ISSUE's two-night series highlighting the Kye record label closes with a solo performance by acclaimed improvising violinist Malcolm Goldstein, who as a composer, author, and educator, has been a quiet force in New York’s contemporary music community since the 60s. Kye label-head Graham Lambkin appears in a duo for piano and tape with Australian improvisor James Rushford. Lambkin also presents a tape piece by Henning Christiansen, Opus 186 Schafe statt Geigen (1988), performed by Christiansen with 30 sheep. One of the central figures of the Danish branch of Fluxus and also of Denmark’s radical art movement Ex School, Christiansen is highly regarded for his collaborations with Joseph Beuys and for works that trespass conventional boundaries between artistic disciplines.
Kye’s aesthetic involves “organizing sound” as opposed to “making music,” in the words of founder/label-head Graham Lambkin, the sound artist and composer who established himself through the sonic experiments of the Shadow Ring. Lambkin and Kye’s artists create deep, atmospheric, and evocative pieces through the use of electronics, analog tape, field recordings, and sound collage. Kye’s catalog contains artists from varied backgrounds with distinct approaches to organized sound, weaving together concepts from both the sonic and visual arts, as well as the sounds of the everyday.
A composer, violinist and improviser, Malcolm Goldstein has been active in the presentation of new music and dance since the early 1960s, when he participated in the Tone Roads Ensemble, Judson Dance Theater and Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York City. Though trained as a classical violinist, his music became focused on open improvisation (his Soundings improvisations have received acclaim for having “re-invented violin playing”) and structured improvisation-composition. Numerous composers—as diverse as John Cage and Ornette Coleman—have written music for him. Since the late 1970s he has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Japan, where he has presented concerts of his music at several New Music America festivals, the Acustica International Festival (West German Radio, Cologne), and as director of the Ensemble for New Music of the Frankfurt Hessischer Rundfunk.
Graham Lambkin is a multidisciplinary artist based in upstate New York, who first came to prominence in the early 90's through the formation of his music group The Shadow Ring. Combining a D.I.Y. post-punk ethic with folk music, cracked electronics, and surreal wordplay, The Shadow Ring created a unique hybrid sound that set them apart from their peers and continues to show as an influence today. Following the dissolution of The Shadow Ring Lambkin embarked on a series of striking and highly original solo releases, a critically acclaimed trilogy with experimental tape music artist Jason Lescalleet and a collaboration with legendary table-top guitarist and founding member of AMM, Keith Rowe.
James Rushford (b. Melbourne 1985) is an Australian composer, keyboardist, violist and improviser. His work is drawn from a familiarity with specific concrète, improvised, avant-garde and collagist languages. He has been commissioned by ensembles including the BBC Scottish Symphony (Glasgow), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Neon (Oslo), Synergy Percussion, Ensemble Offspring, Soundstream, The Song Company, and Decibel, and has had work featured in the Melbourne International Arts Festival (2006 and 2008), Norway Ultima Festival (2011), Unsound Festival (New York 2014), Tectonics Festival (Scotland 2013) and the Liquid Architecture Festival (2010). As a performer, James is a founding member of the chamber music ensemble Golden Fur, and has given premieres of works by Alvin Lucier, Anthony Pateras, Henning Christiansen, Ivan Wyschnegradsky, David Chisholm, Iancu Dumitrescu, Phill Niblock, Robert Ashley, Klaus Lang and Jani Christou. Collaborators include Jon Rose, Oren Ambarchi, Kassel Jaeger, Ned Collette, Francis Plagne, Sophia Brous, crys cole and Joe Talia. James's music has been published by Cajid Media (AUS), Pogus (US), Sabbatical (AUS), Prisma (Norway), Bocian (Poland), Penultimate Press (UK), Loopy US) and Kye (US). He is currently undertaking a DMA at the California Institute of the Arts.
Henning Christensen (1932-2008) was a Danish composer and artist, known as one of the central figures of the Danish branch of the Fluxus movement. Having studied composition at the Royal Conservatory of Music, Copenhagen, in the early 1950s, he attended the Darmstadt Summer School in 1962, where he became involved with the Fluxus movement and was aligned with the radical Danish art movement Ex School. A mainstay of experimental performance in Denmark, Christensen resented the concepts of isolated artistic genius and genre distinctions, and his entire production can be seen as a subsequent and vibrant example of praxis in a constant flux. This is visible from his engagement in Fluxus, over numerous collaborative performances, to his position as a professor at the Art Academy in Hamburg. From 1964 to 1985 Christiansen collaborated regularly with Joseph Beuys, regularly providing the sonic backdrop for his performances.
Henning Christiansen: Opus 186 Schafe statt Geigen (1988)
Performers: Henning Christiansen and 30 sheep. First performance in Linz, Austria, July 1988
Recording: Vogelzymphon / Schafe statt Geigen Edition Galerie Bernd Kluser, Minch, Germany 1991.
(the sound installation Schafe statt Geigen owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art. Roskilde. Denmark).
Registered with KODA.
