONYC, the Riverside Symphony, and is principal violist of Princeton Symphony. She has collaborated with Indonesian composer Tony Prabowo on numerous projects in Indonesia and America. An active improviser, Stephanie has worked with traditional Indonesian musicians and free jazz legend Butch Morris. Ms. Griffin has recorded for Koch, Arte Nova, Centaur, Harmolodic and Siam Records, and recently released a CD of Tony Prabowo’s music on an independent Indonesian label. She holds a doctorate from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Samuel Rhodes.
http://www.momentaquartet.com/Stephanie.html
John Gurrin is a filmmaker, photographer, and sound designer. His projections were recently shown in Singapore and Jakarta and he has exhibited video and computer work in New York, Toronto, Montreal, Columbia and Venice. He teaches at New York University’s Kanbar Institute of Film and Television.
http://www.momentaquartet.com/John.html
The music of prominent Indonesian composer Tony Prabowo has been performed in Indonesia, the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan and South Korea. He writes for both Western ensembles and for traditional Indonesian musicians, and his music has been recorded on Siam Records and on the Indonesian label Aksara.
8pm $10
Sunday March 30th
Xu Fengxia/ Min Xiao Fen / Ned Rothenberg
Xu Fengxia, zheng & vocal, Min Xiao-Fen, pipa & vocal, Ned Rothenberg, shakuhachi and saxophone.
Xu Fengxia, born in Shanghai/China began to play Chinese string instruments when she was 5 years old. Because of her exceptional talent she was accepted to study at the renowned Shanghai Conservatory. Xu Fengxia learnt the “guzheng”, “sanxian”, “Guqin” and “Liuqin”. After she had graduated she joined the famous Shanghai Orchestra for Traditional Chinese Music. After having moved to Germany in 1991, Xu Fengxia developed her own personal style: a mixture of everything from traditional sounds all over the world to more abstract and avant-garde material. She mainly uses the 21-string “guzheng” in concerts and has started to use her beautiful voice in many contexts. Jazz- or improvising musicians she works with are: Joe Fonda, Hamid Drake, Assif Tsahar, Matthias Schubert, Frank Gratkowski, Baby Sommer, Misha Feigin, Lucas Niggli, Michael Heupel, Uwe Oberg, Le Quan Ninh, Martin Blume, Johannes Bauer, Luc Houtkamp, Wilbert de Joode and many more.
Chinese pipa player, singer and composer Min Xiao-Fen is known for her fluid style. She is a world recognized virtuoso and a courageous pioneer in both orchestral and underground projects. She was a pipa soloist with the famed Nanjing Traditional Music Orchestra of China for more than ten years. She also won the Jiangsu national pipa competition and eventually become a first class artist in China. After Ms. Min came to the United States in 1992, she worked with composers John Zorn, Philip Glass, Tan Dun and many others. In 2003, she was invited by Jazz at Lincoln Center to play a solo set of the music of Thelonious Monk. Most resent highlights included appearances with her Blue Pipa Trio at the JVC Jazz Festival, the Deer Isle Jazz Festival, and recorded for Björk’s new album Volta. Min was a featured composer and performer for the American Composers Orchestra’s “Composer Out Front” project. She was invited by Björk to play as a special guest at Madison Square Garden and Radio City in New York. Min received a new commission, Retune of the Dragon, from The Kitchen, and also performed with her Asian Trio at The Kitchen. Ms. Min is also the founder of Blue Pipa, Inc. (www.bluepipa.org)
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 leads the trio Sync, with Jerome Harris, guitars and Samir Chatterjee, tabla. Recent recordings include Sync’s Harbinger, Intervals, a double-cd of solo work,Live at Roulette with Evan Parker and Are You Be, by R.U.B.(Rothenberg/Kazuhisa Uchihashi/Samm Bennett) on Rothenberg’s Animul label.Chamber music releases include Inner Diaspora and Ghost Stories, on Tzadik and Power Lines on New World, along with The Fell Clutch on Animul. Other collaborators have included Sainkho Namchylak, Paul Dresher, John Zorn, Marc Ribot and Yuji Takahashi.
7pm $10
APRIL
FROM POINT TO DEPARTURE
A month long exhibition with installations by Benton-C Bainbridge, Ernesto Klar, Todd Shalom, Chris Sugrue and Jessica Findly
Evening performances for FROM POINT TO DEPARTURE will happen throughout the month
curated in collaboration with gaby ron
Thursday April 3rd
opening reception with a performance by tristan perich
In all of his creative activities, Tristan Perich is inspired by the aesthetics of math and physics, and works with simple forms and complex systems. The challenge of elegance provokes his compositions for solo instruments, small ensemble and orchestra. As a visual artist, he works primarily with machines to create pen-on-paper drawings that explore the limits of traditional drawing through randomness and order.
Perich’s compositions have been performed by ensembles including counter)induction, Calder Quartet, New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Due East, Y Trio and Ensemble Pamplemousse at venues including P.S.1 and Mass MoCA. His recent activities include electroacoustic pieces for 1-Bit Music with instrumental accompaniment. His experimental electronic music group, the Loud Objects, has performed in Germany, Japan, Italy (Screen Music 2), Norway (Piksel) and the USA (including at the NIME festival). He has spoken twice at Dorkbot. Perich studied math, music and computer science at Columbia University after attending Philips Academy, Andover. More recently, he studied art, music and electronics at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts.
Tristan will present two pieces: Telescope (two bass clarinets, two baritone saxophones, 4-channel 1-bit electronics (2007)) and This Resonant Room (three trumpets, two sets of crotales, 4-channel 1-bit music (2008) which premiered at the Whitney Museum, Feb 29 2008)
8pm $10
Friday April 4th
andy graydon + ray sweeten
Andy Graydon was born and raised in Maui, Hawaii and currently lives and works in New York City. Originally trained as a filmmaker, his art practice is focused on the interaction of media and environment. In the form of projected light and video installations, photographs, sound works, and architectural interventions that are attuned to site and context, his work explores the interplay of phenomenal, ecological, and social constructions that make up our composite notion of place.
Graydon describes many of his works as “science fiction ecologies,” suggesting that what is most important to his work are the speculative potentials that circulate through an environment – the what-ifs and the parallel dimensions; real and potential traumas and erasures; reversals of scale and time course; conflations of fictional and factual existence. Graydon’s work tries to engage with elements that will draw out the future dynamic from the present material existence.
Graydon’s sound work is currently on view in New York at the New Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition “Unmonumental” through March 26. “Displacement”, a group show in Williamsburg, Brooklyn opens March 8. His first solo show in Chelsea, Untitled (Ground), will open in April at the LMAKprojects gallery.
Chora For
Chora For began its life in November 2007 as a series of “room tone” recordings (field recordings of an empty or silent space) in the Light and Sound Gallery at the Portland Art Center in Portland, Oregon. These recordings of “nothing”, or of the background noise of the room itself, have been filtered, processed, and arranged into forms that evoke the dynamics of that original space, with the intent of using those dynamics to “excite” new architectural spaces of listening – geographically distant performance spaces, home environments, and other exhibition spaces. Chora For opens a multiple or overlayed space of listening in which the effects and mediations of diffused sounds can create a new awareness, an acoustic and imaginal awareness, of the space of listening – both as a real, existing space, and as a speculative, utopian space of sound.
Ray Sweeten b.1975. Audio origins begin with antiquated tape
experiments based on recorded correspondences between his late father and brother. In ‘89 he studied classical piano and theory at the University of Rhode Island. In ‘93 Sweeten entered the TIMARA program (Technology In Music And Related Arts) at Oberlin Conservatory. In ‘98 he acquired a residency at Fabrica, spa.Italy, where he collaborated with Michael Galasso (ECM), Robert Wilson, Chieko Mori (Tzadik). He also produced music for MTV Japan and Italy, Benetton, and performed frequently throughout Italy and Europe solo and with FabricaMusica, a collaborative ensemble comprised of musicians from diverse cultural and musical backgrounds. Ray moved to New York City in 2000 to work
for Children’s Television Workshop where he provided music for
CD-Rom/Web games, cell phones and broadcast television. 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.
Sweeten’s work as a video artist is also rooted in a notion of the
historical, as he deals primarily with an oscilloscope (used as early
as 1950 by animator Ben Laposky, and evoking early abstractions by early computer art pioneer John Whitney). As a visual artist working with analog and digital techniques, his work presents a stunning intersection between the early roots of the medium and offersmesmerizing glimpses of its future.
8pm $10
Saturday April 5th
stephan moore with video by madeleine gallagher +
bubblyfish with video by chika
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.
Madeleine Gallagher’s interest in video and visual art has existed as an exploration of physical and visual sensation, endurance, perceptual thresholds and phenomenology. Her current body of work focuses on live video processing with experimental musicians. Gallagher has exhibited and performed in a variety of alternative and mainstream spaces in New York City, Washington DC, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Knoxville, Los Angeles, London and Berlin. She teaches video and installation at The Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.
With a background in classical piano, Haeyoung Kim explores the texture of sounds in electronic music. Currently, under the name bubblyfish, she has been creating 8-bit and experimental sound works.
Based in NYC, Haeyoung has worke as a composer, sound designer, and audio engineer, Haeyoung’s work has been presented in various art venues, clubs, festivals, and galleries including The American Museum of the Moving Image, PS1, New Museum, Lincoln Center Walter Reed theater, and Kunsthalle Wien.
Bubblyfish’s album Peripheral v1.2.1 is released on Retinascan Records (http://www.retinascan.de). Her recent cover version of Kraftwerk’s ‘It’s More Fun To Compute’ is included on compilation album, 8-Bit Operators, released on Astralwerks. The new self release EP album Too Cute To Kill is available upon a request.
Chika Iijima is a live computer visuals artist working within New York’s expanded cinema community and VJ scene. Her videos implement geometric minimalist patterns and original graphics in unique, repetitive combinations. Chika works exclusively with MODULE8 from Gragecube in Switzerland.
Chika has performed at the Museum of Modern Art, The Mapping Festival (Geneva), the Bushwick Art Project and the clubs Galapagos and Tonic, as well as private parties, festivals, events, galleries and night clubs.
Since Chika started performing live in the summer of 2004, she has become very active in the experimental music and video underground scene in NYC. She is a member of the Share community, a weekly multimedia open jam, HTTP://SHARE.DJ for more info.
Chika was born and raised in Japan and moved to New York in the early 90s, working as a graphic designer until she began her experiments in time-based media. Chika also collaborates with electronic musicians and DJs on several projects
8pm $10
Thursday April 10th
lemur + ben neill
LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots is a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists who create robotic musical instruments. This January, LEMUR inaugurated “ReSiDeNt,” a new creator-in-residence series that invites three artists each month to create works employing LEMUR’s instruments and technology. In its first three months, ReSiDeNt has been so successful that we are already able to bring you “Best of ReSiDeNt.” This show features performances by Taylor Kuffner and Holland Hopson two of LEMUR’s favorite ReSiDeNtS from January through March.
Eric Singer is a musician, artist, engineer and programmer and the founder and Executive Director of LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots. He holds a BS in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon; a Diploma in Music Synthesis (Magna Cum Laude) from Berklee College of Music; and an MS in Computer Science from New York University. He has over 20 years of music and arts programming, engineering and performance experience in the areas of interactive music and graphics systems, alternative controllers, networked multimedia environments and robotics. He performs and lectures around the world with electronic musical instruments and teaches workshops on a range of art and technology subjects. He is known internationally for his software and hardware for interactive art and music creation.
Ben Neill is a composer, performer, and inventor of the mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument. His work frequently crosses the boundaries of acoustic/electronic, classical/popular, composition/improvisation, and audio/visual. He has recorded seven CDs of his music on the Verve/Universal, Astralwerks, Six Degrees, New Tone and Ear-Rational labels. Performances have included Etnafest Italy, Cite de la Musique Paris, Spoleto Festival Italy, Lincoln Center Scanners Festival, Umbria Jazz, Bang On A Can, ICA London, Istanbul Jazz Festival, House of Blues clubs throughout the US and Canada and the Edinburgh Festival. Neill was music curator of The Kitchen in New York City from 1992-98. He studied with minimalist La Monte Young and has worked closely with numerous other musicians and artists including Mimi Goese, David Behrman, Nicolas Collins, John Cage, John Cale, Coil, DJ Spooky, DJ Olive, Helmet’s Page Hamilton, and David Wojnarowicz. For this concert Neill will present solo works for the newly redesigned mutantrumpet and several pieces made in collaboration with LEMUR.
8pm $10
Friday April 11th
bec stupak + charles cohen + anthony ptak
Bec Stupak is an artist living and working in New York City. She works mostly with video, but her imagery is rarely limited to a rectangular screen. You don’t just sit and watch her videos– they affect your glands and elevate your serotonin levels like drugs. They are mood enhancing.
Maybe it’s because Stupak got her start as a “VJ” at raves and dance parties scratching and superimposing video imagery like a DJ. For 4 years, she accompanied superstar mixmasters like Paul Van Dyk and Derrick May, traveling to thumping clubs and warehouses in Detroit, Washington DC, Vancouver– even as far as Slovenia and Macedonia. Mixing her wildly varied imagery in a room full of people with dilated, color-hungry pupils honed her editing skills and sharpened her eye for arresting images.
In 1999, she founded Honeygun Labs, an experimental video project that has created branding, animation and graphics for major companies like Bacardi, MTV2, and Red Bull, as well as music videos and live visuals for artists like Derrick May, Ultra Nate, and Delia & Gavin.
In 2002 Honeygun Labs moved into the art world. The studio joined with the NYC-based art collective Assume Vivid Astro Focus, and together they created an installation for the Whitney Biennial called “Garden 8″. At the LA MoCA Ecstacy Show in 2006, they presented two pieces: “AVAF vs. HGL #2″ and “AVAF vs. HGL #3,” which were projected through mirrors onto the psychedelic wallpaper to create an environmental sensory overload. Also that year, the collective exhibited at the Tate Liverpool and Stupak screened “Pills and Cigarettes” a looped recording of a live VJ performance.
In 2003, Honeygun Lab’s video, “Shiny Disco Balls” won the award for Best Underground Music Video at the Winter Music Conference in Miami, and Stupak created 4 DVD “‘zines” that were shown at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center.
2004 she appeared in Art Star, a documentary/reality show broadcast on the art network Gallery HD. The show, a very contemporary hybrid of television pop culture and artworld commentary, was the final lesson in media spectacle for Stupak. Since then, her gallery shows have evolved into performances that mix all her previous work as an artist and commercial designer.
In 2006, for example, Stupak created “Radical Earth Magic Flower,” her companion piece to Jack Smith’s 1961 classic drag film, “Flaming Creatures.” The installation, shown at Deitch Projects in New York, displayed Stupak’s technical fortitude and production savvy. Using 3 video screens, LED lights and lenticular signage, Smith’s original film and her remake were projected on opposite walls of the gallery while her storyboards outlining the action were projected on a surface in the middle of the room. Meanwhile, friends and collaborators who appeared in her video would often come to the space, decked out in eye-popping costumes and glittery makeup. Surrounded by Stupak’s gorgeously dressed colleagues, the audience would become part of the environment, invited to lounge on a huge bed. The happening was “amazing,” according to Roberta Smith in the New York Times, who found Stupak’s film “much more fluid, androgynous and flaming’ than the original” in this regard, she may have surpassed her inspiration.”
Based in the Philadelphia area, Charles Cohen has been amazing and challanging audiences for over 20 years. His music is entirely improvisational and produced solely on a vintage Buchla Music Easel synthesizer. An avid collaborator, Cohen is most well known to STAR’S END listeners from his work with Jeff Cain in their group The Ghostwriters. With few recorded/commercially available works to his credit, Cohen prefers to concentrate on creating Electronic Music in the setting of the live performance space. His music ranges from completely abstract and challanging to pleasantly rhythmic and infectious. Each performance is original and new, to the audience and to Cohen as well.
Anthony Jay Ptak is an artist and a composer born in Brooklyn, New York in 1970. He grew up near the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the RCA Radio Central testing facility. An inviolable autodidacticist, he has studied with Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits, Lydia Kavina, and Herbert Brün, and had technical consultations with Robert Moog. He performed at the First International Theremin Festival. He has been a guest theremin artist under director Scott Wyatt at the historic Experimental Music Studios at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2000. He was appointed visiting researcher in 2001, and participated in the C4A Computing for the Arts initiative for Fine and Applied Arts at UIUC. He taught sound art and musique concrète for new media artists at the School of Art and Design at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has presented 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, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Roulette Intermedium, The Kitchen, and Issue Project Room in New York. He was first introduced to the theremin in 1987 by improviser Eric Ross. He began playing an etherwave theremin kit 0017 in 1995. A. J. Ptak is a founding member of the New York Theremin Society. He currently resides in New York City and is a visitng scholar at NYU Department of Art and Art Professions.
Saturday April 12th
david weinstein + richard garet
David Weinstein is composer and multimedia artist whose musical and site-specific installation works often juxtapose sound effects,
traditional and non traditional instruments, synthetic sound, ancient
and exotic tunings and noise. As a keyboardist Weinstein has recorded and performed in collaboration with musicians including Shelley Hirsch, Elliott Sharp, John Zorn, Ned Rothenberg, Rhys Chatham and many others from Arto Lindsay to Zeena Parkins. His own group, Impossible Music, performs using sound effects as musical material. Weinstein also makes theatrical, installation and site-specific multimedia pieces for which he received two NEA grants. He is also expert in computer assisted audio and animation including streaming and interactive media. He participated in a long collaboration with the live video performance group, The Poool, and his work with the artist Doris Vila on animated, multi-user, multi-screen, responsive installations won a Jury Prize at Ars Electronica in 2002.
Born in Chicago in 1954, David Weinstein studied music composition at the University of Illinois with Ben Johnston and Salvatore Martirano. From 1979 to 1994 he co-directed the vigorous downtown New York experimental music space Roulette. He has taught music at Yale, CUNY, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He has worked as a consultant for companies from MTV to Morgan Stanley and many adventurous non-profit music organizations. Currently he is Director of Public Programs at P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center and runs the museum’s Web radio station WPS1.org. He has lived in Brooklyn since 1979.
Richard Garet (b. 1972) is a sound and video artist that lives and works in New York. With regards to sound art Richard Garet is principally interested in the investigation of aural phenomena, environment, spatial listening, structure, process, and materiality. He utilizes analog and digital recording devices for capturing aural material. However, all his sound pieces are worked and completed within the digital environment. Richard Garet’s work begins from the idea that the ear is the primary instrument and listening is the activity that establishes it all; especially choices and the function of the work. Any other tool, device, or mechanism is transitory, replaceable, and subject to change, therefore it cannot be ultimate or adopted permanently. For Garet sound is listening and composing is the organization of sound. Sonic construction emerges within the interconnections of the ear and the mind and the awareness of space and time. Garet’s work proposes that the listener engage with the work principally in a mode of active listening. His most common aural materials are unaltered, as well as, processed field recordings, and synthetic sounds. Presently he approaches sound work as an artist-composer experimenting within the ranges of electro acoustic, electronic music, and sound art installations. Additionally, he works within the parameters of live performances to temporal-in-space performance-installations. Garet’s performances possess all the qualities of his compositions. Each presentation is distinct and may be approached as improvisation, pre-prepared systematic setting, or collaboration with another artist/s.
Richard Garet has collaborated in the past with artists Andy Graydon, Gill Arno, Ben Owen, Gil Sanson, and Andre Goncalves through the EA collective. He has also collaborated with Brendan Murray, Shimpei Takeda, Sawako, Chica Ijima, Bruce Tovsky, Bruce Mcclure, Adam Kendall, Jeremy Slater, Peter Eudenbach, Wolfgang Von Stürmer, Zimoun, Zach Layton, and Aaron Kadoch.
His aural works have been released by the Austrian label NON VISUAL OBJECTS in 07/2007 with • Extract: Portraits of Sound Artists–22 various artists: Book and Double CD cat# nvo_11, in 12/2006 with • Intrinsic Motion–CD (Solo) cat# nvo _008, and in 10/2005 with • TERRITORIUM–CD (Compiler) cat# nvo_004. In 2008 Richard Garet has lined up a series of upcoming releases such as • L’avenir” (solo) — WINDS MEASURE RECORDINGS - NYC, USA, • V-P V-F is V-N 7″ compilation series, 7001 — WINDS MEASURE RECORDINGS - NYC, USA, • Four (solo) / Double CD — AND/OAR - Seattle, Washington, USA, • Antonioni: Trilogy & Epilogue (compilation) — AND/OAR - Seattle, Washington, USA, • Winter (Solo) / DVD Audio Surround 4.0 — Leerraum, Switzerland and a collaborative release • Of Distance, Richard Garet and Brendan Murray, UNFRAMED RECORDINGS, NYC, USA. Richard Garet’s collaborative past releases include • Balancing Act with Controlled Dynamics / EA (collective) 2006 — WINDS MEASURE RECORDINGS - NYC, USA, and the 03/2008 online release • Balancing Act with Controlled Dynamics: Take Two / EA (collective) CON-V, Madrid, Spain. For additional info visit: www.richardgaret.com
8pm $10
Sunday April 13th
greg pope + barry weisblat
presented in collaboration with Anthology Film Archives
LIGHT TRAP PERFORMANCE
Pope’s LIGHT TRAP is a performance for four prepared 16mm projectors. Something of a “live punk homage” to Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone, the work is a voluminous and spatial sound/light sculpture, performed live and in constant flux by factors both random and controlled. Without a screen, seating, or a traditional beginning and end, LIGHT TRAP explores the raw elements of cinema: the projector, the film material, the darkened room and synchronized sound.
The imagery in LIGHT TRAP begins with loops of completely black film, a dark room filled with haze, and only the hum of the projectors’ motors. Slowly, the emulsion is whittled away on each loop with sandpaper and an array of hand tools, allowing bursts and streams of light to pierce through the darkness. Synchronous to the unfolding cascade of light emanating into the room, the aberrations on the film loops create pops, cracks, and hisses.This constant, reductive physical process applied to the surface of the film loops results in a slow transformation of the physical space; out of aural and visual darkness builds a cacophonous crescendo of sound and light. Performed with Andrew Lampert, Bradley Eros and others.
After dabbling in punk rock bands and absurdist performance, Greg Pope founded Brighton based Super-8 film collective Situation Cinema (1986-88). Loophole Cinema was the next venture (London 1989 -99), using 16mm multi-projection and screen technology to create events staged at festivals and industrial spaces accross europe. In 1996 Pope co-produced the International Symposium of Shadows in London.Working collaboratively and individually, Pope has made video installations, live art pieces and single screen film works since 1996. His work has been shown at Tate Modern, Rotterdam Film Festival, Gugenheim, London Film Festival and Kill Your Timid Notion festival ( Scotland ) and Images festival, Toronto. He currently lives in Norway in a small wooden house and is active with Atopia, an artists’ film and video collective in Oslo.
for more Greg Pope films at Anthology Film Archives click here.
Barry Weisblat was born in 1975 in Brooklyn. He is a sound artist and electronic instrument builder who extensively experiments with electro-magnetic devices, solar technology, homemade and modified circuits for application in sound generation/manipulation, audio engineering and photography. Weisblat has collaborated with Margarida Garcia, Tower Recordings, Mattin, Tim Barnes and Tetuzi Akiyama, and has built instruments for Peter Kowald, Toshio Kajiwara, Manuel Mota and Matt Valentine. He has sound engineered for Erstwhile Records, Dean Roberts and Jon Gibson. Selected recordings include: 2003 ‘Velatropa 24.3′, Allegorical Power Series, Issue 5, december 2003
7pm $10
Thursday April 17th
luke dubois + sawako
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 was 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.
Sawako is a sound sculptor, a timeline-based artist and a signal alchemist in the urban life environment who understands the value of dynamics and the power of silence. Once through the processor named Sawako, subtle fragments in everyday life float in space vividly with a digital yet organic texture. She is interested in the soundscape and the media scape of digital era, and her activities are making bridge between public and private, virtual and actual world.
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Sawako released her albums from 12k (USA), and/OAR(USA) and Anticipate (USA). She had collaborated with Taylor Deupree, asuna, HYPO, RF, Toshimaru Nakamura, Taku Sugimoto, Andrew Deutsch, Jacob Kirkegaard, Kenneth Kirschner, Radiosonde, among others. Her unique sonic world has been called “post romantic sound” by Boston’s Weekly Dig.
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She has performed internationally as an audio and/or visual artist in MUTEK (Canada): Tonic, Diapason, Monkey Town, Issue Project Room, Starbucks Salon, BAP Festival (NYC); Corcoran Gallery (Washington DC); Glade Festival, Resonance FM, ICA (UK); Batofar (Paris); m12(Berlin); Offsite, Super Delux, Bullets, Apple Store (Japan). In 2006, she was awarded a Jerome Foundation grant to create a commissioned work for Roulette.
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Her work has been featured in The Wire (UK), Blow Up (Italy), Improvised Music from Japan (Japan), NY Art (US), e/i magazine (US), DEBUG (Germany), Go MAG (Spain), GAFFA (Denmark) among others.
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Sawako obtained a Master’s degree in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University where she studied Networked Expression, Physical Computing, Post Linear Narrative and Audio/Visual Studies. She received a B.A. from Environmental Information Department at Keio University, SFC, Japan.
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Born in Nagoya, Japan, studying the classical piano over 10 years and Japanese Nohgaku Theatre for 6 years when she was a child.
Friday April 18th
bruce tovsky + zach layton
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, often in collaboration with artists such as John Hudak, David Linton, Kim Cascone and Michael Schumacher in a variety of spaces around New York City, such as Diapason, Experimental Intermedia, Issue Project Room, Tonic, and his own installation space 106BLDG30 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. His audio/video duo with video artist Shimpei Takeda has been appearing in planetariums, rural arts festivals and galleries around New York.
INTERFERENCE
INTERFERENCE | Theremin + jitter
INTERFERENCE is an exploration of sound visualization and visual patterning, driven by a solo Theremin score that gradually accumulates density over the length of the piece. Simple motifs combine, both audially and visually, creating harmonic intermodulations and interference patterns that take on a life of their own.
Zach Layton is a composer, curator, improviser and new media artist
based in Brooklyn with an interest in biofeedback, generative
algorithms, experimental culture and architecture. 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, New York Electronic Art Festival, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Eyebeam, Sculpture Center, Diapason, ISSUE Project Room, Bushwick Arts Project, St. Mark’s Ontological Theater, Dumbo Arts Festival, New York Digital Salon, Miguel Abreu Gallery, Participant Inc, Monkeytown and many other venues in New York, South America and europe. He has collaborated with Luke Dubois, Vito Acconci, Jonas Mekas, Bradley Eros, Andy Graydon, Nick Hallett, Matthew Ostrowski, Christine Bard, Alex Waterman, Patrick Hambrect, Marissa Olsen, Angie Eng, Adam Kendall, Chika Ijima, Tristan Perich and Ray Sweeten among many other artists, filmmakers, curators and musicians.
Zach is also the curator of Brooklyn’s monthly experimental music
series, “Darmstadt: classics of the avant garde” which features
leading local and international composers and improvisers, was
co-curator of the 2007 PS1 summer Warm Up music series and is one of the directors of ISSUE Project Room. Zach has received grants from the Netherlands America Foundation, Turbulence and the Jerome Foundation and is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and the Interactive Telecommunications Program.
8pm $10
Wednesday April 23rd
littoral with doug nufer + zeroboy + musical guest: Lycaon Pictus
Doug Nufer writes prose, poetry, and works for performance using various procedures and restrictions. In 2004 three of his novels came out more or less at once: Never Again (Black Square), Negativeland (Autonomedia), and On the Roast (Chiasmus). Two years later his double novel The Mudflat Man/ The River Boys (soultheft) was published. His recent book is a collection of Oulipian poetry, We Were Werewolves (Make Now). His stories and/or poems have appeared in Fence, Chain, The Brooklyn Rail, Golden Handcuffs Review, and Bird Dog, and in performances with and without dancers or musicians. He lives in Seattle, where he runs a wine shop.
Performance artist, stand-up comic & “vocal acrobat” Zero Boy recounts his zany adventures in Zeroland through a unique blend of sound and mime, the results being something akin to a performed comic book.
Combining movement with live, vocally-produced sound effects, Zero Boy enacts a parade of hilarious, fantastical characters that find themselves in the most unlikely situations.
From his New York base Zero Boy has written, directed & performed numerous productions on both coasts and Europe, working in traditional theater, stand up comedy, television, street performance festivals, radio, film, comic books, a national magazine, and on the cutting edge of digital media/art.
Has been heard regularly on NPR’s The Next Big Thing with Dean Olshar doing Stump Zero Boy and This Day in History with Zero Boy. Stump Zero Boy gave audience members a chance to commission a short-form radio cartoon. They email a 1-sentence scenario, involving as many strange and challenging elements as you can think and then Zero Boy creates live a vocal cartoon.
Lycaon Pictus are not a band. We are a pack of wild science
wizards! Using future technology blended with sorcery we make things
and stuff. Song technicians and sonar experimentalists, cyborg animal
simalucrums, ghost whisperers, and more. Are we not half-men? We are
Lycaon Pictus.
“We will perform musical works of varying intensity using keyboards, bass, drums, and certain electronic devices. Perhaps an orgy will follow. Stay tuned.”
8pm $10
Friday April 25th
ernesto klar + zach lieberman
Ernesto Klar is a media and sound artist based in New York City.
Klar’s works have been presented at Eyebeam, Chelsea Art Museum, BAP Lab Festival in New York City, the ICA in Boston, FILE Festival in
Sao Paulo, OI Futuro in Rio de Janeiro, and the CCCB in Barcelona,
among others. His awards include grants, fellowships, and commissions from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Klar holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons The New School For Design, and a BM in Composition from Berklee College of Music. He is currently a faculty member at Parsons The New School For Design in New York City.
“Microspazi” is an audiovisual performance piece that uses a custom-software and a high-resolution microscopy digital camera to reveal, amplify, and alter imperceptible topologies of the artwork’s given site
.
Zachary Lieberman’s work uses technology in a playful and enigmatic way to explore the nature of communication and the delicate boundary between the visible and the invisible. He creates performances, installations, and on-line works that investigate gestural input, augmentation of the body, and kinetic response.
Working with collaborator Golan Levin, he created a series of installations - “Remark” and “Hidden Worlds” - which presented different interpretations of what the voice might look like if we could see our own speech. These were followed with “Messa Di Voce,” a concert performance in which the speech, shouts and songs of two abstract vocalists were radically augmented in real-time by interactive visualization software. The collaborators were recently nominated for Wired magazine’s artist of the year award and have toured and exhibited their works widely, much to the delight of their audiences.
Lieberman has held artist residencies at Ars Electronica Futurelab, Eyebeam, and most recently at Dance Theatre Workshop, where he investigated how technology might be used to aid the choreographic process.
He is currently working on a concert-performance, “Drawn,” in which live painted forms appear to come to life, rising off the page and reacting to the world around them. Lieberman is also developing a suite of software for disabled students that transforms their movement into an audio-visual response as a means for performance and self-expression.
8pm $10
Wednesday April 30th
artist in residence ashley paul + eli kezsler with charles cohen, aki
onda, bryan eubanks and David Linton
Ashley Paul/ Eli Keszler combine sustained resonances with constantly
shifting jabs and attacks. Keszler’s bowed metal and driving percussion,
and Paul’s expressive reeds and floating vocals, creating deliriously eye
opening moments. The duo will be joined by some very special guests,
8pm $10
During the month of May 2008 ISSUE Project Room devotes its programming to the ecstatic moment.
Thursday May 1st (at 7pm)
dan graham
Dan Graham presents a screening of ROCK MY RELIGION
“Rock My Religion” is a provocative thesis on the relation between
religion and rock music in contemporary culture. Graham formulates a history that begins with the Shakers, an early religious community who practiced self-denial and ecstatic trance dances. With the “reeling and rocking” of religious revivals as his point of departure, Graham analyzes the emergence of rock music as religion with the teenage consumer in the isolated suburban milieu of the 1950s, locating rock’ssexual and ideological context in post-World War II America. The music and philosophies of Patti Smith, who made explicit the trope that rock is religion, are his focus. This complex collage of text, film footage and performance forms a compelling theoretical essay on the ideological codes and historical contexts that inform the cultural phenomenon of rock `n’ roll music.
