To TILT: Orig. Music for TILT Brass [Part 2]
To TILT: Orig. Music for TILT Brass [Part 2]
On Wednesday, March 3rd, the 10-piece Brooklyn-based group TILT Creative Brass Band presents the second installment of its on-going series To TILT: Original Music for TILT Brass which focuses solely on repertoire written for the organization’s distinctive ensembles (CBB and 6-piece SIXtet) at ISSUE Project Room. The program features works by a stellar group of composer/performers including Downtown legend Anthony Coleman, trumpet virtuoso Dave Ballou, avant-cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, Gold Sparkle’s Charles Waters (featuring composer and world-class improviser Mick Rossi on piano), and TILT Director Chris McIntyre. TILT CBB features an extraordinary line-up of creative musicians including trumpeters Nate Wooley and Gareth Flowers, trombonists Curtis Hasselbing and Jacob Garchik, and and percussionist Kevin Norton.
More infomation (incl. mp3′s and composer bios) at http://www.tiltbrass.org/09-10_gigs/ipr_100303.html
PROGRAM
Anthony Coleman - Set Into Motion (2005)
Charles Waters - 3 Mysteries [Concertimento #12] (2007)
>>featuring Mick Rossi on piano
Taylor Ho Bynum - preharmonic, postchordal, revamped (2007)
Chris McIntyre - Foliation (for Suzanne) (2009)
Dave Ballou - Concerto for TILT (2003)
PERSONNEL
Creative Brass Band:
Trumpet – Nate Wooley, Gareth Flowers, Andy Kozar
French Horn – John Clark, Rachel Drehmann
Trombone – Curtis Hasselbring, Chris McIntyre
Bass Trombone – Jacob Garchik
Tuba – Ron Caswell
Percussion – Kevin Norton
Conductor – Greg Evans
Special Guest:
Mick Rossi – piano soloist on Waters
TILT Creative Brass Band
Brooklyn based TILT Creative Brass Band (TCBB) is a beautifully strange combination of military brass band and Downtown repertoire ensemble. The group has presented concerts since January 2003 at venues ranging from Whitney Museum to Barbes in Brooklyn. Since its inception, TCBB has fearlessly taken on works from the fringes of experimental concert music, tongue-in-cheek agitprop, and hybrid scores combining notation and improvisation. The group frequently presents entire programs of original works by its composer/performer members (Kevin Norton, Curtis Hasselbring, Nate Wooley, among others) and colleagues from the field, including legendary pianist Anthony Coleman (released on Tzadik), Doctor Nerve’s Nick Didkovsky, multi-instrumentist Charles Waters, and cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum.
In addition, the Creative Brass Band is committed to presenting works from the experimental tradition, ranging from a Varése graphic score from the late 50′s and selections from James Tenney’s Postal Pieces to works by Fredric Rzewski (Les Mounton de Panurge) and early John Adams (Light Over Water). In June ’09, TCBB kicked off a new on-going series of programs called New York Noise which presents historical and current works by important composers from the Downtown community and its ancestors such as Elliott Sharp, Lois V. Vierk, and Rhys Chatham. In 2010, the group will present several programs at ISSUE Project Room and will record and release its current To TILT repertoire.
Mick Rossi
Pianist, percussionist, and composer Mick Rossi’s diverse accomplishments include: being among “the most courageous, gifted, and charismatic musicians” of the New York Downtown scene (AllAboutJazz); a long-time Philip Glass collaborator and member of the ensemble as pianist, percussionist, and conductor; and working with artists from Dave Douglas to Kelly Clarkson to Leonard Cohen. He recently conducted Book of Longing at the Sydney Opera House, and performed Einstein at the Beach at Carnegie Hall and Koyaanisqatsi at the Hollywood Bowl. Recent recordings include One Block From Planet Earth (OmniTone), and They Have A Word For Everything (Knitting Factory). His recent concert at Le Poisson Rouge presenting his latest and ninth recording Songs From The Broken Land (Orange Mountain Music) was featured in the NY Times.
Elliott Sharp & Andrea Centazzo – guitar and percussion duo
Two masters of improvisation meet for a set of wide-ranging sonics and rhythmic extremes.
Andrea Centazzo:
An Italian-born American percussionist and composer, in more than 30 years’ career, Centazzo has crossed music genres and artistic expression forms, starting as jazz percussionist and improviser to become later a contemporary composer, a visual artist, a film and theater director and a multimedia artist. His discography includes over 150 LPs, CDs, and DVDs, almost all recorded for ICTUS RECORDS, his own label, founded in 1976 and still active after its 2006 rebirth in California. He has performed and recorded with Don Cherry, Derek Bailey, Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Henry Kaiser, Enrico Rava, Tom Cora, Theo Jörgensmann, Alvin Curran, Lol Coxhill, and others. Most of those musicians were involved in his Mitteleuropa Orchestra, a seminal 16-piece big band active between 1980 and 1983 in Europe. His most famous opera, TINA (1996), was inspired by the life and art of Tina Modotti. Two more operas followed, Memento in 2000 and Simultas in 2001.
Elliott Sharp:
Sharp is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer and central figure in the avant-garde music scene in New York City for over thirty years. He leads the projects Carbon and Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction. His collaborators have included Ensemble Modern; Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Radio-Symphony of Frankfurt; pop singer Debbie Harry, computer artist Perry Hoberman; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; jazz greats Jack deJohnette, Sonny Sharrock, Oliver Lake, and Billy Hart; turntable innovator Christian Marclay; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians Of Jahjouka from Morocco. Sharp’s work was featured in the 2008 New Music Stockholm festival with the premiere of “Sidebands” and at the Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale in May 2007 with the premiere of his orchestral work “On Corlear’s Hook”. He is now woorking on a commissioned opera for the Bavarian Opera in Munich. The documentary film about Sharp’s work by Bert Shapiro, “Doing The Don’t”, has just been released on DVD and screened at international film festivals
Izzi Ramkissoon
Community Percussion Ensemble
For this event I would like to invite all of the audience members to bring a small piece of portable homemade percussion. This can be anything from a bottle to a small piece of PVC pipe. Your hands will also suffice. Nothing too big. There will be a short piece that you will get to use this object to create sound and be apart of the EEME community percussion ensemble.
Izzi Ramkissoon and his Electric Eel Multimedia Ensemble (1+)
Turntable – Marcel Blum
Flute – Sarah Carrier
Clarinet – Dan Padmos
Clarinet – Zara Acosta
Cello – Eric Cooper
Viola- Pedro Vizzarro Vallejos
Guitar – Amar Lal
Percussion – Jerrold Kavanagh
Percussion – Corey Bracken
Upright Bass – Sean Ormiston
Video – Alain Alfaro
Electric Bass and laptop – Izzi Ramkissoon
Littoral: MUSIC OF THE HEMISPHERES (w/ The Lickets)
MUSIC OF THE HEMISPHERES
The idea for –MUSIC OF THE HEMISPHERES—originates in the work of neuro-philosopher Dan Lloyd, Thomas C. Brownell Professor of Philosophy and a faculty member of the Neuroscience program at Trinity College, Connecticut. Dr. Lloyd’s research focuses on taking patterns found in brain activity and converting them into musical score. These scores are not biofeedback or music cognition experiments, but rather extracting the ‘architecture of consciousness,’ as it occurs in the brain, and assigning its varying components musical tones. The result is musical scores meant to reflect brain activity itself. Through this, Lloyd found that recognizable musical structures emerge, and he thus formulated a theory that consciousness operates within a musical structure – or rather, that music is an expressive interpretation of how our brains work.
