Unsound LABs concerts feature collaborations between musicians of different kinds working together for the first time in a series of unique free performances. Curated to cross borders of both sound and geography, this year’s program pairs artists from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia with musicians from the U.S. This year’s LABs features: Zavoloka with Andrea Pensado, Hai Nguyen Dihn with Nondor Nevai, Kotra with Black Rain, Denis Kolokol/Tomek Choloniewski Duo with Nate Wooley, Maria Minerva with Mark Van Hoen, and Mark Mcquire with Bartosz Weber.
Zavoloka and Andrea Pensado
Andrea Pensado began playing piano as a girl, with private instruction. Later on, her main professors were Elsa Carranza in Argentina and afterward, Ewa Sobolowa in Poland. She obtained her BA in Music Education from the University of La Plata in 1987. Immediately following, she moved to Poland where she continued her studies at the Krakow Academy of Music. Pensado graduated with two MFAs, the first one in Choir Conducting in 1992, then she received her Composition Degree with honors in 1995. Her professors were Barbara Buczek and Boguslaw Schaeffer in composition and Marek Choloniewski in computer music. Presently, Pensado has been performing solos and has played with, among others. She continues using Max/MSP as her main programming tool. Emphasis focuses on the search and/or creation of parameters for real time articulation of sound. The approach to programming and performance is highly intuitive. Occasionally, the combination of the performance situation, the often abrasive sounds, the irrational use of the voice and the inherent uncertainty of improvisations contributes to discoveries of unknown places in her mind.
Zavoloka is a stage name of Kateryna Zavoloka - sound artist, experimental electronic music composer, performer and graphic designer from Kyiv, Ukraine. Zavoloka mainly explores digital and analog synthesis and combines them with recordings of herself singing ancient Ukrainian folk songs and playing different instruments. Her music consists of intensive varied sound motions and unexpected combinations piped into carefully controlled electronic flows.
Hai Nguyen Dinh and Nondor Nevai
Hai Nguyen Dinh is a composer, light programmer, video- and performance-artist. His work is mostly concerned with stage productions combining several medias, although he also contributes to the area of more traditional theater/dance and music. He is the founder and director of the music project "Next Life", and is currently a part of the exhibiting/performing group "Verdensteatret" as a performer. Both projects visited New York in 2011.
Nondor Nevai is a Transylvanian-and-Norwegian-American composer vocalist and percussionist (born in New York state in 1970) who began listening to Heavy Metal around 1984 and playing it around 1990. He believes that Heavy Metal is not only the superior music of all the known kinds, but that the athletic expression of extreme metal, with its philosophical component, is among the most profound of arts. Nevai is the founder of ABORTED CHRIST CHILDE, HATEWAVE and more recently, _ and BARR-NEVAI. Known for writing in a hypertechnical neoclassical style and for lightspeed improvisation of typically long-form pieces with glossolalic lyrics in vibrating unison or bowel-shudderingly-throatsung.
Kotra and Black Rain
Kotra is the stage name and the main art project for Dmytro Fedorenko, Ukrainian sound-artist and promoter. Creator and runner of his label Kvitnu, curator of International festivals Kvitnu Fest and Detali Zvuku. Though he is a classically trained guitarist, you won’t hear a guitar in his harsh, lately inderministic extreme noise music. Dmytro started making music in an avant-garde or noise duo called Zet; after its breakup in 1998 he started the Kotra project, releasing tapes and CDs, at first sounding industrially and rhythmic, combining extremely loud waves with other extremely loud waves and playing with the results. Worked with Zavoloka, Abs6, Kim Cascone, Jeff Surak, Moljebka Pvlse, Andrey Kiritchenko and Andreas Berthling. Kotra is a very active and productive artist - intensively performing around the world on festivals and tours. There are loads of releases available on various labels all over the world.
Black Rain was the post-punk, post-industrial group formed by Stuart Argabright (Futants, Ike Yard, Dominatrix, Death Comet Crew) with Shinichi Shimokawa, Dave Vulcan, Bones & Thom Furtado in 1989. The group worked hard to make their sound; incorporating punk tempos, short concise song forms, turbo drumming, metal percussion and sound effects. Performing at CBGB’s, The Bank, Bond Street Café, C Squat and at the Anniversary of the Tompkins Sq. Park Riots party in the Park, Black Rain had their final show as a four piece opening for GG Allin at The Gas Station June 27 1993.Black Rain later stripped down to a two man unit for soundtrack work with William Gibson’s "Neuromancer" audio book followed by Johnny Mnemonic directed by Robert Longo. In 1995 Black Rian released some of these tracks and other as the 1.0 album Fifth Column Records. A second album nanarchy followed on FCR in 1996. In 2012 London label Blackest Ever Black has released Black rain’s soundtracks as Now, I’m Just A Number: Soundtracks 1994 – 95.
