06/25 @ 8:00pm - Man Forever + Elliott Sharp, Frank Vigroux, Zeena Parkins and Hélène Breschand

Elliott 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

Franck Vigroux works in the fields of electronic music, new media, composition and improvisation. He leads many bands and projects such as Push the triangle, Supersonic Riverside Blues. He has played or recorded with musicians such as Bruno Chevillon, Elliott Sharp, Marc Ducret, Ben Miller, Helene Breschand, Joey Baron, Michel Blanc, Stephane Payen,Andrea Parkins, Matthew Bourne, Edward Perraud, writer Kenji Siratori, video artists Scorpene Horrible, Philippe Fontes, Mariano Equizzi. In 2009 he won the prize Villa Medicis Hors les Murs for an artist residency in New York. Franck Vigroux is also the founder of d’Autres Cordes a record label dedicated to aventurous music. He has played in hundreds of festivals and clubs in Europe and Asia, as a guitarist or turntablist and conducted improvisers orchestras worldwide ( Nagoya, Barcelona, Leeds,etc…), he has been commissioned by Ars Nova ensemble instrumental and Radio France . He also presents audiovisual installations such as Recolte and O. Recent works for theater “septembres” by philippe malone, music for films “the nishiazabu affair” by mariano equizzi, “dust” 30mn, directed by franck vigroux in 2007, “recolte” video suite, 2009, by franck vigroux

Zeena Parkins Multi-instrumentalist, composer, improvisor, well-known as a pioneer of the electric harp she describes her harp as a “sound machine of limitless capacity”. Zeena’s unique vision is one that seeks to both meld and highlight opposites. She has broken musical boundaries to create a highly personal and stunning body of work. Or, to quote the WDC Period “Music that makes you hike up your britches and howl like a coyote”.

Made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, FAJE, Chamber Music of America, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Florence Gould Foundation, SACEM, and CulturesFrance.

MAN FOREVER is the solo endeavor of ONEIDA drummer Kid Millions. The self-titled debut–two monolithic, hypnotic improvisations for arrays of drums in just intonation– is due out in an edition of 300 LPs featuring hand-pulled screens on recycled record jackets from Jagjaguwar vinyl imprint St. Ives. The touring quintet of Kid Millions, YEAH YEAH YEAHS drummer Brian Chase, Oneida cohort and KNYFE HYTS drummer Shahin Motia, drummer Allison Busch of AWESOME COLOR, and SIGHTINGS bassist Richard Hoffman, will be augmented by local percussionists in each city.

“Kid Millions, who, as drummer, is unsurpassed in his generation, finds an opportunity with slippery polyrhythmical approaches here, as if to say that the human drummer is the thing that is most controversial in the age of the click track, so there’s no pulse, no melodic home, no melody at all, really, just the thunderous ebbing and flowing of multiple rolls and fills, to replace the massaged rhythmic pulse of the Pro Tools era. It’s a provocation, yes, and a welcome one. And with the provocation comes a fair amount of dizzy joy, and a ritualized release of dammed-up energy.” – Rick Moody, therumpus.net

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/arts/music/23drummer.html

With accompanying live 16mm film performance by Mighty Robot AV Squad!!!