The “music” generated through Lloyd’s project seems oddly familiar, and is surprisingly harmonious and musical. Now, should this theory be proven, the philosophical implications are both joyous and endless. The idea that we are, in fact, music – or that music is, in fact, truly human: a reflection or interpretation of the human mind.
The event will serve as both an exhibition and an experiment. Elisa Da Prato, a Brooklyn-based filmmaker who had initiated the event and is currently working on a film concerning this theme, will be pairing Dan Lloyd with different ensembles/musicians who will be assigned with the task of interpreting the scores that are the result of his studies. The event will be divided into three parts: a screening of a short film about Lloyd’s experiments that would spell out the context for the experiment; the staging of these scores as interpreted by the musicians; and a discussion concerning both the aesthetics and the musical validity of the aforementioned scores. The panel is shaping to include Lloyd, a neuroscientist, a music theorist, and the musicians assigned to the task.
Da Prato states that her goal is to create a discussion about the emotional and biological necessity of music itself. She wishes to assimilate Lloyd’s theory to the scientific/philosophical equivalent of Woody Allen’s joke concluding his film Annie Hall: “we need the eggs.” The idea being that, for some reason, we need to both express and experience people in musical form. Almost a scientific case for joy.
The evening will feature:
DAN LLOYD is the Thomas C. Brownell Professor of Philosophy and a faculty member of the Neuroscience program at Trinity College, Connecticut. For several years, he has been pursuing the connections between music and mind, a project at the intersection of art and science. Using art to explore complexity is at the heart of several past and ongoing projects as well. He is the author of Radiant Cool: a novel theory of consciousness. (Cambridge:MIT Press, 2004), a book joining noir fiction with a theory of consciousness, and Simple Minds (MIT Press, 1989). His current projects include Ghosts in the Machine (Rowan and Littlefield, forthcoming), a philosophical drama about minds, brains, and computers, and Subjective Time (MIT Press, forthcoming), an anthology on the philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of experienced temporality. He is the editor of the journal Frontiers in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.
ZORAN JOSIPOVIC, PhD, is a Research Associate and an Adjunct Professor in the Psychology Department and Center for Neural Science, New York University. His research focuses on the effects of meditation and other contemplative techniques on the brain, and on what these effects can tell us about the nature of consciousness. Zoran is a long-term practitioner of meditation in the nondual traditions of Dzogchen, Mahamudra and Advaita Vedanta. He has also worked as a psychotherapist and a bodyworker and has taught meditation at Esalen Institute for many years.
DOUGLAS BRUCE JOHNSON is a composer and music therapist, currently based in Hartford, CT. Performances of his compositions have been heard on three continents, and recorded on Zimbel (USA) and on BITMusik (Germany). Dedicated to live musicking, Johnson’s music celebrates the emotional connectedness that, together, performers and listeners can explore in music. His work in music therapy brings this interactive, celebratory approach to music into a variety of supportive and restorative healing contexts. From 1988 to 2009, Johnson was a member of the music faculty at Trinity College, Hartford
“THE LICKETS deploy a mini-orchestra of acoustic instruments—cello, flute, acoustic guitar, organ, sitar, harmonium, hand percussion, et al.—to call into being undulating vistas of luminous mantras and soundscapes. The Lickets’ raga-like settings suggest a strong Indian influence, and traces of visionary ‘60s jazz artists like John and Alice Coltrane, the time-transcending drones of La Monte Young and his Theatre of Eternal Music, and ‘60s psychedelic rock surface too as parts of the trio’s trippy mix.” – Textura
ELISA DA PRATO is a writer, director and editor currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She worked for documentary filmmaker Murray Lerner on several films featuring artists such as The Who, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. As of late, Da Prato is developing a film aiming to narratively explore the intersection of philosophy, neuro-science, and music theory. Elisa is a regular video contributor to indexmagazine.com and theblackharbor.com. She studied motion picture production at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, CA.
Littoral series is made possible, in part, by the Casement Fund together with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
Nat Baldwin + peace, loving + Woody Sullender
Nat Baldwin
New Hampshire-native Nat Baldwin is an experimental upright bassist and singer-songwriter who cut his teeth studying with free jazz legend Anthony Braxton. In addition to his three critically-acclaimed solo releases, Nat has collaborated on works with Extra Life, Vampire Weekend and is a long-time member of The Dirty Projectors.
“Nat Baldwin’s upright bass is Joanna Newsom’s harp, Andrew Bird’s violin – a partner so indispensable, it’s a personal trait. Over a gorgeous bull-fiddle hum, he belts out these melismatic flourishes… This delivery is terrifically earnest, terrifyingly intimate, and terribly special.” – The Boston Phoenix
“His musical imagination is expansive, while his lack of pretense is admirable” – Pitchfork
“The New Hampshire-native (and Anthony Braxton disciple) rains hyper-melodic chamber fire in melismatic, cinematic glory.” – RCRD LBL
peace, loving
peace, loving has been a force of new music around new england and beyond the past three years, performing compositions for aromatics and tape (w/ 3 professional chefs), dances for handheld tape recorders, working as set designers, video artists, performance poets, instrument builders, and becoming infamous for having a major rotating cast of performers doing all these things at once. peace, loving was formed out of the whitehaus family record, a community based label/venue in the jamaica plain neighborhood of boston.
Woody Sullender
Woody Sullender is an artist currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Over the past few years, Sullender has been emerging as a pre-eminent experimental banjo performer, playing with and against the cultural baggage of the instrument. While alluding to the “traditional” musics of his home states of Virginia and North Carolina, he explores a diverse plane of plucked string music from around the world as well as incorporating punk, noise, free jazz, etc..
“Not too many musicians have redefined what the banjo is about the way Woody Sullender has.”
- Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
“If he keeps it up, and there seems to be no doubt that he will, he has the potential to become one of the most innovative and historically important players of [the banjo]”
- Tiny Mix Tapes
Nicolas Collins with Ben Neill and Andrea Parkins+ Loud Objects
***PLEASE NOTE: Due to overseas flight cancellations, Anthony Coleman will not be able to perform***
Nicolas Collins
New York born and raised, Nicolas Collins studied composition with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University, worked for many years with David Tudor, and has collaborated with numerous soloist and ensembles around the world. He lived most of the 1990s in Europe, where he was Visiting Artistic Director of Stichting STEIM (Amsterdam), and a DAAD composer-in-residence in Berlin. Since 1997 he has been editor-in-chief of the Leonardo Music Journal, and since 1999 a Professor in the Department of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The second edition of his book, Handmade Electronic Music – The Art of Hardware Hacking, was published by Routledge in 2009. Collins has the dubious distinction of having played at both CBGBs and the Concertgebouw.
Loud Objects (Tristan Perich, Kunal Gupta and Katie Shima) create electronic noise with minimal components: microchips, a power jack, an audio jack, and wire. The group solders custom audio circuits live, creating audible fluctuations of electricity with these bare elements. Gradually building a complex sound circuit, they present electronic music in a form closer to a physical instrument than a laptop. Their performances invite the audience to bear conscious witness to each musical gesture: the addition of a microchip; the soldering of an output pin to the audio jack.
People Like Us presents “Genre Collage” + Aki Onda + DJ KEN FREEDMAN of WFMU!
Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been an influential figure in the field of audio visual collage, through her innovative sampling, appropriating and cutting up of found footage and archives. Using collage as her main form of expression, she creates audio recordings, films and radio shows that communicate a humorous, dark and often surreal view on life. These collages mix, manipulate and rework original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film, television and radio. People Like Us believe in open access to archives for creative use, and have made work using footage from the Prelinger Archives, The Internet Archive, and A/V Geeks. In 2006 she was the first artist to be given unrestricted access to the entire BBC Archive. People Like Us have previously shown work at Tate Modern, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. The ongoing sound art radio show ‘Do or DIY’ on WFMU has had over three quarters of a million hits since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb.
Aki Onda is an electronic musician, composer, and photographer. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New York. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project – works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images set to live guitar improvisation. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Shelley Hirsch.
Ken Freedman is the ongoing General Manager of WFMU. He also co-hosts the conceptual comedy program Seven Second Delay with Andy Breckman, as well as hosting his own freeform radio program on Wednesday mornings.
The Long and The Short of It – Alex Waterman, Jon Rose “Fences”, Hotel Axe & Miya Masaoka Trio
A mini festival of strings in all sizes, shapes and uses curated by David Watson and Jon Rose.
Alex Waterman
Miya Masaoka Trio (Miya Masaoka, Alex Waterman, Jon Rose)
Hotel Axe, an electric guitar group composition by David Watson with Roger Kleier, Byron Westbrook, Kenta Nagai, Grey Gersten and others.
Jon Rose, “Fences”
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Miya Masaoka
Miya Masaoka resides in New York City and is a classically trained musician, composer and new media artist. Pioneering the koto in contexts of improvisation, computer processing, new music and sound installations, she has expanded the koto to include lasers (Laser Koto), and has expanded the traditional costume while playing the koto — the kimono –to include responsive and wearable technology with thousands of hand-embroidered LED’s. She creates works that hover the boundary of music, sound, movement and light and that both investigate and reveal these fluid relationships.
Jon Rose
Those involved in new and experimental music often come to the metaphor of fences and borders in describing their work. Violinist Jon Rose has grappled with these ideas conceptually and literally. His project The Great Fences uses the 3,500 Dingo Fence that stretches across Australia and turns it into music. In 2009 The Kronos String Quartet commissioned Rose for their own fence piece, based on the standard #5 wire outback fence.
It has been 10 years since pioneering violinist, improviser, composer and instrument building maverick Rose played in New York. Apart from the subtleties of barbed wire, there will be a celebration of many string types and lengths – from violin, to tenor violin, to cello, to double bass, to electric guitar, to koto – with some of the finest players around New York. www.jonroseweb.com
Alex Waterman
Alex Waterman is a cellist, composer, and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been shown internationally in museums, galleries and cinemas. He won the Tiger Award for Best Short Film at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2008 and took part in the Whitney Biennial that year. He continues to perform with his two ensembles: Plus Minus in London, and Either/Or in New York. He’s finishing work on a book on Robert Ashley, designing a garden, and writing a new screenplay about H.L. Mencken and the early 20th century circles of journalists and publishers in America.
David Watson
As a guitarist David Watson has regularly performed John Zorn’s Cobra. He has worked closely with Chris Mann and Ikue Mori, and premiered Robert Ashley’s trio composition “White on White”. He is a member of the long-standing but slow moving trio Glacial, with Lee Ranaldo. Recent guitar releases include Fingering an Idea (on XI) and The Shirley Jangle (with Lee Ranaldo, Christian Marclay and Günter Müller) on Kraak. “Hotel Axe” is part of an occasional series of multi guitar pieces inspired by other large ensemble experiences: pipe bands, drum corps, gamelan orchestras.
Canceled – Philippe Petit + Post Abortion Stress
Philippe Petit is interested in soundtracks; even if he creates original music he’d rather be introduced as a “musical travel agent” than a composer.
Petit uses a computer to build up electronic layers, process acoustic and field recordings. To second the machine he likes to move various glasses, or percussive objects, and take advantage of vinyl material to fondle released sounds.
A journalist for various magazines and radio as well as a musical activist, Petit has celebrated his 25th year of sharing his musical passions as the man behind the cult labels Pandemonium Rdz. and BiP_HOp.
Petit has assembled what people call a dream-team of collaborators, working with: Lydia Lunch, Foetus, Kumo, Scott McCloud (Girls Against Boys), Cosey Fanni Tutti, My Brightest Diamond, Sybarite, Pantaleimon, Graham Lewis (Wire), Barry Adamson, Scanner, Mira Calix, Kammerflimmer Kollektief, Guapo, Leafcutter John, Simon Fisher Turner, Justin Broadrick and many more…
Aside his solo works, Petit is active in Strings Of Consciousness, does a duo with Lydia Lunch, and his collabs with Cosey Fanni Tutti (Throbbing Gristle) + James Johnston (Gallon Drunk/Bad Seeds/Faust) have appeared on Dirter Promotions.
His first solo album “Henry: The Iron Man” was released thru Beta Lactam Ring Records, and his second Cd appeared on Rothko’s imprint Trace Recordings + OFF and Helmet Room in digital formats.
In the works are collabs with Murcof, Simon Fisher Turner, Vultures and “Cordophony” gathering music whose sound comes from the vibrations of one or several strings.
Petit will be performing with:
Bianca Bibiloni (Ala Muerte) on guitar/cello
http://www.myspace.com/alamuerta
Post Abortion Stress (Robert L. Pepper: violin / Amber Brien: percussions)
http://www.myspace.com/postabortionstress
Marco Oppedisano (guitar)
http://www.myspace.com/marcooppedisanomus
Rich Johnson on trumpet
http://www.myspace.com/richjasonjohnson
Post Abortion Stress
PAS (Post Abortion Stress) started in 1995 out of Brooklyn, NY, USA, driven by the creative talents of Robert L. Pepper working in the mediums of sound and video. Since then PAS has evolved into a collective with many different instrumentations and line ups. Permanent members include Amber Brien, Job “Vomit” Worthley, Michael Durek, and Will Seesar. Guests and occasional collaborators include, ZEV!, Steve Beresford, Matt Chilton (Vultures), Anthony Donovan (Vultures), Damien Olsen, Philippe Petit, Robert Pascale, and many others.
PAS have released 6 full length cd’s and have been on several compilations throughout the years. Some of these can be found on www.cdbaby.com or iTunes. PAS have performed in various countries including the United States, Germany (including Fausts Avant Garde Festival 2009), the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Macedonia, and Poland, just to name a few. Sound and video installations have also included Chile and the United States.
PAS (Post Abortion Stress) is a group out to create musical collages through the form of abstract sound. Their name refers metaphorically to those who have been aborted by society, because their point of view doesn’t fit in the constraints of “normal” society. The short name refers to the negative in French, metaphorically negating everything that is established to start from a new beginning. The viewpoint fuels our creativity to create our own world of beauty. Since our inception the band has been interested in making music from the fringes of perception, creating soundscapes that aren’t defined by any particular conventions or viewpoints. The aesthetic underpinnings are defined by the notion that music can be whatever the ear perceives. It’s a conception fueled by the love of life and art. It’s a desire for honest artistic self-expression. The compositions themselves are more akin to soundscapes than “songs” in the traditional sense. There are no clearly defined melodies, no structural landmarks that give you any sense of traditional anchor. This is not music making with any sense of or desire for commercial viability, but sonic sculptures in the mode of pure art.
aMute Canceled
Jérôme Deuson, born 1980, is the name behind aMute. Since 2002 he has been one of the most active Belgian composer and won notoriety in Europe and abroad as someone inventive, over excited by music and always ready to help people out. aMute has played in more than 15 countries including Canada, USA, European tours in Austria, Germany, Italy, UK, France and many others…
Apart from composing, Jérôme has also been involved in the legendary shop Le Bonheur in Brussels and organized festivals and concerts for the shop, he created the Stilll label back in 2005 and designed most of its fifteen releases and is currently involved in concert organisation in Brussels and Belgium.
