an evening with dj olive
January 18, 2008
an evening with dj olive and special guests:
marina rosenfeld, toshio kajiwara, and barry weisblat
dj olive
DJ Olive , aka Gregor Asch, is known for many sounds. A founding member of We™, one of the state’s most influential electronic acts to emerge from the U.S. scene in the nineties. He has improvised with literally thousands of world class musicians from Luc Ferrari to Kim Gordon, from Ikue Mori to Jah Wobble, from Jim O’Rourke to Uri Caine, from Alan Vega to John Zorn. From Medeski Martin and Wood to Christian Fennez.
He has also been releasing what he calls “Sleeping pills” and doing sleep over events for years. This record is a clear example of his beat writing skills following fluidly in the footsteps of his 2003 hit “Bodega”. This is the down home happy go lucky feel of sunrise future funk on a roof top in Brooklyn with all your positive smiling friends dancing in your arms around the hibachi.
8pm $10
totem
January 17, 2008
Totem is a noise rock free improvisation trio that ventures from walls of sound to exploring microscopic sound worlds.
Andrew Drury
Andrew Drury grew up near Seattle (USA) and works primarily in avant-jazz and free improvisation, with regular forays into other genres and media. He has performed in Europe and North America, made four CDs as a bandleader, and appeared on about 20 others. He is an acclaimed leader of percussion workshops. Drury has collaborated with artists that include Jason Kao Hwang, Myra Melford, Wadada Leo Smith, John Tchicai, Kenny Wolleson’s Himalayas, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and many more. Drury currently leads four groups that play his compositions. The Andrew Drury Trio, Content Provider, Breathe, and his latest project is a percussion quartet that features Jim Black, Mike Pride, and Michael Sarin. His music for dance has been presented at DTW, Joyce Soho, NW New Works Festival, and five cities in Romania. Drury has received 18 grants for his work from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Seattle Arts Commission, the Artist Trust, the Puffin Foundation, and others.
Bruce Eisenbeil is a composer, improviser, and guitar instrumentalist who has dedicated his life to the advancement of modern guitar techniques through the growth and evolution of modern improvised music. He has seven CD’s released and has performed throughout the USA, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Brasil, and at many festivals. Eisenbeil has performed, recorded and collaborated with some of the best musicians in the world, including Cecil Taylor, David Murray, Milford Graves, Evan Parker, Ellery Eskelin, Andrew Cyrille, William Parker, and Katsuyuki Itakura. Critics have compared him not only with guitarists such as Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt, Grant Green, Billy Bauer, Derek Bailey, Sarnie Garrett, Sonny Sharrock, Curtis Mayfield, John McLaughlin, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck but also with saxophonists John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman and pianists McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor. His ensemble writing has been associated with that of Miles Davis, Don Cherry, Brian Ferneyhough, Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Revolutionary Ensemble.
Tom Blancarte is a bassist, improviser and composer living and working in New York City. He has performed his music across North America, Europe and Japan. His primary focus is on improvisational music and finding new roles for the bass in a variety of musical contexts. He is an active performer in a variety of ensembles in the New York area, his most active groups being the hyperactive duo Sparks with trumpeter Peter Evans, Dave Smith’s Who Put The Bad Mouth On Me, and the Peter Evans Quartet. Blancarte has toured extensively throughout Europe and has received critical acclaim for his work on the self-titled Peter Evan Quartet CD released by Firehouse12 records.
blackberg/Hernandez/evans/lipton
Blacksberg/Hernandez/Evans/Lipson is a collective ensemble that plays improvised music. In this music, we strive to call on as much of our personal and shared experiences in every moment. We do this to challenge ourselves to explore our relationships with each other to find new spaces of communication and to bring joy.
Daniel Blacksberg is a trombonist who is working inside and outside the boundaries of jazz, creative and new music and Jewish music. He has performed with Joe Morris, Toshi Makihara, Bobby Zankel and the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, Sonic Liberation Front, Taylor Ho Bynum, Gene Coleman and many others. In the world of Jewish music, he has played with Michael Winograd, Frank London, Aaron Alexander, Susan Watts, Michael Alpert, Alicia Svigals, Hankus Netsky, and others in Philadelphia, New York and Krakow, Poland.