Original Music: Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth. Sound: Ian Murray, Wharton Tiers. Narrators: Johanna Cypis, Dan Graham. Editors: Matt Danowski, Derek Graham, Ian Murray, Tony Oursler.
Produced by Dan Graham and the Moderna Museet.
Since the mid-1960s, Dan Graham has produced an important body of art and theory that engages in a highly analytical discourse on the historical, social and ideological functions of contemporary cultural systems. Architecture, popular music, video and television are among the focuses of his provocative investigations, which are articulated in essays, performances, installations, videotapes and architectural/sculptural designs.
Graham began using film and video in the 1970s, creating installation and performance works that actively engage the viewer in a perceptual and psychological inquiry into public and private, audience and performer, objectivity and subjectivity. Restructuring space, time an spectatorship in a deconstruction of the phenomenology of viewing, his early installations often incorporate closed-circuit video systems within architectural spaces. The viewer’s perception is manipulated and displaced through such devices as time delay, projections, surveillance and mirrors.
In installations focusing on the social implications of television, as articulated in private and public viewing spaces, Graham refers to video’s semiotic function in architecture in relation to both window and mirror. Graham has also published numerous critical and theoretical essays that investigate the cultural ideology of such
contemporary social phenomena as punk music, suburbia and public architecture.
Graham was born in 1942. He has published numerous critical essays, and is the author of Video-Architecture-Television (1980). His work is represented in the collections of numerous major institutions in the United States and Europe, including Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and The Tate Gallery, London. He has had retrospective exhibitions at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Holland; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, England; The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago; Kunsthalle, Berne, Switzerland; and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; and has been represented internationally in group exhibitions at Documenta 7, Kassel, Germany; Art Institute of Chicago; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; P.S. 1, New York; American Film Institute National Video Festival, Los Angeles; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, among other festivals and institutions. Dan Graham lives in New York.
7pm $10
Friday May 2nd
mv carbon + hahn rowe
M.V. Carbon resides near the bridge and composes transpositions. cello, keyboards, tape machines, guitars w/ modified instruments oscillate -lyrics induce abstractions.
the effects of color, tone, shape and distance will be tested on the participants through projection and (bi)-linear sound.
Hahn Rowe is a composer, producer, engineer, and multi-instrumentalist who has performed and/or worked with artists such as Hugo Largo, Glenn Branca, David Byrne, Hassan Hakmoun, Foetus, Mimi, and Antony and the Johnsons among many others.
He is currently active as a composer for film and his longstanding musical collaboration with Brussels/Berlin based choreographer Meg Stuart (Damaged Goods) has resulted in the creation of 5 critically acclaimed dance/theater works.
Tonight’s performance will feature solo, digitally de/re-constructed violin - fluidly transforming from sensual-textural microsonics to the lush and quasi-symphonic.
8pm $10
Saturday May 3rd
sean meehan + duane pitre
Liz Tonne & Sean Meehan
So, I have never had anything remotely close to an ecstatic moment, so maybe tonight is the night.
-sm
Liz Tonne - Biography
Liz Tonne is a sound artist inspired by the unorthodox use of the human voice. She is an improviser and an interpreter of contemporary composition using voice as her instrument. Her singing is an abstraction of styles ranging from jazz to bird songs, and uses techniques taken from bel canto, wheezing and the mimicry of machinery.
As well as performing as a solo artist, Tonne is a member of The BSC, a large improvisational group directed by Bhob Rainey. She is a quarter of undr quartet, who along with James Coleman, Greg Kelley and Vic Rawlings, celebrated 2008 as their tenth year anniversary as one of the pioneering ensembles of Boston’s “lowercase” sound.
www.liztonne.com
Sean Meehan-Biography
Sean Meehan plays the drums. This is his second performance with Liz Tonne. He plays with others, most notably Matthew Sperry and Kendall Pigg. Meehan and Pigg have recently finished a duo drum CD to be released latter this spring.
Duane Pitre is a Brooklyn-based composer, improviser and sound-artist. His primary instrument is electric guitar, which he plays in a nontraditional fashion, utilizing various objects such as mallets and rotary tools to coax unusual sounds from the instrument. His current solo works explore both chaos and discipline—and the territory that exists between the two.
Pitre (originally from New Orleans) spent the better part of the 90s in San Diego, where he began exploring drone, minimalism, and ambient music. In September 2004 he moved to Brooklyn and began studying the physics of sound, the involvement of mathematics in tuning and temperament, the tuning system of Just Intonation, and other microtonal tuning systems.
In summer of 2007 Pitre’s album, Organized Pitches Occurring in Time, was released on Important Records. This album consists of two versions of his lengthy drone/contemporary-classical composition Ensemble Drones. Ensemble Drones was performed live in December 2007 by a 13-piece ensemble in Burlington, VT, and future performances of the piece are in the works for Chicago (May ‘08), New Orleans, Austin, and San Diego.
Pitre has a number of releases scheduled for 2008, including a track on a compilation of experimental/avant-garde guitarists (to be released by Quiet Design) and limited edition lathe-cut vinyl on Ireland’s 5 Minute Association label (Loren Connors, Michael Gira, Sunburned Hand of the Man).
Pitre is currently curating and will be contributing a track to a Just Intonation compilation (to be released on Important Records in late 2008/Early 2009), which will include work by artists such as Pauline Oliveros, Ellen Fullman, Michael Harrison, and Arnold Dreyblatt.
8pm $10
Thursday May 8th
marc zegans+ gabrielle senza + ecstatic quartet
Ecstatic Quartet
MV Carbon, cello, Lucian Buscemi, bass, Michael Evans, Percussion and Anthony Ptak, theremin
PILLOW TALK
A collaboration between artist Gabrielle Senza and poet Marc Zegans, Pillow Talk explores the human comedy through erotic haiku and graphite images drawn with sensitivity and light. Senza and Zegans’ collaboration unfolds as a conversation between form and text playing out across the pages of a pillow book, an intimate
set of musings on eros expressed in raucous, tender, vulnerable human form.
Speaking different languages, male and female, line and word, sound and shape, Zegans and Senza turn in to each other, gently, allowing life to find its balance in the shared, quiet moments of pillow tal
Artist-activist, Gabrielle Senza is internationally recognized as an environmental artist, educator, curator and writer. She exhibits widely and has work in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, Fidelity Investments, Paine Webber, and in private collections around the world. She has taught at Mass MoCA, Cooper Union and Bard College of Simon’s Rock. She is the founder and director of the creative public arts initiative, Red Collaborative.
Marc Zegans is a poet, playwright and author. His current work explores waking dreams and human fragility in the post-industrial landscape. Marc’s play, Mum and Shah, co-written with Colby Devitt, was a Boston Globe “Pick of the Week”.
His spoken word Album, “Night Work” was released by Philistine Records in August 2007. Erin Cressida Wilson, author of the films, “Secretary” and “Fur” describes “Night Work” as, “erotic and sad, a logue of girls: broken-hearted, cruel and grieving - a
celebration of love and naughty women…”
g.spot press
Recently founded by Gabrielle Senza, g.spot press, publishes artist-designed books that combine poetry, fiction, and other creative musings with high quality artwork by contemporary artists. We specialize in bringing together some of today’s most original creators from a variety of genres, to publish original books of delectable quality and style.
To order Pillow Talk online, visit: g.spot press
For more information, write gspotpress@mac.com
Friday May 9th
jonathan kane’s february
“Blistering the stars…Jonathan Kane’s February was a show to remember. Kane and his four guitar assault launched the blues into the stratosphere. This is glorious guitar music where everthing riffs, crashs and rolls in synch, the blues stretched to the infinity…it shouldn’t work but by god it does. Many try it and many fail but Jonathan Kane and band deliver BIG time. The Dream Synidicate has got a new forger of harmonic maximalism” Qu Junktions - Bristol, UK
“John Lee Hooker meets La Monte Young in the droning, bluesy incantations of Jonathan Kane, a mainstay in the downtown avant-garde scene, interested in the crossroads of new-music iconoclasm and experimental rock. He has a drummers sense of steady dynamic development and an unapologetic love of noise. Virtuosic”
-New York Times
Jonathan Kane is a Downtown NYC legend — as co-founder of the no-wave behemoth Swans, and the rhythmic thunder behind the massed-guitar armies of Rhys Chatham and the rock excursions of La Monte Young — and as one of the hardest-hitting drummers on the planet. On his critically acclaimed releases ‘February’, and ‘I Looked At The Sun’, Kane summons Swans’ concussive wallop, Chatham’s dense guitar strata, and the perpetual propulsion of 70s krautrockers Neu, then steers it all head-on into… the blues. Make no mistake about it: Kane is a bluesman, and beneath his music’s hip shaking high-decible bombast, he’s powering guitar-driven minimalism into the blues, and the blues into guitar-driven harmonic maximalism. Kane has also toured and recorded with a galaxy of modern music luminaries, making over 50 records with artists such as Elliott Sharp, Gary Lucas, John Zorn, Dave Soldier, The Kropotkins, Moe Tucker, Jean-Francois Pauvros, Jac Berrocal, Tony Hymas, Evan Parker, Septile, Transmission and Circus Mort.
8pm $10
Saturday May 10th
michelle handelman+flaming fire
Tonight Handelman will open the evening with some new three-channel works that re-animate, re-play and orchestrate excess with a glamorous loss of control.
Michelle Handelman makes confrontational works that explore the
sublime in its various forms of excess and nothingness. Her videos
have shown at Georges Pompidou Centre, Paris; ICA, London; American Film Institute, and her live performance spectacles at Exit Art, NYC; Jack the Pelican, NY; Jack Tilton/Anna Kustera Gallery, NY;
Cristinerose Gallery, NY; Palm Beach ICA and The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. Recent projects include “The Laughing Lounge” for Performa 05; “This Delicate Monster”, (touring); “Passerby <ghost sites>” for the show “public.exe: Public Execution” curated by Anne Ellegood and Michele Thursz; and an animated collaboration with Paul Miller AKA DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid “DJ Spooky vs.WebSpinstress M”. In Fall 07 Handelmans work was chosen by Bloomingdale’s for their Fall Art Campaign, featuring her videos, photographs and related props in the windows of their Lexington Ave flagship store.
Before moving to New York in 1999 Handelman directed the critically acclaimed documentary, “BloodSisters”, winner of the 1999 Bravo Award, and was involved in a series of collaborations with Monte Cazazza, pioneer of the Industrial music scene in San Francisco. She has a rich and varied history in the pop culture scene having collaborated with Eric Werner, co-founder of the industrial performance group Survival Research Laboratories, creating sound effects for Jon Moritsugu’s ITVS production, “Terminal USA”, and through her work with Cazazza forging relationships with the following bands who have provided music for her work: Psychic TV, Coil, Chris + Cosey, Lustmord, and Larsen.
Her fiction and critical writing appears in Inappropriate Behaviour(Serpents Tail, London); Apocalypse Culture edited by Adam Parfrey (Feral House Press, LA); Herotica 3 edited by Susie Bright (Plume Books, SF) and several publications including Filmmaker Magazine, Soma Magazine and Indiewire.com. She is the winner of several grants and awards including a NYSCA Individual Artists Grant and the American Film Institute Visions Award. Handelman is assistant professor in the department of Media and Performing Arts at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
Flaming Fire is the twisted creation of Patrick Hambrecht, mid-Western son of a Baptist preacher. He imagined the group as an eerily masked Greek chorus, inspired not only by his religious upbringing, but his avid passion for comic books and creepy things that go bump in the night. In order to realize his vision, he enlisted the help of his talented wife, Kate, and a rotating group of musical friends, from comicbook writer/ performer Lauren Weinstein to Dewanatron, Joe McGinty, and Dame Darcy. Flaming Fire’s weird and catchy songs, lively stage show, and unique costumes have helped gain them a strong fanbase at home in New York, and a growing fanbase throughout the nation.They’ve shared the stage with such acts as Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, The Apes, Faun Fables, Peaches and Psychic TV.
Flaming Fire recently released their new album, When The High Bell Rings, to rave reviews and they have gained much press (NY Times, Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker) for their Illustrated Bible Project, a live salon and website project wherein they invite professional artists and laypeople to illustrate a verse of the Bible in whatever manner the artist sees fit. A night with Flaming Fire is a raucous, whiskey swilling, crowd pleasing blend of the wacky and the profound.
“Where did all the kooks go? L.A.? Well, at least some of them have stuck it out in the city and they are in Flaming Fire, an awesomely kooky, theatrical band singing songs of biblical plagues and Egyptian sexual practices. Picture the Butthole Surfers, the Residents, the Manson Family, and the B-52’s all running amok in a Kenneth Anger film. They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore.” – VICE Magazine
8pm $10
Wednesday May 14th
emil de waal w/ erik sanko, andy green, bruce tovsky and kato hideki + joe morris w/alex ward and simon fell
Play- and joyful freeform acoustic/electronic music by dane Emil de Waal and the great artists of the evening.
Accompanying artists will make improvised music interplaying with Emil and his prerecorded material, a.o. adding improvisations and backing to the preliminary (live) recordings from his laptop.
Emil de Waal on drums, percussion, electronics and laptop is one of the most heavily engaged drummers in Danish music, and has toured internationally and appeared on 150 releases since his debut in 1986. Emil de Waal is also known as a band-leader, programmer, composer and arranger. Since 2004, Emil de Waal+ has released two albums with his “Emil de Waal+” project that have been appraised by reviewers a.o. in British “The Wire”. Emil de Waal+ has toured in China, US, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark with diverse guests such as Wayne Horvitz, Danny Frankel, Erik Sanko, Bruce Tovsky, Andy Green and Yan Jun.
myspace.com/emildewaal
emildewaal.com
Multi-instrumentalist Erik Sanko “Erik Sanko is the leading light in the much admired Skeleton Key and was an original member of John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards. He also helps out such luminaries as Yoko Ono and John Cale from time to time. ”
.
Guitarist and technician Andy Green is known for his work with John Cale & The Velvet Underground, among others.
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, often in collaboration with artists such as John Hudak, David Linton, Kim Cascone and Michael Schumacher in a variety of spaces around New York City, such as Diapason, Experimental Intermedia, Issue Project Room, Tonic, and his own installation space 106BLDG30 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. His audio/video duo with video artist Shimpei Takeda has been appearing in planetariums, rural arts festivals and galleries around New York.
Kato Hideki (Kato:family name; Hideki: given) is a Japanese-born composer/bassist/multi-instrumentalist, who lives in NYC. He is the co-founder of Death Ambient with Ikue Mori & Fred Frith. His other groups as a leader are: Green Zone with Otomo Yoshihide & Uemura Masahiro; OMNI wtih Nakamura Toshimaru & Akiyama Tetsuji. His compositions include: solo bass piece Turbulent Zone, Mystic Ship of Life, (commissioned by the Kitchen, NYC) and Tremolo of Joy for his quartet with Charles Burnham, Briggan Krauss & Calvin Weston. Besides his own projects, Kato collaborates with Nicolas Collins and James Fei. He is also a member of analog synthesizer collective, Analogos. (http://www.katohideki.com/)
NY debut for this group and a rare NY appearance for
Simon Fell and Alex Ward. The performance will be free
improvised music, full of adventure, discovery, sound,
energy, melody and as many surprises as possible.
Guitarist Joe Morris has worked with Anthony Braxton, David S. Ware,
Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Dewey Redman, John Butcher, Han
Bennink, Ken Vandermark, Barre Phillips, Joe Maneri, Eugene
Chadbourne and many others. He has recorded for the labels ECM,
HatHut, Aum Fidelity, Clean Feed, Avant, Not Two, Leo, Incus and his
own label RITI. His is on the faculty at New England Conservatory and
Longy School of Music.
Bassist Simon Fell was born in the UK and now lives in France. He has
performed with John Butcher, Peter Brötzmann, Lol Coxhill, Billy
Jenkins, Joe Morris, Keith Tippett, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink,
Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Ellery Eskelin, Tim Berne and numerous
others, plus with John Zorn & Joey Baron (as part of Company) and
with Elliott Sharp, Billy Bang & Christian Marclay. He has been
awarded numerous Bursaries and Grants from the Arts Council of
England and other organisations to further his performing technique
and compositional studies. He runs the label Bruces Fingers.
Clarinetist Alex Ward lives in London. In 1986 when he was 12 years
old he attended a workshop on improvisation run by Derek Bailey. In
1988 Bailey invited him to play at various events including Company
Weeks in 1988, 1990, and 1994. Bailey also organized his first
recording and CD release in 1991. He has also performed with Butch
Morris, Eugene Chadbourne, Steve Noble, Phillip Clark Mike Westbrook
and his group “Dead End Kids.
8pm $10
Friday May 16th
the anniversary & the ecstacy an evening of ecstatic film curated by bradley eros
“Living’s only true terror is the lack of ecstacy.”
-Kathy Acker
The Robert(a) Beck Memorial (Mercurial) Cinema will
celebrate it’s 10th anniversary on May 16th during
Issue Project Room’s month of ECSTACY! An oroboric
event organized by Bradley Eros, Brian Frye & Joel
Schlemowitz.
We will gather all the mercurial ones, remember all
the memorial ones, and play with all the players,
inviting works by and about RBMC from all our former
members: works of music & pleasure, lost and regained
senses & sensuality, sexperimental sinema, and ecstacy
without agony. We will feature clips from the very
first and very last shows, as well as commissioned
trailers, performances, posters, and the infamous
legend of the sanitarium. A night of celebration &
cerebrum!
XS & XTC
Xistence in the Xtreme. We are Xcommunicated from the
Xcruciating norm. In our Xile, we Xcavate the
Xocentric. As ‘pataphysicians, we Xalt the science of
Xceptions: X-raying the myths to Xcrete blood from the
language of Xchange. This is our Xpression of XS,
Xterminating angels while Xposing our XTC!
RBMC = Robert Beck Memorial Cinema / Roberta Beck
Mercurial Cinema
Mission Statement:
The RBMC provides a laboratory for the auto-didact, a
genuine Temporary Autonomous Zone for cine-mavericks
and metaphysicians and a realm to disorder and regain
the senses. As a micro-cinema haven for experimental
film, we seek the radical in form and content: the
poetic, personal & eccentric; hand-made and
found-footage; hybrid works with forays into oddball
genres, like subterranean science, subversive history,
and erotic mystery, from the abject to the obsolete.
We favor expanded cinema & video performances,
paracinema & the ephemeral, artisan films & found
gems. A true cinema of the worm: fertile, underground,
culture.
Our motto: ‘ubi mel ibi apes’ (”where there’s honey,
there will be bees”.)
Organization History:
Every Tuesday night for more than a hex of years
(1998-2004), the RBMC illuminated the snowy-white
screen of the Collective:Unconscious on Manhattan’s
Lower East Side. Initiated by Brian Frye & immediately
joined by Bradley Eros, both shared the core curating
frenzy of this no-budget operation, managing to
produce over 300 programs and exhibiting more than a
thousand artists. When Frye left (for ‘legal’
resaons), we relocated & regrouped, (trans-)mutating
into Roberta Beck Mercurial Cinema at Participant
Inc’s gallery just around the corner, for a year, with
a team of at least six, but primarily & irrepressibly
Eros and Joel Schlemowicz. We are now a restless,
nomadic cinema, mushrooming & mutating into myriad
incarnations, but most notoriously at Issue Project
Room, both indoors and out, near the Gowanus Canal in
Brooklyn.
Bradley Eros:
An artist working in myriad media: experimental film &
video, collage, photography, performance, sound, text,
expanded cinema & installation. Also a maverick
curator, designer, researcher & investigator. Concepts
include: ephemeral cinema, mediamystics, subterranean
science, erotic psyche, poetic accidents, and cinema
povera.
Brian Frye is a filmmaker, programmer, writer &
lawyer. He initiated the RBMC and screened Nixon’s
“Checker’s Speech” & de Antonio’s “Underground” on
the first night. An open dialogue from the
beginning…
Joel Schlemowitz has made over forty short
experimental films, and numerous film installation
pieces. His work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, Anthology Film Archives, Millennium Film Workshop, Berks Filmmakers, and various festivals. He teaches
filmmaking at the New School, where he is passionately
involved with the union. He is an inspired tinkerer in
arcane media and has made many poetic films & films of poetry.
8pm $10
Saturday May 17th
andy mcgraw shahzad ismaily gamelan dharma swara + blarvuster
Andy McGraw (oncampus.richmond.edu/~amcgraw) and Shahzad Ismaily (Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog, Two Foot Yard, etc etc etc etc etc etc) team up again with American and Balinese musicians fromDharma Swara, the gamelan in residence at the Indonesian Consulate (www.dharmaswara.org) for an evening of experimental gongs, rare, sacred and contemporary seven-tone gamelan and Indonesian-inspired duets for vibes and electronics. This will be an evening of spinned, bowed, rolled, dragged, and artifically stimulated gongs, wavering overtones and racous (musical) beatings alongside some of the most intricately designed gamelan music–the repertoire of the gamelan semara pegulingan: the Music of the Lovegod, originally composed to entertain the rajas in their amorous exploits.
Matthew Welch’s Blarvuster
Labyrinthine and florid melodies streaming over alien funk counterpoint make the ecstatic music of Blarvuster, the brainchild of critically acclaimed bagpiper/composer Matthew Welch. Inspired equally by Celtic lines and South East Asian ensemble textures as well as avant-garde rock and minimalism, Blarvuster’s line-up of some of the brightest young stars in the New York experimental scene ardently evoke a seamless hybrid of musical languages that issues forth its own fictional tradition. “The Brooklyn-based composer leaps vast geographical distances, imagining statistically implausible musical melting pots that sound utterly natural…a composer possessed of both rich imagination and the skill to bring his fancies to life.” - TimeOut NY
In a New York Premiere, Blarvuster will perform the second composition in a new series of long form pieces called Blind Piper’s Obstinacy: relentless mayhem in rhythm and color designed to make you feel ecstactic and dizzy!
Blarvuster
Leah Paul: flutes
Karen Waltuch: viola
Mary Halvorson: guitar
Ian Riggs: bass
Brian Chase: drums
Matthew Welch: bagpipes, reeds, vox
8pm $10
Sunday May 18th
an evening with raster noton
alva noto +byetone+frank bretschneider+signal
alva noto will perform unitxt (the new release comin´soon) byetone will perform d.o.a.t. (death of a typographer) - new album comin´soon frank bretschneider will perform rhythm (his 07 release)
signal will perform robotron (2007, but first time in america)
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8pm $10
Thursday May 22nd
glenn branca + the paranoid critical revolution
“A Demonstration of The Harmonics Guitar” by Glenn Branca + The Paranoid Critical Revolution.
Glenn Branca is a symphonist. In the last 27 years he has composed 13 symphonies: six for electric guitar ensemble (1,2,6,8,10,12), three for harmonic series instrumentation (3,4,5), three for conventional symphony orchestra (7,9,11) and No. 13 (Hallucination City) for 100 guitars which premiered in NYC at the former WTC in 2001. Since 2006 a revised version of the 100 guitar piece in four movements has been performed in Rome (at Musica Per Roma), London (as part of the Frieze Art Fair), Dublin, Belgium, LA (sponsored by the LA Philharmonic) and New Jersey. In May there will be a performance in Seattle and In Nov. this year it will be in St. Louis on a program with the St. Louis Symphony. In the spring of 2009 it will be heard in Munich.
He has also composed many shorter pieces for a wide variety of Instrumentation as well as an unproduced opera, a film soundtrack, two ballets and numerous dance and theater pieces. Recent short compositions have been: “In Perpetuity” a special commission for MTV, “Compositional Recreations” for the Bang on a Can All Stars, a new performance of “Guitars d’Amour” by Fireworks, a string quartet version of “Light Field” for Kronos (commissioned by Carnegie Hall) and “Lesson No.3 (a tribute to Steve Reich)” which was commissioned by the Barbican Center and was recently performed at the ATP Festival.
Last year Atavistic released for the first time “Indeterminate Activity Of Resultant Masses (for 10 guitars and drums)”. Recorded in 1981, this is the piece of music that “disturbed” John Cage and has not been heard since the mid-80’s. He is also the inventor of the Harmonics Guitar and a founding member of the 70’s No Wave band Theoretical Girls.
PARANOID CRITICAL REVOLUTION
Intense, frantic, NYC-based THE PARANOID CRITICAL REVOLUTION self-released their debut CD “Death of the Cool” just in time to play All Tomorrow’s Parties, A Nightmare Before Christmas curated by Portishead in Minehead, England in December 2007. They’ve been described by IMPOSE magazine as “Seething with treble, technically formidable, and crashingly dissonant, THE PARANOID CRITICAL REVOLUTION was another of those acts that create far more of a racket than would seem possible for a two piece.” Guitarist Reg Bloor and drummer Libby Fab met in 2005 and have been playing on the NYC club scene since the summer of 2006. They also curated the “Creating A Diversion” film festival in 2007.
In addition, Reg Bloor has been playing with Glenn Branca (to whom she is married) since 2000. She played in Branca’s Symphony No. 12, their rock band Branca/Bloor, in his trio, eventually becoming Concertmaster for his Symphony No. 13. In the late 90’s she was a founding member of the Boston-based band TWITCHER, who released the self-produced CD “Leg of Lamb of God” in 1999.
Libby Fab became part of the Glenn Branca crew in 2006 as technical director, rehearsal drummer and assistant engineer for Symphony No. 13. She has worked on Branca’s shows in New Jersey, Belgium, Dublin, London, Rome and Seattle. Prior to joining PCR, Libby studied electro-acoustic music and music composition at Trinity College Dublin, where she completed an M.Phil in Music and Media Technology.
8pm $10
Friday May 23th
Littoral w David Ohle & Brian Evenson & musical guest Nat Baldwin
Brian Evenson is the author of eight books of fiction, most recently The Open Curtain, which was a finalist for an Edgar Award, an IHG Award, and the Paterson Prize, and was one of Time Out New York’s best books of 2006. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs the Literary Arts Program at Brown University.
David Ohle’s novel, Motorman, was published by Alfred P. Knopf in 1972 and re-released by 3rd Bed Press in 2004 with an Introduction by Ben Marcus. Its sequel, The Age of Sinatra, was published by Soft Skull in 2004. A third novel, The Pisstown Chaos, will be published by Soft Skull/Counterpoint, in June, 2008. He has edited two non-fiction books, Cows are Freaky When They Look at You: An Oral History of the Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers and Cursed From Birth: the Short, Unhappy Life of William S. Burroughs, Jr. (Soft Skull, 2006). His short fiction has appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, the Paris Review, TriQuarterly, the Missouri Review, the Pushcart Prize and elsewhere. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
Saturday May 24th
Bhob Rainey/Jason Lescalleet
nmperign (Greg Kelley/Bhob Rainey)/Sean Meehan
Jason Lescalleet/Graham Lambkin
Jason Lescalleet’s influence was palpably present long before the
average Joe knew how many L’s were in his last name (or could
successfully google it). He spun tape loops with nmperign from the
get-go, frequently signified the endings of his characteristically
foundation-shaking performances by hurling a nearly indestructible, hundred-pound Peavy amp across the stage, and provided the bulk of the “disaster” in legendary drummer Lawrence Cook’s “Disaster Unit 2000″. But as the smoke cleared and the Peavy met its demise in a white-walled room, it became apparent to an awful lot of people that Lescalleet was making some amazing music; beautifully constructed symphonies of decay born of an intimacy with items and ideas lesser minds might discard: tape machines, lo-bit samplers, the tedium of everyday life. His ability to evoke powerfully complex emotional experiences from such muck made a collaboration with Graham Lambkin practically inevitable.
Composer Walter Marchetti once made a statement to the effect that he was seeking to reach the “bottom” of music. Some more diligent attention to this task might lead him to the music of Graham Lambkin. Already marking out a glorious bottom with his former band, The Shadow Ring, Lambkin has pursued a music so removed from prescribed aesthetics that one is flooded by the beauty it seems to ruthlessly avoid. He puts the mundane to tape and carves out its horror, its sweetness, and its unsettling ambivalence. Shrouded in a disarming naiveté, the music leaves the listener ill-prepared for its very adult take onbeing-in-the-world. We are fortunate that humor can be so black, that we may surrender happily and willingly to an experience not many artists are willing or capable of delivering.
This concert will be the first, and likely one of the only, live
performances by this duo, on the heels of their stunning release, “The Breadwinner”, on Erstwhile Records.
Speaking of Erstwhile, the duo of Lescalleet and Bhob Rainey, a
long-standing and mutually influential relationship, is due to release a much-anticipated work on said label in early 2009. While it may seem a daunting task for Lescalleet to participate in two monumental sets in a given evening, experience has shown that he is more than capable. And he will certainly have a great deal of help from Rainey, whose restless mind lends baroque construction to a music not necessarily known for its formal rigor. His highly-regarded contributions to the outer-reaches of the saxophone and the possibilities of free improvisation, combined with his recent work in musique concrete (including his impeccably constructed collaboration with Ralf Wehowsky on Sedimental Records), assure us that Lescalleet will be kept on his toes and that sparks, however tiny and frail, will fly.
Rainey won’t get much rest, either, as he joins Greg Kelley to form nmperign, and they join Sean Meehan to form… a completely awesome trio. Combining these forces was such an obvious idea that it only took them eight years to actually make it happen. But happen it has (twice - this concert makes three), and it keeps happening because it’s really great. With just one trumpet, one saxophone, and one snare drum, these men commute with molecules to make whatever space they’re in a better place to be. They do it with silence, with elegance, with some deadpan goofing, and with the kind of focus that burns holes through granite. Is there a CD release in this group’s future? That is currently unknown and somewhat irrelevant; their music is so well-suited to live performance, it would be silly to miss it.
8pm $15
Tuesday May 27
Issue project room’s artist in residence:
ashley paul + eli keszler w/ loren connors
Residing on a farm in upstate New York, multi-reedist,
vocalist and composer Ashley Paul finds daily inspiration in the sounds and often the silences surrounding her. Using whispered and distorted melodies, wailing reeds and subtly explored overtones Ashley creates lyrical, often haunting moments equally involved in high volumes and the nearly inaudible. She is currently working on a solo CD patch-working field recordings with floating vocals, assorted reeds, bells, guitar and keyboards to be released early 2008 on REL Records. In addition to her solo projects, Ashley can be found in duo with Eli Keszler and in trio with Anthony Coleman and Keszler recently recording with Coleman for his December, 2007 release on New World Records. Ashley has collaborated or performed with Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble of Chicago), Ran Blake, Joe Maneri and George Russell and has performed at venues such as The Stone, Issue Project Room, Brooklyn Summer Stage and Jordan Hall.
Eli Keszler is a Hudson Valley 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 artists such as Jandek, Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble of Chicago), Anthony Coleman, Geoff Mullen (Last Visible Dog), Steve Pyne (Redhorse), Greg Kelley, T Model Ford (Fat Possum Records), Jamaican music legend Lyn Taitt and pianist Ran Blake. Performing at venues such as The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Irving Plaza, Issue Project Room, The Stone and The Knitting Factory (NYC and LA). In addition to his work as a performer he put up a installation last Spring at the Boston Cyber Arts Festival. Keszler has recently released a solo album on his own imprint REL records, and has completed a soon to be released solo LP on Geoff Mullen’s Rare Youth label.
Loren Connors has improvised and composed guitar music for about three decades. His music, sometimes called avant blues, has been recorded on Family Vineyard, Drag City, Table of the Elements, and other labels. He has performed with Alan Licht, John Fahey, Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke, Derek Bailey, and other artists. Thom Jurek (All Music Guide) writes,”Connors, like John Cage and Mark Rothko before him, sees and hears the value in not ordering sounds along a particular path even if that path has been drawn out in advance. Hence, where the 12 bars are supposed to be placed are sparse notes and large spaces where notes, harmony, and melody once existed. Touch, sense, and aural interrogation are the only bones left on the skeleton of Connor’s blues….”
