Tuesday, June 26th, ISSUE and Harvestworks present acclaimed sonicist, composer, and biologist Francisco López making a rare New York appearance, his first at ISSUE since 2014. With roots in industrial music, and a penchant for recording everything from rainforests to New York skyscrapers, López’ work concerns complex phenomenological referencing to the “substance of reality -- in texture, in complexity, in richness, in virtual space. Tickets are limited to 75 seats, with Lopez’ work presented in multi-channel sound, in the dark, with a blindfolded audience.
The evening also features composer, performer, and kinetic installation artist Michael Theodore performing on electronics and various organic instruments, including electric guitar. Theodore’s music tends to oscillate between minimal, hushed gestures and maximal sonic architectonics -- with the resulting soundscapes often focused on the elemental. At ISSUE, Theodore premieres the solo work “Sound Houses (i)”, the first in a series of pieces inspired by Francis Bacon’s 1627 book entitled “The New Atlantis.” Bacon’s work is a vision of the future of human discovery, knowledge, science, and the arts, and includes a compelling description of “Sound Houses,” which are speculative museums filled with whimsical and imaginary musical instruments.
Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music scene. For almost forty years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion. He has realized hundreds of concerts, projects with environmental recordings, workshops and sound installations in over seventy countries of the six continents. His extensive catalog of sound pieces (with live and studio collaborations with hundreds of international artists) has been released by nearly 400 record labels / publishers worldwide. He has been awarded four times with honorary mentions at the competition of Ars Electronica Festival and is the recipient of the Qwartz Award 2010 for best sound anthology.
Michael Theodore was born and raised in New York City, and has lived in Boulder, Colorado for the past twenty years. Inspired by observations and experiences of both the mechanical and the natural world, Theodore creates dynamic fields of sound, color, and light in a large variety of mediums, including interactive kinetic installations and moving images. Theodore's work has been presented across the United States, and in Mexico, Trinidad y Tobago, Greece, Spain, Germany, Sweden, France, Australia, Japan, and China, and his artwork is represented by the David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, Colorado. Theodore holds faculty appointments at the University of Colorado, Boulder, with the College of Music (music composition and technology), the Department of Art and Art History, and the College of Media, Communication, and Information, and is director of the ATLAS Institute’s Center for Media, Arts and Performance, a venue for experimental media created with technology. Theodore received degrees from Amherst College, Yale (MM), and UCSD (PhD), studying with composers Lewis Spratlan, Martin Bresnick, Jon Berger, Jacob Druckman, Betsy Jolas, and Roger Reynolds. An active and eclectic collaborator, Theodore has created a series of performance works with acclaimed dance artist Michelle Ellsworth, received a Timeout Chicago “Top Ten Classical Music 2010” citation for the album Panauromni, created with trumpeter Glen Whitehead, duo partner in the band “Psychoangelo,” partnered on a number of experimental electronic releases with Ryan Wurst on Always Human Tapes, performed in a trio setting with Sam Bardfeld (Bruce Springsteen, The Jazz Passengers) and Oren Bloedow (Elysian Fields, The Lounge Lizards), and performed in venues ranging from small clubs to the Newport Folk Festival with “Batteries Die” duo partner and punk-folk legend Tim Eriksen.