Katt Hernandez recently moved to Philadelphia, after living in the Boston area for nine years, playing the violin, running spaces, and producing shows. She has collaborated with a magnificently variegated sea of musicians, dancers, and others including- but certainly not limited to- Joe Maneri, Zack Fuller, David Maxwell, John Voigt, Joe Burgio, Vashti Bunyan, Eric Rosenthal, Jeff Arnal, Andrew Neumann, and Hans Rickheit. She has twice been invited to perform on the Autumn Uprising , High Zero and Improvised and Otherwise festivals. She has been a guest artist at MIT, Harvard, and the New England Conservatory, performed in a vast slew of local venues and- to date- any number of subway passages, urban grottos, and troglyditical performace places, as well as other experimental and life-making places throughout the Bos-Wash metropolii.
Bassist Evan Lipson draws on his varied experience as a performer to create imaginative free improvisation. Evan has performed in a variety of alternative ensembles. His improvisation credentials include participation in the NoNet Festival and performing with Stuart Dempster, Andy Hayleck, Matthias Kaul, Stanley Schumacher, Todd Whitman, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and many others. Evan has received both the American Composers Forum SUBITO grant and Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections grant. He studied string bass with Michael Formanek and Robert Kesselman and attended Peabody Conservatory and Temple University.
Michael Evans is an improvising drummer/composer whose work investigates and embraces the collision of sound and theatrics. As well as being a drum set player, his work with unusual sound sources includes found objects, homemade instruments, and various digital and homemade analog electronics. He has worked with a wide variety of artists including Samm Bennett, Jac Berrocal, EasSide Percussion, Fast Forward(Gobo), God is my Co-Pilot, Alexander Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten), Susan Hefner, Skip LaPlante’s Music for Homemade Instruments, Sean Meehan, Toronto Dance Theatre and Peter Zummo.
8 pm $10
the trojan pony tour
January 16, 2008
The Trojan Pony Tour, presented by Specific Recordings, features films and live music by artists and musicians from the fabled city of Troy, New York. Featured in the show is infectious, charming, and subversive live music from Specific Recordings artists Ross Goldstein and Jesse Stiles, sexy/patriotic short videos and the debut of Sittin’ on a Million, a surprisingly funny new documentary about a famous Troy madam by Penny Lane and Annmarie Lanesey. The program raises questions about memory and nostalgia in the construction of our shared national narratives – in a ridiculously fun way.
About Specific Recordings – Specific Recordings specializes in audio recordings that are unique as a result of historical circumstances or other unusual factors. They represent singular moments that cannot be recreated and are presented here in the highest quality possible.
Jesse Stiles
Jesse Stiles is a composer, multimedia artist, and sound designer. Stiles received a Watson Fellowship in 2000 to compose electronic music while traveling in India, Australia, and the UK for one year. His MFA thesis performance in Troy, New York opened the historic Gasholder Building to the public for the first time in 25 years, immersing hundreds of attendees in a performance of improvised electro-acoustic music and computer-controlled LED sculptures. He has performed and exhibited multimedia artwork internationally.
Ross Goldstein is an American Musician and Artist/Photographer. His “United States of Belt” recording project is a subliminal exploration of the American landscape/mindscape, combining field recordings, experimental music, and studio magic. Goldstein resides in Troy, NY where his collection of hand-painted signs play a vital role in keeping the public bewildered about what the hell is going on.
Penny Lane is an independent filmmaker and video artist living in Troy, NY and Northampton, MA. Her collaborative and solo experimental, narrative and documentary videos have screened at AFI FEST, Int’l Film Festival Rotterdam, San Francisco Int’l Film Festival, Seattle Int’l Film Festival, Women in the Director’s Chair, Santa Fe Art Institute, MOMA, and DUMBO Art Under the Bridge. Her award-winning documentaries The Abortion Diaries and Independent Media in a Time of War (the latter made with Hudson-Mohawk Indymedia) are regularly screened in classrooms, community centers and microcinemas across the U.S. and internationally on Free Speech TV and Yes! Television. And yes, that is her real name.
8 pm $10
jim pugliese’s phase III cd release party
January 12, 2008
Drums, Christine Bard
Bass, Kato Hideki
Alto sax, Michael Attias
Guitar, Marco Cappelli
Percussion/drums/mbira/conducting, Jim Pugliese
Jim Pugliese
Join Jim Pugliese’s Phase III with many special guests celebrating the release of their newest CD on the Italian label “Improvvisatore Involontario”.
