03.24.10 - 8:00pm

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.