Hans Grüsel’s Krankenkabinet + Occasional Detroit (O-D) The Best In ABSTRAKT ENT
Hans Grüsel’s Krankenkabinet
Hans Grüsel’s Krankenkabinet is an ever-changing woodgrain diorama of dark forest characters. Started in 1999 in San Francisco, California, by Hans Grüsel, the ensemble uses electronics, concrète recording, and acoustic instruments to explore the lost Teutonic rites of the past while stumbling into the failure of the future.
Hans Grusel’s “sound” might best be described as the sounds of a Bavarian music box designed by an artist who had been bonked on the head with a brass cuckoo clock chime and left in a dark room for three years with only the music of Scriabin, Wagner, and Prokofiev mixed with off-speed 1960s sci-fi soundtracks and folkloric anthems pumping through the slightly clogged vents. HGKK audio combines numerous divergent elements—rigid structures and sweeping washes of plucky improvisation; classic violin sounds twisting in a mobius strip of clashing yet beautiful sounds and tones; flitting marches and delicate traipsing at the bottom of the sea—to create dense and blissful audio rainstorms.
There are very few bands who truly baffle. Who confuse and confound, both musically and conceptually. Sure, plenty of bands are weird, or strange, or hard to describe, some might even be described as fucked up or damaged, but very very few truly baffle. Hans Grusel’s Krankenkabinet is most definitely one of those bafflingly confusional elite. . . Hans Grusel and his Krankenkabinet create a bizarre cacophony of sound, theatrical, dramatic, noisy for sure, but weirdly melodic and playful and more than anything, confounding.
Occasional Detroit
My NAME IS Towondo”Beyababa”Clayborn I am a part of the abstrakt hip-hop duo Occasional Detroit (O-D) THE BEST IN ABSTRAKT ENT..
We are an abstrakt hip-hop duo CONSISTING OF MYSELF Towondo’Beyababa’Clayborn”
AND DEMETRISA L. ANDERSON
we will kill it on may 1st the best in ABSTRAKT ENT.
It is not an understatement. We like too show what it feels like in our own words, on how it feels after recovering from taking a piss under scrutiny. So, that is A SYNOPSIS ON how we roll.
Come see us (O-D) THE BEST IN ABSTRAKT ENT..
The Long and The Short of It – Hans Tammen, Kenta Nagai & Gowanus Bass Quartet
A mini festival of strings in all sizes, shapes and uses curated by David Watson and Jon Rose.
Hans Tamnen, Endangered Guitar
Kenta Nagai solo samisen
Gowanus Bass Quartet (Reuben Radding, Garth Stevenson, Sean Conly, and Stephan Crump)
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Hans Tamnen, Endangered Guitar
Kenta Nagai solo samisen
Gowanus Bass Quartet (Reuben Radding, Garth Stevenson, Sean Conly, and Stephan Crump)
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Hans Tammen
Hans Tammen creates music that has been described as an alien world of bizarre textures and a journey through the land of unending sonic operations. He discovers hidden sound properties through means of his modified ENDANGERED GUITAR, interactive software programming, stereo and multichannel sound systems, and by working with the room itself. Signal To Noise called his works “…a killer tour de force of post-everything guitar damage”, All Music Guide recommended him: “…clearly one of the best experimental guitarists to come forward during the 1990s.”
The Gowanus Bass Quartet
The Gowanus Bass Quartet is a unique grouping comprised of four improvising double bass players : Garth Stevenson, Reuben Radding, Rob Jost, and Stephan Crump. Their sounds, like their instruments, resemble a cluster of trees bending to the light
Kenta Nagai
Kenta Nagai is a sound and visual artist based in New York City. He works with acoustic and electronic sound, visual media and live performance. After completing undergraduate studies at Berklee College of Music in Boston (BA, 1996) Nagai moved to New York City. He began his NY career as a fretless guitarist playing on the streets, in subway stations and at clubs. His most recent compositional work, entitled Long, Long, Long, is an ensemble piece for traditional Asian instruments. It was presented at Roulette, in NYC, in October 2006. Nagai’s fretless guitar playing is featured on Eugene Chadborne’s album “Guitar Festival Summer 1999″ with Sonic Youth members Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo and Jim O’Rourke plus Joe Morris, Lauren Mazzacane Connors, David Watson and others. Nagai is also a featured performer on two recordings by the composer Laura Andel, “Somnambulist” (Red Toucan Records, May 2003, RT9322) and “In::tension:” (Rossbin Records, October 2005, RS022). As a performer on the shamisen, a traditional Japanese string instrument, Nagai has appeared in numerous concerts at venues including Sculpture Center in Long Island City and Carnegie Hall. From 1999 until 2002 Nagai was a composer in residence at The Cave Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Theoretical: David Joselit in Conversation with Jutta Koether
Jutta Koether and David Joselit will stage a dialogue about painting. How do paintings slip from subjects to objects, and back again, never staying secure in either position. Why and how have paintings become performative? In the era of digital networks is the outmoded practice of applying pigment on canvas, linen, or wood, our best hope for understanding digital space?
David Joselit
David Joselit worked as a curator at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from 1983-1989 where he co-organized several exhibitions including “DISSENT: The Issue of Modern Art in Boston,” (1985) “Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture” (1986) and “The British Edge” (1987). After receiving his Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard in 1995, he began teaching in the Department of Art History and Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies at University of California, Irvine, where he taught until 2003. He is currently Carnegie Professor of the History of Art at Yale where he served as Department Chair from 2006-2009. Joselit is author of Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941 (MIT Press, 1998), American Art Since 1945 (Thames and Hudson, World of Art Series, 2003), and Feedback: Television Against Democracy (MIT Press, 2007). He is and editor of the journal OCTOBER and writes regularly on contemporary art and culture.
Jutta Koether
Jutta Koether is one of the central figures in contemporary painting. Yet she is more than just a painter. She is also a performance artist, musician, writer and theoretician. . Her role as an artist was long reduced to being regarded as a feminist response to a specific scene of the late 1980s in Cologne, Germany. With her translucent color fields, the gestural brush stroke, drawings of female bodies and the lyrical appropriation of poetry and art history, she frequently seems to assume positions in contrast to artists such as Martin Kippenberger, Sigmar Polke and Albert Oehlen. As critic and editor of the music and pop culture magazine Spex and as performance artist and musician, however, Koether did not fit the typical image of the art scene of that time. Since the start of her artistic career Jutta Koether has sought to make expansion her program. At the same time, it has always been important to her not to take an unequivocal role as an artist, but always to work from several positions.
Since coming to New York in the 1990s, she moves in an expanded field of experiment and improvisation, literature and theory in the New York scene. Cooperation with musicians like Tom Verlaine (Television) or Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) often provides her with more important inspiration than the work of other visual artists. It is specifically through these apparent detours and alternative forms of energy that she has created a kind of free space for herself, which enables a reevaluation of the medium of painting and its potential that is so urgently needed in today’s situation.
