Thursday, September 24th, composer and performer John McCowen continues his 2020 ISSUE residency with a streamed performance of compositions from his duo with clarinetist Madison Greenstone.
Mundanas for Duo is an ongoing book of compositions for two clarinets by McCowen. These works take multiphonic and microtonal clarinet techniques and put them against old-fashioned forms like canon and counterpoint. In John’s words, the sonic end result is his “droney modus operandi of wubwubwubwub.”
The concert will be streamed from ISSUE’s 2020 Boerum theater, and includes premieres of new works from the Mundanas book as well as selections from 2018’s Mundanas I-V released by Edition Wandelweiser.
John McCowen is a Brooklyn-based composer and performer originally from Southern Illinois. His work focuses on extending the possibilities of the clarinet & contrabass clarinet. John embraces long-form drones, difference tones, and beating harmonics as a means to extrude the dimensions within - treating the clarinet as an acoustic synthesizer. His discography includes releases on Edition Wandelweiser, International Anthem, Astral Spirits, NNA Tapes, Cairn Desk, and others. Performances include Le Guess Who Festival (Utrecht), Norður og Niður Festival (Reykjavik), Hot Air Music Festival (SF), Bowling Green New Music Festival, Supersonic Festival (Birmingham), Berkeley Art Museum (BAMPFA), The Stone, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Constellation (Chicago). John was a 2017 & 2019 artist-in-residence at Lijiang Studio in Yunnan, China. He received the Elizabeth Mills Crothers Award for excellence in music composition in 2016 from Mills College where he also received an MA in Music Composition under the mentorship of Roscoe Mitchell.
Madison Greenstone is a clarinetist currently based between New York City and San Diego. She has performed as a featured artist of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik and the Lucerne Festival Academy. Notable performances have been as a soloist presented by ISSUE Project Room, as part of the Merce Cunningham Centennial Night of 100 Solos in Los Angeles, in recital at the Vigeland Mausoleum (Oslo) and at the Fondation Abbaye Royaumont. Madison is the clarinetist of TAK Ensemble, and a founding member of the [Switch~ Ensemble]. She can be heard on Wandelweiser Editions, Another Timbre, and on the TAK Editions Podcast. Madison develops collaborative works that explore brend-based awareness in Hermetic Art Party with Anthony Vine (guitar and objects) and Katy Gilmore (projections). She works closely on creative projects and large-scale low-clarinets works with Michelle Lou. Further ongoing collaborations are with Timothy McCormack, John McCowen, members of the Harvard Group for New Music, and DAD (T.J. Borden and Michael Matsuno). Madison is a doctoral candidate at UC San Diego, where she learns greatly from the mentorship of Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music. Madison performed at ISSUE Project Room in December 2018 in support of, and alongside, Mary Margaret O'Hara