“Phase III” is Jim Pugliese’s newest project and is a continuation of his ongoing quest to combine his diverse performing experiences into a single new sound with its base in rhythm. The music skirts and shifts along the edges of free improvisation, deep groove and African influenced Rhythms. It reflects Jim’s ongoing quest to explore the powerful, enlightening and spiritual secrets of drumming and is inspired by his recent association and work with Nii Tettey Tetteh, master musician from Ghana, with Milford Graves, learning drumming and healing through the heartbeat and his study of the spiritual songs of the Mbira Dzavadzimu from Zimbabwe. The Band includes some of downtowns most astounding musicians
8 pm $10
the holy experiment + corridors + ateleia
January 11, 2008
The Holy Experiment + Byron Westbrook
Byron Westbrook is a sound/intermedia artist living in Brooklyn, NY. His work involves performance of processed instrumental and environmental recordings through a multi-channel environment with a focus on redistributing energy distilled from sound and light. In solo performances under the nameCORRIDORS, a system of multiple amplifiers is used in conjunction with PA speakers to create a dynamic space within a space using sound and video projection. He has also collaborated with Rhys Chatham in the drone metal group Essentialist (Table of the Elements), as well as performed in the ensembles of Phill Niblock, Chatham, Glenn Branca and Jonathan Kane. Releases are forthcoming in 2008 for both Corridors and Essentialist.
www.byronwestbrook.com
www.myspace.com/corridors
The Holy Experiment is the solo performance of Brooke Hamre Gillespie, who was born in Ely, Minnesota in 1979. She plays bells, Tibetan singing bowls, suling flutes, recorders, electric violin, electric guitar, and uses her voice to navigate the new worlds created through the sounds. Gillespie writes. “My work is intended to reach not only those in the immediate area who listen, but consciousness is given to the sounds and vibrations produced with insight into the idea that all vibration is interactive and that every sound created eventually makes its way through the cosmos…”
Ateleia is Brooklyn resident James Elliott. His music combines crystalline pulse with submerged aquatic drones and subtle ghost melodies, evoking the grand echo of “My Bloody Valentine” and the long-standing tradition of psychedelic minimalism while informed by contemporary electronic music. “Hypnotically gorgeous…” – Jon Dale, Stylus Magazine
8 pm $10
shawn onsgard + maguire x clearvor x halvorson
January 10, 2008
Shawn Onsgard
shawn onsgard
Piano & Organ
Brooklyn pianist and composer Shawn Onsgard presents fresh selections
from his avant jazz compositions arranged for solo piano and Hammond
organ.
Through composition and performance Onsgard seeks an epistemology in
music practice which might inform new and meaningful life
experiences. He is currently developing an improvisatory solo piano
repertoire that explores imbalanced harmonic structures inspired by
Alexander Scriabin and Vijay Iyer. When not at the piano, he composes
for all sound-producing things from ice cream trucks, to hundred
meter piano wires, to snoring grandparents, and everything in between
exploring politics, metaphor, narrative, and perception of space
through sound.
His work has been performed and exhibited internationally, and he has
worked with composers Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier; film makers
Pierre Huyghe, and Jane & Louise Wilson; choreographer Mollie
O’Brien; and media artists Aaron Davidson & Melissa Dubbin, and Woody
Vasulka. He has received grants from Meet the Composer, NYSCA
Independent Media Artist award, NYFA Special Opportunity Stipend; and
he received his MA in experimental music composition from Wesleyan
University, CT.
Maguire x Cleaver x Halvorson
“Then I reflected that all things happen to oneself, and only in the
present; countless men in the air, on the land and sea, yet everything
that truly happens, happens to me….”
This decidedly unbalanced trio of drums, electric guitar, and exposed
Rhodes integrates extended sections of exact notation with
improvisational passages to create a vivid aural landscape of textural
diversity and rhythmic sensuality.
Mary Halvorson is a guitarist, composer and improviser living in
Brooklyn. She grew up in Boston and studied jazz at Wesleyan University
and the New School. Since 2000 she has been performing regularly in New
York with various groups and has toured Europe and the U.S. with the
Anthony Braxton Quintet (Live at the Royal Festival Hall, Leo Records)
and Trevor Dunn’s Trio-Convulsant (Sister Phantom Owl Fish, Ipecac
Recordings). She has also performed alongside Joe Morris, Nels Cline,
John Tchicai, Elliott Sharp, Andrea Parkins, Marc Ribot, Tony Malaby,
Oscar Noriega and Jason Moran. Current projects which Mary composes for
and performs with include a chamber-music duo with violist Jessica
Pavone ( On and Off, Skirl Records, 2007); The Mary Halvorson Trio with
John Hebert and Ches Smith; and the avant-rock band People (Misbegotten
Man, I & Ear Records, 2007). She also performs regularly in ensembles
led by Taylor Ho Bynum, Ted Reichman, Tatsuya Nakatani, Jason Cady,
Matthew Welch, Brian Chase and Curtis Hasselbring.