Carver Audain: Digital Tide
Carver Audain (b 1981) is a sound artist actively producing works comprised of field recordings, guitar, electronics, organ, and other assorted sources. Strategically, he uses improvisational tactics to integrate a variety of pre-recorded and pre-arranged material with his live playing through the use of controlled feedback and situation-specific spontaneous composition. Sonically, he produces an array of textured sound fields with a focus on controlling the shift of sustained harmonic overtones that both merge with and transform their physical surroundings.
Digital Tide is comprised of processed environmental recordings captured from various locations in Brooklyn during the summer of 2008, and pre-recorded instrument based improvisations also from that period. these elements are used to propel and conduce a well textured sonic field. the twelve channel system and unique structure of the speakers will hopefully serve as fingers with which to place sound.
New Roaratoria: Grouper (SOLD OUT)
Grouper is a recording and performance project by Liz Harris,and over the last few years she has quickly nudged herself into the underground spotlight with her peculiarly disarming music. Her journey began with the haunting midnight ambience of ‘Way Their Crept’ released on ex-Deerhoof member Rob Fisk’s Free Porcupine Society label in 2005. The record was instantly praised by British site Volcanic Tongue who described it as a ‘wildcard late entry for album of the year’, and its woozy blend of William Basinski-esque drone and breathy vocals slowly garnered the attention of music fans around the world. What followed over the next few years was a handful of stunning releases, from ‘Wide’ (again on FPS) to the haunting collaborative recording with Xiu Xiu entitled ‘Creepshow’. With each release Liz grew in confidence and refined her unique style, coming to a head with the limited ‘Cover the Windows and the Walls’ LP on Root Strata which sold out in a matter of weeks. In 2008 she released the album which defined her sound; ‘Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill’ and through cult British imprint Type Records she finally reached the wider audience she deserved. The album achieved an unprecedented amount of critical acclaim, with respected US webzine Pitchfork mentioning it in their top albums of 2008, touting it as ‘druggy and sexy and arty and pretty, but never pretentious’. In 2009 she toured the USA in support of Animal Collective (one of the world’s biggest alternative acts), released split 7”s with City Center and Pumice and continues to stun audiences worldwide with her truly unique songs.
On June 4th Grouper will perform pieces from her album Way Their Crept for the first time outside of Portland, as well as new keyboard material in a special set at Issue Project Room. These pieces have not been possible to perform before because of the logistics of playing live with an instrument as heavy and fragile as the keyboard used.
A second special set of a new tape collage called “Ascend/Descend” will be performed through the IPR’s 16 channel surround-sound system on June 4th.
The New Roaratoria is made possible, in part, through generous support from the Greenwall Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Paul Metzger + Amen Dunes
Paul Metzger
In 1979, Paul Metzger drilled a few innocent holes into a Yamaha acoustic guitar. A self taught musician with 5 years of playing behind him, Metzger was growing tired of the conventions of the instrument. This lobotomy was the first of many surgeries that would follow in years to come. Strings were added, subtracted, added again; the frets of the neck were disemboweled and retrofitted with a sarong like metal fingerboard plate; paint was splattered over it, a rejigged music box was affixed to the guitar’s belly, a crash cymbal mounted to its bottom. On the face of it, the instrument took on the look of a piece of tramp art.
Thirty years on, Metzger plays the same guitar in rotation with a heavily modified 23 string banjo in a tireless – often isolated – search for a musical style of his own which he finally took public for the first time in 2002. His sonic vocabulary ranges from deeply satisfying & impulsive outer cosmos ragadelia to clangorous, rapidly punctuated percussive workouts. Metzger has been described as a virtuoso and a visionary whose live performances are vital, deeply visceral and simply breathtaking.
Metzger has played more than 500 shows worldwide on bills with a diverse array of artists including blues legends Spider John Koerner & Tony Glover, Japanese metal act Boris, new wave revivalists Gang Gang Dance, psych acts Amen Dunes and Six Organs of Admittance, moperockers Low and fellow string journeymen Sir Richard Bishop and Jack Rose. Notable festival appearances include the Festival Météo (France), Suoni per il Popolo (Montreal, Canada), Two Rivers (Portland, Maine) and events sponsored by WFMU and The Wire magazine.
Metzger has been profiled on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition and recorded for Amsterdam’s legendary VPRO radio.
Since 2005, Metzger has released 7 full length solo recordings, a split lp, a compilation appearance and, most recently, a trio improvisation lp with Milo Fine and Davu Seru. His 8th record - a follow up to his widely acclaimed 2007 album Deliverance – was recorded in 2009 in a century old abandoned church in northern Minnesota and is due out on Locust Music in Spring 2010.
Amen Dunes
Born in Philadelphia on Spruce Street. Went to school. Left school. Moved to New York 2002. Played in bands. Worked in a deli. Worked as a gardener. Worked selling shirts. Worked selling tea. Left work. Left New York 2007. Rented a cabin, Three weeks. Catskill mountains. Recorded DIA. Moved to Beijing, China. Worked for a Chinese news-paper. Spent money to travel in the western countryside. Working on a second record.
Josephine Foster Trio + Jason Ajemian and the Highlife
Josephine Foster with Sonny Simmons and Ryan Sawyer
Colorado-born singer and songwriter, celebrated for her timeless and arresting voice and songs, several widely acclaimed albums, and the magnetic nature of her live performances. A self-proclaimed opera school dropout, her unusually imaginative work unites a wide musical spectrum and forms a truly singular body of songwriting. While compared to such singers as Shirley Collins or Tiny Tim, it is difficult to pigeonhole her voice, though a signature characteristic may found in the theremin-like melismas and a peculiar manner of ornamentation, sliding in microtonal freedom. Embedded in her rock and folk vieled work are relatively obsolete and unfashionable musical styles fascinatingly reimagined.
At age 15 she began working as a paid funeral and wedding singer; her earliest such performance was singing folk ballads and operatic hymns in a Rocky Mountain log cabin chapel. Thus began a musical trajectory tending to explore the gap between ‘lowbrow’ and ‘highbrow’ music.
After several years of meandering singing and artistic studies—harp, acting and opera stage direction—, she moved to Chicago and there quickly shrugged off the idea of a traditional operatic career. Instead, she returned to her adolescent love of writing songs; revisiting early jazz, blues and folk forms, north indian classical music and others. She adapting her lieder and aria repertoire into simplified and intuitive arrangements, freely breaking classical music taboos she found unduly limiting.
Whilst working as a freelance singing and music teacher, she was invited to perform her songs in wildly and comically disparate settings, often supported by friends in a handful of duos and trios including: ‘The Supposed’ (with guitarist Brian Goodman and drummer Rusty Peterson); ‘Born Heller’ (with free-jazz bass player Jason Ajemian); ‘The Children’s Hour’ (with songwriter Andy Bar and occasional drummer David Pajo). She has performed around the globe—Australia, Europe, Canada, Israel, Ireland—and has recorded several albums of her original songs with these musicians in addition to other unaccompanied solo work.
Ryan Sawyer (drummer/composer) plays with Stars Like Fleas, Tall Firs, Lone Wolf and Cub, amongst many others. An improviser that has played with everyone from Thurston Moore to Scarlett Johansson. Recorded on such seminal albums as At the Drive-In’s debut Acrobatic Tenement and Tv on the Radio’s Return To Cookie Mountain. Most recently, he co-wrote and performed the New York chapter of the Boredoms 88 Boa-drum. He lives in Brooklyn.
