Excepter+ Mirror Mirror
excepter
Saturday January 17th
Excepter
Excepter is a six-person improvisational vocal and electronics band based in New York City. The group’s noisy mix of psychedelic rock and deranged house music fetch comparisons to Animal Collective, Black Dice, and Gang Gang Dance, but Excepter is far more devoted to chaos and infinity than its more structured contemporaries. While records released on labels such as Paw Tracks, 5RC, Load and Fusetron suggest an interest in pop construction, Excepter’s anarchic live shows display a real focus on provocation, alienation and obliteration. Pioneers in digital documentation, Excepter offers up recordings of most of its live shows as free mp3s through its website.
Mirror Mirror
Brooklyn-based Mirror Mirror has earned a reputation for its curious blend of music and performance, as well as its polymorphous membership. Chief songwriters David Riley and Ryan Lucero met in 2003 and quickly recruited percussionist Matt Bagdanoff, guitarist Jill Kaufman, and a rotating cast of friends, performers and guest musicians. Their unpredictable live shows incorporate theater, visual art, video, design, and even food. MM has played sold-out shows at rock venues and clubs, as well as site-specific shows at galleries and art spaces, where they have been known to construct mazes, offer massages to strangers and lead their devoted followers in song. The Society for the Advancement of Inflammatory Consciousness was born, and claimed as its goal nothing less than “Cosmic Erotic Ecstasy.” Mirror Mirror’s first full-length album (on Cochon Records) is a schizophrenic exploration into the multiple personalities and points of views of the (fictional?) Society, as well as aspiring followers, runaways, hustlers, partygoers, and music producers. The compositions are lush and complex blending folky sing-alongs, sinister rock songs, cult lullabies, robotic choral pieces, and meditative interludes. Ultimately, the album raises more questions than it answers: Are these people real or imaginary? Are they visionaries or are deluded? Capitalizing on the tension between devotion and terror, Mirror Mirror narrate the rise and fall of a utopia…
In the past few years, MM has played shows around NYC, LA, Paris and Miami, with bands like Get Hustle, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Japanther, Aleks and the Drummer, Lansing Dreiden and Telepathe (in which Ryan is also the guitarist). In the run up to their album release on September 16, MM will be releasing a 7 inch in the UK (on Half Machine) on June 16 and planning a summer tour in the US and Europe
King Darves + Florida + Kwaidan
florida
Wednesday January 14th
King Darves + Florida + Kwaidan
King Darves
King Darves began his solo career in the early 2000′ s playing noise shows in New Brunswick basements. He became involved with the noise/rawk/experimental projects Gorgot, ASPS, and the Human Adult Band. He has toured the country a few times and played a few shows in europe last year. Lately KD has been focusing on writing and singing songs. “The Sun Splits for…the Blind Swimmer” is out on De Stijl.
Florida
Brooklyn based trio Florida (originally formed as a solo project in 2006 and expanded to a trio in 2008), headed by Dan Rineer, combines back wood hilly-billy evangelicalism with the genteel tunes of the Charlie Manson mixed with a Daniel Johnston-esq sensibility for song writing. Florida is backed by Jordan Pettigill and CJ Jankow. In early 2008 Jordan Pettingill and CJ Jankow relocated to Brooklyn from Florida (the state) where they been playing music since their early teens. When not playing in Florida Pettingill and Jankow stay busy with Cop City/Chill Pillars and Freak Church. Recordings can be found at amerikkkkanmon.tumblr.com.
Kwaidan
(w/ Special Guest Matt Heyner of NNCK)
Kwaidan is a Brooklyn based improv collective formed in 2008 that centers around Jimmy Thompson (Gwar, Bio-Ritmo, Carcinegenic Static Funk) laying down percussion, grunts and gongs and Dan Rineer (Flordia) spewing mind numbing spaced out guitar. Improvisational-cinematic soundtracks for unmade Japanese 60s horror films.
Tony Conrad, Genesis P.Orridge, Morrison Edley, Marie Losier, Sebastien S.D Santamaria, Bradley Eros
Tony Conrad & Genesis P-Orridge
Two special evenings of collaboration 1/10 @ 9pm & 1/11 @ 4pm
Photo Credit: Marie Losier
TONY CONRAD AND GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE
TO PERFORM TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME
The meeting of two legends in experimentation and sound: the meeting of two fabulous violins:
Tony Conrad and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
Guest musician: Edward Morrisey, PTV3.