8pm $10
Wednesday May 28th through Saturday May 31
the joshua light show in residence at issue project room
Curated in collaboration with Nick Hallett
Joshua White is a New York based artist and television director. He studied theater at Carnegie Mellon University and film at University of Southern California. He is well known for developing the lightshow at the rock venue Fillmore East, appearing with artists such as Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Doors, Yayoi Kusama, and Led Zeppelin, among many others. During this time, he also created special effects for the film Midnight Cowboy. After the lightshow’s performance at Woodstock in 1969, White shifted to television. His directing credits include Seinfeld, The Max Headroom Show, Club MTV and Inside The Actors Studio. In the 1990s, White returned to creating fine art installations in collaboration with Michael Smith, and in 2004 developed a new lightshow with comic artist and designer, Gary Panter. His first show since 1969 billed as “Joshua Light Show” was performed in April 2007 at The Kitchen with music by Delia Gonzales and Gavin Russom. His artwork has shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Tate Liverpool, Kunsthalle Schim Frankfurt, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, and the Kunsthalle Wien. The Center for Visual Music recently released a DVD of his “liquid loops.” Upcoming show at Centre Pompidou.
Bec Stupak is a video artist and founding member of Honeygun Labs, a multimedia project working within the genres of music video, installation, and live VJing. Collaborations with fine-art collective Assume Vivid Astro Focus have been exhibited at the 2004 Whitney Biennial, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and Tate Liverpool. In 2006, Deitch Projects, presented her first solo show, “Radical Earth Magic Flower.” www.honeygunlabs.com.
Wednesday May 28th
the joshua light show with
Marina Rosenfeld, Ikue Mori, Lee Ranaldo & Zeena Parkins
8pm $20
Thursday May 29th
the joshua light show with
Pandit Samir Chatterjee, tabla
K.V. Mahabala, sitar
co-produced by Chhandayan,
8pm $20
Friday May 30th
the joshua light show with
Spiritual Unity
Marc Ribot (guitar), Chad Taylor (percussion), Henry Grimes (bass), Roy Campbell (trumpet)
8pm $20
Saturday May 31th
the joshua light show with
Invisible Conga People (eric tsai, justin simon) & Soft Circle (Hisham Bharoocha)
8pm $20
ISSUE Project Room is thrilled to host pioneering multimedia artist
Joshua White and his legendary Joshua Light Show for a week of unique audiovisual collaborations. The residency will involve White’s iconic projections alongside an incredible roster of musicians, with a different musical genre represented on each night of the residency.
The Joshua Light Show involves a team of video and light artists, led
by White and his senior collaborator, Bec Stupak (Honeygun Labs) to
improvise live synesthetic visuals behind a giant rear projection
screen, involving the “liquid light” techniques he developed at Bill
Graham’s Fillmore East during the late 1960s. In addition, each
performance of the light show will feature contributions from a
different live-cinema artist, including Seth Kirby, Zach Layton, and
Mighty Robot A/V Squad. The residency is curated and produced in
collaboration with Nick Hallett and concludes a month of programming
at IPR devoted to the Ecstatic Moment.
ISSUE Project Room’s Joshua Light Show Residency is made possible through Presentation Funds from the Experimental Television Center. The Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.
JUNE
Floating Points 2008
ISSUE Project Room
This Festival, in its third year, (formerly points in a circle)
explores the versatility of ISSUE Project Room’s Innovative house
speaker system, designed by Stephan Moore.
In the hands of these diverse performers and sound artist, this
fifteen-channel installation of hemisphere loudspeakers radically
changes the concert experience for both performer and audience.
Each of the hemispheres radiates sound in all directions, activating
the acoustics of this unique concert space. Immersive sonic
environments are generated, electronic sounds take on the
characteristic intimacy of acoustic instruments, and location is
liberated as a musical dimension.
Thursday June 5
Tianna Kennedy & Chad Laird,
Vito Acconci
Friday, June 6
(All Guitar Syndakit)
Saturday, June 7
Tuesday, June 10
The Princeton Laptop Orchestra
Ben Owen
Wednesday, June 11
Bob Holman + Angela Jaeger + Lee Ranaldo & Leah Singer
(A part of the Littoral Concert/Reading Series)
Thursday, June 12
Friday, June 13
Saturday, June 14
Ashley Paul & Eli Keszler
Phill Niblock
Sunday, June 15
Wednesday, June 18
Thursday, June 19
Gibby Haynes (cancelled! Sorry…now performing, Zeroboy)
C. Spencer Yeh
Friday, June 20
Thursday, June 26
Friday, June 27
Saturday, June 28
All performances 8:00pm, $15
Floating Points 208 is made possible through generous support from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and the Puffin Foundation.
JULY
Wednesday July 2nd
the extended guitars
hans tammen+erhard hirt+nick didkovsky+douglas repetto
The EXTENDED GUITARS with Erhard Hirt, Hans Tammen, Nick Didkovsky and Douglas Repetto play contemporary tabletop guitar music - sounds that seem chaotic on the surface, with a forest of apparently separate details, interlinked underneath, woven together as a maze of infinite complexity. Originally formed in 1996 by Erhard Hirt and Hans Tammen, the quartet’s other current members are Nick Didkovsky and Keith Rowe. Rowe was not able to be in New York at this time.
Look at: http://www.tammen.org/ens_xtg.html
Erhard Hirt (Münster) - http://www.erhardhirt.de
Since the 1970s Erhard Hirt is actively involved in improvised and experimental music as a musician and promoter as well. In his electro-acoustic works he focuses on sound as a powerful tool for musical expression. He started playing blues guitar when he was 16 and played with jazz-oriented groups, experimental rock bands, free jazz combos, and toured with blues bands). Since 1978 he plays also regularly solo.
Hans Tammen (New York) - http://www.tammen.org
Hans Tammen is a composer/guitarist whose music has been described as an alien world of bizarre textures and a journey through the land of unending sonic operations. He discovers hidden sound properties through means of his modified ENDANGERED GUITAR, interactive software programming, stereo and multichannel sound systems, and by working with the room itself. Signal To Noise called his works “…a killer tour de force of post-everything guitar damage”, All Music Guide recommended him: “…clearly one of the best experimental guitarists to come forward during the 1990s.”
Nick Didkovsky is a guitarist, composer, and computer music programmer. Since 1983, he composes for his the avant-rock septet Doctor Nerve, and he also well known as a member of the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet. He presently resides in New York City, where he composes, programs music software, and teaches computer music composition at NYU. His work with Doctor Nerve joins the furious energy of rock with intricate composition, some of which finds its origins in rich software systems of his own design. His non-didactic approach to combining human and machine creativity is his unique fingerprint in a musical world that pushes the boundaries of rock music, algorithmic composition, and contemporary classical formal systems.
Douglas Repetto (New York) - http://music.columbia.edu/~douglas/portfolio/index.shtml
Douglas Irving Repetto is an artist and teacher. His work, including sculpture, installation, performance, recordings, and software is presented internationally. He is the founder of a number of art/community-oriented groups including dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity, ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show, organism: making art with living systems, and the music-dsp mailing list and website. Douglas is Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center and lives in New York City with his wife, writer Amy Benson; two cute/bad cats, Pokey and Sneezy; and many plants. For this quartet improvisation at IPR he has bred a small army of bio-activated electro-mechanical creatures that produce small and terrifying noises.
8pm $10
Thursday July 3rd
nat baldwin+angel deradoorian+extra life
New Hampshire native Nat Baldwin plays the upright bass and sings, and takes both of those things to their limit, perfecting a sound that he can call entirely his own. His approach to the bass is experimental and endlessly creative, though never showy or overdone. He is an ex-member of Dirty Projectors, and has studied under legendary composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton. Initially courted by myriad colleges for basketball scholarships, Baldwin instead pursued music and has since recorded several albums. His latest, Most Valuable Player, was released on Broken Sparrow Records in late April of 2008 and has received accolades for Baldwin’s melismatic vocals and unconventional compositions.
Extra Life is a New York-based band led by guitarist/vocalist/composer Charlie Looker harlie. Formed in 2007, Extra Life combines elements of Medieval vocal music, technical metal, romantic pop song and modern classical composition. For years Looker was a core member of brutal chamber group Zs, and has also worked with diverse bands and artists such as Dirty Projectors, Seductive Sprigs, Period, William Parker, and the S.E.M. Ensemble. Extra Life also includes various combinations of the following musicians: violinist Caley Monahon-Ward (Snowblink), bassist Tony Gedrich (STATS), drummer Nicholas Podgurski (Yukon), saxophonist/keyboardist Travis Laplante (Little Women). Extra Life’s debut full-length CD, “Secular Works”, was released in 2008 on Planaria Recordings. A split twelve-inch vinyl EP with Nat Baldwin was also released in 2008 on the Shatter Your Leaves label.
Angel Deradoorian sings and plays bass in the Dirty Projectors as well as several other projects tonight she will perform a solo set.
8pm $10
Thursday July 10th
12k presents a night of textured electronics
jodi cave+taylor deupree+kenneth kirschner
12k is proud to present jodi cave’s debut performance in new york. jodi’s cd “for myria” was released last year on 12k and was described by The Wire as:
” Cave started life as a clarinetist and he plays that instrument, plus harmonium and guitar alongside various close-miked objects, which could be marbles, stones, or bits of flint, pottering around in the mix. In its inconsequential absorption, it suggests a man engrossed in some hobby of a late afternoon as the light fades, whittling, rattling, sharpening and polishing various cherished bits and bobs on a workshop in a shed. There’s a sense that, rather than create some ridigly girded technological structure in which to house all of these objects and elements, he’s let them roll around as they please, finding their own place and direction.”
Kenneth Kirschner will start the evening with a preview of his upcoming stark and haunting work on 12k. Taylor Deupree will improvise a soft bed of acoustic guitar and electronics and Jodi Cave will treat with his incredibly tactile and human sound.
JODI CAVE
Jodi Cave is a sound artist and musician from from the UK. He was braught up in a small town near Sheffield playing the clarinet, went to study music, and then in 2006 completed a research internship at the ircam in Paris.
Jodi’s work ecompasses studio-based electronics, laptop performance and instrumental composition. His first widely available full-length CD ‘for myria’ was released on NY label 12k in June 2007.
KENNETH KIRSCHNER
Kenneth Kirschner was born in 1970 and lives in New York City. He is known for his open source approach to audio, his experiments with software-based indeterminate composition, and his interest in adapting the insights and aesthetics of 20th century composers such as Morton Feldman and John Cage to the context of contemporary digital music. His work can be freely downloaded from his website.
TAYLOR DEUPREE:
Taylor Deupree (b. 1971) is a sound artist, graphic designer, and photographer residing in New York. On January 1st, 1997, he founded 12k, a record label that focuses on minimalism and contemporary musical forms. In 12k’s 10 years of existence Deupree has released over 40 CDs by a roster of international sound artists and has developed 12k into one of the most respected experimental electronic labels in the world. In September 2000, Deupree and sound artist Richard Chartier formed LINE, a sublabel of 12k that curates its continuing documentation of compositional and installation work by composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism. In January 2002 (as a celebration of 12k’s fifth anniversary) Deupree launched term., an online series of MP3 releases. While 12k’s emphasis lies not only in sound but also on design and presentation, term. exists entirely in the digital domain with no physical object or package. In September, 2003, Deupree started a 3rd record label called Happy to promote unconventional japanese pop. Happy was born from Deupree’s interest in Japanese pop and the fact that it is quite unknown outside of Japan.
Since 1993 Deupree has created critically acclaimed recordings for labels worldwide including Spekk, Plop, Noble (Japan), Ritornell/Mille Plateaux, Raster-Noton, Disko B (Germany), Sub Rosa (Belgium), Fällt (Ireland), Audio.NL (Netherlands), Room40 (Australia), Instinct Records, Caipirinha Music, Plastic City (USA), Dum (Finland), and of course 12k and LINE, among others. In January 1999, Deupree currated a compilation for New York’s Caipirinha Music label that he titled “Microscopic Sound.” This release was among the first to gather together artists of this style and helped put a name to a then-rising genre of electronic music.
His solo works in recent years have explored a fusion of digital sound manipulation with organic and melodic textures that take influences from his interest in architecture, interior design, and photography. Themes of minimalism, stillness, atmosphere, nature, and imperfection prevade throughout his work . An intense passion for recording and studio technology creates a strong technological backdrop for all of his compositions.
Collaboration with other musicians is also a very important aspect of Deupree’s work. Working with other artists is a way to not only create unique works beyond his solo recordings but to also expand his own techniques and processes as a learning experience. Over record years he has collaborated with a wide variety of artists such as Christopher Willits (US, guitar), Kenneth Kirschner (US, Piano), Eisi (Japan, 3-piece acoustic ambient-rock band), Tetsu Inoue (US, sound artist), Frank Bretschneider (Germany, sound artist), and Richard Chartier (US, sound artist). Deupree feels the importance of collaborative work is to not layer two individual styles but to create a 3rd, fusion sound that incorporates the strengths of each collaborator yet sounds like a unique, 3rd identity.
Deupree continues to evolve his sound and approaches each project with a new direction and different process. Continued shifting and sound exploration is vital to his work. He has many recording and remixing accomplishments and a substantial, varied, discography formed over 14 years. His design and photography work has appeared on dozens of projects and record labels around the world and published in a number of books in Japan and the UK.
8pm $10
Friday July 11th
Gust Burns/Vic Rawlings
Barry Weisblat/Aki Onda/Margarida Garcia
Tucker Dulin/Bryan Eubanks
This evening focuses on three unique sets of improvised music and sound works with musicians from Lisbon, Seattle, New York, and Boston working together in new and familiar settings. Its the second of three nights of music organized by Rasbliutto at different brooklyn venues called Three Days and is graciously hosted by Issue Project Room tonight in this beautiful space. Info on the rest of the festival and participants is at http://www.rasbliutto.net/threedays.
Vic Rawlings of Boston works with amplified cello and surface electronics teaming up with pianist Gust Burns of Seattle, Wa. for their first duo collaboration. Lisbon native, Margarida Garcia makes an all too rare visit to New York to work with longtime friend and collaborator Barry Weisblat. Barry and Margarida will be joined by Aki Onda on tapes and electronics to explore a trio they have all been looking forward to. Trombonist Tucker Dulin and Bryan Eubanks have been working on a piece for Trombone and sub-tones derived from the instrument. They will use three subwoofers, live Trombone, and electronics to improvise a piece with these materials and the acoustics of Issue.
Gust Burns plays piano, inside piano, tape recorders, and electronics. He is an improviser and he composes and performs new music. He lives and works in Seattle, Washington. http://www.rasbliutto.net/artists/gustburns.html
Vic Rawlings is active as an improviser and instrument builder, specializing in modifications of existing instruments. He has created extensive cello preparations. He also continually develops an electronic instrument from extant exposed circuitry, producing, in effect, a modular analog synthesizer with a highly unstable interface. This electronic instrument is paired with a flexible array of exposed speaker elements, chosen for their often unpredictable and idiosyncratic acoustic qualities. He is based in Boston and is a member of the bsc, undr quartet, and many other ongoing projects.
Barry Weisblat, Brooklyn, NY., is a sound artist/improviser and Electronic Instrument builder. Extensive experiments with electro-magnetic devices, solar technology, homemade and modified circuits for application in sound generation/manipulation, audio engineering and photography. Musical collaborations with Margarida Garcia, Tim Barnes, Toshio Kajiwara, Tower Recordings, Sean Meehan, Dion Workman, Mattin, and Ricardo Arias.
Margarida Garcia Studied at the Parsons School of Design, from the New School University in New York. By then she was very interested in Max Neuhaus and Robert Smithson’s work as well as the films and sounds of Tony Conrad and Michael Snow.
She has collaborated in live/recording settings with Manuel Mota, Nöel Akchoté, Barry Weisblat, Otomo Yoshihide, Toshio Kajiwara, Oren Ambarchi, Ferran Fages, Alfredo C. Monteiro, Ruth Barberán, John Tilbury, Sean Meehan, Eddie Prevost, and Rhodri Davies.
Aki Onda is a self-taught electronic musician, composer, and photographer. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New
York. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project – works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images set to live guitar improvisation. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Shelley Hirsch. www.akionda.net
Tucker Dulin is a trombonist, sound artist, and programmer finishing his dissertation on music and space for the doctorate from U.C., San Diego. He has performed at the Getty Museum, L.A., Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Santa Monica Museum of Art, was a guest of the NO IDEA (Austin/Houston), line space line (L.A.), and Darmstadt (Germany) festivals, and co-founded the Voltaire arts collective in Ocean Beach, San Diego. His current projects include a multimedia/dance duo blank with Amanda Waal, and web development for Jango.com.
Bryan Eubanks (b. 1977) is originally from the Pacific Northwest of the US, currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He focuses on collaborative improvisation and solo musical projects, working in live electronic settings with an instrument of his own design that integrates open-circuits and samplers, as well as in acoustic settings with the Soprano Saxophone. He became musically active in Portland, Oregon, and worked extensively with Joe Foster, Jean Paul Jenkins, Doug Theriault, and Leif Sundstrom (eventually in the duo GOD). Since relocating to New York he primarily collaborates with Andrew Lafkas and Vic Rawlings.
8pm $10
Tuesday July 15
Littoral
veronica gonzalez+steve erickson+101crustaceans
Veronica Gonzalez was born in Mexico City and raised in Athens, Ohio and Los Angeles. After getting a degree in art history she studied writing at NYU and while in NY co-edited Inflatable Magazine, a zine which enabled her to work with many of her artschool heroes, including Dan Graham, Lawrence Weiner, Chris Kraus and Lynne Tillman. Always interested in bringing artists and writers together, in 2004 she co-edited Juncture: 25 Very Good Stories and 12 Excellent Drawings, an exciting cross-genre anthology published by Soft Skull press. In 2005 Veronica began rockypoint press, which produces books of truly collaborative artist/writer pairings in association with 1301PE Gallery in LA.
Poetic, sensuous and witty, Veronica Gonzalez’s debut novel unfolds like a fairy tale spanning the dusty hills of Los Angeles and the glittering nightlife of Mexico City. Raised in northeast LA by her widowed immigrant father, a baker, Mona has grown up believing her mother died minutes after her birth, and her twin brother was simply given away. Stifled by unnameable doubts as a child, when her father dies, Mona sets off on a quest to discover her long-lost twin brother. The journey takes her into the labyrinth of her own fabulations about her parents’ lives, and a dreamy Mexico City that exists only as cultural imagination. In the process she encounters a band of Nordic men, her Chinese double, a lascivious giant, and a tribe of feral children. Gonzalez masterfully probes the oddness of Mona’s interior world until it becomes a twisted parable for all kinds of displacement.
Steve Erickson was born in Santa Monica in 1950. Except for the mid-Seventies and early Eighties when he sometimes lived in Europe and the New York area, he’s spent most of his life in Los Angeles. He’s the author of eight novels: Days Between Stations (1985), Rubicon Beach (1986), Tours of the Black Clock (1989),Arc d’X (1993), Amnesiascope (1996), The Sea Came in at Midnight (1999), Our Ecstatic Days (2005) and the upcomingZeroville (2007). He also has written two books about American politics and popular culture, Leap Year (1989) andAmerican Nomad (1997). Numerous editions have been published in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Greek, Russian and Japanese. Over the years he has written for Esquire, Rolling Stone, Spin, Details, Elle, San Francisco, Bookforum, Frieze, Conjunctions, Tin House, Salon, the L.A. Weekly, the Los Angeles Reader, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, the New York Times Magazine and other publications and journals, and his work has been widely anthologized. Currently he’s the film critic for Los Angeles and editor of the literary journal Black Clock, which is published by CalArts where he teaches in the MFA Writing Program. He’s received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2007 was awarded a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. He lives with his wife, artist and director Lori Precious, and their son.
This seminal outfit has been compared to a crumbling silo meticulously recorded. And, in its more pristine moments, lichen. Crush together Ligeti, Lennon, Tristano and Lee (Peggy) and you might get a porridge like this. Tonight a subset consisting of Indigo Street (Partyface, Lulu and the Trivets) and Ed Pastorini (Beth Orton, Elysian Fields, Badly Drawn Boy) will be presenting standards and themes from film. Listen as this duo, known as Dwarf Heart, wade through Capra, Truffaut, Fellini, Anderson. Bring your own trivet.
8pm $10
Wednesday July 16
ryan jewell+nate wooley+jesse kudler + talibam!
“…to explore the micro and macro structural implications of improvised forms in a real time collaborative environment utilizing the the minute control of unstable sounds in excess audio and silence..”
For this Issue Project performance, Ryan has brought together two of his favorite collaborators, Nate Wooley and Jesse Kudler, who will be performing together publicly for the first time on this date.
Ryan Jewell- snare drum, electronics
Nate Wooley- trumpet
Jesse Kudler- electronics
Ryan Jewell was born in a small Appalachian river town in southern Ohio in an environment set between the rundown post-industrial factories by train yards and the natural beauty of the forested foothills on the Ohio River. The juxtaposition of these two seemingly conflicting environments has profoundly affected his aesthetic. He studied percussion and electronic composition techniques at Capital University and has since studied drumset with Susie Ibarra and tabla with Dr. Lowell Lybarger. Ryan regularly works as a solo performer and collaborator in the arenas of very quiet improvised music and very loud harsh noise. In addition to being a perpetual traveler of the US, he has also toured extensively in Europe. He was invited to perform at such respected international festivals as the SOWIESO 1 festival in Paris, the Kraak Festival in Brussels, the International Noise Conference in Miami, SXSW in Austin and Les Sciences Bruitistes also in Paris. He has collaborated with such diverse artists as C. Spencer Yeh, Greg Kelley, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, Christine Sehnaoui, Bhob Rainey, Larry Marotta, Mike Shiflet, Tatsuya Nakatani, Reuben Radding, Hasan Abdur-Razzaq, Tom Abbs, David Boykin, Douglas Ewart (AACM), Graveyards, Envenomist, Fossils, Wasteland Jazz Unit, and many more…
Nate Wooley (b. 1974) was born in Clatskanie, Oregon. He began his professional career on trumpet with his father at the age of 13. After a brief stay in Denver, Nate moved to Jersey City in 2001. He has developed a highly personal style, mixing his knowledge of jazz and classical trumpet tradition and context with a very healthy bit of experimentation. His solo album, “Wrong Shape to be a Storyteller” on Creative Sources Recordings from last year was a culmination of this kind of thinking and was critically acclaimed as a benchmark for solo documents in the lowercase/reductionist tradition. His main thrust is still the trio, Blue Collar, whose sophomore cd “Lovely Hazel” on Public Eyesore was voted one of the top 10 jazz and improv cds by the Philadelphia CityPaper in 2005. Besides these projects, Nate does a great deal of work as a sideman with figures as diverse as John Butcher, Anthony Braxton, Paul Lytton, John Olsen of Wolf Eyes, David Grubbs, Daniel Levin, Stephen Gauci, and the Sound/Vision Orchestra.
Jesse Kudler, born 1979, improvises on guitar, synthesizer, tapes, radios and electronics, and he makes music on the computer. Recent interest has focused on both internal (electronic) and external (microphone/speaker) feedback, from radios/transmitters and microphones, allowing dynamic textures to arise in concert with the space in which they are played.
In his various travels, Kudler has performed with Matt Bauder, Kyle Bruckmann, Gene Coleman, James Coleman, Tim Feeney, Marcos Fernandes, Brent Gutzeit, Horse Sinister, Bonnie Jones, Jason Kahn, Mazen Kerbaj, Pauline Oliveros, Bhob Rainey, Vic Rawlings, Christine Sehnaoui, Mike Shiflet, Jason Soliday, Howard Stelzer, Christian Weber, Matt Weston, Jack Wright, Jason Zeh, and many others. He has toured the United States several times.
Jesse Kudler lives in Philadelphia. Current projects include: Benito Cereno (with Dustin Hurt, Chandan Narayan, Tim Albro, and Ian Fraser); HZL, an electronics duo with Tim Albro (and sometimes Dustin Hurt, as HZL BRD); Tweeter, a treble-intensive noise trio with Alex Nagle and Eli Litwin; solo performance and recording; and various ad hoc groupings.
His last name rhymes with “muddler.”
talibam
Hailing from New York, Talibam! have been making their presence felt since 2003 through numerous live gigs, self-released cdr’s and label releases. Talibam! have toured Europe five times since 2006 and will be going back later this year. They have releases on Azul Discografica, Evolving Ear, Pendu Sounds, Ecstatic Peace, Gaffer Records, Blackest Rainbow, and others.
Talibam! Is one of the most potent and fascinating bands in contemporary music. The five years of interplay between Mottel and Shea has created one of the most unique and exciting live shows and some of the most powerfully recorded documents of any era. At a time when most culture sticks to conservative niche opportunities, Talibam! is interested in expansion and exploration; They manage to part the sea by not sticking to genre, aesthetic predisposition or the usual norms of what being a ‘band’ is. More inclined to put on a show that any and all will like, and not be stymied by ‘avant’ type casting, they have won over both unsuspecting and in the ‘know’ audiences worldwide.
Matt Mottel’s visage should be familiar to anyone who’s been going to shows in NYC in the past ten years. He’s been hanging around NYC clubs since he was like 16, and dropping electric mind bombs with his synthesizer in those clubs nearly as long with folks like Awesome Color, Akron/Family, Kenny Wollesen, Chris Corsano, Ras Moshe, Cooper-Moore, Sean Meehan, and his new band Shadow Maps.
Kevin Shea’s drumming and stage gymnastics have been gazed at with wide wonder through his membership in bands like Storm & Stress (Touch & Go), Coptic Light (No Quarter), People (I and Ear), Peter Evans Quartet (Firehouse 12), Sexy Thoughts (rcarchives.com), Mostly Other People Do The Killing (Hot Cup), etc.
8pm $10
Thursday July 17th
roy vanegas+ ki
The sound of Noise Floor Music, Roy Vanegas’s solo music project is electronic, at times guitar-based, heady, typical, and experimental. The music can be described as an ambient cross between Arvo Pärt and Boards of Canada (with the audio mechanics of Western melody conjoining the two).
Roy Vanegas is a musically-inclined technician. His passions for post-rock, electronica, and neo-classical don’t allow him to choose the genre in which to work, so he attempts to put elements of them all into his music. He listens to Tabula Rasa every day.
KI
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.
8pm $10
Friday July 18th
duane pitre + corridors+ ilya monosov
Byron Westbrook (b. 1977) is a sound/intermedia artist living in Brooklyn, NY. His audio video performances as CORRIDORS involve the distribution of processed instrumental and environmental recordings through a multi-channel environment with a focus on energy distilled from sound and light. He has shared bills with Sawako, Tony Conrad, O.blaat, Lichens, James Blackshaw, Anette Krebs, Soft Circle, Mountains among many others, and presented at venues such as Tonic, Issue Project Room, Experimental Intermedia, Exit Art Gallery. He has also collaborated with Rhys Chatham in the drone metal group Essentialist (Table of the Elements), as well as performed in the ensembles of Phill Niblock, Rhys Chatham (alongside Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Kim Gordon), Glenn Branca and Jonathan Kane. He was a 2007 recipient of the Jerome Foundation Emerging Artists Commission through Roulette Intermedium. Releases are forthcoming in 2008 for both Corridors and Essentialist, along with European Corridors performances and a fall tour of the US with Alessandro Bosetti.
www.byronwestbrook.com
www.myspace.com/corridors
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Duane Pitre (w/ ensemble)
Duane Pitre (originally from New Orleans) is a Brooklyn-based composer, improviser, and sound-artist. His primary instrument is electric guitar(s), which he plays in a nontraditional fashion, utilizing various objects such as mallets and rotary tools to coax unusual sounds from the instrument. His current works explore both chaos and discipline–and the territory that exists between the two.
In summer of 2007 Pitre’s album, Organized Pitches Occurring in Time, was released on Important Records (CD) and Trome Records (vinyl). This album consists of two versions of his lengthy drone/contemporary-classical composition Ensemble Drones. Ensemble Drones was performed live in December 2007 by a 13-piece ensemble in Burlington, VT, and future performances of the piece are in the works for Chicago, San Diego, and New Orleans.
Pitre has a number of releases scheduled for 2008, including a track on a compilation of experimental/avant-garde guitarists, which will also feature work by Keith Rowe (AMM), Tetuzi Akiyama, Sebastien Roux, and others. He is currently curating–and will be contributing a track to–a Just Intonation compilation that will be released on Important Records in late 2008. The compilation will include work by artists such as Pauline Oliveros, Ellen Fullman, Michael Harrison, and Arnold Dreyblatt.
Pitre is currently constructing, and writing for, a bowed-guitar ensemble, which will use unconventionally strung electric guitars (utilizing multi-unisons) tuned in Just Intonation. Tonight’s performance will be from this ensemble/material.
www.duanepitre.com
www.myspace.com/duanepitre
Ilya Monosov has spent the last decade working with sound and objects and creating his unique form of ritualistic music performance. He has worked in collaboration or had co publications with Preston Swirnoff, Marc Schulz, Andrew Deutsch, Pauline Oliveros, Charles Curtis, Larry Polansky, Bob Cobbing, Makoto Kawabata, Radu Malfatti and many others. His output has been highly varied and has encompassed everything from gypsy folk music, to minimalist improvisation, to heavy rock in the wild California group, The Shining Path. He has also been involved in many performances and multi-media events (including performances and installations at the first lower case events in LA) and currently has a piece online in Frogpeak Unbound, as well as artist books in Printed Matter NYC.
8pm $10
Sunday July 20th
Cancelled
Tuesday July 22nd
MARY MAGDALENE FEASTDAY CELEBRATION
curated by MM Serra
A fantastic evening of films and festivities—a homage to the female subject and the exultant powers of both self-possession and captivation.
Michelle Handelman, M.M
(2008) video, color, 3 min
“An homage to one dominating force of the avant-garde film world, Ms. Mary Magdalene herself!”
Silvianna Goldsmith, Nightclub, Memories of Havana in Queens
(1975) 16mm, color & b/w, 5.5 min
Three Latin Dancers in a nightclub in Queens make up, and do a samba, a merengue and an afro-cuban dance. Filmed both tongue-in-cheek with humor and satire at the kitsch aspects, and also seriously as a tribute to the culture’s ancient sensuality. “Another art form (dance) was displayed in Silvianna Goldsmith’s witty NIGHTCLUB.” — Daryl Chin
M.M. Serra, Soi Meme
(1995) 16mm, color, sound, 6 min
Sound composition by Zeena Parkins.
Erotic dance performance by Goddess Rosemary.
Gunvor Nelson, Take Off
(1972) 16mm, b&w/so, 10min
Starring Ellion Ness.
A dance, a documentary, a metaphysical strip tease.
“Ellion Ness, a thoroughly professional stripper, goes through her paces, bares her body, and then, astonishingly and literally, transcends it. While the film makes a forceful political statement on the image of woman and the true meaning of stripping, the intergalactic transcendence of its ending locates it firmly within the mainstream of joyous humanism and stubborn optimism.” - B. Ruby Rich, Chicago Art Institute
Caroline Koebel, Hole or Space
(2006) 16mm, miniDV & DVD, color & b&w, silent
Pricks, gaps, dots, openings…hole or space takes its cue from contortionists of the early screen in spiraling out from conceptions of the body as whole. The collage film uses early cinema and avant-garde classics as its compositional notes: Luis Martinetti, Contortionist (Edison Manufacturing Company, 1894), Crissie Sheridan Serpentine Dance (Edison, 1897), Ballet Mécanique (Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy, 1924), An Optical Poem (Oskar Fischinger, 1938), Tarantella (Mary E. Bute & Ted Nemeth, 1940).
Tessa Hughes-Freeland, WATCH OUT! (Premier!)
Experimental film, 3 minutes
A lighthearted poetic comment which addresses concepts of male voyeurism. Exploring clichés to the point of saturation, these combinations present different ways of learning to look and looking to learn.
Tessa Hughes-Freeland & Holly Adams, NYMPHOMANIA
(1994) S8, b&w/sound, 9min
A reaction to a sense of violation experienced through a love affair gone wrong. Hoping to express the conflict between the feminine experience of sex as a loving unifying event and its corruption by the male’s base animal instincts. The female body is not portrayed as a sexual phenomenon. It is the male who transforms the nude female form into an image of sexuality. Nudity and penetration are not intended to arouse or stimulate the audience. Instead, it invites the viewer to contemplate the relationship he or she has to his or her own sexuality.
Marguerite Van Cook, “Chasing the Unstitched Hem.”
A reading / performance to be conducted with secrets and concealments.
Peter Cramer & Jack Waters with guests. “Marys: Stag Nation”
A mythographic pageant evoking the Sister/Sinner/Saint aspects of Mary; Pagan meets Pious. Study #8 in the development of “Pestilence”, a three part opus.