Sonny Simmons
Huey “Sonny” Simmons (b. August 4, 1933, Sicily Island, Louisiana) is an American jazz musician.
He grew up in Oakland, California, where he began playing the english horn. At age 16 he took up the alto saxophone, which became his primary instrument. He is one of the few jazz musicians to use the english horn as a solo instrument.
In the early 1960s he worked with Charles Mingus and Prince Lasha before recording his own LPs for ESP-Disk.
Jason Ajemian and the Highlife
Formed at the Harold Arts Residency in Ohio, Jason Ajemian pulls all of his previous conceptual musics together under a solid roof with The HIGH LIFE.
Ajemian creates scores in the architectural drafting program AutoCAD, which guide the musiciansthrough spaces and hallways of musical structures. His blueprints dictate the flow and motion of a musical set, opening the performers up to visual and descriptive influences, while leading them through a diverse musical landscape consisting of Ajemian’s orchestrated poems, American folk forms, Native American chants, Canadian sea shanties, Orbison, jazz expressive motion and balladry — all filtered through the creative/improvised process in a unique communication of the moment.
Josephine Foster + Willshine
Josephine Foster
Colorado-born singer and songwriter, celebrated for her timeless and arresting voice and songs, several widely acclaimed albums, and the magnetic nature of her live performances. A self-proclaimed opera school dropout, her unusually imaginative work unites a wide musical spectrum and forms a truly singular body of songwriting.
While compared to such singers as Shirley Collins or Tiny Tim, it is difficult to pigeonhole her voice, though a signature characteristic may found in the theremin-like melismas and a peculiar manner of ornamentation, sliding in microtonal freedom. Embedded in her rock and folk vieled work are relatively obsolete and unfashionable musical styles fascinatingly reimagined.
At age 15 she began working as a paid funeral and wedding singer; her earliest such performance was singing folk ballads and operatic hymns in a Rocky Mountain log cabin chapel. Thus began a musical trajectory tending to explore the gap between ‘lowbrow’ and ‘highbrow’ music.
After several years of meandering singing and artistic studies—harp, acting and opera stage direction—, she moved to Chicago and there quickly shrugged off the idea of a traditional operatic career. Instead, she returned to her adolescent love of writing songs; revisiting early jazz, blues and folk forms, north indian classical music and others. She adapting her lieder and aria repertoire into simplified and intuitive arrangements, freely breaking classical music taboos she found unduly limiting.
Whilst working as a freelance singing and music teacher, she was invited to perform her songs in wildly and comically disparate settings, often supported by friends in a handful of duos and trios including: ‘The Supposed’ (with guitarist Brian Goodman and drummer Rusty Peterson); ‘Born Heller’ (with free-jazz bass player Jason Ajemian); ‘The Children’s Hour’ (with songwriter Andy Bar and occasional drummer David Pajo).
She has performed around the globe—Australia, Europe, Canada, Israel, Ireland—and has recorded several albums of her original songs with these musicians in addition to other unaccompanied solo work.
Willshine
Experimental filmmaker, photographer and musician Mark Borthwick became well known for his award winning avant-garde fashion photography. More recently he can be found collaborating on films with such innovators as Mike Mills, Chan Marshal and Chloe Sevigny, as well as creating site-specific installations of his photographs, mixed with drawings and texts, frequently accompanied by performances, musical events and dinner parties. His perceptive and seemingly effortless images evoke the satisfactions of home, family and harmony with nature. Born in London, Mark Borthwick currently lives with his wife and two children in Brooklyn, New York.
weasel walter, vinny golia and adam lane
Faruq Z. Bey + Northwood Improvisers
Faruq Z. Bey w/ the Northwoods Improvisers music focuses around the composing and arranging of Faruq Z. Bey.
Faruq Z. Bey
(Tenor, alto, soprano saxophone, flute)
Faruq is the founder of the seminal creative Detroit based jazz ensemble “GRIOT GALAXY”. Their cd OPUS CRAMPUS on the sound aspects label earned them international acclaim. Faruq is also a published poet and is currently a member of the Detroit based ensemble “SPEAKING IN TONGUES”. He has worked with Northwoods on and off since the fall of 2000.
Mike Carey
(flute)
Performed with A.A.C.M. (Chicago) and Detroit based ensemble, “GREEN/MOSLEY COMPLEX” from 1982 to 1995. some of the members included, Donald Washington, Muwata Bowden and Harrison Bankhead. studied flute from 1980 to 1984 with Elmer Nodgie, flute virtuoso with the romanian symphony orchestra who fled the country for political reasons. has been a member (and is) of several detroit based ensembles including;
“TRUE STORIES ORCHESTRA”, “THE VISITORS”, “DESCRIPTION”, “CONSPIRACY WIND ENSEMBLE”, “LATER DAYS FREEBOP ORCHESTRA” (w/Hakim Jami), and “SPEAKING IN TONGUES”.
Skeeter C. R. Shelton
(Tenor and soprano saxophones, oboe, basoon)
Has played with the 70th DIVISION ARMY RESERVE BAND for 27 years. He is currently a member of SPEAKING IN TONGUES and is one of the founding members of GRIOT GALAXY. His father AJARAMU SHELTON was Gene Ammons drummer and an early Delmark recording artist with Kalaparusha.
Write up in Metro Times
Mike Gilmore
(Vibraphones, Marimba, Cheng, Guitar, Saz, Percussion)
Founding member of Northwoods Collective. Began playing guitar at age 5. Began studying Jazz Improvisation and East Indian Music in 1976. Shortly thereafter African, Middle Eastern and Far East Musics. Formal Piano studies 1976. Formal Classical Guitar studies 1979.
Mike Johnston
(Bass, wood flutes, percussion)
Founding member of the Northwoods collective. Contributing writer for coda publications 1982-1999. teaches college course at various colleges in jazz history and african and asian musics. MFA degree in Photography/Art from Central Michigan University. Does a public radio show “Destination Out” on CMU Public radio featuring creative jazz and world music.
Nick Ashton
(Drums, percussion)
Nick Ashton (son of James Ashton, professional drummer) began formal instruction at age 11 and continued band and orchestra in public school and college. Played different genre of music through college and after until settling in NYC in 1978 for 6 1/2 yrs whereupon jazz and improvised music became the only musical focus. Returned to Indiana in 1985 and began playing on the Indianapolis scene in 1986. He began playing with “NORTHWOODS IMPROVISERS” in 1987 and has continued performing with them ever since. Northwoods Improvisers first came together in 1976. Early versions of the band played totally collective electro-acoustic improvised music. Around 1980 the band switched to an all acoustic instrumentation which has remained to this day. Mike Gilmore and Mike Johnston were founding members of the ensemble. Nick Ashton joined in 1986.
In the 1980′s the band published several homemade cassette tapes of various live performances. in 1987 the band played several gigs with Canadian saxophonist (and Coda Magazine editor) Bill Smith.
In 1994 Northwoods released their 1st recording Fog and Fire on Trevor Watts Arc label. In 1996 Northwoods began recording on the Michigan based Entropy Stereo label owned by violinist Mike Khoury.
In 2000 the group began colaborating with Detroit saxophonist Faruq Z. Bey. Mike Carey a long time Bey collaborator joined the ensemble in 2002.
Faruq Z Bey + Northwood Improvisers
Faruq Z. Bey w/ the Northwoods Improvisers music focuses around the composing and arranging of Faruq Z. Bey.