Guest visual artists: Bradley Eros and Sebastien S. Santamaria.
Tony Conrad and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge will meet for the first time and perform on two consecutive days in improvisatory concerts centered on their mutual love for violin. The shows will take place at ISSUE Project Room on January 10 at 9 p.m. and January 11 at 4 p.m. The event will be recorded for an album release and filmed by Marie Losier for her upcoming feature documentary on P-Orridge.
The idea to unite the two influential musicians was conceived at the screening of “Marie Losier’s Film Portraits” at the French Institute Alliance Française in September of 2008. Upon watching Losier’s documentary, “Tony Conrad DreaMinimalist,” P-Orridge confessed that violin, which figured prominently in the film, was her favorite instrument and that hearing Conrad’s personal story made her cherish it even more. “I initially wanted to create a scene for the film on Genesis in which she and Tony would just play the violin together,” says Losier. “But very quickly this idea developed into a strong desire to see the two musicians I love perform live for an audience. Even though their paths have not crossed up until this point, it only felt natural to me that they should.”
Tony Conrad started playing violin in his teenage years, but the first experiences with the instrument were largely negative. At the urging of a symphony musician Ronald Knudsen, Conrad concentrated on playing the violin slowly and in tune. “If I were really careful, it might take me a long time just to get my violin really in tune,” writes Conrad in “Four Violins,” an essay accompanying the CD box set “Tony Conrad. Early Minimalism Volume One.” “And anything that I could play slow I could play fast; the secret of playing well was playing more slowly.” Soon Conrad was looking for more polyphonic music to play on the instrument. A chance discovery of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Bibers’s “Mystery Sonatas” with their inventive constructions around timbre as opposed to melody had a transformative effect. “For the first time, my violin sounded truly wonderful. It rang, and sang, and spoke in a rich soulful voice – the timbre of the instrument… My body merged with the body of the violin; our resonances melted together in rich dark colors, harsh bright headlights. Slower; slower.”
Violin has been one of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s primary instruments since the days of Throbbing Gristle. Preferring the electric variety, she has carried it through a myriad of projects including Psychic TV and Thee Majesty. P-Orridge’s approach to music is as equally cerebral as it is emotional and physical. In the words ofThe New York Times critic Ben Ratliff, “Any record or performance involving Genesis P-Orridge has been about ideas as much as about music, and the ideas were generally about how to slip free from the normative impositions of life, the binary one-thing-or-the-otherness of art, manners, sex or anything else.”
Losier discovered a striking resemblance between Conrad and P-Orridge while working on film portraits of the two artists. “I realize now how close Tony and Genesis are in technique and spirit, how much they share in their experimentation with sound, noise, voice, handmade musical instruments, and in their particular love for violin,” says Losier. “The ISSUE Project Room concerts will be a meeting of two fabulous violins.”
For more info please visit:
http://issueprojectroom.org/
http://marielosier.net/
Carlos Giffoni + Dan Friel + Noveller
Carlos Giffoni
Friday January 9th Carlos Giffoni + Dan Friel + Noveller
Carlos Giffoni
Carlos Giffoni is a prolific Venezuelan electronic musician who resides in the New York City area since the year 2000. Currently using modular synthesizers, handmade custom instruments, and various types of analog and digital synthesis in the composition of electronic music pieces, as well as improvising live with local and international musicians. His recent solo work has focused in live analog synthesizer pieces that put his style in a line with early Brian Eno, Cluster and Conrad Schnitzler while maintaining the harsher edge of his previous noise works.
Carlos remains a major figure in the US and international experimental music scene, performing live in New York and in a number of tours and festivals in the US, South America, Europe and Japan. He is the curator of the No Fun Fest, a yearly event in Brooklyn bringing together a wide variety of international experimental musicians as well as running the No Fun Productions label.
His work has been featured in many publications including The New York Times, The Wire, Pitchfork, Art Forum, Tokion, Signal to Noise and many others. He also holds an MFA in design and technology from Parsons School of Design, where he occasionally teaches classes and workshops. Dan Friel Dan Friel has been making primitive electronic music under his own name and with the Brooklyn-based noisepunk band Parts & Labor since 2001. His work with both has garnered rave reviews from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wire, and Pitchfork. He has also performed with Glenn Branca and Damo Suzuki.