Anne Hanavan, I Love Jesus
(2003) color, sound, 3 min
In I love Jesus we see the first in a series of personal rituals that the artist undertook to regain power over her past. Hanavan is confronting her present obstacles as they relate to those in her past life as a heroin addict and prostitute. An auto-erotic self portrait of the artist. High tone and natural light with clever editing set to a classic punk sound track makes this piece the quintessential postmodern porn.
Highly sexualized imagery is juxtaposed against religious imagery in most of the artists work as she comes to terms with how the two, sex and religion, relate and purges herself of all negative influence inflicted by each
8pm $10
Thursday July 24th
darmstadt presents
emily manzo
‘A night of vocal music from many genres’,
Pianist Emily Manzo plays all of her favorite music- Webern, Ives, Neil Young, George Gershwin, Christy & Emily- with all of her favorite singers – Daisy Press (virtuosic soprano and champion of new works), Judith Berkson (of Platz Machen), Nick Hallett (!), Aaron Diskin (of Golem, Lycaon Pictus), Rachel Cox (of Oakley Hall), Pat Sullivan (of Oneida, Oakley Hall) and Christine Edwards (of Christy & Emily). Plus other surprise guests and DJs.
8pm $10
Friday July 25th
droid: amir ziv + jordan mclean + luke o’malley
w/ visualist cj
Advanced screening of: “DROID – The Spirit of Improvisation”
A documentary film by Rafael Altman
Emerging out of the underground dens of New York City’s DJ-based remix revolution - DROID pushes the envelope of improvised music, mixing elements from breakbeat / electronica to industrial rock and NU-form jazz. Their combination of all these disparate sensibilities is a touchstone to an incredible new scene in NYC; reminiscent of the eclectic mix of people and sounds that brought about the early 80’s NO WAVE scene. In 2000 the band was signed to Shadow Records and released “NYC D ’n’ B” as well as various tracks on Shadow compilations “Hard Sessions” 1 & 2. NYC’s DJ Spooky and Detroit producer Carl Craig incorporated Droid’s music in their own remixes.
The musicians that make-up DROID combine experimentation, musicianship and an attitude for current beat culture. Amir Ziv (long-time member of Cyro Baptista’s Beat the Donkey & leader of KOTKOT w/Marc Ribot, Cyro Baptista & Shahzad Ismaily) plays drums and co-leads with trumpeter Jordan McLean (Antibalas & leader of Fire of Space). The past few years have seen Droid collaborate with synth virtuoso Adam Holzman (keyboardist and musical director of Miles Davis!!!) As for the LOW-END…. BASS that is - it’s basically a rotating “electric” chair which so far has been bravely filled by the likes of: Tim LeFebvre, Jonathan Maron, Luke O’Malley, Shahzad Ismaily, Stu Brooks & Yossi Fine. Droid has been very active during 2007/2008 doing live events at their Lower East Side Estate home-base and recording/archiving their current sound.
Tonight’s event will feature an advanced screening of “DROID – The Spirit of Improvisation”, a documentary film by Rafael Altman. Followed by a performance set featuring Amir Ziv on drums, Jordan McLean on Trumpet and Luke O’Malley (Antiballas) on bass.
In addition, projection artist CJ (Chris Jordan) will be collaborating with the group as they fold time and space.
For more info on the artists and sound clips please go to:
http://www.myspace.com/droidfactory
http://www.myspace.com/amirziv
http://www.myspace.com/fireofspace
http://www.seej.net/
http://www.rafaelaltman.com
8pm $10
Tuesday July 29th
harrius + the moth
Jenny Graf (Metalux) and Chiara Giovando (PCPCG) are Harrius, a duo from Baltimore, Md. Their first LP “Enter the Cotton Ring” was released on Ehse records in 2005. Described as a “bizarre dream of a record… this is willfully weirdly its own brand of wonder! It works a deep subconscious rupture…like a blood vessel mic’d up to volcano level.”
Harrius creates a strange and perplexing sound that straddles the line between psychedelic folk and electronic improv via BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Never resting on either side of the fence, they build soft arenas of song that are alternately revealed and consumed by a dense field of electronics. Far removed from any “noise” record professing the same instrumentation; Harrius uses vocals and violin to blend in and out analog electronic hiccups and tidal waves. Both their recordings and live performances yield carefully sculpted composition.
The duo has also recently completed a short film, “Proud Flesh”, a kind of psychedelic Western shot in the Badlands of South Dakota that is scheduled to Premiere in Baltimore on July 11th 2008.
For Issue Project Room Performance Chiara will be playing violin electronics and voice and Jenny will be playing Trinu, an istrument designed with Peter Blasser and voice.
The Moth is a Swedish improv/elctronicaduo comprised of Martin Öhman and Erika Alexandersson. With drums, voice and live electronics, attractive as well as repulsive soundscapes take form. The moth use no pre-recorded tracks since they are very fond of creating in the spur of the moment. And that’s what you’ll hear at ISSUE PROJECT ROOM - the spur of the moment!
Erika Alexandersson and Martin Öhman decided to form a band. At first the music was acoustic (it still is sometimes…), but after a while as moth´s do “the moth” went through a transformation and reinkarnated as an impro/electronica duo.
MARTIN ÖHMAN has received a lot of attention for his unorthodox way of playing. Martin uses fans, razors or whatever he can to create a different sound. In The Moth, Martin uses drums and cymbals, amplified with the help of contact microphones and manipulated through various guitar effects and custom made electronics. In recent years he’s built a reputation as a highly sought after composer by composing for bands, filmscores and other projects. In 2005 he put together and composed for an ensemble with The Moth partner Erika Alexandersson, world famous bassplayer Anders Jormin and trumpet phenomenon Arve Henriksen from the norwegian improv/electronica group Supersilent.
ERIKA ALEXANDERSSON has spent time tearing down the vocal boundaries and investigating the sound possibilities of the human voice. As a result, her singing stretches from melodic simplicity to making free improvised lyrics and transforming the human native sounds into music. Apart from The Moth, Erika Alexandersson appeared with the Swedish indiepop band Loney, Dear, and with her other duo, Josef och Erika, that recently was nominated a Swedish Grammy for their second album. Erika is also about to release her debut solo album in Japan during the fall 2008.
8pm $10
Wednesday July 30th
ISSUE Project Room presents and evening at the Music at the Bridge Festival in the Tobacco Warehouse, Dumbo
featuring:
John Zorn’s Cobra
jim staley… trombone
sylvie courvoisier… plano
david weinstein… keyboard
annie gosfield… keyboard
anthony coleman… keyboard
eyal maoz… guitar
mark fekdman… violin
okkyung lee… cello
shanir blumenkranz… bass
ikue mori… electronics
cyro baptista… percussion
kenny wollesen… drums
john zorn…prompter
Written and premiered in 1984, “Cobra” is a classic in the circles of new music, having been performed innumerable times. In fact, composer and “prompter” John Zorn says in the liners that it his most often performed composition — no mean feat considering his prolific output. It is no wonder, though: There is a mischievous, cartoonish quality to it that epitomizes Zorn’s style but also makes for continually fascinating listening. Based on the composer’s secretive “game pieces,” “Cobra” is a fun-filled, mystical, blindfolded ride down a dark alley that circles back every few yards.
(Steven Loewy, All Music Guide).
Theremin Society
w/ members Dorit Chrysler, David Simons, Rob Schwimmer
Theremin Society was founded in December 2005 by ISSUE Project Room Artistic Director Suzanne Fiol and thereminist Dorit Chrysler. The project focuses on the contribution of the theremin to 21st century musical culture and the musicians who have devoted their careers to this instrument. Participants are defined by varying approaches and a wide range of musical language, which has included abstract experimentalist to classical to pop electronica. To date there have been 13 Theremin Society performances and each one has featured new guest artists.
Jonathan Kane’s February
Jonathan Kane is a Downtown NYC legend — as co-founder of the no-wave behemoth Swans, and the rhythmic thunder behind the massed-guitar armies of Rhys Chatham and the rock excursions of La Monte Young and one of the hardest-hitting drummers on the planet. With his solo work, Kane summons Swans’ concussive wallop, Chatham’s dense guitar strata, and the perpetual propulsion of 70s krautrockers Neu, then steers it all head-on into… the blues. Make no mistake about it: Kane is a bluesman, and beneath the high-decible bombast, he’s powering guitar-driven minimalism into the blues, and the blues into guitar-driven harmonic maximalism. So roll with Jonathan Kane down his Highway 61 of the mind — it’s the shape of blues to come.
This is a free concert and will take place in Dumbo NOT at ISSUE
6:30pm - 9:30pm
for more info visit www.brooklynbridgepark.org
Thursday July 31st
Walking Another Way + Cosmic Poetry –
New audiovisual compositions of ethereal qualities.
Walking Another Way – Being 98% water, jellyfish are the visual manifestations of water as a creature. First performed at EyeWash *Scenario” earlier this year, Walking Another Way is an all-immersive audiovisual performance exploring the elegant movements and mysterious world of the jellyfish. With Lady Firefly on live video mix and Dok and Zemi17 on live sound.
Cosmic Poetry - Cosmic Poetry premieres at IPR as a series of audiovisual performances dedicated to the cosmos. In the first installation, Cosmic Poetry transforms analog / digital noise, feedback, and video abstractions into flower-like and organic imagery — creating a sonic and visual jungle. Other short form pieces to be included. Developed by Lady Firefly at a residency at Experimental Television Center this summer.
Lady Firefly (a.k.a. Zarah Cabañas) is a video artist/VJ based in New York City who explores the vital, sensual, and transient qualities. Zarah performs and exhibits her self-dubbed “electrorganic” works throughout New York City and internationally including the River to River Festival, American Museum of Natural History, EyeWash, Eyebeam, and South Street Seaport; to eclectic events at nightclubs, warehouses, parks, music venues, rooftops, mountaintops, galleries, and living rooms. Festivals have included Territoria Festival (Moscow), Apositsia III Experimental Music Forum (St. Petersburg), Lux VJ Festival (Barcelona), LoopVideoArt Fair (Seville), DUMBO Arts Festival (NYC) and the Montreal Sketch Comedy Festival. She is a 2008 resident of Experimental Television Center, former resident at Chashama, Knitting Factory, and Nublu. She is also vocalist for Oloroso, saxophonist of audiovisual group Silence Corporation, and video editor at Blue Man Group.
http://www.fireflylab.com
Dok Gregory has been composing/performing and recording experimental electronic music since 1983. As a member of NYC based audio visual group Amoeba Technology from 1997 to the present, he has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Russia and South America. Audio visual works have been featured in programs at the Forum Des Images in Paris, Basel Art Fair in Switzerland, The Kitchen and Lincoln Center in NYC, and elsewhere. Dok has also toured/worked extensively as a member of Psychic TV, Trance Pop Loops and Ransom Corps. Current projects include ongoing collaborations with fellow 23 Windows resident Zemi 17, and “ZGT” with Peter Principle of Tuxedomoon.
http://www.amoebatechnology.net
Zemi17 is a composer, musician and media artist who creates experiences that are to plant seeds for the evolution of consciousness. He is the co-founder of the Ransom Corp and 23 Windows Studio in Bushwick Brooklyn, co-curator of the Resonant Wave Festival in Berlin, and has lived and worked extensively in Indonesia collecting field recordings of insects and frogs, while researching and learning archaic and sacred forms of music.
http://zemi17.net
8pm $10
Friday August 1st
zeroboy
Underground Zero
Stories from Art, Anarchy and Adventure, Follow Zero Boy on an autobiographical journey. True stories of the Underground. How did Zero Boy get to be so weird? Art tales of the Lower east side, Anarchy in Europe and America. Comedy and love in two centuries. Tonight’s performance will utilize ISSUE Project Room’s 15 channel hemispjherical speaker array
8pm $10
Wednesday August 6th
dean bowman and gary lucas + fight the big bull
Dean Bowman and Gary Lucas perform contemporary and traditional spirituals and the blues. Long time colleagues on the downtown music scene perform together for the first time, including the music of Rev. Gary Davis, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey, as well as original music.
An amalgamation of saxophones, trombone, trumpet, guitar, bass and drums, fight the big Bull is a spontaneous display of emotion filled with far-reaching significance and baptized in the traditions of music.
Bob Miller trumpet
John Lilley saxophones
Jason Scott saxophones
Reggie Pace trombone
Bryan Hooten trombone
Cameron Ralston bass
Matt White guitar, tunes
Pinson Chanselle trap set, percussion
8pm $10
Friday August 8th, 9:00pm
greg davis and eric chenaux
Eric Chenaux plays guitars, ballads, electronics, tunes and improvisations. He is currently a member of The Reveries, The Draperies, Drumheller, The Guayaveras and The Allison Cameron Band. These groups share affiliation with the Toronto-based record label, Rat-drifting — a home for sweet-psychedelic experimental polyphony and fried pop. Chenaux had also released his hacks of ballads on two solo records (Dull Lights and more currently Sloppy Ground) on the Montréal- based record label, Constellation.
Eric will be performing solo renditions of these ballads with voice, electric guitar and whammy Echo harps.
http://www.rat-drifting.com
http://www.myspace.com/ericchenaux
Greg Davis plays everything from guitar to khaen to gongs to synthesizer to pine cones to laptop and more. He primarily works as a solo musician but has worked in a variety of musical situations with Jeph Jerman, Zach Wallace (as Sun Circle), Keith Fullerton Whitman, Sebastien Roux, Steven Hess, Joseph Grimm and Akron/Family. Davis has released many records on labels such as Carpark, Kranky, Important, Tompkins Square, Tonschacht, Room40, Ghostly and more. He has toured and travelled around the world sharing his openness to all sounds and musical experiences. Davis makes his home in Burlington, Vermont where he works on music, audio mastering and has been active in developing a new scene for different music.
Greg’s recent live sets have focused on a shared meditative drone based music which creates a sound environment conducive for the practice of deep listening in the present moment with a clear mind and without prejudice.
http://www.autumnrecords.net
http://www.myspace.com/gregdavismusic
9pm $10 (note time change)
Wednesday August 13th
audrey chen, nate wooley and herb robertson + hahn rowe, carole kim
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
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 visual/sculptural concepts. chen performs solo and in collaboration with a wide number of musicians and dancers. Among musicians, she has worked with many great improvisers, including phil minton, elliott sharp, aki onda, phill niblock, frederic blondy, jim pugliese, alessandro bosetti, mike cooper, mats gustafsson, mazen kerbaj, michael zerang, tatsuya nakatani, le quan ninh, joe mcphee, susan alcorn, michele doneda, paolo angeli, and gianni gebbia. some current projects include duos with phil minton, frederic blondy, katt hernandez, 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 international festival devoted to experimental improvised music. www.myspace.com/audreychen
CLARENCE “HERB” ROBERTSON is internationally renowned as an innovative instrumentalist, composer and arranger in both traditional and avant-garde jazz idioms and new music. In 1981, Robertson became one of the original members of Tim Berne’s ensemble and shortly after joined Mark Helias’s band. It is with these two artists that Robertson first began receiving enormous critical acclaim on tour throughout the United States and Europe and on subsequent recordings documenting his original brass concept incorporating extended mute technique.
From 1985 to 1992, Robertson recorded as a leader with JMT musical productions in Munich, Germany, producing five albums under his own name. On various other labels, he has recorded with many of the leading lights of the New York Downtown Scene including Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, John Zorn, Bobby Previte among others (selected discography included). After his debut album, TRANSPARENCY, Herb Robertson formed his own quintet and opened the Greenwich Village Jazz Festival in 1986 to high critical acclaim. This was the first time an avant garde band opened a major jazz festival in the United States. Soon after, the quintet toured Europe.Robertson has been leading groups ever since, and now records as a leader for Leo, Splasc(h), Cadence, and the CIMP record labels. Robertson has been invited as a soloist and guest artist for many important European Jazz and New Music productions. He was invited to the important “October Meeting” in Amsterdam in 1987 and 1992, along with Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Gerry Hemingway, Steve Lacy, Paul Bley, Horace Tapscott et al, and is a frequent performer at the Berlin, Saalfelden, Willisau and Nicholsdorf music festivals. He toured with the Charlie Haden Music Liberation Orchestra at major jazz festivals in Italy, England, Scotland, Switzerland and Austria.
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 Lasterís Hydra and Barry Guyís 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 Composerís 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. 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.
HAHN ROWE
Git plucking, violin sawing, knob twiddling, wax handling, wave channeling man about town…
Composer, producer, engineer, dj and multi-instrumentalist (violin, guitar, electronics) HAHN ROWE has migrated freely between the rock, electronic music, improvisation and new music scenes for over 20 years. As a member of composer GLENN BRANCA’s ensemble in the mid 80s, he was introduced to NYC’s cross pollinating music and art scenes. It was during this time that he joined atmospheric chamber rock quartet HUGO LARGO, who released two acclaimed records on BRIAN ENO’s Opal/Land label. Hahn Rowe has worked on a diverse assortment of recordings by people such as DAVID BYRNE, FOETUS, IKUE MORI, ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS, MIMI, MOBY, R.E.M., THAT PETROL EMOTION, SYD STRAW, SWANS, ZAHAR, FIREWATER and MICHAEL BROOK. Rowe’s work with Brussels/Berlin based choreographer MEG STUART (DAMAGED GOODS) has resulted in the creation of 5 major evening length dance/theater works - DISFIGURE STUDY, NO LONGER READYMADE, REPLACEMENT, BLESSED, and FORGERIES, LOVE AND OTHER MATTERS.
CAROLE KIM is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on live video performance and performance-based video installation. She brings a very tactile approach to digital technologies, pushing video’s capacity as a responsive medium in the moment. She has exhibited and performed widely in the US and abroad. Recent venues include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art-Los Angeles, REDCAT/Disney Hall, the Getty Center, Springwave Festival/LIG Performing Arts Hall (Seoul, Korea), Trampoline: Platform for New Media Art (Nottingham, England), the Stanford Jazz Festival, Engine 27 (New York), Arizona State University-West Interdisciplinary Arts & Performance Program (Phoenix, AZ), the Knitting Factory (LA), ArtSonje Center (Seoul, Korea) plus numerous festivals and performance series. She is a featured artist in the August 2008 issue of ABITARE/China. Eyebeam Atelier in New York commissioned a piece on the web and the performance/installation REVERSE HOUSE KIT was featured in the DVD publication ASPECT vol2: New Media Artists of the West Coast.
(Please see www.carolekim.com <http://www.carolekim.com> )
8pm $10
Thursday August 14th
The extra sensory pedestrians + evidence CD release party
The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians (Jennifer Schmermund and Kimberly Young) present the first installation of “Boxed Dances” - a year-long series of site-specific dance installations. The E-SPs join Evidence (Stephan Moore and Scott Smallwood) to celebrate the release of their new CD “Receiver” (free103point9 Audio Dispatch 035), with a re-imagined performance of their original installation at Wave Farm. Bring an FM radio with batteries! A limited number will be provided.
Kimberly Young, artistic director of the Extra-Sensory Pedestrians, is a dancer/choreographer based in Brooklyn. She has danced with Jen Schmermund/FreshBlood Productions, Todd Williams of WilliamsWorks, The Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy and in her own work. Earlier this year, Young danced for Tere O’Connor in a restaging of his 2001 piece Winterbelly. In 2006, Young started her own dance company, The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians, through which she has an ongoing collaboration with composer/sound artist Stephan Moore. The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians have presented Young’s work at venues including Movement Research at the Judson Church, SUNY Stony Brook’s Staller Center, and Roulette Intermedium. Young recently received a 2008 Choreographers’ Project Fellowship from Summer Stages Dance at Concord Academy. In February 2009 The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians will present an evening of work at the Joyce Soho. Young’s most recent work for The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians, Plenitude, was reviewed as “intriguing and ambitious” by Roslyn Sulcas of The New York Times.
Jennifer Schmermund is a certified yoga teacher through OM Yoga and holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As director of FRESH BLOOD, her work has been commissioned by Bucknell University where she was an adjunct professor. She has danced for KC Chun-Manning, Valerie Green and is now working on a project for Shannon Hummel.
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 a large multi-channel array of his Hemisphere speakers. He performs regularly with Scott Smallwood in the electronic duo Evidence, and with a variety of musicians, live-video artists, and dancers. He has created custom music software for a number of composers and artists, and has taught extensively in sound art and electronic music. He is currently the Sound Engineer and Music Coordinator of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
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. Ranging from sonic photographs, studio compositions, instrumental pieces, and improvisations, the resulting pieces are often textural, always mindful of space and subtlety.
8pm $10
Sunday August 17th
andy graydon auf wieder sehen konzert
andy graydon + kenneth kirschner
sawako + bradley eros
zach layton + richard garet + bruce tovsky
tom mulligan + ben owen + sandra gibson + luis recoder
7pm
free
Monday August 18th @ 9pm
hair stylistics/masaya nakahara
tom thayer
hot garbage
with events etc by ei arakawa / michiko
Hair Stylistics (a.k.a. Violent Onsen Geisha, Masaya NAKAHARA)
Profile: Born in 1970 at Tokyo, Nakahara started making music with MTR and sampler around 88, He released his first split LP from the U.S. independent label RRRecords as Violent Onsen Geisha in 90. He released unique records such as “OTIS” and “QUE SERA SERA (THINGS GO FROM BAD TO WORSE)” in mid 90s. Nakahara changed his artist name from “Violent Onsen Geisha” to “Hair Stylistics” in 97. The long-awaited latest album “custom cook confused death” was released in 04. Along with musical activities, he is known as a film critic and a book “Lost Memories of Cinema” co-written with a novelist Kazushige ABE is just out. He also started writing novels in 94 with “Mari and Fifis Massacre Song Book?. “Bouquets of Flowers Everywhere” received Mishima Yukio Prize in 01. He was nominated for the Akutagawa Award in 06. He is attracting much attention as a novelist recently.
He is on a very brief US tour, doing dates in LA (with Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy) and New York only..
9pm $10
Thursday August 21st
magda mayas + andy moor
Magda Mayas is a pianist and curator currently based in Berlin, Germany. Mayas studied jazz and improvisation at Universität der Künste, Conservatorium van Amsterdam in 2001 under Misha Mengelberg and completed a diploma at Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler under Georg Graewe in 2005. During this time she began developing a specific set of techniques for inside-piano performance. Mayas has concentrated her musical investigations on the piano and its sonic possibilities, utilizing extended techniques, amplification and preparations as a process of abstraction, whilst focusing on the physicality of both internal and external parts of the piano.
As a continuation of this research Mayas founded the festival Tasten-Berliner Klaviertage featuring contemporary and innovative approaches for the piano. Mayas performs internationally in a variety of roles as interpreter, solo and in collaboration with a large number of musicians and composers: in a duo with Tony Buck, in the trio Phono Phono with Michael Renkel and Sabine Vogel, the Quartet Mayas/Nutters/ Olsen/Glavez and as part of the Amsterdam based N-Collective. She has appeared in various festivals including The Total Music Meeting, Konfrontationen and Festival of Exiles. Over the years Mayas has performed with many leading figures in improvisation such as Johannes Bauer, Wilbert de Joode, Steve Heather, Annette Krebs, Christoph Kurzmann, Andy Moore, Thomas Lehn,Tristan Honsinger, Frank Gratkowski and Michael Moore.
www.myspace.com/antheacaddyandmagdamayas
www.n-collective.com
www.tasten.org
andy moor
Born in London England 1962 Andy began his musical life in Edinburgh, Scotland playing guitar with the band Dog Faced Hermans, a multi faceted eclectic group that mixed energetic post punk energy with traditional tunes and improvisations….
In 1990 he moved to the Netherlands after an invitation to join Dutch band The Ex and continues to be a full time member of this band….the openess and versatility of the musicians in this group has brought them into contact with many musicians from different scenes and backgrounds including Tom Cora(cello), Han Bennink(drums), Wolter Wierbos(trombone), Djibril Diabate (kora) John Butcher (sax) and Anne james Chaton (sound poet) In 95 he performed his first series of completely improvised concerts as a duet with Terrie Ex, and later released a video of the best performances. In 1996 he began another group with Tony Buck (Necks), Joe Williamson and Leonid Soybelman (Ne Zhdali) called Kletka Red…fusing traditional Klezmer, Greek and Russian songs with their own frantic styles of playing.
In more recent years Andy has involved himself more with the Amsterdam improvisation scene and has worked alongside electronic musicians as well as composing soundtracks for films and he performing regularily with dancers such as Magpie music and Dance Company with Katie Duck.
8pm $10
Saturday August 23rd
asher thal-nir + brendan murray + richard garet
This event will consist of a collaborative aural and visual live performance between Boston artists’ Asher Thal-Nir and Brendan Murray, and NYC artist Richard Garet. The show will range from combinations of solo, pair, and trio groups exploring the interconnected dialogue of improvised live sound and video performance. The sound presence will focus on exploring different parameters affecting the listening experience by ranging from quadraphonic to the full spectrum of the ISSUE Project Room’s 15 channel speaker system. The sound can be expected to range from computer processing, micro-tonal, minimal drone, phonography, phenomena found by live-room-sampling, and self-generated sounds. The live moving image will vary from an optical-sensory-overload color field exploring light phenomena, to static and minimal recorded footage.
Asher Thal-Nir is an artist living and working in Somerville, Massachusetts. His sound work is composed using recordings of acoustic and electronic instruments, location recordings and found recordings which are combined and processed in various ways. His work has been published online and on disk by Con-V, Leerraum [ ], Mystery Sea, The Land Of, Laboratoire Moderne, Winds Measure, Transparent Radiation, Term. And Homophoni, with upcoming solo and collaborative releases on Einzeleinheit, Leerraum [ ], and/OAR, Gears of Sand, Room40, and Sourdine. For additional info visit: www.myspace.com/asherthalnir
Brendan Murray is a self-taught musician living in Somerville, MA. He has actively recorded and performed with electronics since 1999. He regards his music as a balance between spontaneous sound making and compositional rigor, with an emphasis on drones and repetition. He records and processes instruments and tapes until all traces of instrumentality are blurred, leaving only large blocks of pure sound. He has recorded four full-length CDs, four cdrs and two cassettes for various record labels in the United States and Europe. Murray has also toured extensively throughout the United States as a solo performer and as a member of various improvising ensembles. He is actively involved with long distance collaborations with musicians and sound artists such as Seth Nehil, Richard Garet and Chuck Bettis. He is also a founding member of the group Ouest, with longtime friends and collaborators Jay Sullivan and Howard Stelzer. Other activities include playing drums and guitar in the rock band Paper Summer, composing music for film and occasionally presenting a concert series in the Boston area; “Uppercase Sound”, which features upcoming and established electronic musicians from New England. Published Works (solo): Not Now CD, create-transmit records (US), 2001–“Garden” 3 inch CDR, Kissy (US) 2002–Animation CDR, naninani recordings (FR), 2002–Resting Places CD, Sedimental Recordings (US) 2005–Everybody Wants ?e Tide CDR, Audiobot (Belgium) 2005–Ocean Of Dirt, Mountain Of Steam CDR, Gameboy (US/JP) 2006–Wonders Never Cease CD, Intransitive Recordings (US) 2006–Due Locations CS, Long Long Chaney (IT) 2007–Scared In My Heart CS, Twonicorn (US) 2007–Commonwealth CD, 23Five Recordings (US) 2008. Forthcoming works: The Cold Piano, Students Of Decay CDR 2008–Fondness CD, Students of Decay 2008–N175 (Music for Mixed Instruments and Electronics) CD. Collaborative Recordings: “The Social Life Of Small Urban Spaces” with Howard Stelzer on VARIIOUS compilation, Intransitive Recordings, 2000–The Please “Breakfast” 3 inch CDR , Chewtoy/Chloe Recordings 2004, The Please is: Mike Bullock, Linda Aubry Bullock and Brendan Murray–Sillage with Seth Nehil CD Sedimental Recordings 2007–Of Distance CD with Richard Garet, 2008. Soundtracks: HUMAN HEART EXPLODES d. Matt Orefice, 2006. Color NTSC video, 90 minutes. With Katt Hernandez (violin), Mike Bullock (contrabass) and Vic Rawlings (cello). For additional info visit: www.brendanmurray.com
Richard Garet is a sound and video artist. He is interested in the phenomena found and produced in aural and visual time-based media, in nature’s processes, and human beings’ relationship with both artificial and natural environments. Garet explores the it-referential, communicational, and sensory characteristics of the various media he utilizes. Additionally, he focuses on the investigation of aural and visual spatial-contexts, relational structures, process, materiality, and form. Even though Garet’s work suits the standard gallery setting, many of his other activities as an artist explore the various practices of experimental sound and video performance. All of these modes are additional ways in which Garet’s work exposes the audience to visual and physical acoustic sensory perception. Richard Garet has collaborated in the past with artists Andy Graydon, Gill Arno, Ben Owen, Gil Sanson, and Andre Goncalves through the EA collective. He has also collaborated with Brendan Murray, Shimpei Takeda, Sawako, Chica Ijima, Bruce Tovsky, Bruce Mcclure, Adam Kendall, Jeremy Slater, Peter Eudenbach, Wolfgang Von Stürmer, Zimoun, Zach Layton, and Aaron Kadoch. His discography include works such as • L’avenir” (solo), and the compiler • V-P V-F is V-N 7″ compilation series, 7001, have been released in 4/2008 by the NYC, based label WINDS MEASURE RECORDINGS. Also the Austrian label NON VISUAL OBJECTS released in 07/2007 • Extract: Portraits of Sound Artists–22 various artists: Book and Double CD cat# nvo_11, in 12/2006 • Intrinsic Motion–CD (Solo) cat# nvo _008, and in 10/2005 • TERRITORIUM–CD (Compiler) cat# nvo_004. In 2008 Richard Garet has lined up a series of forthcoming releases such as • Four (solo) / Double CD — AND/OAR - Seattle, Washington, USA, • Antonioni: Trilogy & Epilogue (compilation) — AND/OAR - Seattle, Washington, USA, • Winter (Solo) / DVD Audio Surround 4.0 — Leerraum, Switzerland, and a collaborative release • Of Distance, Richard Garet and Brendan Murray, UNFRAMED RECORDINGS, NYC, USA. Richard Garet’s collaborative past releases include • Balancing Act with Controlled Dynamics / EA (collective) 2006 — WINDS MEASURE RECORDINGS - NYC, USA, and the 03/2008 online release • Balancing Act with Controlled Dynamics: Take Two / EA (collective) CON-V, Madrid, Spain. For additional info visit: www.richardgaret.com
8pm $10
Wednesday August 27th (CANCELLED)
silver hauches - circumstantial guitars
SILVER HAUNCHES (a band with dance) was formed to serve as bridge between the parallel cultures of DIY “contemporary” dance and “independent” music. Being from both these worlds Steven Reker is trying to see how they might take cues from one another to inform workand sustainability. In this project Tei Blow, Marilyn Maywald and he are experimenting with music as a circumstantial element in the environment of unrelated dancing through prepared guitars. The guitars and sounds they produce will act as a kind barometer for the atmosphere established by the dancers. There will also be a set of songs that were generated through the lens of music as gesture/movement.
STEVEN REKER has worked with the likes of Yoshiko Chuma, Miguel Gutierrez, John Jesurun, Jeff McMahon, and has been making his own music and dance since his arrival to New York in 2006. You can also find him at Sound Fix Records in Brooklyn where he hosts a monthly mix tape party and sells records. stevereker@gmail.com
MARILYN MAYWALD is a dance artist in NYC. Recently she has been engaged in research-in-movement experiments with dance group Cheap Cake, co founded with Steven Reker, Megan Byrne, Maggie Bennett and Jacob Kovner. She is also in an ongoing solo process of how to embody. This is linked to her study of biomechanics, somatics and functional anatomy as a Pilates certification candidate at the Kane School of Core Integration. Marilyn has been creating collaborative dance duets with Steven Reker since 2004, starting at Arizona State University (BFA 05) where they both went to dance school. She has also been a member of Yin Mei Dance since 2004. marilyn.maywald@gmail.com
TEI BLOW’S recent projects include creating video sets for the band Steve Burns and the Struggle, a book of music reviews conducted by plants, and an all-gold musical entitled *everything one in the disc of the sun*. He also plays under the monikers Frustrator! and Perfect Shapes. He can be found at the Science Company,
www.sciencecompany.org
8pm $10
Thursday August 28th
Woody Sullender/Katt Hernandez duo
JOZEF VAN WISSUM CANCELLED
Woody Sullender (banjo/electronics)
http://www.deadceo.com/unclewoody
Over the past few years, Woody Sullender has been defining himself as a pre-eminent experimental banjo performer, playing with and against the cultural baggage of the instrument. While alluding to the “traditional” musics of his home states of Virginia and North Carolina, he explores a diverse plane of plucked string music from around the world as well as incorporating punk, noise, free jazz, etc..