Faruq Z. Bey
(Tenor, alto, soprano saxophone, flute)
Faruq is the founder of the seminal creative Detroit based jazz ensemble “GRIOT GALAXY”. Their cd OPUS CRAMPUS on the sound aspects label earned them international acclaim. Faruq is also a published poet and is currently a member of the Detroit based ensemble “SPEAKING IN TONGUES”. He has worked with Northwoods on and off since the fall of 2000.
Mike Carey
(flute)
Performed with A.A.C.M. (Chicago) and Detroit based ensemble, “GREEN/MOSLEY COMPLEX” from 1982 to 1995. some of the members included, Donald Washington, Muwata Bowden and Harrison Bankhead. studied flute from 1980 to 1984 with Elmer Nodgie, flute virtuoso with the romanian symphony orchestra who fled the country for political reasons. has been a member (and is) of several detroit based ensembles including;
“TRUE STORIES ORCHESTRA”, “THE VISITORS”, “DESCRIPTION”, “CONSPIRACY WIND ENSEMBLE”, “LATER DAYS FREEBOP ORCHESTRA” (w/Hakim Jami), and “SPEAKING IN TONGUES”.
Skeeter C. R. Shelton
(Tenor and soprano saxophones, oboe, basoon)
Has played with the 70th DIVISION ARMY RESERVE BAND for 27 years. He is currently a member of SPEAKING IN TONGUES and is one of the founding members of GRIOT GALAXY. His father AJARAMU SHELTON was Gene Ammons drummer and an early Delmark recording artist with Kalaparusha.
Write up in Metro Times
Mike Gilmore
(Vibraphones, Marimba, Cheng, Guitar, Saz, Percussion)
Founding member of Northwoods Collective. Began playing guitar at age 5. Began studying Jazz Improvisation and East Indian Music in 1976. Shortly thereafter African, Middle Eastern and Far East Musics. Formal Piano studies 1976. Formal Classical Guitar studies 1979.
Mike Johnston
(Bass, wood flutes, percussion)
Founding member of the Northwoods collective. Contributing writer for coda publications 1982-1999. teaches college course at various colleges in jazz history and african and asian musics. MFA degree in Photography/Art from Central Michigan University. Does a public radio show “Destination Out” on CMU Public radio featuring creative jazz and world music.
Nick Ashton
(Drums, percussion)
Nick Ashton (son of James Ashton, professional drummer) began formal instruction at age 11 and continued band and orchestra in public school and college. Played different genre of music through college and after until settling in NYC in 1978 for 6 1/2 yrs whereupon jazz and improvised music became the only musical focus. Returned to Indiana in 1985 and began playing on the Indianapolis scene in 1986. He began playing with “NORTHWOODS IMPROVISERS” in 1987 and has continued performing with them ever since. Northwoods Improvisers first came together in 1976. Early versions of the band played totally collective electro-acoustic improvised music. Around 1980 the band switched to an all acoustic instrumentation which has remained to this day. Mike Gilmore and Mike Johnston were founding members of the ensemble. Nick Ashton joined in 1986. In the 1980′s the band published several homemade cassette tapes of various live performances. in 1987 the band played several gigs with Canadian saxophonist (and Coda Magazine editor) Bill Smith.
In 1994 Northwoods released their 1st recording Fog and Fire on Trevor Watts Arc label. In 1996 Northwoods began recording on the Michigan based Entropy Stereo label owned by violinist Mike Khoury. In 2000 the group began colaborating with Detroit saxophonist Faruq Z. Bey. Mike Carey a long time Bey collaborator joined the ensemble in 2002.
Jozef van Wissem + Che Chen
http://ubu.com/sound/van-wissem.html
“composer-lute player jozef van wissem is renowned for his unusual approach of the renaissance and baroque lute. he cuts and pastes classical pieces, reverses melodies, adds electronics and processed field recordings made at airport lounges and train stations. the unusual wedlock of composition and improvisation creates an unheard amalgam of contemporary folk and late renaissance music. he has accomplished the strange feat of bridging the idiom of seventeenth century lute literature and twenty-first century composition. although van wissem uses subtle electronic sound manipulation, he has largely stayed faithful to the particular timbre, resonance and playing technique of the lute. van wissem first came to be noticed a few years ago because of his radical conceptual approach to renaissance lute music: he deconstructed existing compositions, for instance by playing them backwards. he also composes his own pieces for lute, using palindromes and mirrored structures. his music therefore does not have a traditional linear progression, nor leads to a climax, it rather stays on the same level of intensity. his music is quiet and not so much demands concentrated listening, as it will bring the listener in a state of concentrated listening. van wissem runs the incunabulum record label, and performs extensively around the world. he has worked with tetuzi akiyama, maurizio bianchi, smegma, gregg kowalski and james blackshaw. with blackshaw he has formed brethren of the free spirit ( important records) his latest solo records entitled “it is all that is made” and ” ex patris were released by important records. he has lectured a.o. at wesleyan universtity, mills college and cambridge university on ‘the liberation of the lute”. van wissem has received numerous commisions and grants, most recently from national gallery, london van wissem performs around 80 lute concerts per year. he lives in new york and amsterdam.
He also plays in a duo with multi-instrumentalist, Robbie Lee, in Jozef Van Wissem’s “Heresy of the Free Spirit”–a trio that plays arrangements of Van Wissem’s lute pieces as well as free improvisations–and in True Primes, his duo with singer/percussionist, Rolyn Hu. He is also the editor of OSOS , a private press artists’ magazine inspired by Wallace Berman’s Semina, Aspen Journal and the Fluxus design work of George Maciunas. OSOS # 3, which will be a double LP and magazine in a box, will be out in September 2010.
Artist-In-Residence Collective w/ Shelley Burgon, Shannon Fields, Ryan Sawyer, Matt Lavelle, Laura Ortman & Jon Natchez
AIR Collective (January-March 2010)
To launch our 4th year of providing multi-month artist residencies, ISSUE will host the first AIR Collective Residency featuring Brooklyn-based musicians:
Jon Natchez
Matt Lavelle
Laura Ortman
Shannon Fields
Ryan Sawyer
Shelley Burgon
These composer/musicians have, for the greater part of the past decade, recorded and performed consistently beguiling and volatile and genre-defying music as members of the critically acclaimed group Stars Like Fleas.
As part of this new collective, these artists will be provided with rehearsal space, curatorial guidance, opportunities to meet with members of our Artistic Advisory, technical/production support, marketing/pr support, and opportunities to create new and site-specific works.
AIR Collective Performances: Jan 17, Feb 19, Mar 26
ISSUE’s AIR program made possible, in part, through the generous support of the Jerome Foundation.
Porter Records Showcase: Nate Wooley, Katherine Young and Jeremiah Cymerman
Porter Records Showcase
Porter Records is a young label with clear focus of celebrating the diversity of music both domestically and abroad. Within a few short years the label has amassed an impressive collection of music that ranges from jazz and electronic to the modern composer and hip hop artist. Along with presenting new and exciting music, Porter Records also digs deep to find lost music treasures of the past through reissues of hard to find or previously unreleased recordings.
Nate Wooley
Katherine Young
Jeremiah Cymerman
Nate Wooley (b. 1974) grew up in a Finnish-American fishing village in Oregon. He has spent the rest of his life trying musically to find a way back to the peace and quiet of that time by whole-heartedly embracing the space between complete absorption in sound and relative absence of the same. He began playing trumpet professionally at age 13 with his father.
