The DownTown Ensemble performs sound/text pieces by Robert Ashley, Daniel Goode, Richard Kostelanetz, Jackson Mac Low and Anne Tardos. Featured performers include Bill Hellermann, and downtown stalwarts Peter Zummo, Alex Waterman, Andrew Bolotowsky, and Daniel Goode, Co-director of the DownTown Ensemble. David Garland performs three of his new songs from his forthcoming album Conversations with the Cinnamon Skeleton
David Garland will sing, play clarinet, and play a one-of-a-kind, drone-driven guitar. David Garland's songs are "squeezed between categories looking for the truth." His first album Control Songs was released in 1987 and his 10th album will come out in July 2011.
Bill Hellermann, well known as a composer guitarist on the downtown scene in the 70s and 80s, has in the last five years redefined himself as a reciter/narrator of texts in experimental music works. As a curator at PS 1, the Clock Tower, and the Alternative Museum he launched the first exhibitions of sound sculpture and audio art, and in the process bringing into usage the term "Soundart".
Robert Ashley is widely regarded as one of the foremost composers of experimental music. He is best known for his operas Perfect Lives, Atalanta (Acts of God), and the monumental tetralogy, Now Eleanor's Idea. On this concert Hellermann will perform his rarely performed virtuoso narration piece But, Is It Edible?
Daniel Goode's new work Misdirection of the Eye is one of a series of monologues with music written expressly for Bill Hellermann and this latest one focuses on the troubles going on in his home state of Wisconsin, with some asides on the travails of God.
Richard Kostelanetz is one of America's most prolific and interesting poets. Among his vast output are a significant number of important sound/text works. Tonight's concert will feature his work Lovings, in which a collection of completely independent sentences are performed by musicians, who interpret the sentences as music, or as spoken words, or as a combination of both.
Jackson Mac Low is widely acknowledged as one of the major figures in 20th century American poetry, with much of his work ranging freely across boundaries into the spheres of music, dance, theater, performance, and the visual arts. The DownTown Ensemble will perform his Music Words (for Phill Niblock) comprised entirely of words and pitch patterns that would never be employed by Phill Niblock.
The DownTown Ensemble also will perform poems set to music by Anne Tardos from her book Uxudo, featuring Toowomba 5 , Work Ants, and Avuncular Proceedings. Ms. Tardos is a poet, composer, and visual artist. She is the author of several books of poetry and the multimedia performance work and radio play Among Men.