Most recently, with technical advising from STEIM, Sullender has been developing an electro-acoustic banjo with various parameters of computer synthesis and processing algorithms being controlled by sensors on the instrument. Previously, he has worked with pioneering electronic composers such as Pauline Oliveros and Maryanne Amacher (incorporating his banjo recordings into Amacher’s “TEO! A sonic sculpture” which won the Golden Nica prize at the 2005 Ars Electronica festival).
Katt Hernandez (violin)
http://zeitgeist.numachi.com/katt
Katt Hernandez recently moved to Philadelphia, after living in the Boston area for nine years, playing the violin, running spaces, and producing shows. She has collaborated with a magnificently variegated sea of musicians, dancers, and others including but certainly not limited to Joe Maneri, Zack Fuller, David Maxwell, John Voigt, Joe Burgio, Vashti Bunyan, Eric Rosenthal, Jeff Arnal, Andrew Neumann, and Hans Rickheit. She has twice been invited to perform on the Autumn Uprising , High Zero and Improvised and Otherwise festivals. She has been a guest artist at MIT, Harvard, and the New England Conservatory, performed in a vast slew of local venues and to date any number of subway passages, urban grottos, and troglyditical performance places, as well as other experimental and life-making places throughout the Bos-Wash metropolii.
8pm $10
Friday August 29th
mario diaz de leon, jay king + zeljko mcmullen
A duo set by longtime multimedia collaborators Mario Diaz de Leon and Jay King. Using video, guitars, voice, zither, and electronics, K/DdL will perform their dense, percussive, and hyper-composed audiovisual style, as well as more recent approaches incorporating improvisation and live video.
Jay King (b. 1978) and Mario Diaz de León (b.1979) began working on music together in 1995; multidisciplinary work in 2000. Their collaborative practice has included video, game environments, participatory experimentation, and multimedia performance. Solo exhibition at Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis. Group exhibitions include Greater New York 2005, PS1/MoMA, New York; Trial Balloons, MUSAC, León, Spain; The Space Between the Spokes, KS Art, New York; musica-video-musica, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid. Artist residency at Brooklyn Fireproof, New York. Performances at venues including Roulette, The Stone, The Juilliard School, New York; Oberlin Conservatory, Ohio; Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore. Both live and work in New York City.
Mario Diaz de León : Born 1979 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Grew up playing guitar in punk and metal bands. Attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied composition and music technology. Since 2004, he lives in New York City, and is currently pursing his doctorate in composition at Columbia University, studying with George Lewis and Fabien Lévy. Since 2002 he has focused on acoustic + electronic hybrids in chamber music, expressed as hypnotic walls and gestures of shimmering sound. He helps run the Shinkoyo music label. A multi-instrumentalist on guitar, zither, voice, and electronics, he performs solo, and with the multimedia group Symbol (with Doron Sadja and Zeljko McMullen). He has collaborated with Jay King on multimedia works since 2000. Performed and exhibited work internationally, with ensembles including International Contemporary Ensemble (USA), Hyperion Ensemble (Romania), iO Quartet and Allsar Quartet. His discography includes 3 releases on the Shinkoyo label, as well as an upcoming CD on John Zorn’s Tzadik label.
“a solo performance utilizing live guitar and piano feedback as well as binaural recordings of many spaces collapsed together - presented through Issue Project Room’s multi-channel sound system.”
Zeljko McMullen :
Born February 4th, 1980 in Massillon, Ohio - moved to Chicago and then Oberlin, attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Studied orchestral and electronic composition, sound art/installation. Helped form the Shinkoyo art + music collective. Currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Co-curates the Paris London New York West Nile art + music gallery. Studying for MFA Music/Sound at Bard College.
Primarily deals with walls of acoustic and electronic sound as architecture and moveable spaces. Active experimenter with both binaural perceptive beating and binaural spacial recordings. Participates regularly in improvised musical and visual art
environments.
Has exhibited work and/or performed at the Ke Center for Contemporary Art (Shanghai, China), Tarantula Hill (Baltimore, MD) Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, PA), Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, OH), Sovereign Gallery (Boulder, CO), the Detroit Electronic Music Festival (Detroit, MI), Here-Here Gallery (Cleveland, OH) Placard Headphone Festival (Ny, NY), The Black Lodge (Philadelphia, PA), the Empty Bottle (Chicago, IL), Stairwell Gallery (Providence, RI), Music Gallery (Toronto, ONT), Marvelli Gallery (Ny, NY), The Bridge PAI (Charlottesville, VA), Lemp Arts (St. Louis, MO), Butchershop Gallery (Vancouver, BC), il Corral (Los Angeles, CA), Roulette Intermedium (NY, NY), Norwegian Wood Festival (Oslo, Norway), Hultsfred Festival (Hultsfred, Sweden), Isle of Wight Festival (Isle of Wight, UK), Villa Marina (Isle of Man, UK), The Sage (Gateshead, UK), Primavera Festival (Barcelona,Spain), Palacio de Congresso (Madrid, Spain), The Kitchen Benefit 2006 (NY, NY)
Has received commissions from the Jerome Foundation, Neumann/Sennheiser.
Has numerous solo and collaborative releases on Shinkoyo records. Has recently collaborated with musicians Lou Reed, Doron Sadja, MV Carbon, Mario Diaz de Leon, Justin Craun, and Brooke Gillespie. Currently working with Tony Conrad, Maryanne Amacher, Nautical Almanac, Severiano Martinez + more on a video project based on the fool’s journey through the tarot (completion fall 2008). Also a surround sound installation in Beijing, China summer 2008.”
8pm $10
Saturday August 30th, 9pm
Power 2
Sponsored by Colt 45
Featuring Contributions by:
Kristina Donello
Nick Lesley
Avarus
Curated by Lisa Baldini
Power 2 is the second in a series of curatorial experiments that examines the phases of web media through collaborative projects. For its second incarnation, choreographer Kristina Donello, media artist Nick Lesley and members of Finnish sound collective super group Avarus fuse dance, motion capture video, and sound to create a Gesamtkunstwerk (Total Art) that addresses the era of social media.
The approach remains true to the Richard Wagner definition of a Gesamtkunstwerk:
Whereas the public, that representation of daily life, forgets the confines of the auditorium, and lives and breathes now only in the artwork which seems to it as Life itself, and on the stage which seems the wide expanse of the whole World.
As such, the work’s goal is intended to create a multimedia environment that
commands/consumes the viewer’s attention.
In the age of social media, the viewer is accustomed to simultaneously consuming information, content, media and interpersonal interactions. The threshold for attention spans continues to decrease, while saturation with the visual world increases. Power 2 combats this phenomenon by making the viewer the 4th wall of the piece. An exercise in control, it blurs the lines between performer, art and audience by constantly moving the viewer between passive observer, participant and static object.
Power 2 is a one night only event, beginning at 9pm. There is a ten dollar suggested donation for entry. Complimentary Colt 45 will be available for all guests who are 21 and over.
All guests are asked to wear white to participate.
Please contact Lisa Baldini at lisa@golden-gallery.org for more information regarding Power 2 or the Power Series.
Avarus
In 2001 Avarus formed in Tampere, Finland, by members of the Anaksimandros and Pylon. The group continues to expand, collaborating with members of Kiila,
Munuaissymposium 1960 and Kemialliset Ystävät. There are approximately 10 core members in Avarus dispersed throughout Finland; performances may include up to 20 members. Regardless of the number of members, they focus on improvised collective sound that values primitive, child-like, joyous and free vibes. Avarus has toured twice in Europe and completed their first U.S. tour in 2007.
http://www.secreteye.org/se/avarus.html
http://www.haamu.com/lallallal/
Kristina Donello
Kristina Donello was raised in sunny south Florida where she pranced around barefoot all day. After graduating from the dance program at Dreyfoos School of the Arts, Kristina moved to New York to continue her dance education at the SUNY Purchase College Conservatory of Dance. She danced as a part of the Purchase Dance Corps and toured in Spain performing contemporary works under the direction of Kazuko Hirabayashi. Ms. Donello studied dance composition with Rosalind Newman and Neil Greenberg. Since graduation Kristina has performed works by Pele Bauch, Yael Shtainer, and is currently a dance administrative assistant for Chris Elam/Misnomer Dance Theater. Kristina often choreographs work in conjunction with other multimedia.
Nick Lesley
Nick Lesley is a multimedia artist and musician. Much of his work focuses on physical relationships to sound and art experience. He regularly performs improvised music, primarily playing percussion and electronics. Nick has also created interactive sound and video installations as well as music for a number of dance pieces. He expects to complete his MFA in Performance and Interactive Media Arts from Brooklyn College in the Spring of 2008. He holds a BA from the University of California, San Diego (2001) in Film and Video, Media Arts with a minor in Music Technology. Nick hopes to develop in his work a better fusion of interactive video and music in performance.
http://www.neckandtongue.com/
http://www.nicklesley.com/
9pm - $10 suggested donation
Thursday September 4th
Agathe Max + Tony Conrad
Agathe Max is a french musician based in Lyon. She mostly performs as a solo violin act, enhanced with various loops, distortions and other effects. She has been a member of Brown Recluse, Clara Clara and is a current member of Promise is yours. Her album to come will be released by the infamous TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS label. She has been very much on tour in the last few years sharing gigs with important international acts such as Carla Bozulich, Jonathan Kane, David Daniell, Melt Banana… Her music is either composed or improvised, depending of the shape of the project. In addition to her musical carreer, Agathe Max is also a visual artist, a jeweller and an activist in the musical and artistic community in Lyon.
She recorded a first demo in february 2007 of entirely improvised music before recording her first official release on ANGRY BALLERINA records in the shape of a live album recorded at Lyon’s fave experimental music dive, the SONIC. Her music is hypnotic, pulsed if not rythmic in a real way, raw & sincere yet sophisticated. It’s an invitation to explore the depths of true feelings, palpable, organic, pagan and spiritual.
Max will mostly present pieces of the new album « this silver string » released on Table of The Elements in September. This album has been recorded in Lyon, France, last february. She will also present a new piece, just worked on, which is based on an Indian raga mixed with distortions and loop effects, and mostly improvised.
Tony Conrad is a video/sound artist, musician/composer, filmmaker, teacher and writer. His collaboration Outside the Dream Syndicate (1972) with the German Krautrock group Faust is a classic of minimal music, and his film The Flicker (1966) is a key work of the structural film movement. Conrad was a founding member of the Theater of Eternal Music, nicknamed The Dream Syndicate, which included John Cale, Angus MacLise, La Monte Young and Marion Zazeela. Conrad has composed more than a dozen audio works for strings with solo amplified violin. He began to work in video and performance in the 1970s as a professor at Antioch College in Ohio and at the Department of Media Study in the University at Buffalo, where he continues to teach. His work has been shown in many museums and galleries in Europe and North America.
Tony Conrad will perform on violin with recorded accompaniment.
8pm $10
Friday September 5th
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM AND WFMU PRESENT A MONTH OF COLLABORATIVE CONCERTS
featuring:
Dan Bodah, host of Airborn Event
The Pyramid Scheme Trio and Bing & Ruth bring an evening of delicate sounds and hopeful ambiances to IPR, presented by WFMU DJ Dan Bodah, who will also share his work with manipulated field recordings. All three come from different directions to a similar end — the creation of habitable sound environments, from the post-jazz explorations of the Pyramid Scheme Trio, to the monumental minimalist melodicism of Bing & Ruth, to the dream chamber of Bodah’s drones.
Bing & Ruth: imdavidmoore.com
Formed in 2006 by Brooklyn based composer and pianist David Moore, ambient chamber band Bing and Ruth utilizes a large number of traditional acoustic instruments to craft expansive soundscapes and quiet microtonal textures. With clarinets, voices, cellos, bass, percussion, and piano, the group calls upon a family of experienced musicians and improvisers who ably interpret Moore’s slow-developing, visceral compositions. In addition to their unique live performances, Bing and Ruth currently has two albums to their name; 2006’s self-titled debut and last year’s Kenitle Floors. While a majority of the band resides in New York City, its official membership includes many friends currently scattered throughout the world.
The Pyramid Scheme Trio: myspace.com/thepyramidschemetrio
Consisting of Victor Signore (saxophone), J Starpoli (trombone), and Josiah Cuneo (drums and percussion), the trio Pyramid Scheme creates original music with an experimental mindset. Freewheeling explorations of sound color and loudness fuse with original material and diverse approaches to musical communication. Using acoustic instruments, Pyramid Scheme’s music reflects the band’s experiences with audio and visual art, academic and esoteric knowledge,underground radio, technology and performance. Energetic, unconventional investigations into the nature of sound and musical creativity provide the essence of the music of Pyramid Scheme.
DJ Dan Bodah: http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/AE
Dan has been hosting experimental music on the radio since 1994. He has produced the freeform Airborne Event radio broadcast on WFMU since 1999, now airing from 6-9 AM on Sundays. Dan spins everything from avant garde crunk to acid folk junk and gypsy punk. He recently got back to his ambient sound collage roots with the Airborne Event Dronecast, a weekly WFMU podcast of field recordings immersed in honey
and converted into new psychedelic landscapes.
Saturday September 6th
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM AND WFMU PRESENT A MONTH OF COLLABORATIVE CONCERTS
featuring:
Irene Trudel
with David Garland, Pete Galub, Greta Gertler & Friends + Noa Babayof
http://www.3garlands.com/davidgarland/about.html
David Garland’s early fascination with adventurous music was confirmed in 1968 when he attended a concert by Jimi Hendrix and had his 13-year-old mind blown by the opening act, England’s Soft Machine. Growing up in an artistic family in Lexington, MA, Garland drummed in what was literally a garage band, and taught himself piano and guitar. By the time he attended Rhode Island School of Design (’72-’76, overlapping with members of Talking Heads), Garland was organizing free-improv ensembles, playing jazz piano, composing chamber music, and singing songs. After graduating with honors from RISD, Garland moved to New York City primarily to hear and make music.
Garland’s first album, 1987’s “Control Songs,” on the German label Review Records, included musicians John Zorn and Christian Marclay. In 1985 and ‘86 Garland was one of five improvising vocalists, with Arto Lindsay, Shelley Hirsch, David Moss, and Sussan Deihim, in “Dead Stories” and “Tower of Babel”—concert and theater projects by turntable pioneer Christian Marclay.
Garland formed The Worlds of Love with banjo and synthesizer player Cinnie Cole and percussionist Ikue Mori (of DNA), releasing an album and touring Europe in 1989. With The Worlds of Love, Garland recorded an album of songs by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, “I Guess I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” released in Japan in 1993.
Garland’s 2007 album “Noise In You” (Family Vineyard) is his most heartfelt and imaginative, and his first to be widely distributed. In “Noise In You” Garland has created a sumptuous experimental song cycle in which his voice is joined by the voices of some of the most creative of a younger generation of song-inventors: Sufjan Stevens, Diane Cluck, and others. David’s voice can also be heard on WNYC as the host of Evening Music, Fridays through Sundays, and as host of “Spinning On Air.”
Pete Galub cites a diverse range of musical influences from the likes of Thelonius Monk to 60’s and 80’s melodic guitar pop music a la the Byrds, Big Star, and the Chills, as well as folk/country tunesmiths like the Louvin Brothers and Michael Hurley, and raw punk groups like Wire and the Undertones. Pete has had the pleasure of sharing stages with the likes of Gillian Welch and Liz Phair and his music has received radio-play in the United States and Ireland, where he also lived for a year in 1999.
A strange cast of characters graces “Boy Gone Wrong”, the debut record by Brooklyn-based songwriter Pete Galub. Between members of Pete’s band, the Annuals, and producer Chris Cunningham the musicians on this record have been around and played with the likes of Marianne Faithful, hardcore band Negative Approach, no-waver James Chance and power popper Marshall Crenshaw. And the results are still not at all what you’d expect; a very refreshing dose of heartfelt, well-crafted and meticulously arranged indie pop/folk songs a la Big Star, Robyn Hitchcock, Will Oldham, and East River Pipe. With “Boy Gone Wrong”, Pete Galub establishes himself as one of the most interesting new songwriters to come around in a while.
Greta Gertler grew up near the beach in Sydney, Australia and currently lives amongst construction sites in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her debut album “THE BABY THAT BROUGHT BAD WEATHER” (2003) brought her into the light as “a hot commodity on the New York music scene” (WNYC, Soundcheck), with a “spacious voice and a welcome weakness of lushly orchestrated 70s-style pop” (The New Yorker). In the move from Australia to New York City, and with the encouragement of a recording deal from Jarvis Studios, she was inspired to write and co-produce her first solo album with Noah Simon over a three-year period, featuring an astounding group of musicians that she met in the streets and subways of New York.
The young Israeli singer/songwriter Noa Babayof is rapidly establishing a presence on the new international folk scene. Her debut album From A Window To A Wall was recently recorded and mixed by renowned Greg Weeks (The Espers) at his studio in Philadelphia. The album is set for a US/European release in spring 2008 on Weeks’ new analog recording label Language of Stone (distributed by Drag City).
From A Window To A Wall features lush string arrangements backing up Noa’s arresting singing and writing style. Noa is influenced by the likes of Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, along with such contemporary icons as Diane Cluck, Smog and the Espers. Anova Music, Noa’s Israeli management and label, released From A Window To A Wall locally in fall 2007.
8pm $10
Thursday September 11th
In the Shadow of No Towers
after Art Spiegelman
Concept by:
Maria Isabel Gouverneur, Anne Rothshild, Marco Cappelli
Video Art by:
Anne Rothshild
Graphic Art by:
Maria Isabel Gouverneur
Music by Syntax Error:
Marco Cappelli - guitars
Daniele Ledda - live electronics
Roberto Pellegrini - drums
Special guests:
Elliott Sharp - guitars, bass clarinet, live electronics
Eric Bogosian: speaker
8pm $15 in advance, $20 at the door.
for reservations, email reservations@issueprojectroom.org
to buy advance tickets, click here
Friday September 12th
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM AND WFMU PRESENT A MONTH OF COLLABORATIVE CONCERTS
The Brother Lucy Show with Kurt Gottschalk Presents A Neil Peart
Birthday Celebration
With Brown Wing Overdrive and Sean Meehan / David Watson duo
Brown Wing Overdrive is Chuck Bettis (electronics + vocals), Mikey IQ Jones (electronics + jaw harps + percussion + objects + vocals) and Derek Morton (electronics + banjo). They cite as influences pollution, angry shamans, burning circuitry, lonely poltergeists, sandpaper, dental work, alarm clocks, hallucinogenic banjo claw hammer, trash trucks, beat box’in, synthy modular meltdown and chaotic analog. Their CD “ESP Organism” will be released in October on Tzadik.
http://www.myspace.com/brownwingoverdrive
Sean Meehan has been active in improvised music in New York since the late 80s. He plays a single snare drum, sometimes augmented with cymbals or other objects, in a manner that sheds conventional usage and reconstructs the conception and function of the instrument. His concerts around the world are often staged in unobserved and unconsidered outdoor locations. He has recorded solo and with Sachiko M, Ellen Fullman, Tetuzi Akiyama, Toshimaru Nakamura and others. His artistic output also includes the construction of “performance objects” that serve as “compositional things,” such as “gift iii’” which musically activated a sink full of dishes, and a boxed set of four sculpted cassettes to be played in the mind.
http://home.earthlink.net/~overturnedbowl/index_2.htm
Guitarist and bagpiper David Watson hails from New Zealand, where he was a member of Primitive Arts Group and co-founded Braille Records. He released three LPs on Braille, and did much to create an improv/noise-music scene where previously there was none. In 1987 he moved to New York and has performed in clubs, new music and concert venues throughout New York, Europe, Australia, NZ and Japan. He has worked with Ikue Mori, Marc Ribot, Zeena Parkins, Kato Hideki, Cecil Taylor, Andrea Parkins and others, and has curated music series at Roulette, Experimental Intermedia, St. Marks Church, Greenwich House, Bang-on-a-Can, PS 1, and PS 122. In 2007, he released “Fingering an Idea” (XI), a two-disc set for multiple guitars and bagpipes, and “Throats” (Ecstatic Peace) with Shelley Hirsch and Makagami Koichi.
Kurt Gottschalk writes about, talks about, thinks about, listens to and plays (on the guitar, on the radio) music. He still likes every band he ever liked.
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/KU
Saturday September 13th
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM AND WFMU PRESENT A MONTH OF COLLABORATIVE CONCERTS
featuring:
DJ TONY COULTER
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/TC
Tony Coulter has been on the radio in the New York City area continuously since 1985 — at one point, on three stations at once. His only excuse for hogging the airwaves is that he likes everything from Pierre Henry to America. He has also occasionally written about music for magazines such as Ear, i/e (later e/i), and the Rail. He has way too many records.
STERLING BASEMENT
http://www.johnroach.net/pages/sterling.html
Sterling Basement - Songs of the Gowanus Canal
Sterling Basement are John Roach, John Hudak, Shawn Onsgard, Matthew Rohrer
John Roach is a Brooklyn-based artist working in many media, including sculpture, video, installation, internet collaboration, and sound art. He is usually not happy unless he is jamming things together that don’t seem to fit. Collaboration is a key component of his work, as can be seen in the Free103.9 Wavefarm project Trailhead, realized with the artist James Rouvelle and poet Matthew Rohrer, as well as in his ongoing networked performance project Simultaneous Translation. His work has been exhibited at many venues at home and abroad, including Parkers Box in Brooklyn, Flux Factory in Queens, the Saint Stephen Museum and 2B Galeria in Hungary, and
the ZAIM gallery in Yokohama, Japan.
www.johnroach.net
Shawn Onsgard
Composer and performer Shawn Onsgard is currently developing an improvisatory solo piano repertoire that explores imbalanced harmonic structures inspired by Alexander Scriabin and Vijay Iyer. When not at the piano, he composes for all sound-producing things, from ice cream trucks, to hundred-meter piano wires, to snoring grandparents. His work, which explores politics, metaphor, narrative, and perception of space through sound, has been performed and exhibited internationally. Onsgard has collaborated with composers Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier, filmmakers Pierre Huyghe and Jane & Louise Wilson, choreographer Mollie O’Brien and media artists Woody Vasulka and Aaron Davidson & Melissa Dubbin.
www.onsgard.net
Matthew Rohrer is the author of Rise Up (Wave Books, 2007) and A Green Light (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of Satellite (Verse Press, 2001), and 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.
www.wavepoetry.com/authors/32-matthew-rohrer
John Hudak has been interested in sound and music from the age of four, when he began to play a variety of instruments. At the University of Delaware (BA, English 1981) and Naropa Institute for the Arts (1979), he studied video, photography, creative writing, and dance. He then began to create taped soundtracks for his solo performance-art/dance pieces that later developed into sound-only pieces. In recent years, he has concentrated solely on sound, particularly natural sounds. Hudak’s current work focuses on the rhythms and melodies that exist in our daily aural environments. These sounds usually remain hidden, as we tend to overlook their musical qualities, or their musical qualities are obscured through mixture with other sounds. In simplified terms, what he is doing could be considered “re-framing what is already there so that it can be admired.”
www.johnhudak.net
In this performance, Sterling Basement presents an homage to the Gowanus Canal. The ensemble includes the multidisciplinary artist John Roach on his homemade Band-O-Fly instrument, sound artist John Hudak with homemade thumb pianos, pianist and composer Shawn Onsgard with his mockingbird Melodica, and the poet Matthew Rohrer delivering texts related to the once thriving shipping hub.
If, Bwana and Michael Peters, sounds and texts
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=107044282
IF, BWANA
Since the 1980s, Al Margolis has earned an international reputation for his experimental music recorded under the name If, Bwana. Realized with a range of collaborators, If, Bwana music is a fusion of ambient, industrial, and musique concrete, featuring strange soundscapes that are both soothing and unnerving, often at the same time. Margolis has also been very active as the owner of two prolific labels, the cassette label Sound of Pig and, since the 1990s, Pogus Productions, a CD label with a focus on experimental contemporary classical music.
MICHÆL PETERS
Michael Peters is the author of Vaast Bin (Calamari Press, Fall 2007). Various manifestations of his written-sound-images have appeared in journals and books like Sleepingfish, Word for/Word, LUNGFULL!, Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, SPELL, Spinning Jenny, and Richard Kostelanetz’s Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes. His visual poetic structures can be found in various special collection libraries like the Sackner Archive; they have also appeared in numerous galleries and anthologies, such as the
recent Ohio State Visual Poetry in the Avant Writing Collection and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts’ Vispoeologee. Most notably with Poem Rocket and the Be Blank Consort, aural manifestations of his sounds have appeared on recording labels such as Atavistic, PCP Entertainment, Magic Eye, and Luna Bisonte Prods. This appearance at Issue Project Room will be his third collaboration with Al Margolis.
Sunday September 14th
Lisa Cooley Fine Art + ISSUE Project Room Present:
“Creswell Crags” exhibition opening with live performances by:
Barry Weisblat + Toshio Kajiwara + Aki Onda
+ Margarida Garcia + Bryan Eubanks
As I travel through the mountain these spears, these crosses, these trefoils, these leafy hearts, these composite crosses, these triangles, these creatures facing each other and opposing each other to mark their eternal conflict, their divisions, their duality, awaken strange memories in me. I seemed to read everywhere a story of childbirth in war, a story of genesis and chaos… There is… a music of numbers and this music which reduces the chaos of the material world to its principles expl’l2ains by a kind of awesome mathematics how nature is ordered and how she directs the birth of forms that she pulls out of chaos and everything I saw seemed to correspond to a number – the statues, the forms, the shadows, always presented these recurring numbers…
- Antonin Artuad, “The Mountain of Signs” from Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara
Lisa Cooley presents Creswell Crags, an exhibition examining aspects of the primal or the ancient. The exhibition will run from September 7th until October 5th and will feature painting, photography, sculpture, weaving and video from Mark Barrow, Michael Bauer, Josh Faught, Frank Haines, Alex Hubbard, Rashid Johnson, Zak Prekop, Alan Reid, Erin Shirreff and J. Parker Valentine.
The exhibition’s title derives from a particular British Paleolithic site of the same name. Such a specific title allows the exhibition to bind together disparate threads running through the works presented, many of which utilize essential materials like raw wood, wax, plaster, cloth and torn paper. Several works concern primitive crafts like weaving, tool-making, and altar-making, while others specifically address the idea of antiquity. Overall, each work possesses a certain rawness, either in materials, marks, or content.
exhibition images here: http://www.lisa-cooley.com/exhibitions/
Barry Weisblat
Brooklyn born musician
Homemade Modified and Broken Electronics
collaborations include work with Margarida Garcia, Toshio Kajiwara, Tim Barnes, Ricardo Arias, Sean Meehan, Dion Workman, Andrew Lafkas, Bryan Eubanks
Toshio Kajiwara
A sound performance artist currently based in Tokyo after 20 years in NYC. His obsessive interest in archiving obscure recordings from the times past, naturally extended itself into a series of sound performances using record players and tape machines in early 90’s NYC. Later he toured and recorded as a member of Christian Marclay Trio, and collaborated extensively with Tim Barnes, Peter Kowald, Shelley Hirsch, DJ Olive, Marina Rosenfeld, Barry Weisblat, Margarida Garcia and Okkyung Lee amongst others. Curated “Phonomena” improvisation series at Tonic for its first 5 years and runs the label of the same title. 2008 projects includes a dance piece premiered in Cuba entitled “EIS”, extensive collaboration with a Japanese choreographer Yoko Higashino, and a project entitled “Window Matter” organized in Lisbon by media artists John Klima and Adriana Sa.
Margarida Garcia
Musician born in 1977, Lisbon.
Doublebassist, public activicty since 1997.
Some selected music collaborations in live/recording settings include Manuel Mota, Nöel Akchoté, Barry Weisblat, Otomo Yoshihide, Toshio Kajiwara, Oren Ambarchi, Ferran Fages, Alfredo C. Monteiro, Ruth Barberán, John Tilbury, Eddie Prevost, Bryan Eubanks, Andrew Lafkas, Rhodri Davies, David Keenan, Alex Neilson and Aki Onda.
Bryan Eubanks (b. 1977) is a musician and sound artist who focuses on collaborative improvisation and solo musical projects, working in live electronic settings with an instrument of his own design that integrates open-circuits and samplers, as well as in acoustic settings with the Soprano Saxophone. He has worked extensively with Joe Foster, Jean Paul Jenkins, Vic Rawlings, Doug Theriault, Leif Sundstrom (eventually in the duo GOD), and Andrew Lafkas. He has released recordings on EMR, Jyrk, Little Enjoyer, and Gameboy and performed music across the US, Europe, Japan, and Korea.http://www.rasbliutto.net/bryaneubanks
Aki Onda is an electronic musician, composer, and photographer. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New York. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project – works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images set to live guitar improvisation. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Shelley Hirsch. www.akionda.net
Lisa Cooley Fine Art
34 Orchard Street
$5 6-8pm
Wednesday September 17
MATA Interval 2.1
Music of the Dublin collective Grúpat
Performed by Object Collection and curator Jennifer Walshe
MATA kicks off the second season of its bi-monthly series Interval with a program of music by the radical and enigmatic South Dublin collective Grúpat. Curated by Irish vocalist and composer Jennifer Walshe, Grúpat’s greatest champion, Interval 2.1 features the collective’s eclectic blend of textural and playful music, performed by Ms. Walshe and up-and-coming New York interdisciplinary group Object Collection.
Program Info
The Grúpat collective, comprised mainly of artists living in the South Dublin County Council area of Ireland, is a political and artistic group based on the ideas of the Situationists, graffiti artists, direct action networks, and others, which they called “The Avant Gardaí.” Grúpat works primarily in sound, with work ranging from strictly-notated compositions for classic ensembles to graphic scores, sonic sculptures, sound installations and interventions in both the public and private sphere. These facts sometimes make it difficult to determine exactly who or what is in Grúpat. Notable members, however, include Bulletin M, The Parks Service, Detleva Verens, Ukeoirn O’Connor, Flor Hartigan and O’Brien Industries. This sub-set of Grúpat often exhibit under the name “6by4” a reference to the Parisian composers known as “Les Six” and the postcode Dublin 24, in which they all reside.
Vocalist and composer Jennifer Walshe has been working closely with members of Grúpat as a commissioner and curator since their inception. She has commissioned a number of works for solo voice which she has premiered to critical acclaim at concerts in the Kilkenny Arts Festival (Ireland), the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Tmu-na Theatre (Israel) and Frau Musica Nova (Germany). Grúpat members have exploited Walshe’s commitment to non-traditional musical notation by writing pieces for her voice which incorporate photographs of the landscape around Tallaght, embroidered pictures from the Tallaght Echo and diagrams of the sky over South Dublin County into their scores. These unusual notational methods have garnered much interest for Grúpat members’ work - Three Songs by Ukeoirn O’Connor, Scintillia Studies by Detleva Verens and Whives by Flor Hartigan were exhibited in the Museum of Arts and Design, New York in November 2007.
For her performance of Grúpat works during Interval 2.1, Walshe will be joined in by members of Object Collection. Founded in 2004 by multidisciplinary artist Kara Feely and composer/instrumentalist Travis Just, Object Collection is a collaborative theater-music performance group solidly rooted in the experimental tradition. Their dedication to new artistic work in hybrid forms, including the use of found sound, is perfectly suited to the work of Grúpat artists and their common aesthetic.
Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin. She studied composition with John Maxwell Geddes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and Kevin Volans in Dublin. She graduated from Northwestern University, Chicago, with a doctoral degree in composition in 2002. While at Northwestern, her chief teachers were Amnon Wolman and Michael Pisaro. In 2003-04 she was a fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, and from 2004-05 she lived in Berlin as a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm. From 2006 to 2008 she is the composer-in-residence for the In Context 3 project in South Dublin. In 2007 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York.