Nate currently resides in Jersey City, NJ and performs solo trumpet improvisations as well as collaborating with such diverse artists as Anthony Braxton, Paul Lytton, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Marilyn Crispell, Joe Morris, Steve Beresford, Wolf Eyes, Akron/Family, David Grubbs, C. Spencer Yeh, Daniel Levin, Stephen Gauci, Harris Eisenstadt, Taylor Ho Bynum and Peter Evans.
Katherine Young
Brooklyn-based composer and bassoonist Katherine Young writes acoustic and electro-acoustic music that uses expressive colors and curious timbres to explore suspended time, genre fiction, the communication of ensemble energies, and the narrative qualities of space. Her acoustic and electro-acoustic music for large and small ensembles has been performed throughout the U.S. and Europe by groups such as the FLUX Quartet and Till by Turning; she has also been commissioned to compose music for dance. As a bassoonist, Katherine performs with Anthony Braxton’s Falling River Quartet, Architeuthis Walks on Land, Till by Turning, chamber pop quartet the Fancy, and in many other collaborations.
Katherine Young debuts her new project Pretty Monsters, which animates the solo bassoon music released on her 2009 Porter Records debut Further Secret Origins in an interactive ensemble setting. Katherine has arranged the music – as well as some new material – for this New York trio featuring Owen Stewart-Robinson on guitar and Mike Pride on percussion. Using amplification and pedals to enhance the power of the bassoon, Pretty Monsters explores dynamic extremes, energetic interplay, flexible rhythmic structures, as well as timbral depth and detail.
Composer Jeremiah Cymerman will premiere a new electroacoustic piece for his ensemble Scorpio Rising featuring Elena Moon Park (violin) Jessica Pavone (viola) Christopher Hoffman (cello) & Tom Blancarte (bass) in addition to selections from his upcoming Porter release, “Under a Blue Grey Sky”.
Jeremiah Cymerman is a composer and clarinetist based in New York City since 2002. He has been fortunate to present his work in many of the city’s most respected venues for experimental performance including Roulette, Issue Project Room, the Stone & Anthology Film Archives. Described by Time Out New York as “one of Downtown’s most resourceful and inventive composer-performers” Cymerman has worked with a broad range of contemporary artists including Jandek, Otomo Yoshihide, John Zorn, Nate Wooley, Evan Parker, Matthew Welch, Jessica Pavone, Anthony Coleman, Toby Driver, Peter Evans, Mary Halvorson and many others. His recorded output has been documented on the Tzadik, Porter and Solponticello record labels.
Porter Records Showcase: Matthew Welch, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Matt Bauder
Porter Records Showcase
Porter Records is a young label with clear focus of celebrating the diversity of music both domestically and abroad. Within a few short years the label has amassed an impressive collection of music that ranges from jazz and electronic to the modern composer and hip hop artist. Along with presenting new and exciting music, Porter Records also digs deep to find lost music treasures of the past through reissues of hard to find or previously unreleased recordings.
Matthew Welch
Andrew Raffo Dewar
Matt Bauder
Matthew Welch
Regarded as “a composer possessed of both rich imagination and the skill to bring his fancies to life” by Time Out New York, composer and bagpipe virtuoso Matthew Welch (b.1976) holds two degrees in Music Composition, a BFA from Simon Fraser University (1999), and an MA from Wesleyan University (2001), having studied with noted composers such as Barry Truax, Rodney Sharman, Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton. After locating to New York City in 2001, he has worked with a host of other artists such as John Zorn, Julia Wolfe, Zeena Parkins, and Ikue Mori. The eclectic breadth of his interests in Scottish bagpipe music, Balinese gamelan, minimalism, improvisation and rock converge in compositional amalgams ranging from traditional-like bagpipe tunes to electronic pieces, improvisation strategies and fully notated works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra and non-western instruments. Since 2002, Mr. Welch has been running and composing for his own eclectic ensemble, Blarvuster, whose repertoire the New York Times has claimed as “border-busting music; original and catchy.” Mr. Welch has recorded for the Tzadik, Mode, Cantaloupe, Leo, Porter, Muud, Avian, Newsonic and Parallactic record labels.
Tonight Matt Welch’s Blarvuster welcomes the other five artists in this series to form a unique “Blarvuster Big Band” in a performance of Welch’s monolithic Blind Piper’s Obstinacy #1.
Andrew Raffo Dewar (b.1975 Rosario, Argentina) is a composer, improviser, and woodwind instrumentalist.
Since 1995, he has been active in the music communities of Minneapolis, New Orleans, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, performing his work internationally.
He studied with Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, Alvin Lucier, Bill Dixon, and has also had a long involvement with experimental and traditional Indonesian music.
Dewar has been noted as “having the rare ability to translate his knowledge into something beautiful” (Foxy Digitalis). His music has been described as “absorbing” (Dusted Magazine), “enshrouding” and “evoking something unnatural and plugged-in” (Bagatellen), as well as “musical rainfall” and “absolutely essential listening” (Aquarius Records).
In addition to leading his own ensembles and working in collaborative groups with musicians from around the world, Dewar performs with the Anthony Braxton 12+1tet and the Bill Dixon Orchestra.
Dewar is an Assistant Professor in New College at the University of Alabama.
Andrew Raffo Dewar’s Interactions Quartet East
ARD: soprano saxophone, composer
Jessica Pavone: viola
Aaron Siegel: vibraphone & percussion
Carl Testa: contrabass
For more info: www.freemovementarts.com
Piece for Four Instruments (2002, dedicated to Earle Brown) is a modular composition that can be performed in any page configuration or duration that uses graphic and spatial notation. One result of this notation method are complex indeterminate/stochastic rhythms, most obvious when performers attempt to realize “unison” lines, but which is present throughout the work.
Interactions (2009, dedicated to Guillermo Gregorio) is an ongoing book of quartet compositions (currently numbering six pieces) that explores the idea of “interactions” on a number of levels. This includes various layered configurations of the performers, from solo to quartet, the incorporation of traditional notation and alternative image notation (in the form of photographs), concrete melodies and abstract sounds, and in a forthcoming studio recording (with Kyle Bruckmann, Gino Robair, and John Shiurba) the interactions between electronic and acoustic sounds.
Matt Bauder is a saxophonist and composer who has studied with Ed Sarath, Anthony Braxton, Ron Kuivila and Alvin Lucier. In the past ten years he has been an active member of the new music scenes in Ann Arbor, Chicago, Berlin and New York, where he has performed with, among others, Braxton, Bill Dixon, Fred Anderson, Roscoe Mitchell, Jeff Parker, Taylor Ho Bynum, The SEM Ensemble, Ken Vandermark and Phil Minton. He appears on recordings with Jason Ajemian (Locust Music), Rob Mazurek (Thrill Jockey), Neil Michael Hagerty (Drag City), His Name is Alive (4AD/TimeStereo), Saturday Looks Good to Me (Polyvinyl) and Bill Brovald (Tzadik). His recordings as a leader and co-leader on 482 Music, Clean Feed and Eye & Ear Records have received wide critical acclaim.
PAPER GARDENS
An extended work stemming from the most basic of ideas, Paper Gardens uses the unison and the cluster to serve as a springboard for compositional and improvisational expansion. The piece has developed through multiple revisions and performances over the past 5 years. In these performances a regular lineup of players played an intregral part in developing its unique musical language. In that sense Paper Gardens lies somewhere between chamber music, jazz and free improvisation.
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,...