Dan Friel
Dan Friel has been making primitive electronic music under his own name and with the Brooklyn-based noisepunk band Parts & Labor since 2001. His work with both has garnered rave reviews from The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wire, and Pitchfork. He has also performed with Glenn Branca and Damo Suzuki. His most recent solo recording, “Ghost Town”, was released by Important Records in May of 2008.
Noveller
Noveller is the solo project of Brooklyn-based sound artist and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate. Armed with a double-neck guitar and a slew of effects processors, Lipstate creates soundscapes that straddle the line between the melodic and abstract. She has performed in Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Army, and as a member of Glenn Branca’s 100 guitar ensemble. Recently, Lipstate joined art-rock outfit Parts & Labor as their new guitarist. In December, Noveller performed at the Un Son Par Là, Music of Today festival in Nîmes, France. Lipstate will also participate in the revival of Rhys Chatham and Karole Armitage’s Drastic-Classicism at The Kitchen in March.
Talibam! + Car Commercials & Stian Westerhus
Talibam
Wednesday January 7th
Car Commercial & Talibam! + Special guest from Norway: guitarist Stian Westerhus
TALIBAM!
Hailing from New York, Talibam! has been making their presence felt since 2003 through numerous live gigs, self-released cdr’s and label releases. Talibam! has toured Europe six times since 2006 and released 15 records during this period. They have releases on Azul Discografica, Evolving Ear, Pendu Sounds, Wallace Records, Holiday Records, Thors Rubber Hammer, Ecstatic Peace, Gaffer Records, Blackest Rainbow, and others.
Talibam! Is one of the most potent and fascinating bands in contemporary music. The five plus years of interplay between Mottel and Shea has created one of the most unique and exciting live shows and some of the most powerfully recorded documents of any era. At a time when most culture sticks to conservative niche opportunities, Talibam! is interested in expansion and exploration; They manage to part the sea by not sticking to genre, aesthetic predisposition or the usual norms of what being a ‘band’ is. More inclined to put on a show that any and all will like, and not be stymied by ‘avant’ type casting, they have won over both unsuspecting and in the ‘know’ audiences worldwide. The energy of Kevin Shea’s full steam drumming is not to be missed, nor is the primal tone of Mottel’s synth run through a Marshall Half Stack.
Matt Mottel’s visage should be familiar to anyone who’s been going to shows in NYC in the past ten years. He’s been hanging around NYC clubs since he was like 16, and dropping electric mind bombs with his synthesizer in those clubs nearly as long with folks like Awesome Color, Akron/Family, Jeffrey Lewis, Chris Taylor (Grizzly Bear), Kenny Wollesen, Chris Corsano, Ras Moshe, Cooper-Moore, Sean Meehan, and his new band Shadow Maps.
Kevin Shea’s drumming and stage gymnastics have been gazed at with wide wonder through his membership in bands like Storm & Stress (Touch & Go), Coptic Light (No Quarter), People (I and Ear), Peter Evans Quartet (Firehouse 12), Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio), Tyondai Braxton (Battles)Sexy Thoughts (rcarchives.com), Mostly Other People Do The Killing (Hot Cup), etc.
Car Commercial
Car Commericals are generally uncomfortable; probably shifty-eyed loners that barely leave the basement. Their brand of strictly personal suburban ooze was borne deep within the recesses of New Jersey, just east of I-95. More specifically, this music springs from inside that unspeakable zone deep within the mind where feelings get very messy.
David Sutton and Daniel DiMaggio, the duo known as Car Commercials, make mysterious fake rock clatter for heavy petting (yeah right). Following a brief stint as GT Performers, Daniel and David began to make duo recordings as Car Commercials a few years ago, releasing their creepy missives in small runs, mostly for Sutton’s Leaf Leaf label. The two have tapped into an aspect of nonsensical nihilism that makes Jad Fair’s early recordings so alluring, but have forgone his obsession with cartoon horror and monster movies in favor of Faces of Death I thru VI.
