Gleason’s Twins is an ensemble obsessed with the blur between speech and music, word and sound. The duo performs a kind of modern art song in which the group sets its own poems, infusing pre-composition with improvisation. With an unusual and spare instrumentation, voice and trumpet, they seek to expand the sonic ranges of their respective instruments while finding ways for the two sounds to mingle, contrast, and collapse. The work of Steve Lacy and Irene Aebi is a major inspiration and point of departure for the duo, as well as the compositions of Morton Feldman and György Kurtág, and the poetry of Robert Creeley and George Oppen.
Gleason’s Twins have appeared at The Stone, Goodbye Blue Monday, and Stain Bar in New York, and Mobius and the Outpost Gallery in Boston. The group was also invited to perform on Anthony Coleman’s “Barbaric Yawp,” which took place in New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall in 2008.
Michael Beharie is a composer and songwriter interested in multiplicity, noise and drones. Michael studied classical guitar and composition at Oberlin Conservatory and is dedicated to expanding the vocabulary of the bowed guitar through the use of extremely light and extremely heavy bow pressure. Michael has composed chamber music for various mixed ensembles and is also interested in combining simple song forms with noise. His primary collaborations include the groups ‘beijaflor you hummingbirg’ with Thomas Arsenault and ’sugaring seasons’ with Jonah Rossenberg.
At ISSUE Michael will be joined by Amanda Wolman (violin), Brendan Evans (guitar), Ted Rankin-Parker (cello) and Jonah Rossenberg (piano) in a led improvisation based loosely on Alejandro Jodorowski’s classic film The Holy Mountain. Arranged as a series of vignettes, and controlled through text instructions, hand signals and sonic cues, the piece attempts to reconcile sounds from different worlds by simply letting them coexist.