Her works have been performed throughout Europe, the US, and Canada by groups such as Alter Ego, Ensemble Récherche, Ensemble Resonanz, Apartment House, Ensemble Intégrales, Neue Vocalisten Stuttgart, the Crash Ensemble, ensemble ascolta, Champ d’Action, the Rilke Ensemble, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Irish Youth Wind Ensemble, the Bozzini Quartet, Concorde, Ensemble Musica Nova, Ensemble Chronophonie, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Wind Quintet, the Hebrides Ensemble, Psappha, and Q-02 among others. She has received commissions from RTÉ, Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), Sudwest Rundfunk (SWR), Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, Musik der Jahrhundert, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Dresdener Tage der zeitgenössischen Musik, Wien Modern, the Dresden Semper Oper, ZKM (Karlsruhe), the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, the Project Arts Centre and the National Concert Hall, Ireland, as well as commission awards from the New Music Scheme of the Arts Council of Ireland and the Scottish Arts Council.
From 2003-04, she was composer-in-residence at the National Sculpture Factory, Cork. In 2000 she won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, and received first prize in the SCI/ASCAP 2002 Commission Competition. In July 2002 she returned to Darmstadt to lecture in composition at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Music. Her works moving in/love songs/city front garden with old men and been in a room and a room and a room and a room were shortlisted for the 2002 and 2003 Gaudeamus Foundation compositions respectively.
In addition to her activities as a composer, Jennifer Walshe frequently performs as a vocalist, specialising in extended techniques. Many of her recent compositions were commissioned for her voice in conjunction with other instruments. She is also active as an improviser, performing regularly with musicians in Chicago and Europe. Forthcoming projects include a portrait concert in Parma, Italy, with Alter Ego, solo performances in Chicago, Belgium and Belgrade, and commissions for the 2006 ISCM World New Music Days and 2007 Maerzmusik festivals. She is currently living in Berlin as a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm.
BIOGRAPHIES
Grúpat collective
“So what is sound? Is it stillness? Does it shock flesh, the drums, the mind squealing? Is it the resolution or the tension? The silence or the not silent? So we sit or stand and even to hear the wildest anti-musical noise or nothing—it is still a creature in a jar. We want to free the creature. This is the point of everything you’ve heard before. The point, the sharpness of it, the moment where the idea takes shape and enters the flesh, drawing blood, opening bodies to air, not a penetration but a commingling, an embrasure, a knitting together, spillage and contamination—to set the creature free. Sound is the creature. Sound is a thing with feathers.” — Grúpat
For individual Grúpat Composer bios, please visit www.matafestival.org/interval/?p=31
Object Collection was founded in 2004 by director/writer/designer Kara Feely and composer/instrumentalist Travis Just as a collaborative theater-music performance group solidly rooted in the experimental tradition. Dedicated to new artistic work in hybrid forms, Object Collection constructs performances using a unique palette of live sound, composed music, and found text. Based in New York City, the group presents collaborative projects and curated series both at home and abroad using an expanding network of local and international affiliated artists.
8pm $10
Wednesday September 18th
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM BENEFIT AUCTION AT PHILLIPS de PURY
click here for more information
Friday September 19th
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM AND WFMU PRESENT A MONTH OF COLLABORATIVE CONCERTS
featuring:
Bethany Ryker, host of Stochastic Hit Parade (www.wfmu.org/playlists/HP)
BLOODCOUNT
Tim Berne - sax; Chris Speed - sax/clarinet,Michael Formanek - bass and Jim Black - drums
http://www.screwgunrecords.com/
NORMAL LOVE
http://www.myspace.com/normallove
NEW YORK MINIATURIST ENSEMBLE
http://www.nyme.org/
8pm $10
Saturday September 20rd
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM AND WFMU PRESENT A MONTH OF COLLABORATIVE CONCERTS
featuring:
WFMU music director/DJ: Brian Turner
www.wfmu.org/playlists/BT
Cooper-Moore Solo / Music: Old and New Paths
Cooper-Moore performs Music: Old and New Paths on his handcrafted instruments. Old and New Paths is a mix, a gumbo, a stew of gospel, bop, avant and blues based music which is used to accompany stories about people that he’s known, and to accompany stories that he heard as a child living in the Piedmont area of Virginia.
http://www.jazz.com/encyclopedia/cooper-moore-gene-y-ashton
Ryan Jewell & Greg Kelley Duo
Ryan Jewell is an experimental percussionist and composer from Columbus, Ohio, who’s collaborated with the likes of C. Spencer Yeh, Tatsuya Nakatani, and has been a frequent member of the band Psychedelic Horseshit. http://myspace.com/ryanxing
Greg Kelley has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Japan at numerous festivals {No Fun/NYC, Musique Action/France, Superfici Sonore/Italy}, in clubs {Bowery Ballroom/NYC, Choppin Block/Boston, Instantes Chavires/Paris}, outdoors {Baltimore, Big Sur, Mhere}, in living rooms & basements, in a bank {Argentina}, and at least once on a vibrating floor {MIT}. He has collaborated w/ a number of musicians throughout the globe {Keiji Haino, Kevin Drumm, Jandek} performing experimental music, free jazz and noise, releasing a number of recordings in the process {RRR, Twisted Village, Freedom From}. He constantly seeks to push the boundaries of the trumpet and of ‘music’. He is the Minister of Fanfares for the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland.http://www.geocities.com/greyelkgel/
Heathen Shame
Unbridled twin guitar destruction courtesy of Wayne Rogers and Kate Village (Major Stars, Twisted Village label/store and more) accompanied by trumpeter Greg Kelley.
www.twistedvillage.com
8pm $10
Tuesday September 23rd
Jacob Kierkegaard + Kyle Bobby Dunn
LABYRINTHITIS
Jacob Kirkegaard has turned his ears inwards: His new work LABYRINTHITIS is an interactive sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist’s auditory organs – and will cause audible responses in those of the audience.
LABYRINTHITIS relies on a principle employed both in medical science and musical practice: When two frequencies at a certain ratio are played into the ear, additional vibrations in the inner ear will produce a third frequency. This frequency is generated by the ear itself: a so-called “distortion product otoacoustic emission” (DPOAE), also referred to in musicology as “Tartini tone”.
By arranging the tones from his ears in a composition and playing them to an audience, the artist evokes further distortion effects in the ears of his listeners. At first, each new tone can only be perceived “intersubjectively”: inside the head of each one in the audience. Kirkegaard artificially reproduces this tone and introduces it, “objectively”, into his composition. When combined with another distorting frequency, it will create another tone… until, step by step, a pattern of descending tonal structure emerges whose spiral form mirrors the composition of resonant spectra in the human cochlea. Read more about Labyrinthitis here: http://fonik.dk/works/labyrinthitis.html
Jacob Kirkegaard is an artist with an interest in the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time and hearing. His performances, audio/visual installations and compositions deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain inaccessible to sense perception. With the use of unorthodox recording tools such as accelerometers, hydrophones or home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard manages to capture and explore “secret sounds” - distortions, interferences, vibrations, ambiences - from within a variety of environments: volcanic earth, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, crystals, ice… and the human inner ear itself.
A graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, Kirkegaard has given workshops and lectures in academic institutions such as the Royal Academy of Architecture in Copenhagen and the Art Institute of Chicago. During the last ten years, he has been presenting exhibitions and touring festivals and conferences throughout the world. He has released five albums (mostly on the British label “Touch”). Among his numerous collaborators are JG Thirlwell, Ann Lislegaard, CM von Hausswolff, Philip Jeck and Lydia Lunch.
Jacob’s website: www.fonik.dk
Kyle Bobby Dunn is a young, New York-based minimalist composer and sound artist who draws his material from outdoor locations, classical instrumentation and generates sounds from site-specific environments and processes them using analog setups and a laptop. He was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1986 and has been an active performer since 2000. He’s had releases on Kning Disk, Housing (his own imprint), This Generation Tapes and his latest full-length release, Fragments & Compositions, is out now on Sedimental.
This exclusive appearance at Issue Project Room will find Dunn utilizing newly built and arranged compositional systems for violin performers and brand new “love songs.”
8pm $10
Wednesday September 24
Jason Kahn-percussion, electronics (Zurich)
Bryan Eubanks-electronics
Andrew Lafkas-doublebass, electronics
First time meeting of this trio for two sets of improvisations.
Jason Kahn is a sound and visual artist based in Zürich. His work includes sound installation, performance and composition. He was born in New York, grew up in Los Angeles and relocated to Europe in 1990.
Kahn has been exhibiting his sound and visual works since the late 1990’s, and has had solo and group exhibitions internationally, including museums, galleries and arts spaces in the USA, Canada, France, Croatia, Germany, Argentina, Egypt, Poland, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria and Spain. He has given concerts at various festivals, art spaces and clubs throughout Europe, North and South America, Japan, Mexico, Korea, Israel, Turkey, Russia, Lebanon, Egypt, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia.
Originally a percussionist, Kahn later began integrating live electronics into his playing. He currently performs with different combinations of percussion, analogue synthesizer or computer. As a composer, Kahn’s work draws on electronic and acoustic sound sources to create slowly developing compositions imbued with a sense of timelessness. His work addresses the entity of sound as both a physical and psychological factor shaping our consciousness. Kahn’s sound installations seek to enhance spatial awareness through sonic intervention, focusing on expanding our perception to other dimensions of seeing, hearing and feeling a space.
http://jasonkahn.net
Bryan Eubanks (b. 1977) is a musician who focuses on collaborative improvisation and solo musical projects, working in live electronic settings with an instrument of his own design that integrates open-circuits and samplers, as well as in acoustic settings with the Soprano Saxophone. His work with sound installation is exploring sound as a function of architecture, cognition, and temporality. He became musically active in Portland, Oregon, and worked extensively with Joe Foster, Jean Paul Jenkins, Doug Theriault, and Leif Sundstrom (eventually in the duo GOD). Since relocating to New York he primarily collaborates with Andrew Lafkas and Vic Rawlings. He has released recordings on EMR, Jyrk, Little Enjoyer, and Gameboy and has performed music across the US, Europe, Japan, and Korea.
http://rasbliutto.net/bryaneubanks
8pm $10
Thursday September 25th
Mattin + Bernhard Gal
Mattin is a Basque artist working with noise and improvisation. His work seeks to address the social and economic structures of experimental music production through live performance, recordings and writing.
Using a conceptual approach, he aims to question the nature and parameters of improvisation, specifically the relationship between the idea of ”freedom”and constant innovation that it traditionally implies, and the established conventions of improvisation as a genre.
Mattin considers improvisation not only as an interaction between musicians and instruments, but as a situation involving all the elements that constitute a concert, including the audience and the social and architectural space. He tries to expose the stereotypical relation between active performer and passive audience, producing a sense of strangeness and alienation that disturbs this relationship.
Collaborations
Mattin has collaborated with many musicians inlcuding: Eddie Prevost (Sakada), ” ” [sic], Tim Goldie (Deflag Haemorrhage/Haien Kontra), Lucio Capece (NMM), Mark Wastell (Belaska), Rosy Parlane, Radu Malfatti, Taku Unami, Dion Workman, Junko, Billy Bao, Xabier Erkizia, Alberto Lopez, Josetxo Anitua & Inigo Eguillor (Josetxo Grieta), Tim Barnes, Matthew Bower, Oren Ambarchi, Margarida Garcia, Dean Roberts, Klaus Fillip, Bruce Russell, Matt Earle, Campbell Kneale, Werner Dafeldecker, Cremaster, DD Kern, Kouhei Matsunaga, Christof Kurzmann, Matthew Hyland, Joel Stern, Anthony Guerra, Takehiro Nishide, Taku Sugimoto, Yasuo Totsuka, Axel Doerner, Masafumi Ezaki, Tony Conrad, Michel Henritzi and Philip Best.
Mattin has toured Europe, Japan, USA, China, Australia and New Zealand.
He has performed in many international festivals including: ad libitum (Warsaw 2007), Argos (Brussels 2007), Sonorites (Montpelier 2007), Densites (Fresnes en Woevre 2007), Jazz Festival (Mullhouse 2007), Noise Festival (Ljubljana 2007), Sonic Protest (Paris 2007), Escena contemporanea (Madrid 2007), ErstQuake (New York 2006), No Trend (London 2006), Parthenay Festival (Parthenay 2006), LMC festival (London 2005), What is music? (Australia 2004),Improvisations (Adelaide 2004), Avanto (Helsinki 2004), Lieux Communs (Montreal 2004), Observatori (Valencia 2004), Ciberart y MEM (Bilbao 2004), LEM e Improvisa ( Barcelona 2003), Freedom of the City Festival (2003 & 2002 London), Konfrontation 2003 (Nickelsdorf), SKIF 7 ( 2003 San Petersburg & Moscow) , Wrong Festival (Barcelona 2002), MEM (Bilbao 2003, 2002,2001), Ertz 2001 & 2002 (Bera) y Elektronikaldia (2001,Donostia/San Sebastian).
Exhibitions
He had exhibited his sound work in places such as Arthouse (Dublin), Arteleku (Donostia/San Sebastian), Abisal y Sala Rekalde (Bilbao), CataLyst Arts (Belfast), Cubbit Gallery (Londres), ZAIM (Yokohama), Alma (Londres).
http://www.mattin.org
Bernhard Gal
“relive”
In his solo laptop performance “relive”, Bernhard Gal recycles sound materials from previous works and sound installations, creating new musical structures live in concert. Fragments of these works are taken apart and reassembled in a quasi-improvised, real-time context. The pool of used sounds ranges from environmental sound recordings (phonographies) to language samples as well as instrumental sounds. Additional materials from current music and art projects are constantly being added to Gal’s sound library, hence his ‘repertoire’ keeps expanding and changing continuously.
A CD release of “relive” is scheduled to be published on the Austrian label Gromoga Records in fall of 2008, hence this concert can be seen as the New York record preview party.
The Austrian artist, composer and musicologist Bernhard Gál has become internationally known as one of the most prolific sound artists of a younger generation. During the past ten years Gál has created around 50 sound installations and media art projects, combining sound, light, objects, spatial concepts and video projections into intense and often site-specific interdisciplinary art works. He also composes music for acoustic instruments and electro-acoustic music. As a (laptop) musician he has been performing around 150 concerts on four continents. He runs the record label Gromoga Records and is director of the Austrian art organization ‘sp ce’. Currently, Gál lives as a freelance composer, artist and curator in Vienna and Berlin where he also taught sound art at the University of Arts in 2006-07. For his music and art projects Gál has received numerous awards, his music has been made available on some 25 audio publications.
8pm $10
Friday September 26th
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM AND WFMU PRESENT A MONTH OF COLLABORATIVE CONCERTS
featuring:
Fabio, host of “Strength through Failure”
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/FR
Michael Evans/Ken Montgomery Duo
Lary 7 - Projection/performance
Kenta Nagai - solo
Michael Evans is an improvising drummer, percussionist, thereminist and composer whose work investigates and embraces the collision of sound and theatrics. His improvisational methods combine ordered systems with arbitrary choices, creating unique, indelible experiences. He has performed with a wide range of musical talents throughout the world, including Jac Berrocal, EasSide Percussion, Fast Forward (Gobo), God is my Co-Pilot, Alexander Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten), Gordon Monahan, Joe Morris, Evan Parker, William Parker, and the KBZ 2000. Michael Evans lives and works in the city-across-the-river: Brooklyn, but his spirit hails from somewhere in the outer reaches a distant galaxy. For this program,
Michael Evans will be performing with Ken Montgomery for this rare presentation.
Ken Montgomery is a New York-based visual artist and “noisician” whose involvement in the cassette-culture and mail-art movements of the late seventies led to the creation, in 1989, of the first and arguably still the most important sound art gallery in New York City: Generator. Located first in the East Village and later in Chelsea, Generator’s wide scope and novel approach toward audio art made it a vector-point for some of the most interesting and important artists from around the world. Ken was also the founder of A.T.M.O.T.W. — Art is Throwing Money Out The Window — and Generator Sound Art Inc., and he co-founded the seminal experimental labels
Generations Unlimited and Pogus Productions. As a composer, by the early eighties Ken was creating multi-channel sound works often performed in total darkness. More recently Ken has been focusing on visual art, collage, bookmaking, and international correspondence art. As The Minister of Lamination (a.k.a. Egnekn) he is the world’s foremost practitioner of Lamination Art. Montgomery has collaborated with a wide variety of audio and visual artists including Conrad Schnitzler, David Lee Myers (Arcane Device), Zoe Beloff and Ishtvan Kantor (a.k.a. Monty Cantsin). Currently
Ken is working on a sound installation for the artist Emily Feinstein, as well as three sound works pending release on GD Stereo, Banned Production and Pogus Productions respectively.
Lary Seven is a multimedia alchemist able to coax profane, inscrutable sounds and images from numerous and mysterious devices. His work has been described as that of a magician or scientist — one who may not always be certain of the outcome, but who is determined to see it through to its (il)logical end. Since the late seventies, Lary has been building, soldering, photographing, recording, mixing, filming, playing, collecting, re-interpreting and creating in order to make something happen. He’s the
founder of the Analogue Society and co-founder of Plastikville Records and Directart Productions Ltd. Lary has released work on Touch, Diskono, Ectoplasm, Plastikville and Plastiktray records. He has performed in many countries in Europe as well as in the U.S. and Canada. Mr. Seven lives and works in Manhattan’s East Village and is one of the last remaining vestiges of a once-vibrant community. For this presentation, Lary Seven will have an extended and undefined interaction with a film projector.
Kenta Nagai is a sound and visual artist based in New York. He works with
acoustic and electronic sound, visual media and live performance. Nagai has appeared on several compilations including Eugene Chadborne’s “GuitarFestival Summer 1999″ album and on two recordings by composer Laura Andel, “Somnambulist” and “In::tension:”. As a performer on the Shamisen, Nagai has appeared in numerous concerts at venues as diverse as the Sculpture Center in Long Island City and Carnegie Hall. He was composer-in-residence at The Cave Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn from 1999 until 2002. In addition to his work as a guitarist, Nagai is involved in creating multi-media, interactive performance and installations while collaborating with a variety of artists. Among these projects is the longstanding collaborative relationship with choreographer Boaz Barkan. More recently, Nagai worked on the silent film “The Water Magician” (1933, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi), working and performing on the score for the presentation atthe Japan Society, NYC, and at the Hershhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Kenta will be performing solo for this event.
8pm $10
Saturday, September 27th
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM AND WFMU PRESENT A MONTH OF COLLABORATIVE CONCERTS
featuring:
Trouble, host of “This is the Modern World”
A viking ship appears on the horizon, a likeness of Loretta Lynn carved into its bow. Rare birds flock together to sing Francoise Hardy as soul hits. A sunset of blips and bleeps fills the air. Dj Trouble has been spinning a free-form mix of outerspace sounds for WFMU since 1995. Don’t get the viking lady mad.
with:
Lights
http://www.myspace.com/lightsmakemusic
Teeth Mountain
http://www.myspace.com/teethmountain
8pm $10
Tuesday September 30th
ISSUE Project Room’s Artist in Residence for Fall 2008:
Tristan Perich with Pianist David Broome
Compositions for soloist with 1-bit music:
- For Argeo (Argeo Ascani, baritone saxophone)
- A/B/C/D (Natacha Diels, flute)
- 5 Intersections (Tristan Perich, piano)
- The Curve of Forgotten Things (Sarah Moulton, soprano)
- Momentary Expanse (Peter Wise, vibraphone)
In all of his creative activities, Tristan Perich is inspired by the aesthetics of math and physics, and works with simple forms and complex systems. The challenge of elegance provokes his compositions for solo instruments, small ensemble and orchestra. As a visual artist, he works primarily with machines to create pen-on-paper drawings that explore the limits of traditional drawing through randomness and order.
In 2004 he began work on 1-Bit Music, combining his music with primitive, hand-programmed electronics that investigate the foundations of digital sound. The Village Voice, BOMB Magazine, BPM Magazine, Res Magazine, Wired News, Cool Hunting and Spin Magazine covered the release, which has also been featured on television. Surface Magazine called the boxes “profound throwbacks to the traditional album, a response to the intangibility of iTunes and mp3s in the form hand-held artwork.”
Perich’s compositions have been performed by ensembles including Bang on a Can (2008 People’s Commissioning Fund), counter)induction, Calder Quartet, New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Due East, Y Trio and Ensemble Pamplemousse at venues including the Whitney Museum, P.S.1 and Mass MoCA. His recent activities include electroacoustic pieces for 1-Bit Music with instrumental accompaniment. His experimental electronic music group, the Loud Objects, has performed in Germany, Japan, Italy (Screen Music 2), Norway (Piksel), England (Evolution) and the USA (including at the NIME festival). He has spoken twice at Dorkbot. Perich studied math, music and computer science at Columbia University after attending Philips Academy, Andover. More recently, he studied art, music and electronics at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.
http://www.ensemblepamplemousse.org/ppi/david.html
8pm $10
DECADES - a month long program featuring week-long presentations that span several decades of a genre or subject in music and art.
- A week of Women of Experimental Cinema curated by Meredith Drum and Suzanne Fiol
- A week of the compositions of Phill Niblock and Experimental Intermedia celebrating Niblock’s 75th Birthday Curated by Phill Niblock
- A week of Improvisation curated by Zeena Parkins and Suzanne Fiol
- A week of Darmstadt curated by Zach Layton and Nick Hallett
- A week of Noise curated by Thurston Moore
October 1-3
Women’s Experimental Cinema, A Historical Survey, to be presented at ISSUE PROJECT ROOM
Organized by Meredith Drum and Suzanne Fiol
Three evenings of experimental films and videos made by women artists in the U.S. over the last six decades, subjectively culled by three guest curators well respected for the intelligence of their programming.
Oct. 1 — A tribute to Women Artists Filmmakers, including films by Sara-Kathryn Arledge, Doris Chase, Silvianna Goldsmith, Storm De Hirsch, Marie Menken, Carolee Schneemann and Rosalind Schneider, programmed by MM Serra, Director of the Film-Makers Cooperative
Oct. 2 — Videos by Lynda Benglis, Dara Birnbaum, Pat Hearn, Cynthia Maughan, Howardena Pindell and Martha Wilson as Nancy Reagan, programmed by Rebecca Cleman, Director of Distribution of Electronic Arts Intermix
Oct. 3 — Films and Videos by Peggy Ahwesh, Martha Colburn, Michelle Handelman, Kerry Laitala, Xander Marro, Shana Moulton, Cecile Paris, Shannon Plumb, Ava Warbrick and Virginie Yassef and Aurelie Godard
The survey will commence with a rarely screened classic from the early 1940’s, Introspection, by Sara-Kathryn Arledge. In his book The Exploding Eye, Wheeler Winston Dixon has written, “Along with Maya Deren and Marie Menken, Sara Kathryn Arledge is one of the foremothers of the American experimental cinema.” This exquisite print of a film that deserves far more attention than it has received, presented by MM Serra, is a fitting start to the three subjective programs spanning 60 years and culminating with brand new work from Shannon Plumb and Martha Colburn. Marie Losier will conclude the series by presenting another gem, Star Eaters, Peggy Ahwesh’s brilliant 24-minute narrative.
The series is not intended as an exhaustive survey. The purpose is to extend past and current efforts to increase interest in experimental cinema by women, to inspire further study, and to bolster efforts to conserve films and videos by the artists presented. M.M. Serra’s program, “Women in Experimental Film,” which was presented during the Wack! Exhibition at P.S.1 in March 2008 is a precedent upon which the series builds. The screenings are also inspired by the publication of Women’s Experimental Cinema in 2007 by Duke University Press, edited by Robin Blaetz.
For more information and a complete list of films and videos to be shown, please visit:
http://womencinema.wordpress.com
About the guest curators:
M.M. Serra is a filmmaker, educator, curator and Director of the Film-Makers’ Co-operative. Her film Art Parade premiered in 2007 at the Womanizer Film program at Deitch Projects in Soho. She is featured in “Profiles from the Edge” in Swoon Magazine (2007, Issue 3) and her own work, as well as her curated programs, have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York; The Centre Georges Pompidou and the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris; the London Film Festival and Oberhausen International Short Film Festival. Serra teaches classes in Media Studies at The New School University including a seminar titled “Sexual Personae” and has recently curated the program “New York Experimental” for the Kulczyk Foundation and the Warszawa Kinolab in Poland.
Rebecca Cleman is the Director of Distribution of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). Since joining EAI in the year 2000, she has programmed many screenings devoted to the history of video art for the New York Underground Film Festival; Ocularis, Brooklyn; Squeaky Wheel, Buffalo; Union Cinema, Milwaukee; Anthology Film Archives, and the Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw Poland, among others. She has also participated in and organized a number of panels around moving image art and artists.
Marie Losier is a French-born filmmaker and film curator who lives and works in New York City, whose films and videos have been featured at numerous museums (Tate Modern, MOMA, Whitney Biennial…), galleries, festivals (Basel Art Fair 08), and biennials. Losier’s upcoming and first feature film “The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye” is dedicated to Genesis P-Orridge, Lady Jaye and her band Psychic TV3 and constitutes her latest Film Portrait of leading avant garde creators including George and Mike Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman and Tony Conrad. In 2000, she became the film programmer at the French Institute / Alliance Francaise in New York City, where she presents a weekly film series. She also programs experimental films at the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema (now at Participant Gallery, NYC) and Ocularis in Brooklyn and programs in Europe and all over in the States.
Generous support for this program has been provided by the Scope Foundation and by A.I.R. Gallery.
each evening is $10 and begins @ 8pm
Saturday October 4th
punk-rock dance
videos of anti-establishment nyc dance from 1988 - 1998
Curated by Jmy Leary
From the starting point of what today can be referred to as “the downtown dance community,” curator Jmy Leary journeys into the recent and somewhat obscure past of the NYC dance scene with a program of rarely seen videos from New York City choreographers 1988 - 1998. The focus in on the anti-institutional, side-project and alternative venue works of choreographers who never followed the rules. The screening includes exerpts of DanceNoise 1988, Nancy Meehan’s 1988, “Costal Traces,” RoseAnne Spradlin’s 1991 “Stranger on the Shore,” Paige Martin’s 1991 “Threading the Cooked Carriage,” and Stanley Love’s 1998 “Coven with and X.” This screening is part of an ongoing project to collect, archive and present videos, photographs, programs, posters, set props, sound scores, notes and other relics from the 80’s and 90’s NYC dance scene’s influential people, their work, collaborations, politics and persuasions.
Admission is $10 and the screening begins @ 8pm
Sunday October 5th
POLWECHSEL
martin brandlmayr - percussion, computer
burkhard beins - percussion
werner dafeldecker - double bass, electronic
michael moser - cello
Polwechsel work with a stringently refined vocabulary of techniques in sound production and sonic choreography. Their works often patiently study and extract beauty from the bare elemental juxtaposition of techniques. They explore strategies where form and function are radically and frequently challenged – the start-point is an expanded musical discipline which deals with the mechanics of beauty in her many perspective distortions and variations. It renders poetry through process, is littered with perfect imitations of failure and aleatory justifications that occur with stunning clarity of gesture and purpose. http://www.polwechsel.com/inde.htm
8pm $10
Tuesday October 7th
A very special evening with Iva Bittova
Iva Bittová (born July 22, 1958) is a Czech avant-garde violinist, singer and composer of Romani ethnicity. She began her career as an actress in the mid 1970s, appearing in several Czech feature films, but switched to playing violin and singing in the early 1980s. She started recording in 1986 and by 1990 her unique vocal and instrumental technique gained her international recognition. Since then, she has performed regularly all over Europe, the United States and Japan, and has made over eight solo albums.
8pm $15
Wednedsay October 8th - Saturday October 11th
Phill Niblock Experimental Intermedia
Celebrating Phill Niblocks 75th Birthday and his contribution to Experimental Music
Organized with the help of Katherine Liberovskaya and Alan Margolis
There will be films / video from the “Movement of People Working” series
Wednesday October 8th - Works from the 60s and 70s
Tenor (1969, 13 minutes) Martin Bough, recorded tenor saxophone
3 to 7 - 196 (December 1974, 23:40), David Gibson, cello, (recorded)
Four Arthurs (April 1978, 22 Min) Arthur Stidfole, bassoon, recorded;
Leslie Ross, bassoon live
A Third Trombone (June 1979, recording revised 1994; 20:54), Jon English,
trombone, recorded, Chris McIntyre, live trombone
Thursday October 9th - Works from the 80s and 90s
Didjeridoos and Don’ts (1992, 13:30), Ulrich Krieger, didjeridu
Five More String Quartets (1991-93, 25 min), The Soldier String Quartet,
recorded; Robert Engelbrecht, cello; Peter Imig, violin, playing live
Summing II, (1985, 32 minutes), David Gibson, recorded cello; Robert
Engelbrecht, cello, playing live
Friday October 10th - Works from the 2000s
A set by Phill Niblock, mixing his sound works, and Katherine Liberovskaya,
live video
Pan Fried 27.5 (27:30, 2001/3) Reinhold Friedl, piano played with a single
nylon string tied to piano strings, recorded piano; Jan Feddersen, bowed
piano, live
Sethwork (21:48, 2003) Seth Josel, unamplified guitars played with e-bow,
recorded guitar; Byron Westbrook,
and The Nelly Boyd Ensemble (Hamburg) -
Robert Engelbrecht, Jan Feddersen, Peter Imig, Jens Rohm, playing live guitars
Saturday October 11th - Works from the 2000s
Poure (2008, 24 minutes) (New York Premier) Arne Deforce, cello, recorded
One Large Rose (2008, 46 minutes) (World Premier) The Nelly Boyd Ensemble
(Hamburg) - Robert Engelbrecht, cello; Jan Feddersen, bowed piano; Peter
Imig, violin; Jens Rohm, bass, playing live
Poure was commissioned by the Centre de Recherches et de Formation
Musicales de Wallonie, CRFMW, Liege, Belgium
The appearance by the Nelly Boyd Ensemble is sponsored by Dr. Martin Schimke LL.M., Senior European Consultant with Bird & Bird (www.twobirds.com), Dusseldorf, Germany Poure, One Large Rose, and Stosspeng will be the pieces on a new “Touch” double CD, out soon.
Phill Niblock is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. He makes thick, loud drones of music, filled with microtones of instrumental timbres which generate many other tones in the performance space. Simultaneously, he presents films / videos which look at the movement of people working, or computer driven black and white abstract images floating through time. He was born in Indiana in 1933. Since the mid-60’s he has been making music and intermedia performances which have been shown at numerous venues around the world among which: The Museum of Modern Art; The Wadsworth Atheneum; the Kitchen; the Paris Autumn Festival; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; ZKM; Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard; World Music Institute at Merkin Hall NYC. Since 1985, he has been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York
(<http://www.experimentalintermedia.org/>) where he has been an artist/member since 1968. He is the producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 (about 1000 performances) and the curator of EI’s XI Records label. In 1993 he was part of the formation of an Experimental Intermedia organization in Gent, Belgium - EI v.z.w. Gent - which supports an artist-in-residence house and installations there. Phill Niblock’s music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode and Touch labels. A DVD of films and music is available on the Extreme label.
Sunday October 12th (6pm - 9pm)
ISSUE at the South Street Seaport Spiegeltent
Presenting: THE INDEPENDENTS
ISSUE Project Room is pleased to present:
“THE INDEPENDENTS, Featuring:
TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS RECORD LABEL
With: JONATHAN KANE’S FEBRUARY, TONY CONRAD AND NEPTUNE
“THE INDEPENDENTS” is a music festival that showcases artists from the nation’s most prestigious independent record labels. ISSUE Project Room, “One of the warmest and best sounding spaces in New York City” (ARTFORUM) presents in collaboration with the legendary Table of the Elements record label three of the label’s most adventurous and groundbreaking artists:
JONATHAN KANE’S FEBRUARY
Jonathan Kane is a Downtown NYC legend — as co-founder of the no-wave behemoth Swans, and the rhythmic thunder behind the massed-guitar armies of Rhys Chatham and the rock excursions of La Monte Young — and one of the hardest-hitting drummers on the planet. With his solo work, Kane summons Swans’ concussive wallop, Chatham’s dense guitar strata, and the perpetual propulsion of 70s krautrockers Neu, then steers it all head-on into… the blues. Make no mistake about it: Kane is a bluesman, and beneath the high-decible bombast, he’s powering guitar-driven minimalism into the blues, and the blues into guitar-driven harmonic maximalism. So roll with Jonathan Kane down his Highway 61 of the mind — it’s the shape of blues to come.