“Car Commericals seem to feed ‘n feast on a particular lost part of my youth, specifically the fuzzy grey area I encountered just after hearin Jad Fair’s ‘Zombies Of Mora-Tau’ for the 1st time. Listenin to the ‘Judy’s Dust’ lp it’s as though them zombies which seemed so menacin & filled w/ petulance didn’t wander too far from home but seemingly procreated & encouraged their spawn to go forth & if not conquer, well, at least be a nuisance to the status quo. Let’s face it, zombie college is expensive but then what college ain’t these days? Um, so…….yeah, Car Commercials come across on this 1st lp like charmed replicants w/exact DNA to match Jad’s mythical zombo’s of yore. True, this generation’s ‘disturbance’ might seem mellower, but somethin tells me if you scratch a little harder there’s a hornet’s nest of dread under there that’ll stand your hairs on end while your runnin for the hills. So go on, dig deeper. A case’ve the creeps can only do you some good.” — Siltblog
Pamelia Kurstin with carla rhodes, shelley hirsch, sebastian rochford & stian westerhus
PAMELIA KURSTIN
Visionary electronics pioneer Bob Moog called Pamelia, “one of the most important innovators of the theremin living today,” and her unique talent has been captured both on recordings and in live performances by a wide spectrum of outstanding artists, including David Byrne, John Zorn, Foetus, Sebastien Tellier, and Bela Fleck & the Flecktones. Recently, Pamelia was featured in the documentary Moog (2004), where she was shown giving a casual theremin lesson over a glass of wine to Mr. Moog and later delivering a riveting solo theremin performance at a Moogfest in New York City. Currently Pamelia is living in Europe, performing throughout Europe and the United States promoting her debut solo album “ Thinking Out Loud” just released by John Zorn’s Tzadik label. Pamelia has taught and lectured at Berklee College of Music and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Conservatory, and she has given private lessons to numerous aspiring thereminists throughout Europe and the U.S.
Before her career as a professional thereminist, Pamelia had already established herself as a sought after contra-bass player since the age of 18, performing, recording and touring with the avante-punk group ‘Geggy Tah’ (Luaka Bop) and also in the Los Angeles jazz scene performing alongside notable artists such as Arthur Blythe (of Chicago Art Ensemble), Gerry Gibbs’ Thrasher project ( including Brad Mehldau and Billy Childs). In the fall of 1997, she was introduced to the theremin and as soon as two months later, Pamelia had already begun performing live as well as recording sessions with Matthew Sweet and the Indigo Girls. That winter, Steven Martin (director of the documentary “Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey”) invited Pamelia to New York to meet and perform for the first virtuosa of the theremin, Clara Rockmore, who had also given Pamelia critical acclaim. One of her popular innovations for the theremin is her unique “walking bass” technique and jazz soloing. Another is her “Theremin-Orchestra” live Improvisations.
“Theremin-Orchestra” is the name Pamelia gives her solo performances. These pieces are complex improvisations using live loops in which she builds, and slowly transforms, multiple layers of harmonies. These fragments that she creates range widely (and can shift quickly) from beautiful, almost pre-Baroque melodic lines to abstract, distorted blocks of noise full of dissonance. These solo performances often contain a great deal of tension between lyrical and dissonant voice-leading, which only gets resolved towards the end when so many layers have been added that the sound mirrors an orchestra in both power and harmonic depth. After years of intensive performance, Pamelia has developed an extraordinarily diverse repertoire of playing styles with the theremin. Besides her solo performances she improvises with a variety of jazz and electronic musicians, performs classical recitals or as guest soloist with ensembles such as the Wiener Musikverein’s Kontrapunkt Ensemble and XX. Jahrhundert Ensemble (A), and tours often with the pioneering cabaret-punk band Barbez (US) in both the U.S. and Europe.
The theremin is one of the first electronic musical instruments invented around 1919 by Russian physicist, Leon Theremin. It is the only instrument that is played without physical contact. The sound can be similar to a voice or a string instrument, and is most commonly recognized by its use as a sound effect in the old sci-fi horror movies of the 1950s, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still. Pamelia discovered the theremin and its unique and strange history from the excellent documentary by Steven Martin, “Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey.” It’s a good place to start for those interested in this unique instrument.
Website: http://www.myspace.com/pameliakurstin
Website of Barbez:http://www.barbez.com
8pm, $10
Share
SHARE will begin @ 10pm on 01/04/08
what is share?
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens every Sunday in New York City at the Issue Project Room (through December), from 8 to Midnight.
open jams and walk-in sets
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join.
10pm, free
Loren Dempster
After Construction
A collaboration with dancer Margaret Sunghe Paek, and cellist Loren Kiyoshi Dempster. In their laboratory work together, they have come up with unique ways to moving and making sound, blurring the lines between their traditional artistic identities. Using their varied ancestries tracing back to, Nebraska, Indiana, Japan, and Korea, they have come of up movement and sound reflecting their multiethnic backgrounds and influences. With this unique blend of ideas, these two artists balance each other, allowing both to exist as individuals, and to come together in one coherent whole.
