10/06 @ 8:00pm - Barry Chabala presents the work of Michael Pisaro

Barry Chabla presents ‘An evening of Pisaro’, performing the compositions: appearance (2), E lá fora and Ascending Series (6). Joining him will be Travis Just (reeds) and trombonist Tucker Dulin.

Barry Chabala (b.1961) – NJ guitarist taking cues from wide ranging influences like John Cage, Morton Feldman and Taku Sugimoto, Barry’s music has continued to evolve, reduce, and focus, reaching ever closer to the essence of his intention. His recent work with composer Michael Pisaro has yielded two critically acclaimed recordings: ‘an unrhymed chord(for 25 acoustic guitars) for Confront Recordings, and ‘black, white, red, green, blue (voyelles)’ for Winds Measure.

Travis Just is co-director of Object Collection. His work as a composer comes from a background in improvised music and experimental composition and often uses texts, gesture, and unconventional technologies in addition to instruments and electronics. His opera Problem Radical(s) premiered at PS122 in 2009 and will be followed by another opera Innova in 2011. In addition to his compositional work, Travis has curated at the Ontological Theater, The Stone, an auto repair yard in Berlin and is the Music Curator at Incubator Arts Project.

Tucker Dulin has lived in brooklyn for 3 years. current projects: jango.com, a set of pieces for live musicians and subwoofer, bicycle riding.

Michael Pisaro

Michael Pisaro (born 1961 in Buffalo, New York) is a guitarist and composer. A member of the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble, he has composed over 80 works for a great variety of instrumental combinations. A large majority of his oeuvre consists of solo works, notably a series of 36 pieces (grouped into 6 longer works) for the three-year, 156-concert series organized by Carlo Inderhees at the Zionskirche in Berlin-Mitte from 1997-1999. Another solo piece, pi (1-2594), was performed in installments by the composer on 15 selected days in February 1999, in Evanston, Illinois and in Düsseldorf in 2000-2001.

Pisaro’s work is frequently performed in the U.S. and Europe in both music festivals and smaller venues. He has been selected twice by the ISCM jury for performance at World Music Days festivals (Copenhagen,1996; Manchester, 1998) and has been included in festivals in Hong Kong (ICMC, 1998), Vienna (Wien Modern,1997), Aspen (1991) and Chicago (New Music Chicago, 1990, 1991). He has had extended composer residencies in Germany (Künstlerhof Schreyahn), Switzerland (Forumclaque/Baden), Israel (Miskenot Sha’ananmim), Greece (EarTalk) and in the U.S. (Birch Creek Music Festival/Wisconsin). Concert length portraits of his music have been given in Munich, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, Vienna, Brussels, Curitiba (Brazil), Berlin, Chicago, Düsseldorf, Zürich, Cologne, and Aarau. Most of his recents works are published by Edition Wandelweiser (Germany) and two of his CDs have been released by Edition Wandelweiser Records. In addition to performing his own pieces, Michael Pisaro has showcased the work of his close associates Antoine Beuger, Kunsu Shim, Jürg Frey and Manfred Werder, and those from the experimental tradition, namely John Cage, Christian Wolff, Robert Ashley and George Brecht.

Before joining the composition faculty at the California Institute of the Arts, he taught music composition and theory at Northwestern University from 1986 to 2000. In 2006 he was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.