“Paradise between the back porch, the urban jungle and the heavens above … The album’s down-home grooves shine with an orchestral, massed-guitar luster that’s often associated with Glenn Branca and Kane’s frequent collaborator Rhys Chatham. Layered electric and acoustic sounds create overtones that trick the listener into hearing nonexistent organs and harmonicas. In place of the mind-boggling beats for which he’s known, Kane underpins these drones with a deceptively simple, forcefully executed shuffle. His swinging opuses exude bright, earthy euphony instead of dark, cerebral dissonance: Witness the rollicking “Sis” or the luminous version of the traditional “Motherless Child.” Rarely does the avant-garde rock this hard.”
Time Out New York
TONY CONRAD
“TONY CONRAD IS A PIONEER, AS SEMINAL IN HIS WAY TO AMERICAN MUSIC AS JOHNNY CASH OR CAPTAIN BEEFHEART OR ORNETTE COLEMAN, ONE OF THOSE REALLY SAVVY OLD GUYS WHOM ALL THE KIDS WANT TO EMULATE BECAUSE THEIR IDEAS, THEIR STYLE ARE ELECTRIC AND NEW AND SOMEHOW INDIVISIBLE.”
–Steve Dollar, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In 1962 Tony Conrad’s amplified strings introduced the sustained drone of just-intonation into what came to be known as “minimal” music. Utilizing long durations and precise pitch, he and his collaborators forged an aggressively mesmerizing “Dream Music” — denying the activity of composition, elaborating shared ideas of performance, and articulating the Big Bang of “minimalism.” However, the many rehearsal and performance recordings from this period were repressed, inaccessibly buried.
In 1987 Tony Conrad set out on a ten-year return expedition to the site of these entombed fragments to unearth the losses; from them he reconstituted and regenerated the epic EARLY MINIMALISM. Reaching back through time, Tony Conrad weaves a mobile narrative over and under minimalism: making music out of history, and history out of music.
http://tonyconrad.net/
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
After tirelessly working in the noise underground for more than 10 years, this New England trio has released its most fully realized album with “Gong Lake.” Initially, the rough hewn polyrhythms and clangorous guitars that propel Neptune’s surprisingly melodic songs seem conventional enough. Amazingly, the band constructs their instruments out of circular saw blades, bike parts, gas tanks and miscellaneous scrap metal found in the trash. But make no mistake, Neptune isn’t aping past metal bangers like Test Dept and E. Neubauten. At times the group rocks hard, creating disciplined almost danceable grooves, combining This Heat’s ascetic experimentalism with Cop Shoot Cop’s percussive wallop. Homemade electronics flesh out the sound, ricocheting off complex rhythms, adding texture and dynamics to Neptune’s singular, highly musical approach.
For more more information please check out www.spiegelworld.com.
Directions:
HOW TO GET TO SPIEGELWORLD
By Subway:
2,3,4,5,J,Z or M to Fulton Street; A and C to Broadway-Nassau. Walk east on Fulton Street to East River.
By Bus:
M15 (South Ferry Bound) down 2nd Avenue to Fulton Street. Walk east on Fulton Street to East River.
Improvisation Week
Monday October 13th
Evan Parker + Ned Rothenberg
Parker has developed the possibilities of unpremeditated music more deeply than almost anyone, creating a personal vocabulary that is simultaneously instantly recognizable and adaptable to the most varied of situations.
“An ideal partnership.” Ben Ratliff, New York Times
“The way each anticipates the others moves is uncanny. It’s a cliche, but the precise entanglement of their lines is nothing less than a tapestry of sound”
Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
(Rothenberg)’s recent duets with Evan Parker demonstrated the kind of deep mischief he’s capable of. You’ll be entertained - his improvs are compelling on many levels. And you’ll understand how dedication to craft can nurture larger questions of art and approach. - Jim Macnie, Village Voice
“A hugely exciting encounter that should utterly floor fellow saxophonists”. John Corbett Downbeat
8pm $15
Wednesday October 15th (CANCELLED)
Aki Onda + Shelley Hirsch
Aki Onda is an electronic musician, composer, and photographer. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New York. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project – works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images set to live guitar improvisation. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Shelley Hirsch.
Shelley Hirsch who has been called “A Woman of 1000 Voices” NY Times- is an award winning, critically acclaimed vocalist, composer, “storyteller” , performance artist , whose work for concert, stage, exhibition, recording, film, television and radio has been presented on 5 continents.
Most recent grants/awards include a music commission for a surround sound choral work from NYSCA, a Harvestworks Artist in Residence grant (her 5th!) and The Alpert /Ucross Residency prize. She is a recipient of a grant from Creative Capital, 3 from NYFA and ones from the NEA, Mary Flagler Cary Trust and more.
Aside from her mostly solo staged performance works, Hirsch has performed 100’s of concerts of improvised music worldwide with Aki Onda, Anthony Coleman, Uchihashi Kasuhisa, Ned Rothenberg,Tony Buck, Okkyung Lee, Ikue Mori, Shahzad Ismaily and has collaborated with visual artists Zoe Beloff, Jim Hodges, Christian Marclay and Barbara Bloom
Hirsch can be heard on over 60 CDs
8pm $10
Friday October 17th
wobbly solo/bevin solo/wobbly +bevin duo:
Wobbly began as an improvised live mix radio program in Santa Barbara In 1990 and since 1994 has become the unintentional psuedonym of Jon Leidecker. Live performances are still laptop free and aim for extended narratives spun from spontaneous yet coherent multi-sample polyphony. 8% of tonight’s content is sourced from tiny samples from every single #2 and #3 US chart hit from 1958 to 2003, either in or not at all in chronological order, and the rest will be sourced from everywhere else. Selected recent albums are freely available online. Previous and ongoing collaborators include Thomas Dimuzio, People Like Us, Matmos, Anne McGuire, Negativland, Tim Perkis, Blevin Blectum, Lesser, Otomo Yoshihide, Zeena Parkins & MaryClare Brzytwa.
http://detritus.net/wobbly/
Blevin Blectum is an electronic musician. Recently relocated from the industrial armpit of Oakland, California, to the humid lovecraftian
greenery of Providence, Rhode Island, Blevin releases her fourth solo album, GULAR FLUTTER, on an unsuspecting public via the AAGOO label (New York). Blevin is one half of the recently reformed and reunited groundbreaking digital duo Blectum From Blechdom, recipients of the 2001 Ars Electronica Award of Distinction in Digital Musics (for their album “The Messy Jesse Fiesta”). Blevin moonlights with audio/video band SAGAN alongside her husband and fellow e-musician Lesser, keyboardist Wobbly, and video artiste Ryan Junell. Blevin produces continued electronics “with a more oblique slant on the basic BFB sensation of things-not-quite-right-here, clanking, creaking grooves and anti-grooves as a coal-powered spacecraft from some steampunk parallel universe potentiality, puffing and straining as it struggles to reach escape velocity, chopped, noise-reduced and timed/stretched to the breaking/boiling point, generally fucked-with samples of everything from hand-slapped rain-drenched leaves in courtship gardens and antique broken Beatnik banks to ProTooledFree classic utterly danceable disembodied-blissful-transvestite-stand-up-comic vocals”.
Blevin holds degrees in English and Violin from Oberlin College/Conservatory, and a masters in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College. She is a licensed and registered veterinary nurse. She was the recipient of a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, California. She has toured extensively through the USA and Europe since 1998. In 1999 she was the winner of the 1999 New Langton Arts Music award for her first solo CD “Pirate Planets” on the Phthalo label out of Los Angeles. Her second and third albums, “Talon Slalom” (2004) on Deluxe Records, and “Magic Maple” (2006) on the Praemedia label, were greeted with much critical acclaim.
http://blevin.lsr1.com/
Saturday October 18th
Peter Evans + Josh Sinton + Matt Bauder
Born in 1981, Peter Evans has been a member of the New York musical community since 2003, when he moved to the city after graduating Oberlin Conservatory with a degree in classical trumpet performance. Peter currently works in a wide variety of areas, including solo performance, chamber orchestras, performance art, free improvised settings, electro-acoustic music and composition. Evans has been steadily working to expand the expressive capabilities of his instrument, and enjoys collaborating with steady configurations of players and composers. Current groupings include the Peter Evans Quartet, Moppa Elliott’s terrorist bebop band Mostly Other People Do the Killing, the hyperactive improvisation duo Sparks (with Tom Blancarte), duo with trumpeter Nate Wooley, as well as a sustained interest in solo performance.
Josh Sinton is a performing and composing musician specializing in the baritone saxophone and bass clarinet. He was born in Massachusetts, raised in New Jersey and educated in the world. He has performed with a theater troupe in India, on the streets of Jerusalem, in Chicago theaters and in Boston concert halls. His most recent teachers were Steve Lacy and Dominique Eade. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Matt Bauder is a saxophonist and composer who has studied with Ed Sarath, Anthony Braxton, Ron Kuivila and Alvin Lucier. In the past ten years he has been an active member of the new music scenes in Ann Arbor, Chicago, Berlin and New York, where he has performed with, among others, Braxton, Bill Dixon, Fred Anderson, Jeff Parker, Taylor Ho Bynum, The SEM Ensemble, Ken Vandermark and Phil Minton. He appears on recordings with Jason Ajemian (Locust Music), Rob Mazurek (Thrill Jockey), Neil Michael Hagerty (Drag City), His Name is Alive (4AD/TimeStereo), Saturday Looks Good to Me (Polyvinyl) and Bill Brovald (Tzadik). His recordings as a leader on 482 Music, Clean Feed and Eye & Ear Records have received wide critical acclaim.
8pm $10
Tuesday October 21st
12k PRESENTS
fourcolor (Tokyo)
moskitoo (Tokyo/Sapporo)
sawako (JPN/NYC)
October. 21th (Tue) - 8:00PM $15 ($10 members, japan & asia society members)
www.12k.com
fourcolor (www.frolicfon.com)
FourColor is one of the music project by Keiichi Sugimoto. Sugimoto founded the cubic music in 1999 with Tetsuro Yasunaga and Namiko Sasamoto. He is engaged to some projects of various music relation based on the label.(ex. a part of the electro-acoustic-music quartet Minamo (12K/apestaartje/cubic music), as electronica project Fonica (plop/tomlab) and as electro-pop music band called FilFla.)
moskitoo (www.moskitoo.com)
moskitoo is Sanae Yamasaki (b. 1978), sound+melody artist and graphic designer in Japan. She began making music in 1997 playing guitar and small casio keyboards in various bands in Sapporo. In 2005 she began writing, playing, and singing under the moniker Moskitoo. “Drape” (12k1041) is her first full-length release from 12k.
sawako (www.troncolon.com)
Sawako is a sound sculptor, a timeline-based artist and a signal alchemist. Once through the processor named Sawako, subtle fragments in everyday life float in space vividly with a digital yet organic texture. Sawako released her albums from 12k (USA), and/OAR(USA) and Anticipate (USA). Her unique sonic world has been called “post romantic sound” by Boston’s Weekly Dig.
DARMSTADT presents: ” ESSENTIAL REPERTOIRE”
Darmstadt “Classics of the Avant Garde” music series is proud to announce its first-ever multi-performance curation at ISSUE Project Room from October 22 through the 26th. Entitled “Essential Repertoire,” its six performances are an initial attempt to accumulate a unique and expanding collection of cherished experimental music: from the New York School through the Minimalists, European approaches, and a number of electronic practices, alongside music’s connectivity to art, performance, and multimedia. Darmstadt’s curators encourage vivid interpretations of their favorite avant-garde works from the city’s liveliest composers and musicians.
Wednesday, October 22 at 8:00 pm
Ne(x)tworks ensemble performs music of the New York School
John Cage: Variations II (1962)
Earle Brown: selections from Folio (1953-54)
Morton Feldman: Extensions 1 (1951), Projection One (1962)
Christian Wolff: selections from Exercises (1973-)
Ne(x)tworks
Joan La Barbara - voice
Shelley Burgon - harp
Miguel Frasconi - glass/electronics
Ariana Kim - violin
Chris McIntyre - trombone/electronics
Cornelius Dufallo - director
Special guests:
Anthony Coleman - piano
Alex Waterman - cello
Ne(x)tworks is a collaborative ensemble of musicians creating and interpreting work that features a dynamic relationship between composition and improvisation. In performance and recordings, the group locates pathways into various types of notation systems and interfaces, striving for a meaningful dialogue with the past, present, and future of creative music. Formed in 2002 in New York City, Ne(x)tworks advances the tradition of the ‘performing composer’ ensemble by frequently presenting full programs of compositions created by its members. The group’s repertoire also extends beyond its ranks to encompass the open scores of New York School composers, work by the their European counterparts, further experiments by the composer performers of the AACM and SoHo Scene of the 1970’s, the so-called Downtown composers of the 80’s, and commissioned works by like-minded contemporary colleagues.
http://www.nextworksmusic.net/
Thursday, October 23 at 8:00 pm
Fluxus scores interpreted by Bradley Eros, Lary 7 and others
Tony Conrad: 3 Loops for Performers and Tape Recorders (1961) interpreted by Lary 7
Yoko Ono: Cut Piece (1964) interpreted by Bradley Eros
Nam June Paik: Concerto for TV Cello and Videotapes (1971) interp. by M.V. Carbon
Emmett Williams: Duet for Performer and Audience (1961) interpreted by Ryan Tracy
Other performances TBA
Bradley Eros’s art practice includes expanded cinema, sound collage, performance, photography, writing, curating, mediamystics, subterranean science, and archival investigation. He is the co-founder of the Robert/a Beck Memorial Cinema and has presented work at the Whitney, MoMA, The Kitchen, Millennium, and Anthology Film Archives among countless others.
Lary 7 is an audio explorer using self-invented sound-producing objects involving the detritus of the twentieth century. He founded the Analog Society and was co-founder of the legendary Directart Productions Ltd. He has released work on Touch, Diskono, Ectoplasm, and his own Plastikville and Plastiktray imprints.
M.V. Carbon is a cellist, composer and improviser who plays and sings through tape loops, pedals and circuits. She occasionally incorporates film imagery into her performances. She is part of the electronic duo, Metalux. Her work has been released on 5RC, Load, No-Fi, and Atavistic, among others.
Ryan Tracy is a composer, writer, and performer with degrees in conducting and composition. He has fulfilled residencies at Yaddo and The Edward Albee Foundation. He is the founder of Collective Opera Company and blogs at CounterCritic.com.
Presented in part by Experimental Television Center’s Presentation Funds program, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts
Friday, October 24 at 8:00 pm
Either/Or ensemble: Early Minimalism
Philip Glass: Music in Similar Motion (1973)
Steve Reich: Four Organs (1970)
Rhys Chatham: Two Gongs (1971)
Either/Or
Anthony Burr - clarinet, organ
Richard Carrick - piano, organ
Jennifer Choi - violin, organ
David Shively - percussion
Alex Waterman - cello, organ, percussion
Recently praised by the New York Times as a “new and first-rate new music ensemble,” Either/Or is a chamber ensemble based in New York City, directed by pianist/composer Richard Carrick and percussionist David Shively. Either/Or draws on a pool of collaborating musicians, all of whom are active soloists in the field of new and experimental music. This mobile structure allows Either/Or to present works ranging from soloists to chamber ensembles and beyond, including unconventional formations and works with electronics. Either/Or has performed at New York’s leading venues for experimental music, including The Kitchen, MATA Festival, The Stone, the Goethe Institut, the Austrian Cultural Forum, and others. Members of Either/Or have worked closely with American composers such as Robert Ashley, Anthony Coleman, Alvin Lucier, Elliott Sharp, and John Zorn, and the ensemble has presented New York premieres of works by Karlheinz Essl, Georg Friedrich Haas, György Kurtàg, Helmut Lachenmann, Thomas Meadowcroft, and many other artists. Either/Or is a not-for-profit corporation registered in New York State and is supported by private sponsors as well as by grants from BMI Foundation, Eiler Foundation, Landecker Foundation, Meet the Composer, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, and other organizations
http://www.eitherormusic.org/
Saturday, October 25 at 8 pm
Stars Like Fleas with special guests perform Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise
Cornelius Cardew: Treatise (1963-67)
Stars Like Fleas
Shannon Fields - guitar, electronics, glockenspiel, voice
Ryan Smith - keyboards, electronics, voice
Montgomery Knott - voice, electronics
Laura Ortman - violin, bowed saw, voice
Matt Lavelle - bass clarinet, trumpet, cuica, voice
Shayna Dulberger - bass, voice
Shelley Burgon - harp, electronics, voice
Tianna Kennedy - cello, voice
Begun in the early aughts as a recording project, by 2005 Stars Like Fleas had already gained cultish worldwide attention with a couple of perplexing Internet- and hand-traded releases. Stars Like Fleas emerged physically, unmasked, and began playing shows in unmarked spaces across Brooklyn in 2006 …very soon after they were asked to perform higher profile shows with the likes of Grizzly Bear, Beirut, Dirty Projectors, Deerhoof, Gang Gang Dance, and Akron/Family. The North American release of their new LP, The Ken Burns Effect (mixed in Iceland in late 2007) on Hometapes in June 2008, is causing a slowly-but-surely boiling stir with what the New York Times described as an “eerie power” and Nylon Magazine called “a new kind of energy”. Pitchfork wrote “The Ken Burns Effect is one of the year’s most ambitious and daring records…Sometimes, I think The Ken Burns Effect deserves a 10.0. Sometimes, it feels like a 2.0. You might hate it. You might love it. But you need to hear it.” The live band brings together an average of 8-11 musicians from musical communities diverse and even antagonist toward one another. Stars Like Fleas has no programmatic agenda, no common inspiration, has thrown out the road map, embraces pretention, incoherence, is as conflicted and confused as any teenager’s base emotions and believe that humane music is fraught with contradiction, posturing, sentiment, mistrust and introspection, like believers trying mightily to disbelieve. Stars Like Fleas music makes some giggle nervously, some angry and disgusted, others moved to tears – ordinarily at the same show, sometimes from the kids onstage behind the instruments.
http://slf.praemedia.com/
Sunday, October 26 at 4:00 pm
Contemporary Extended Vocal Technique: Jennifer Walshe with Object Collection
Jennifer Walshe: i: same person/ii: not the same person (2007)
Jennifer Walshe: nature data (2004)
The Dowager Marchylove: the wasistas of thereswhere (2008)
and a new composition by O’Brien Industries
Object Collection
Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin. Her works have been performed throughout Europe, the US, and Canada by groups such as Alter Ego, Ensemble Récherche, Ensemble Resonanz, Apartment House, Ensemble Intégrales, Neue Vocalisten Stuttgart, the Crash Ensemble, ensemble ascolta, Champ d’Action, and the Rilke Ensemble. She has received commissions from RTÉ, Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), Sudwest Rundfunk (SWR), Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, the Project Arts Centre and the National Concert Hall, Ireland, as well as commission awards from the New Music Scheme of the Arts Council of Ireland and the Scottish Arts Council. In 2000 she won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt; in July 2002 she returned to Darmstadt to lecture in composition. During 2004-2005 she lived in Berlin as a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm . In 2007 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York. In addition to her activities as a composer, Jennifer Walshe frequently performs as a vocalist, specializing in extended techniques.
Object Collection was founded in 2004 by director/writer/designer Kara Feely and composer/instrumentalist Travis Just as an interdisciplinary experimental performance group dedicated to new artistic work in hybrid forms. Based in New York City, the group presents original interdisciplinary performances, concerts, and curated performance series, collaborating with musicians, actors, and visual artists, and combining techniques and methodologies from different mediums. Their performances have been seen at the Ontological Theater, AMBUSH/Chez Bushwick, Experimental Intermedia, Brooklyn Fireproof, Issue Project Room, Brooklyn College, California Institute of the Arts among other venues in New York and abroad. Their work has been praised for its “rich imagery” and “dreamlike intimacy” (nytheatre.com), and has been described as “contemplative……highly conceptual” (Vital Weekly). Their new opera Problem Radical(s), written and directed by Kara Feely and composed by Travis Just, will premiere at Performance Space 122 in April 2009.
http://www.milker.org/personnel/walshe/walshe_bio.html
http://www.objectcollection.us
Presented in part by the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland in association with Culture Ireland
Sunday, October 26 at 8:00 pm
New Electro-Acoustic Practices: Tristan Perich and Ensemble Pamplemousse
Tristan Perich: new compositions for nine strings and nine-channel 1-bit music
In 2004, Tristan Perich began work on 1-Bit Music, combining simple, rhythm-based compositions with primitive, hand-programmed electronics that investigate the foundations of digital sound. The Village Voice, BOMB Magazine, BPM Magazine, Res Magazine, Wired News, Cool Hunting, and Spin Magazine covered the release. Surface Magazine called the boxes “profound throwbacks to the traditional album, a response to the intangibility of iTunes and mp3s in the form hand-held artwork.” Since then, Perich’s compositions have connected his electronic impulses with acoustic instruments in the context of more traditional chamber music forms. Collaborations with Bang on a Can (2008 People’s Commissioning Fund), counter)induction, Calder Quartet, New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Due East, Y Trio and Ensemble Pamplemousse have been performed recently at venues including the Whitney Museum, PS1 and Mass MoCA. His experimental electronic music group, the Loud Objects, has performed in Germany, Japan, Italy (Screen Music 2), Norway (Piksel), England (Evolution) and the USA (including at the NIME festival). He has spoken twice at Dorkbot. Perich studied math, music and computer science at Columbia University after attending Philips Academy, Andover. More recently, he studied art, music and electronics at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.
http://www.1bitmusic.com/
Scott Wollschleger: Secret Machines (2008)
Natacha Diels: butterfly effect (2008)
Chiyoko Szlavnics: Autonomous Gardens (2008)
Andrew Greenwald: Valve 2.0 (2008)
Ensemble Pamplemousse
Natacha Diels - flute, electronics
Kiku Enomoto - violin
Jessie Marino - cello
Andrew Greenwald - percussion
David Broome - piano
Founded in 2002 as a musical exploration vehicle, Pamplemousse presents concerts of extraordinary focus and clarity. Comprised of virtuosic musicians trained in classical, electronic and improvisational realms, the group consistently delivers fresh, exhilarating new concepts in sound. The members’ eagerness for aural discovery has allowed for ample experimentation processes, where boundaries are non-existent, and from which a strong dialogue has emerged. Among the group’s vernacular resides formerly unfathomable sound landscapes formed by the acute relationships the performers have forged with each other, and with the composers who are an intrinsic part of the ensemble. The product, uncompromising and resolutely beautiful, is created by incredibly innovative, yet-to-be-named approaches to performance and composition.
http://www.ensemblepamplemousse.org/
A week of Noise curated by Thurston Moore
Wednesday oct 29
Alberich:
Alberich is one man noise artist Kris Lapke. A collaborative member with Jeff Plummer in noise duo Shallow Waters and with Geoff Mullen in harsh pummelers Northern Cross. He was also in the infamous art-rock trio Football Rabbit with Domenick Furnow and Emily Salvatierra. Alberich recordings have been primarily cassette releases on NYC label Hospital Productions and Providence, RI label Rare Youth. They are the sound of ripped entrails creeping down concrete walls. A rare performance.
ffh:
ffh is one man noise artist Richard Dunn from NYC actively recording since at least 2004. Dunn is a member of Vegas Martyrs along with Domenick Furnow (of Prurient fame) and Joe Potts. He has released a number of cassettes on local noise label Hospital Productions including “Silenced Whore”, “To Find Men” and “Women In War”. A notorious 7″ release was issued by Hair Police/Wolf Eyes member Mike Connelly’s Gods Of Tundra label entitled “tiocfaidh ar la” which expressed an interest and obsession with the Irish Republican Army. FFH live appearances are uncommon and considerably harsh.
8pm $10
Thursday Oct 30
Key to Shame:
Key To Shame is the already legendary duo of Mark Morgan, guitarist from Brooklyn mind/body meltdown trio Sightings and Pat Murano, shred vocalist/guitarist of local black metal underground avatars Malkuth and founding member of the No-Neck Blues Band.
Heaven People:
Heaven People is the New Haven, CT duo of Kryssi Battalene and Danny Moore. A wild improvisatory duo utilizing bowed guitars, prepared music boxes and harmonica, thumb piano, samplers, various electronics and cloudsplitting vocal swoops. “I could discuss in great detail the centerpiece performance by Heaven People, a bottomless well of reverb-laden thumb pianos, gliding strings, static slurpskritch with the ornate detailing of a Faberge egg. But these sorts of sounds defy clear corralling no matter how many sentences I construct around them. Much better to experience them.” - Impose Magazine
A CD forthcoming on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace imprint.
8pm $10
Friday Oct 31
Ahlzagailzehguh:
Ahlzagailzehguh is the insanely named one man noise onslaught project of James Cooke. He has released a brutal stream of essential psycho sonic missives on cassette and cdr since 2003. Classics such as “Black Destination” on Truculent Recordings, “Disrupting Resistance” on Monorail Trespassing, “Sole Possession” on Callow God, “Water Like Witch’s Oils” on Trash Ritual, “Trashed” on Chondritic Sound as well as two LPs on Hospital Productions and a double 7” on Razors And Medicine have put Ahlzagailzehguh in the pantheon of true contemporary harsh noise maniacs. He also runs his own label empire called Collapsed Hole. His live sets are dangerous.
Yellow Tears:
Yellow Tears is the trio of Frank Ludovico, Jeremy Nissan and Ryan Woodhall. Nissan and Woodhall are infamous for their duo Halflings who would absolutely destroy live with displays of sweaty, grinding sex-sick noise hell. Yellow Tears is perhaps less physically rambunctious but as a force of savage gore-sonics it is excellent. Only together for a couple of years they have released incendiary cassettes and cdrs on Accreton Disk, Collapsed Hole and an insane LP on Hospital Productions called “The Pissmop”. Not to be missed.
8pm $10
NOVEMBER
Saturday, November 1
Chop Shop + Leif Elggren
Chop Shop is the moniker of New York based sound artist Scott Konzelmann, whose activities have comprised recordings and installations featuring his speaker construction assemblages and sonic compositions since 1987. There have been several micro-edition CD-R releases, 2 noted 3″CDs for the V2 label, many old school cassettes, a handful of singles, and two 10″ vinyl productions. One of which was a double 10″ bound in roofing tar strapped to a plate of steel. The other was a split 10″ with Small Cruel Party, which was literally chopped in half and assembled on the listener’s turntable at their needle’s peril.
Konzelmann’s sound and noise are intrinsically connected to his sculptural objects. Forged from re-purposed junkyard fragments fitted with functional loudspeakers, these objects compress and articulate particular frequencies into hissing static, jet-engine drones, and noxious rumbles, all of which retain a metallurgist residue.
For this rare live presentation Konzelmann will be offering up a distillaton mix from his highly acclaimed 2008 release “OXIDE” (23_5 org. US ) utilizing prepared analog reel to reel tapes of his muscular and aggressive drones in a dialog with a solitary speaker construction.
Leif Elggren is a Swedish artist who lives and works in Stockholm.
Active since the late 1970s, Leif Elggren has become one of the most constantly surprising conceptual artists to work in the combined worlds of audio and visual. A writer, visual artist, stage performer and composer, he has many albums to his credits, solo and with the Sons of God, on labels such as Ash International, Touch, Radium and his own Firework Edition. His music, often conceived as the soundtrack to a visual installation or experimental stage performance, usually presents carefully selected sound sources over a long stretch of time and can range from mesmerizingly quiet electronics to harsh noise. His wide-ranging and prolific body of art often involves dreams and subtle absurdities, social hierarchies turned upside-down, hidden actions and events taking on the quality of icons.
Together with artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff, he is a founder of the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland (KREV) where he enjoys the title of King.
Elggren spent five years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, specializing in drawing, design and bookprinting. In the late ‘70s he began to associate with performance groups, meeting people like Hausswolff and Thomas Liljenberg. With the latter he formed Firework in 1978, a duo that put up exhibitions and performances. Around the same time he purchased a press and started to publish art books.
In 1988 he formed the duo Guds Söner (The Sons of God) with Kent Tankred, whom he had met four years earlier. The duo excels in creating long, puzzling stage performances that give equal roles to physical action (or inaction) and soundtrack (live or taped) with themes such as violence, love, the quotidian, food and royalty.
Elggren released his first 7″ records in 1982 and 1984 on Hausswolff’s label Radium. A first solo LP, Flown Over by an Old King, came out in 1988. The inception of Firework Edition Records in 1996 allowed Elggren to release more of his music and the growing popularity of installation art in avant-garde music circles (thanks to its ties with experimental electronica) has given his work more international exposure since the late ‘90s. Other key solo works include Talking to a Dead Queen (1996) and Pluralis Majestatis (2000).
Together with Hausswolff, Elggren represented Sweden in the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2001 (with Tommi Grönlund and Petteri Nisunen from Finland and Anders Tomren from Norway).
In 2007 he appeared (with John Duncan) at the Netmage festival in Bologna organized by xing and executed “Something Like Seeing in the Dark”.
8pm $10
Wednesday, November 5
Extra Life + Mary Halvorson/Jessica Pavone
Extra Life is a New York-based band led by guitarist/vocalist/composer Charlie Looker. Formed in 2007, Extra Life combines elements of medieval vocal music, aggressive math rock, dark romantic pop and modern classical composition. For years Looker was a core member of noise/chamber group Zs, and has also worked with diverse bands and artists such as Dirty Projectors, Glenn Branca, John Zorn, Seductive Sprigs, Period, William Parker, and the S.E.M. Ensemble. Extra Life also includes various combinations of the following musicians: violinist Caley Monahon-Ward (Snowblink), bassist Tony Gedrich (Stay Fucked), drummer Nicholas Podgurski (Yukon), and saxophonist/keyboardist Travis Laplante (Little Women).
Extra Life’s debut full-length CD “Secular Works” was released in 2008 on Planaria Recordings. The band did a four-week tour of the midwest and west coast, sharing bills with artists including Carla Bozulich, the Dead Science, Excepter, Magik Markers, These Are Powers, Kyp Malone (of TVOTR), the OhSees and Ocrilim. A split twelve-inch vinyl EP with Nat Baldwin will also be released in 2008 on the Shatter Your Leaves label, followed by east and west coast tours.
www.myspace.com/extralifetheband
www.planariainc.com
Mary Halvorson (guitar, vocals) + Jessica Pavone (viola, vocals)
“Thorny compositions that sound as if female teen punkers the Shaggs received doctorates in the music of 12-tone composer Alban Berg, and then rewrote their Philosophy of the World…. Carefully notated structures and interplay morph effortlessly into free improvisation that is intelligent and expressive, but never self-indulgent. Also featuring intense lyrics sung with their clear and melodic voices, the two women make transcendent chamber music outside of any genre.” -Elliott Sharp, Guitar Player Magazine, December 2007
“The guitarist Mary Halvorson and the violist Jessica Pavone have worked together in ensembles led by the avant-garde eminence Anthony Braxton, and separately in a wide array of upstart new-music groups. As an acoustic duo they produce something distinct and beguiling: an amalgam of experimental folk, rock and chamber music that feels both meticulous and raw. Their debut, “On and Off” (Skirl), presents a dozen pieces of modest scale but impressive metabolism. There’s a disarming openness to their interaction, never more pronounced than when the two are blending their voices in something like a campfire harmony. But this music isn’t clever or cute. Its core is steely, and its execution clear.” -Nate Chinen, The New York Times, August 2007
http://www.myspace.com/maryandjess
8pm $10
Thursday November 6
Paul Steven Ray’s Nine Nine
ELASTIC SONGcycle
Paul Steven Ray – e. guitar, laptop, moog, embedded vocals
Ha-Yang Kim – cello, electronics
Eli Fountain - percussion
ELASTIC SONGcycle takes the simplicity of song and storytelling to refocus the textural sonic excursions that have colored my work over the years. The embedded text carries the performers and hopefully, the listeners to a place that straddles the supercharged ritual atmospheres of improvisation and the stripped down directness of the blues and Americana forms.