Dempster’s quartet for four mobile musicians, “After Construction” has been performed at Weseleyn College, Chez Bushwick, Om Factory and the Stone. Developed from 2005 until now, this music and motion score has a flexible format for each venue, using each space for its site-specific properties, both spatially and acoustically. The performance ritual is extended such that the entrance and exit is just as important as the time at the place of arrival. Using varied states of sound, movement, thought, and identity, a heightened awareness of the moment is brought to the room, reverberating through all present.
Jessica Pavone, viola, Rachel Sokolow violin, Jody Redhage Cello, Loren Dempster, electronics
Loren Kiyoshi Dempster uses a combination of computer, electronics, field recordings, cello, improvisation, notated scores, and world music influences to create and perform music. An active chamber musician, composer and improvisor, he has performed at and been presented by numerous venues, series, and festivals, mostly in the New York area. Always interested in the relationships between movement, space, and sound, he may be found performing music for many choreographers, most recently in Europe and South America with Berlin-based choreographer Jeremy Wade.
8pm $15
Tristan Perich
In all of his creative activities, Perich is inspired by the aesthetics of math and physics, and works with simple forms and complex systems. The challenge of elegance provokes his compositions for solo instruments, small ensemble and orchestra. As a visual artist, he works primarily with machines to create pen-on-paper drawings that explore the limits of traditional drawing through randomness and order.
In 2004 he began work on 1-Bit Music, combining his music with primitive, hand-programmed electronics that investigate the foundations of digital sound. The Village Voice, BOMB Magazine, BPM Magazine, Res Magazine, Wired News, Cool Hunting and Spin Magazine covered the release, which has also been featured on television. Surface Magazine called the boxes “profound throwbacks to the traditional album, a response to the intangibility of iTunes and mp3s in the form hand-held artwork.”
Perich’s compositions have been performed by ensembles including Bang on a Can (2008 People’s Commissioning Fund), counter)induction, Calder Quartet, New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Due East, Y Trio and Ensemble Pamplemousse at venues including the Whitney Museum, P.S.1 and Mass MoCA. His recent activities include electroacoustic pieces for 1-Bit Music with instrumental accompaniment. His experimental electronic music group, the Loud Objects, has performed in Germany, Japan, Italy (Screen Music 2), Norway (Piksel), England (Evolution) and the USA (including at the NIME festival). He has spoken twice at Dorkbot. Perich studied math, music and computer science at Columbia University after attending Philips Academy, Andover. More recently, he studied art, music and electronics at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.
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jenny chai / wu fei
Saturday, December 13
jenny chai / wu fei
wu fei
Composer/vocalist/guzheng (Chinese zither) player Wu Fei and singing-speaking pianist Jenny Q Chai bring their diverse interpretations of the new music of East and West to Issue Project Room on Saturday, December 13th in Brooklyn.
“Soulful, lyrical and powerful music from this remarkable young composer/performer from Beijing!” – John Zorn, describing Wu Fei’s latest album “Yuan”.
“Jenny Q Chai is an extraordinary pianist with limitless imaginations.” – Valladolid Daily News, Valladolid, Spain
Issue Project Room is pleased to present a co-billed concert of composer/performer Wu Fei and pianist Jenny Q Chai. The collaboration of these two outstanding artists provides not only the highest level of music performance but introduces a wide range of styles in modern music, spiced by a clash of Western and Eastern culture. The concert begins with a set of Wu Fei’s solo improvisations and compositions on guzheng and voice. Wu’s solo outings offer a sort of modern “poetry” on strings and voice, tracing streams in the ether like trails of ink from the calligrapher’s brush. This will be followed by Jenny Q Chai’s selection of works representing the extension of piano technique and the new view of piano as an evolving instrument. Chai’s program dives into realms including electronics and visual art, combines playing with singing and speaking techniques, and will feature the work of American and European composers such as Rzewski, Cage, Lachenmann, Boucourechliev and Rakowski, as well as composers of the younger generation.
Born and raised in Beijing, Wu Fei is a virtuoso musician who spent her formative years at the China Conservatory before coming to the US in 2000. She is a versatile artist, having composed for choir, string quartet, Balinese gamelan, orchestra and more and performed with John Zorn, Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp, and Béla Fleck. Wu Fei’s works have been performed around the world, with the most recent premier occurring in the Forbidden City Concert Hall. She draws from the spectrum of contemporary classical, world music, avant-garde, and “tonal-experimentalism”.