Gerald Cleaver, born and raised in Detroit, is a product of the city’s
rich music tradition. Inspired by his father, John Cleaver, also a
drummer, he began playing the drums at an early age. He also played
violin in elementary school and switched to trumpet during junior high
and high school. While in his teens, he gained early working experience
with Ali Muhammad Jackson, Lamont Hamilton, Earl Van Riper, and Pancho
Hagood and later with Marcus Belgrave, Donald Walden, Rodney Whitaker,
A. Spencer Barefield and Wendell Harrison. Cleaver earned a B.A. in
music education from the University of Michigan. During his studies he
was awarded an National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship to
study with drummer Victor Lewis. After graduating he began teaching in
Detroit, and later joined the jazz faculty at the University of
Michigan and Michigan State University. He relocated to New York in
2002. Cleaver has worked with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Jacky
Terrasson, Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Mario Pavone, Charles Gayle,
Matthew Shipp, Reggie Workman, Joe Morris, Craig Taborn, Ralph Alessi,
Eddie Harris, and Miroslav Vitous, among others.
Carl Maguire grew up in Madison, Wisconsin where his early piano
teachers included Jacquelyn Patricia, Ellsworth Snyder, and Joan
Wildman. He continued on to the University of Wisconsin, studying
improvisation with Roscoe Mitchell. Moving to New York in 1995, Carl
engaged in a curriculum of liberal arts at Hunter College, Schenkerian
analysis at Mannes, and post-tonal theory at CUNY Graduate Center. He
studied piano with Fred Hersch, Marilyn Crispell, and Ursula Oppens,
and of particular importance, composition with Mark Dresser. Carl
performs on piano and Rhodes, with both traditional and
less-traditional techniques, and sometimes on accordion. He has
performed or recorded with the Carter Thornton Assembly; Brett Sroka’s
Ergo; Tyshawn Sorey Quartet; The Wau Wau Sisters; Laura Andel
Orchestra; Barbez; Ben Gerstein Collective; Momenta Quartet; and was a
featured soloist in Butch Morris’ New York Skyscraper.Since 2001, Carl
has led Floriculture with Chris Mannigan, John Hebert, and Dan Weiss.
The band plays exclusively Maguire’s compositions. Donald Elfman says
“These are exceptional players, but each man’s every note is at the
service of making brilliant, involving music.” In 2006, Floriculture
released its first album on Between The Lines, to critical acclaim.
8pm $10
mv + ee
January 05, 2008
mv & ee
“It’s gwine to be fine to be back near the Gowanus once again to air some tonal hash. We’ll be rollin’ in with the golden road, core duo exchange of mv & ee augmented with Samara Lubelski, Willie Laneand John Moloney. Psyched to jam with real time presentation of the ‘Gettin’ Gone’ song cycle and other tone petals. Hope to see ya in the tapers pit blossoming, until that time…” mv
8pm $10
ISSUE Project Room’s Theremin Society
January 04, 2008
rob schwimmer +david simons +dorit chrysler +scott burland and frank schultz
Rob Schwimmer
Tonights performance features 2 new works for theremin PELLUCID DREAMS by Rob Schwimmer and ASSENT David Simons for theremin, tuba, cello and voice commissioned by The Department of Cultural Affairs for ISSUE Project Room.
Also featured is new work by Dorit Chrysler in collaboration with Danish Artist Jesper Just and new members to the Society, Scott Burland and Frank Schultz and their duet for theremin and lapsteel
8 pm $10
tony conrad + m.v. carbon
January 03, 2008
If Tony Conrad’s powerful sound has its roots in “minimalism”, M.V. Carbon’s music introduces a more contemporary but equally aggressive practice. Meeting as they do with violin and cello above a unifying drone, Conrad and Carbon explode the space we normally think of in connection with string quartets, waltz music, and country fiddlin’. Chaotic parameters are bent and rigorously sculpted using techniques that have been revealed through enduring experimentation. Their tangles of sounds incite a tumbling clash of traditions. The interplay of their approaches reflects the split personality of today’s listeners, who want to discover the thrill of music in a rich sonic imbroglio.
mv carbon
8 pm $10
On January 25, ISSUE Project Room will inaugurate its new space at 110 Livingston with Gaudeamus Muziekweek, a four-day festival celebrating groundbreaking and challenging new music by emerging composers from around the world. Working in partnership ...
ISSUE is starting off the New Year with a change of scenery. That's right, Issue Project Room is moving out of our space at the Old American Can Factory and into 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn. We've had a great run at the Can Factory,...