Paul Steven Ray has been composing and performing various mutations of electronic-ritual music for over 20 years. He arrived in NYC in 1981 and has been heard in experimental venues such as The Knitting Factory and TONIC and festivals such as the Noise Festival at the Ontological Theater, the International Electro-Acoustic Festival, Cosmoson, Ivy Salon Paris, CERF Festival , New York Jazz Festival and the NORTH RIVER MUSIC SERIES. He has collaborated with such artists as Theresa Rosas, Bora Yoon, Vernon Reid, Oblaat, Val- Inc. Pheeroan Ak Laff, Nate Wooley, Cyro Baptista, Yuko Fujiyama, Val-Inc., Eli Fontaine, Julian Thayer and Susie Ibarra. His compositions for other media include work created for Laura Staton Dance (Judson Movement Research Series) and the score for Sikay Tang’s Phrases/s Lesson #5 . In recent years, Ray has taken up the camera to create multimedia work and video art such as Lotus B.’s Haiku Dream for 4 channel video and live music. In 2006, Paul Steven Ray and Theresa Rosas formed the experimental duet, Aquiaconverse which is now based in Berlin as well as Brooklyn. His experimental opera, SALLY DISTANCE, for Soprano, e. guitar,laptop,live electronics, and video was premiered in 2007 at Galapagos Arts Space and featured Bora Yoon. His listener activated sound environments are outdoor installations designed for an ultra-sensitive sonic experience for the “listener-performer”. He received the 2004 John Cage award for experimental composition. He is curator of the experimental concert series, PSYCHELOUNGE.
www.paulstevenray.com
http://myspace.com/aquiaconverse
http://myspace.com/sallydistance
8pm $10
Friday, November 7
Columbia Computer Music Center Presents
Fün Night at Issue Project Room
The Computer Music Center at Columbia University and Issue Project Room present the first Fün Night of the season. The bill includes an eclectic mix of electronics and laptopery:
The Draftmasters is a media art duo formed by Víctor Adán and Jeff Snyder. Using custom-built software and hardware, The Draftmasters control antiquated pen plotters, originally intended for engineering and architectural drafting, to simultaneously create real-time drawings and sound.
While robot arms apply pigments on paper, the work of motors and solenoids inside the plotters is made audible using electromagnetic transducers.
As sounds collide, visual patters emerge…
Daniel Iglesia writes for humans, computers, and broad interactions of the two.On Friday, Dan presents live his live 3-D audio-visual mashup that magically combines 3-D glasses, Prince, artificial cities, and intense sound destruction.
Damon Holzborn improvises on custom hardware and software. Stepping away from his duo work with Donkey and a recent collaboration with Sparks, Damon plays a solo set of live electronic improvisations.
Sam Pluta is a laptop artist who regularly plays both solo and ensemble sets. His groups include improv quintet Glissando Bin Laden, duo exclusiveOr, and the elusive Prince of Neckebeardf. This Friday he presents his large-scale solo laptop work - data structures/monoliths ii (for chion) - a massive mashup of some 500 audio-visual clips from 20 films.
Originally the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the CMC is the oldest center for Electroacoustic music in the United States. Following several years of experiments with electronic music composition at Columbia, the center was founded by Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990) and Otto Luening (1900-1996) with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1958. Ussachevsky served as director of the center from its inception until 1980, followed by Mario Davidovsky, who served as director from 1980 to 1994. Fred Lerdahl and Brad Garton became co-directors on the center in 1994; the center’s name was changed to the Columbia University Computer Music Center under the directorship of Brad Garton in 1996.
8pm $10
Sunday, November 9
Elliott Sharp – guitars, reeds, piano, electronics, Joey Baron-drums, Bruno Chevillon doublebass, frank hums de terre – turntables
Multi instrumentalist and composer Elliott Sharp has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction, as well as pioneering use of computers in improvising performance. frank hums de terre equally approaches music making with the same explorative zeal. His instrumental magpie approach, uneasy with the comfort that being a virtuoso on one instrument brings, mirrors Sharp’s. Their CD together Hums 2 Terre reflects both musicians’ joy in spontaneous creation and teems with ideas. For this New York premiere they will invite two fantastic musicians : drummer Joey Baron and doublebassist Bruno Chevillon.
www.elliottsharp.com
www.joeybaron.com
www.myspace.com/brunochevillon
About as far away from a standard guitar duo as possible, Hums 2 Terre is a post-modern mash up of timbres, textures and tones stretched to their limits by New York composer Elliott Sharp and French improviser Franck Vigroux. Eschewing formality and melodies, the two frame the 10 sonic duals with minidisks, turntables, computer processing and electronics to trigger warbling pulses and squeaky, pitch-sliding friction.
By subverting the guitar’s traditional role and expected sounds with add-ons and unexpected techniques, Sharp’s and Vigroux’s binary creations excitingly transfigure their instruments while providing a memorable listening experience.
–Ken Waxman, In MusicWorks Issue #101
French experimental turntablist-guitarist Franck Vigroux finds a partner who is up for the occasion in American guitarist Elliot Sharp for this rather outrageous set, recorded in two separate sessions. The artists share similar concepts and backgrounds as they have respectively delved into avant/jazz-rock, mutated-jazz, space music and other genre-stretching articulations. This newly issued effort released for Radio France, proclaims a democratic approach as the musicians use turntables, and electronics to aid these complex and generally free-form works.
Its asymmetrical parts, revved up noise music and steely-edged improvisation. Sharp performs on saxes to augment his wily e-guitar and computer processing escapades, to complement Vigroux’s analogously, blistering guitar voicings. It’s not total cacophony but the overall sound and scope of this powerful endeavor should stimulate more than just a few brain cells. Not for the feint of heart, the musicians’ inject wit and humor while immersed in dialogues that bespeak a wild, anything goes, type free-jam slugfest. And on other note, it’s quite evident that the artists were having a good old time during the majority of these hyper-mode workouts. In sum, the duo’s nicely twisted and bizarre; music without borders methodology provided many odd yet irrefutably, clever standpoints. – Glenn Astarita
This project is possible with the help of FACE, Culturesfrance, le Bureau Export de New York, Chamber Music America, Doris Duke Foundation, Réseau en scéne en Languedoc Roussillon
8pm $15
Tuesday, November 11 (7pm - 11pm)
BENEFIT PARTY FOR ISSUE PROJECT ROOM AT SANTOS PARTY HOUSE
“One of the Warmest and Best sounding venues in New York” (ArtForum), ISSUE Project Room hosts visual and sound installations, spoken word performances, experimental music events, staged readings, films, videos, and lectures. ISSUE was recently awarded an extraordinary 20 year lease at 110 Livingston Street in downtown Brooklyn. Your support will help us restore this room as we build a long-term home for the future of experimental culture…a “Carnegie Hall of the Avant Garde”.
Come celebrate with us at Santos!!!
FEATURING SPECIAL GUESTS:
MOBY
DAVID LINTON
ALEX WATERMAN
CHARLES COHEN
BUBBLYFISH
LUKE DUBOIS
CHIKA
CASPAR STRACKE
with very special Maser of Ceremonies: Mr. TONY CONRAD!
and other very, very special guests tba.
win prizes! dance! support ISSUE! party!
SANTOS PARTY HOUSE: 100 Lafayette Street, NYC
November 11, 7pm to 11pm
$30 - $110 (sliding scale)
Wednesday, November 12
LITTORAL Reading Series with John Reed and Michael Kimball
Michael Kimball’s first two novels are THE WAY THE FAMILY GOT AWAY (2000) and HOW MUCH OF US THERE WAS (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated) into many languages. His third novel, DEAREVERYBODY, has just been published in the US, UK, and Canada (http://michael-kimball.com/). Time Out New York calls the writing “stunning” and the Los Angeles Times says the book was “funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking.” He is also responsible for the collaborative art project–Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard)–and the documentary film, I Will Smash You (2009).
Praise for John Reed:
A WICKED ILLUSIONIST. —GRAHAM REED, LOS ANGELES JOURNAL.
JOHN REED EXCELS IN THE REALM OF STRANGE. —SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
IS THIS MAN WHO WANTS TO BLOW UP THE CLASSIC LITERARY CANON TAUGHT TO CHILDREN IN SCHOOLS A MENACE, OR A MESSIAH? —DAVID SHANKBONE, WIKINEWS
ONE OF THE GUILTIEST POSTMODERN PLEASURES IS TO TAKE FAMILIAR STORIES AND UPDATE THEM TO FIT OUR GENRE-CROSSING, COKE-SNORTING, CONTEMPORARY SELVES. … PASSES FASTER THAN AN EPISODE OF THE REAL WORLD. —LISA NUCH VENBRUX, POPMATTERS
PHILIP K. DICK, HUNTER S. THOMPSON, WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS AND T.S. ELIOT COME CRASHING TOGETHER … SOMETHING YOU MAY POSSIBLY ADORE BY THE END OR THAT MAY MAKE YOU WANT TO BURN THE AUTHOR IN EFFIGY. —JASON PETTUS, CCLAP
REED HAS MANAGED TO TAKE A DATED MASTERPIECE … AND REVIVE IT FOR THE ODD, CASINO-LIKE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL WORLD WE’RE MIRED IN TODAY; IN THE PROCESS HE’S CREATED HIS OWN MASTERPIECE. —JOHN GROOMS, CREATIVE LOAFING, CHARLOTTE
A PIG RETURNS TO THE FARM, THUMBING HIS SNOUT AT ORWELL. … AND THE ESTATE OF GEORGE ORWELL IS NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT. —DINITIA SMITH, NEW YORK TIMES
IT WILL TAKE A GREAT DEAL MORE THAN A FORTNIGHT’S WORK BY A SMART-ALECK ANTI-CORPORATIST TO UNDERMINE THE MOST BRILLIANT SATIRE OF THE 20TH CENTURY. —LONDON TELEGRAPH
JOHN REED … IS GETTING WHAT HE NEVER KNEW HE WANTED, HATE FROM RIGHT WING GROUPS …
—DANIEL ROBERT EPSTEIN, SUICIDEGIRLS
FREE JOHN REED! FREE THE PIGGIES! —NEW YORK PRESS
THIS BOOK HAS SOMETHING TO UPSET ALMOST EVERYONE WHO READS IT, JUST LIKE A GOOD BOOK SHOULD. —DENNIS LOY JOHNSON
ORWELL’S SACRED PIGS GET A PROPER ROAST. —PAUL DUCHENE,PORTLAND TRIBUNE
A PSYCHOTOMIMETIC TALE THAT SEEPS THROUGH THE PAGES, INTO YOUR SKIN—BY THE END, YOU ARE STUNNED TO FIND YOU’VE READ A BOOK, NOT WATCHED A 3-D FILM! —J.T. LEROY / LAURA ALBERT
LIKELY TO OFFEND ALMOST EVERYONE. … WITLESS PARODY. —DAVID FUTRELLE, MONEY MAGAZINE
A VOLATILE NEW NOVEL! —ARTHUR SALM, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE
THE NEW YORK AUTHOR HAS IGNITED A FIERCE LITERARY DEBATE; IS IT EVER RIGHT TO WRITE A BOOK MODELED ON A CLASSIC, THAT TWISTS THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE INTO UNRECOGNIZABLE FORM?
—DAVID ROBINSON AND JACQUI GODDARD, SCOTSMAN
SNOWBALL’S CHANCE PARODIES ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM, DRAGGING IT KICKING AND SCREAMING INTO THE 21ST CENTURY. —ED NAWOTKA, PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
WRITTEN IN LUCID, WISE, FUNNY, FABLE-PROSE, THIS BOOK BRINGS TO MIND SPIEGELMAN’S MAUS—THE USE OF A PLAYFUL METAPHOR TO REVEAL TRUTHS WE MIGHT OTHERWISE REFUSE TO SEE. —JONATHAN AMES
REED’S TALE, CRAFTED AMID GROUND ZERO’S DUST, IS CHILLING IN ITS CLARITY AND INSPIRED IN ITS SKEWERING OF ORWELL’S STILTED STYLE. WHETHER YOU LIKED OR LOATHED THE ORIGINAL, THERE’S NO DENYING REED HAS CAPTURED THE STATE OF THE FARM TODAY. —JAY MACDONALD, FORT MYERS NEWS-PRESS
8pm $15
Friday, November 14
Luke Dubois, Leslie Flanagan + Fair Use Trio +
Bradford Reed & Adam Kendall
R. Luke DuBois is a composer, artist, and performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, and has lectured and taught worldwide on interactive sound and video performance. 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 was the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season.
Stemming from his investigations of “time-lapse phonography,” his recent work is a sonic and encyclopedic relative to time-lapse photography. Just as a long camera exposure fuses motion into a single image, his work reveals the average sonority, visual language, and vocabulary in music, film, text, or cultural information. Exhibitions of his work include: the Insitut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain; 2008 Democratic National Convention, Denver; Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis; San Jose Museum of Art; National Constitution Center, Philadelphia; Cleveland Museum of Contemprary Art, Daelim Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul; 2007 Sundance Film Festival; and the Sydney Film Festival.
An active visual and musical collaborator, DuBois is the co-author of Jitter, a software suite for the real-time manipulation of matrix data. He appears on nearly twenty-five albums both individually and as part of the avant-garde electronic group The Freight Elevator Quartet. He currently performs as part of Bioluminescence, a duo with vocalist Lesley Flanigan that explores the modality of the human voice, and in Fair Use, a trio with Zach Layton and Matthew Ostrowski, that looks at our accelerating culture through elecronic performance and remixing of cinema.
DuBois has lived for the last fifteen years in New York City. He teaches at the Brooklyn Experimental Media Center at NYU’s Polytechnic Institute. His records are available on Caipirinha/Sire, Liquid Sky, C74, and Cantaloupe Music. His artwork is represented by bitforms gallery in New York City.
Bioluminescence is an experimental electronic audio/video processing collaboration between vocalist Lesley Flanigan and laptop artist R. Luke DuBois. The performers (one singing, one processing) create a dense pallet of sound and imagery, all derived entirely from the voice of the singer. Bioluminescence has been performed internationally with regular shows in New York City. Upcoming work includes a performance with David Byrne’s Playing the Building and a collaboration with Matthew Ritchie and Bryce Dressner as part of Ritchie’s touring installation The Morning Line, opening in London 2009.
Fair Use Trio was conceived in the spring of 2006 in celebration of Luke Dubois’ “Billboard” record release on cantaloupe records. Comprised of Matty Ostrowski, Zach Layton and Luke Dubois, the trio provide a live interactive soundtrack to the frenetic and arresting time-compressed hollywood films which are manipulated and layered in real-time by Luke Dubois.
Bradford Reed never fails to entertain and inspire. This Brooklyn, NY 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. Many have enjoyed Reed’s frequent street performances and club dates.
In additon to his solo work, Bradford plays the pencilina, drums and keyboards with King Missile III (”Detachable Penis” and “Jesus Was Way Cool”) and produced Failure and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (on Shimmy Disc/Instict Records) as well as Royal Lunch (Important Records). He also played the electric zither in the Blue Man Group’s band in their lauded Off-Broadway show, Tubes for 8 years. Reed has appeared with his pencilina on MTV, USA Up All Night, Fox’s Sound FX, The Tonight Show and has toured throughout the USA, Asia and Europe. Reed is also featured on Orbitones, Spoon Harps & Bellowphones, Ellipsis Arts’ second experimental instruments compilation album which includes music by Tom Waits, Aphex Twin and John Cage.
Bradford produced records for Krakatoa, Red Velvet Room, Spookorama, Phil Kline and Derek Buckner. He’s also been busy composing for Augenblick (animation) Studios, as well as the Rhombus and Julia Riter Dance companies. He was awarded a fellowship to the Sundance Institute’s 2002 Film Composers Lab where he received mentoring from some of Hollywood’s top composers and film music personnel. In April of 2003 he completed a residency at the Ucross foundation in Wyoming. Bradford serves a mentor for the Music for Youth Foundation and is currently working on a new album and suite for pencilina, string quartet and percussion ensemble.
Adam Kendall is a video-artist and musician living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Through his own work and the A/V series he curates, Adam explores the means of multimedia improvisation and composition. Working solo or with other artists, he approaches live video as a medium as dynamic and improvisational as traditional performance arts, and he approaches composed video with a clear sense of form and counterpoint. Adam curates the {R}ake audio/video series (NYC) and the annual vBrooklyn video-festival (NYC). He is a computer programmer and audio engineer and incorporates these disciplines into his work. http://www.hellbender.org
8pm $15
Saturday, November 15
Outpost with projections by Stephanie Wuertz
+ Alasehir (Michael Gibbons, John Gibbons, and Jason Kourkounis, otherwise known as three-fifths of Bardo Pond)
Outpost is the new group formed this past summer in NYC with Mark C, Stuart Argabright, Alice Cohen with percussionist Rami El Aaser. Mark, Stuart and Alice have been innovating, improvising and releasing music for decades, and over the course of a few NYC music scenes - now come together to launch their own unique sound.
Mark C is a New York City based musician and photographer. He is a founding member of the post punk bands Live Skull and Spoiler. Live Skull toured the U.S. and Europe and released four albums and several eps. Spoiler released crashpad on PCP records. He sings and plays guitar and synths in outpost and int’l shades. Intl shades first release hash wednesday is available on Cass records. Their second album luv & terror will be released in December on Gifted Children Records. Intl shades have performed at such venues as CBGB’s, Tonic, Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury lounge. http://www.myspace.com/internationalshades. His solo project, redfield features electronic based music often accompanied by his multi-projector slide show, Return to the Underground City of the Mind Screwers. Redfield has performed at the Kitchen, Roulette’s Mixology at the Perfoming Garage, at Chasma’s “Theatre 135,” and at the Collective Unconscious. Redfield has also collaborated with Zeena Parkins in New York and Europe. Redfield has been a regular participant in David Linton’s Unity Gain.
Mark C’s summer snow will be included on the Harvestworks surround sound DVD Nowthenafter, curated by Stuart Argabright.
Stuart Argabright ; Producer, music maker.
Since arriving in NYC early ‘78 , he has founded the groups The Futants, Ike Yard, Dominatrix and Death Comet Crew as well as The Voodooists project, black rain and currently, Dystopians ;
During the early 1980’s Argabright lived in W Berlin and worked with
members of MALARIA ! ( Suzanne Kuhnke synth / kyboards ),
Manuel Gottsching of Ash Ra Tempel,
Christlo Haas of Liasions Dangeruses & early DAF,
Michael Koenig of Tangerine Dream and Agitation Free,
Mufti - FM Einheit of Einsturzende Neubauten.
In NYC SA has worked with pioneering synth guitarist Chuck Hammer on TV scores for NY Times TV and they were nominated for EMMY Award for their work on TLC’s
Trauma: Life In The ER , among other series such as Science Times for NY Times.
Other collaborators include artists Gretchen Bender, Robert Longo, Amber Denker,
authors William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and Jack Womack and choreographer Bill T Jones, productions for Judy Nylon, The Rammellzee and others as well as custom soundtracks for IBM’s Advanced CG Division and various N American & Japanese corporations and companies.
Stuart’s selected Discography includes :
The Rudements on “30 Seconds Over DC” Comp. on Limp Records (’78),
Ike Yard’s album on Factory Records America (’82),
“The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” 12″ on Streetwise Records / Uproar (’84),
Death Comet Crew 12″ “At The Marble Bar” on Beggars Banquet Records (’84),
The Voodooists B side of 7″ - “Queen Of Voudou” w/ Debbie Harryfor J Demme’s
“Married To The Mob” sdtk (’89),
black rain’s “Neuromancer” Audio Book on TimeWarner (’94)
as well as many rereleases such as Perfect Beats Vol.2 on Tommy Boy ( Dominatrix ),
Andrew Weatherall’s Nine O’Clock Drop on Nuphonic ( Dominatrix ),
Anti NY collection on Gomma ( ‘00),
This Is Riphop on Troubleman ( DCC album ) (’04),
This Is Riphop and Riphop remixes Japanese release on Delic Records,
and 2006’s Ike Yard Collected: 1980 -’82 on Acute Records / Car Park Records.
DCC and Ike Yard have been playing throughout Europe (Venice Bienalle, Berlin, Paris, Amiens Nuits Blanche, Lyon’ Fest., Toulouse Cartier Fest. and Japan since reforming in 2003, 2005, respectively
Productions include:
Soundtracks for Award winning CG shorts by IBM’s Advanced CG Lab,
CD Rom’s Innerware Ambient Lingerie catalog and
Digital Shiatsu for Nippon TV,
The Brotherhood Of Anti-Good ( NYC Hardcore Comp. for Japanese Fashion brand ),
production of The Bi -Conicals Of The Rammellzee on Gomma Records Munich,
TUSSLE’s Don’t Stop remix on Troubleman Unlimited NJ.
In addition, Stuart put together the 2006 New York Noise 3 collection for Soul Jazz Records London
and the near decade spanning survey of ‘downtown electronicacoustic music’ ,
the Nowthenafter SurroundSound DVD collection for Harvestworks Tellus NYC …
http://www.myspace.com/rapidexpansioncorporation
http://www.myspace.com/ikeyard
http://www.myspace.com/deathcometcrew
Alice Cohen (Bassist in outpost) has recently performed at The Kitchen with Delia Gonzales and Gavin Russom, and at Deitch Projects, with artist Terence Koh.
She has recorded and toured in various bands, going back to The Vels in the 80’s, Die Monster Die in the 90’s, and more recently The Long Lost and Castles, to name a few. Currently performing as a solo artist, her new work blends futuristic keyboard tones with transcendental guitar riffs and train of thought lyrics. Cohen’s songs take you to locations found in dreams and the subconscious, with tales involving seaweed and outerspace. Sometimes catchy, with a darkened pop core, the sound still ventures into unexpected landscapes.
www.myspace.com/alicecohen
Percussion specialist Rami El Aaser also currently plays with Sounds Of Taarab
http://www.myspace.com/outpostnyc
Stephanie Wuertz is an artist, filmmaker, and curator living in New York. A retrospective of early video artist Paul Ryan, curated by her, is currently on view at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute in New York. She is working on a multi-channel installation about hysteria, nineteenth century theories of affect, and proto-cinema.
Alasehir
Alasehir is the trio of Michael Gibbons, John Gibbons, and Jason Kourkounis, otherwise known as three-fifths of Bardo Pond. At times they are joined by Isobel Sollenberger, thus four-fifths of Bardo Pond. Alasehir’s music is a sonic exploration of dense, languorous, free expansion. Billowing and exploding like a cluster of hashish stars, they produce a cosmic energy akin to a quasar in the heavens far left of Coltrane’s OM and just right of the galaxy known as Dead C’s Harsh ’70s Reality. This is the rocket ride into the outer stratum, so climb aboard and let Alasehir be your 2008: A Space Odyssey.
8pm $15
Wednesday November 19
MATA Presents
Interval 2.2
The New Virtuosity:
The Musicians of New Amsterdam Records
Curated by Judd Greenstein
Featuring Solo Performances by:
Andrew McKenna Lee (guitar)
Nadia Sirota (viola)
On November 19, MATA & New Amsterdam Records present with ISSUE Project Room the second installment of the 2008-09 Interval series season. Curated by rising star composer Judd Greenstein, this event, entitled The NEW New Virtuosity: The Musicians of New Amsterdam Records, explores virtuosity from within New York’s indie classical scene, as two of the city’s most highly-regarded young soloists perform works that demonstrate the breadth of their talents and their musical experience. Guitarist/Composer Andrew McKenna Lee and violist Nadia Sirota each combine impeccable technique with a broad-minded taste and a highly refined style: Lee, with his incredibly personal compositions that draw equally from Bach and Hendrix, combining them to form a unique expressive language; and Sirota, whose passion for the interpretation of newly composed music extends, with equal skill, from the far reaches of Modernism and New Complexity to music that lies on and beyond the borders of indie rock.
For this performance, Nadia and Andrew will explore two dimensions of their solo repertoire, the acoustic and the electric; Nadia will play a work for viola alone by event curator Judd Greenstein, as well as a pair of works by Marcos Balter and a selection of études with electronics by Nico Muhly, while Andrew will perform his own works for both the acoustic and electric guitars. Both Nadia and Andrew share an approach to music-making that is idiosyncratic and dynamic, ever-changing in response to the music that moves them, and buttressed by true mastery of their instruments. Moreover, they are each deeply ingrained in the independent classical scene in New York City, opening their ears and minds to the incredible world of sound and music being made among their peers, in the New Amsterdam community and beyond.
Artist Bios
Described as “full of imagination and technical expertise,” Andrew McKenna Lee’s music is an organic synthesis of contrasting elements from a variety of styles and influences. A native of Charleston, SC, Andrew began his musical studies on the guitar at age twelve and soon after went on to pursue composition. In recent years, his music has been performed by such ensembles as the Brentano String Quartet, The American String Quartet, ensemble ereprijs, Talujon, the New Jersey Symphony, Kroumata, Proteus, Janus, and eighth blackbird. Upon the premiere of his orchestral work Vortices by the New Jersey Symphony, The New Jersey Star Ledger praised the work’s “hard edged contrasting orchestral color,” and proclaimed, “Lee’s command of his style must be respected. His orchestration is precise, the composition balanced with clear directional goals and the means to get there.” His works have been presented at many festivals, including the International Music Festival of Toroella de Montgrí, Spain, International Gaudeamus Week of the Netherlands, the Stockholm Arts and Sciences Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. His music has also been heard on WNYC’s New Sounds series with host Jonathan Schaefer and featured in a segment of New Hampshire Public Television’s weekly broadcast, New Hampshire Outlook. As a guitarist, he has given solo recitals and performances in venues such as New York City’s Symphony Space, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, BAM Café, the Harris Theatre of the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, The Annenberg Center in Philadelphia, the Royal University College of Music in Stockholm, and in conjunction with the Aspen Music Festival. He has also collaborated in live performances with other artists, including renowned bassist Mark Dresser, cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, the New York based chamber ensemble Janus, and composer Steven Mackey. His debut album, on New Amsterdam Records, will be released in the Winter of 2009. https://www.newamsterdamrecords.com/#Andrew_McKenna_Lee
New York-based violist Nadia Sirota is best known as an interpreter of new music, having commissioned and premiered dozens of works by composers and songwriters including Marcos Balter, Ben Frost, Judd Greenstein, Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigurðsson, and Ryan Streber. She received her undergraduate and Master’s degrees from the Juilliard School, where she performed as co-founder of the AXIOM ensemble, initiated the Castleman/Amory/Huang studio’s New Music Project, and created the Juilliard Plays Juilliard program for student composers and performers. After winning the top prize in Juilliard’s 2005 concerto competition, Nadia performed Hindemith’s Der Schwanendreher with conductor Marin Alsop and the Juilliard Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall, and she has also collaborated as soloist and chamber musician with such artists as Joseph Kalichstein, Itzhak Perlman, and the Silk Road Ensemble. Nadia is currently a member of the Tetras String Quartet, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), and the collaborative multimedia group Vision Into Art (VIA), and was a founding fellow of the Academy, a program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute. In the fall of 2007, Nadia joined the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music for its new Masters Program in Contemporary Music Performance. She has performed in-studio for NPR’s Morning Edition, BBC Radio 3, CBS Morning Edition, and A&E Breakfast with the Arts, and her recording credits include work for MTV2, Neuma, Bedroom Community, the Royal Academy of Music, and 11:11 Records. In the spring of 2009, Nadia will make her solo recording debut with an album on the New Amsterdam label, including music by Judd Greenstein, Nico Muhly and Marcos Balter. https://www.newamsterdamrecords.com/#Nadia_Sirota
About MATA Interval
Started during the 2007-08 season, MATA Interval is a bi-monthly series dedicated to small-scale performances by emerging performers and composers based in New York City. Produced in conjunction with Issue Project Room (IPR), Interval features programs developed and produced by young participants in MATA’s Curatorial Associate program. The series is committed to presenting various streams of thought and aesthetics from the field, mapping areas in which the traditional and the experimental coexist. More information at http://www.matafestival.org/interval
8pm $10
Thursday, November 20
Ben Vida + MV Carbon/Aki Onda
Ben Vida has been writing, recording and releasing records for over
ten years, both with such bands as Town and Country, Singer and DRMWPN
as well as solo under the name Bird Show. He has released records with
many labels including Thrill Jockey, Drag City and Kranky and has
toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe and Japan.
2008 brings the release of Untitled, the third album under the Bird
Show moniker. Joining the group for this outing are Greg Davis, Robert
AA Lowe, Michael Zerang and Adam Vida. Upcoming projects include works
for solo analog synthesizer and the first Bird Show Band release
featuring Josh Abrams, Jim Baker, Dan Bitney and John Herndon.
M.V. Carbon is a cellist, composer and improviser who plays and sings through tape loops, pedals and circuits. She occasionally incorporates film imagery into her performances. She is part of the electronic duo, Metalux. Her work has been released on 5RC, Load, No-Fi, and Atavistic, among others.
Aki Onda is an electronic musician, composer, and photographer. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New York. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project – works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images set to live guitar improvisation. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Shelley Hirsch.
8pm $15
Friday, November 21
Source of Yellow + Susan Alcorn + Lone Wolf & Cub
SOURCE OF YELLOW is always trying to get lost - whether by wandering directionless into planes of color and overwhelming light, seeking out the blackest brambled swamps, or burying themselves alive then frantically digging themselves out at the last conscious moment, gasping. This is our idea of fun. We are very excited and honored to be playing with Ms.Alcorn, who’s music is a foreign place inside us.
Saxes & Electronics: Nawi Avila (Odeen Pope Saxophone Orchestra, tHE hOLY cHILDHOOD, the Anawium),
Drums & Electronics: Nick Hasty (Shit Fed Iron Hero)
Bass & Electronics: Peter Kerlin (Christmas Decorations, Minetta, tHE hOLY cHILDHOOD)
http://myspace.com/sourceofyellow
SUSAN ALCORN is a composer, improvisor, and pedal steel guitarist active in contemporary music and free improvisation. She combines the techniques of country-western pedal steel with her own extended techniques to form a personal style influenced by free jazz, avant-garde classical music, Indian ragas, Indigenous traditions, and various folk musics of the world.
“From the relatively unadorned sound of pedal steel and amplifier, Susan Alcorn brings forth music that is as full of emotional honesty as it is of melodic and harmonic exploration and surprise. She possesses a virtuosic technique that is always at the service of the musical moment and its possibilities for expression and communication.”
- Kevin McNeil Brown, Dusted Feature
http://myspace.com/susanalcorn
LONE WOLF & CUB
Ryan Sawyer (drums), Suzanne Rogaleski, (trapeze)
8pm $15
Saturday, November 22
Wingdale Community Singers
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.
8pm $15
Tuesday, November 25
Artist In Residence, Tristan Perich presents
Loud Objects Gala FUNraiser
the Loud Objects, that smoky trio of international live-action precision noise solderists, present a special gala col-la-bor-a-tion with fifteen of New York City’s finest top notch high class no holds barred musicians. Simultaneously! Each performer will route their audio through a Loud Objects performance board, with which the tireless solderists will melt and manipulate all fifteen tracks live with microchip machine code. There will be hip hop! chiptunes! rock stars! noise theater! Eric Beug! Fifteen performers for 33 1/3 cents a piece.
Hors d’œuvre by Chris McDonald.
Performers include:
- Natacha Diels
- Zach Layton
- Lesley Flanigan
- Jan Kodylewski
- Mark Denardo
- Ted Hayes
- Tom Ritchford
- Tom Dexter
- Stephan Moore
- Chris McDonald
- Nick Kass
- Eric Beug
- RadioShock
- Jaymes Dec
- Anamanaguchi
8pm $5
Saturday, November 29
THE NEW YORK THEREMIN SOCIETY PROUDLY PRESENTS:
A PERFORMANCE BY MASTER THEREMINIST KIP ROSSER
AND
WORLD WAR ONE IN 3-D WITH THEREMIN ACCOMPANIMENT ROBERT MUNN & SARA COOK OF THE DEPTHOGRAPHY GROUP
The New York Theremin Society will present Robert Munn & Sara Cook and their 3D Projection show of Stereoscopic images of World War 1 with electronic Theremin accompaniment. It is part of the NY THEREMIN SOCIETY’S series of events at the Issue Project Room and headlining the bill is a separate performance by master Thereminist Kip Rosser.
The images are from Mr. Munn’s extremely rare personal collection of 200 glass plate stereo photographs of the conflict. These 90 year old, emulsion-on-glass stereo plates were manufactured in France between 1914-1918 and present a graphic, uncompromising view of the brutality and devastation of the World’s first “modern” war. The immersive effect provided by the 3-D projection combined with Mr. Munn’s provocative live performance on the Theremin assures the audience a startling experience difficult to soon forget…
Tickets $10 at door, this includes 3-D glasses For further information, visit http://www.depthography.com Or call 1-212-674-4185, 1-718-824-1052