Contemporary pianist Anthony de Mare had this to say about Jenny Q Chai: “The astute quality that infuses her versatile musical personality reveals itself time and time again”. Classically trained at The Curtis Institute of Music, Chai has made a dramatic shift in focus towards the music of the present, currently working on her D.M.A. degree at Manhattan School of Music and majoring in contemporary piano performance. “I feel it is necessary to be involved in today’s music. It is my responsibility as a musician.” – Jenny Q Chai
This event is a must-see! This performance should attract fans of classical contemporary, world music evolution, and anyone with a sense of adventure. It will be a showcase of skill, ferocity, and tenderness, a coveted glimpse into the modern sounds coming from China’s new generation of musical avant-garde.
More Praise for Wu Fei:
“Fei’s playing on the guzheng is breathtaking.” -Fred Frith
“My soul undergoes a meltdown when Wu Fei’s delicate guzheng figures remind us of the frailty of purpose amidst the often overwhelming forces of life.” – Paris Transatlantic
Magazine
More Praise for Jenny Q Chai:
“It is quite remarkable to hear a performer of her technical and interpretive skills now addressing herself to a repertoire of music composed within the last 100 years, with special emphasis on music of the last thirty.” – Nils Vigeland
“She really presented the colorful musical images with clear layers.” – Composer Chen Yi
www.wufeimusic.com
www.jennychai.com
www.myspace/chaipiano
www.myspace.com/feiwu (chamber works)
www.myspace.com/feifeifei (solo improvisations and compositions)
8pm $15
KRK – Matthew Ostrowski: electronics, George Cremaschi: Contrabass, electronics
Friday, December 12
KRK
Matthew Ostrowski: electronics
George Cremaschi: Contrabass, electronics
matthew ostrowski
Matthew Ostrowski: electronics
George Cremaschi: Contrabass, electronics
Drawing on their more than 40 years of combined experience working in a variety of genres with such artists as Evan Parker, John Zorn, and Nicolas Collins, KRK is a new collaborative project which aims to synthesize and interpret the neo-postmodern musical landscape. Ghosts of reductionism, noise music, free jazz, and the classical tradition all may or may not appear in any given performance. To date, KRK has performed in Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal and the US.
A New York City native, MATTHEW OSTROWSKI has been working with electronics since the early 1980s, working in improvised music, music theater, and audio installations, with a continuing interest in density of microevents, rapid change, and using technology to stretch the bounds of perception and experience. He has also worked extensively as an an improvisor, having played with such luminaries as Anthony Coleman, Andrea Parkins, Nicolas Collins, John Butcher, o.blaat, Paul Loewens, Ikue Mori, Anne Wellmer, David Linton, Charles Cohen, Alfred Zimmerlin, and a host of others. His work appears on over a dozen recordings.
www.ostrowski.info
His work has been seen on four continents, including the Wien Modern Festival, the Kraków Audio Art Festival, Sonic Acts in Amsterdam, PS 1 and The Kitchen in New York , the Melbourne Festival, and Unyazi, the first festival of electronic music on the African continent. He has received a NYFA Fellowship for Computer Arts, awards from the Media Alliance, Arts International, and many others, and was a nominee for the prestigious Alpert Award in 2006.
GEORGE CREMASCHI was born in New York City, and studied music and composition there. He has played with, and written for, dancers, rock bands, installation artists, improvisers, poets, film, folk musicians, theater groups, new music ensembles, jazz groups, orchestras, and pop divas.
Greg Goodman, Liz Allbee, Burkhard Stangl, Gino Robair, Kai Fagaschinski, Evan Parker, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Saadet Türköz, Ryuzo Fukuhara, Mats Gustafsson, Lê Quan Ninh and Jon Raskin are some of his favorite people to work with. He has appeared on over 30 recordings on the Apestaartje, Evolving Ear, Black Saint, Leo, Beak Doctor, Emanem, Rastascan, Music & Arts, Nine Winds and 482 Music labels. He currently lives in Tábor, Czech Republic, where he is a curator and administrator at CESTA, an international arts center.
www.cesta.cz/georgecremaschi.htm
8pm $15
Arthur’s Landing
Thursday, December 11
Arthur’s Landing
Play the Music of Arthur Russell
arthur russell
Arthur’s Landing is a project, an ensemble of varying dimensions and purposes, that performs music written and imagined by the late Arthur Russell, with not only a sense of recalling his life and times, but also with an view toward moving his music into the future. Arthur’s diverse collection of musicians comprise the ensemble. Arthur rode the subway beyond any known limits of the downtown scene, lurked in the back of the hall observing certain musicians, and talked them into collaborating with him. The result was music informed by the social interaction of people with disparate backgrounds, both in life and in music.
Arthur’s popular and disco songs are a natural vehicle for the musicians of Arthur’s Landing. His interventions into technology and so-called “serious” music also find their way into the group’s sensibility.
musicians include:
Ernie Brooks
Steven Hall
Peter Zummo
Joyce Kirby
Mustafa Ahmed
Elodie Lauten
Bill Ruyle
John Sherman
and special guests
8pm $15
Binibon – free reading by Elliott Sharp and Jack Womack
Tuesday, December 9
A Free Preview Reading by Elliott Sharp and Jack Womack
elliott sharp
Deborah Harry, Alanna Heiss, William Gibson, Robert Longo, Tony Conrad, Toni Dove, Jonathan Lethem and ISSUE Project Room invite you to a special free reading of excerpts of BINIBON, the new music-theater piece by Elliott Sharp with text by Jack Womack and direction by Tea Alagic that will premiere at The Kitchen in May 2009.
BINIBON is a work of both musical theater and alternative history based on the 1981 murder by Jack Henry Abbott of Richard Adan. Richard was a waiter and the night manager at the Binibon, a cafe and 24-hour hangout on 2nd Avenue at 5th Street in the East Village, a nexus for artists, musicians,neighborhood characters and bohemians true and faux. It was a place that E# spent many an hour drinking bottomless cups of terrible coffee during 1979-81.
Abbott was a talented writer, as well as an imprisoned killer who became the protege of famed author Norman Mailer (Mailer sponsored his release into a halfway house on 3rd Street.) The killing was a an important cusp-point in the history of the neighborhood, its culture, its daily life, its real-estate, and its future. E#’s music draws upon his own compositional and performance innovations that he developed during the time of these events with ties to punk, No Wave, noise, dance, industrial and exotic sounds. Jack Womack is famed for his “Dryco Series” of novels portraying a post-Apocalypse NYC.
free, 8pm
Welcome to our new website
Thanks for visiting our new site. As we begin 2009, we hope this new site will be a reflection of our new site at 110 Livingston. We have made it easier for you to browse events, and stay updated on the latest Issues at ISSUE Project Room.
Please make sure you join our mailing list.
We’ll be adding many new features in the coming months to help you stay connected, and make sure you know about the events you’re interested in. And as always, please feel free to share your thoughts on our new look by leaving a comment below.
Flatlands Collective
Saturday, December 6
Flatlands Collective
Jorrit Dijkstra – alto sax, lyricon, analog electronics
James Falzone – clarinet
Jeb Bishop – trombone
Fred Lonberg-Holm – cello, analog electronics
Jason Roebke – bass
Frank Rosaly – drums
(Tim Mulvenna – drums on “Gnomade”)
“In one of the festival’s strongest sets, Dutch saxophonist and composer Jorrit Dijkstra, and his Flatlands Collective on Friday reinvented American Jazz in a way that remained true to its template, while finding new territories to explore. Earthy, meditative and very accessible, the Flatlands Collective was the perfect fusion of composition and improvisation.” (Will Stewart in the Ann Arbor News on the Edgefest gig 10/17/08)
The Flatlands Collective brings together the remarkable Dutch alto saxophonist and composer Jorrit Dijkstra with some of Chicago’s most interesting improvisers. In Chicago, one of the most important musical cities in the US, he found a common ground in a more trans-national way of improvising, using open forms, and a looser interpretation of the American jazz tradition. Dijkstra says: ”I believe that the landscape in which you grow up has an effect on how your music sounds. This is what’s so interesting about jazz: musicians in New York, Barcelona, Moscow, Shanghai or Addis Ababa play this music, but there is always a distinctive local interpretation.” And he adds: “I called this group The Flatlands Collective after the landscape heritage I share as a Dutchman with the Chicago players.”\
Dijkstra provides most of the compositions, in which he strives towards a balance between composed material, clear guidelines for musicians to improvise, and openness for the most adventurous kinds of improvisations. The group has developed a way of improvising that blends Chicago-style free jazz, texture-based minimalism, and melodic layering into an eclectic yet organically coherent repertoire. Dijkstra’s use of the Lyricon (a vintage analog wind synthesizer from the 1970s) and Fred Lonberg-Holm’s amplified cello adds an electronic touch to the rich variety of ideas, structures, and textures of the group sound. The Flatlands Collective has released their debut CD Gnomade in December 2006 on Skycap records, which has received 4 stars from Downbeat Magazine, and much critical acclaim by the international press. Their second CD Maatjes will be released on Clean Feed Records in the fall of 2008.
8pm $15
craig shepard with christian wolff
Thursday, December 4
craig shepard with christian wolff
In the project On Foot, Shepard walked 250 miles across Switzerland. Every day he composed a new piece, wrote it down and performed it on the pocket trumpet at 6 p.m. All concerts took place out-of-doors in public spaces such as squares, harbors, intersections, sidewalks, and mountain-tops. This evening will be indoors. Christian Wolff (melodica, piano), Jeremy Lamb (cello), and Katie Porter (clarinet) will perform pieces written on the trek, Zach Seldess will walk, and Craig Shepard will read excerpts from the book. The concert celebrates the publication of On Foot by Edition Howeg, Zürich.
Bio:
Craig Shepard is published by Edition Wandelweiser. His works have been called “touchingly beautiful” (Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Berliner Zeitung). He studied composition with Michael Pisaro and Amnon Wolman and has worked closely with Jürg Frey and Antoine Beuger. He studied trombone with Frank Crisafulli and Ulrich Eichenberger, and has performed with Collegium Novum Zürich, the Ensemble für Alte Musik München, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company among others.
“I am interested in listening with light concentration. My job as an artist is to create a situation which invites people to this kind of listening. The invitation is there for anyone who wants to listen, regardless of a listener’s knowledge, education, or musical sophistication.”
8pm $15
melissa st. pierre & jessie stiles
Friday, December 5
melissa st. pierre + Jesse Stiles
As a classically trained pianist, Melissa St. Pierre has specialized in the works of two giants of aleatoric music and chance operations, John Cage and Christian Wolff. In early concerts, she tackled Cage’s “Sonatas and Interludes” (1946) and Wolff’s “For a Prepared Piano” (1951) with a vigor and creative insight that belied her years (she’s only in her 20s). Peppering the strings, hammers, and dampers of the piano with a variety of objects for her new compositions, St. Pierre transforms the instrument’s typical timbre and gives it a chance, an opportunity to reveal its true nature. In her adroit, gifted hands, it becomes not just a percussion instrument, but 88 percussion instruments, each key a portal to a new world of sound. Sparkling gamelans chatter; harrowing voodoo drums call out in the night.
St. Pierre has toured the great American south, eastern seaboard, upper-midwest and southwest with her solo piano performance projects, playing such venues as Jordan Hall, the Under the Influences Festival at Black Mountain Museum, Saltworks Gallery, Tonic, *asterisk, Goodbye Blue Monday, the Silent Barn, the Troika Festival, the Middle East, Bohemian National Home, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, South by Southwest Music Festival and Knitting Factory. Most recently, she finished a stint in Boulogne-Billancourt as a guest artist at the BBMix Festival at Carre Bellefeuille outside of Paris, FR and has been granted a commission from Ensemble Integrales in Hamburg, DE.
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Jesse Stiles was born in 1978 in Boston, MA. As a child he studied piano. Stiles began using computers and synthesizers to program music at the age of 12.
Stiles received a B.A. from Vassar College in Cognitive Science, writing his thesis on Music Perception. Upon graduating from Vassar in 2000, Stiles was awarded a Fellowship from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation to travel around the world for one year while creating electronic music. This fellowship culminated in a “backpack record” by The Jesse Stiles 3000 (Stiles’ beat-oriented performance/recording project), titled “Watson Songs.”
From 2001 to 2003 Stiles attended the Integrated Electronic Arts program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a full fellowship. At RPI Stiles studied under Pauline Oliveros, Igor Vamos, Curtis Bahn,
and Neil Rolnick. His thesis show, Topics In Advanced Facemelting, was an electro-acoustic concert/light show in a 19th century Gasholder Building featuring collaborations with violinist Todd Reynolds and light artist Kevin McCormick.
Stiles has performed at wide variety of new music venues such as Lincoln Center, The Galapagos Art Space, Joe’s Pub, and The Deep Listening Space. Stiles also performs at dive bars and actively participates in underground venues.
Stiles has worked as an Educator, Sound Designer, Composer, Remixer, and Music Software Programmer.
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,...
