10/12 @ 8:00pm - Martha Colburn with Thollem McDonas

Martha Colburn

Martha Colburn’s work utilizes the language and materials of filmmaking to comment on popular culture, consumerism, politics and sexuality. Through a collage of live action (paint-on-glass) animations, found footage, and documentary filmmaking techniques, she addresses contemporary topics to express her personal anxieties and passions.  Martha’s films are a disturbing and at times humorous take on popular and political culture.  She creates elaborately layered collages, paintings, and installations that incorporate transparencies, recordings, and live performances. As her conceptual process grows, so follows advances in an already detailed and labor-intensive animating process.  Martha is expanding her technique into working with multi-plane glass animation, which represents a physical manifestation of her conceptually layered ideas.

Currently, Martha is working on films that combine art historical representations and current depictions of politics to challenge our notions of truth and fantasy. As a descendent of some of America’s earliest settlers (ministers, farmers and wagon train members), her work demonstrates an awareness of the repository of the guilt haunted twisted history of the American soul. Martha’s current work draws from this perspective and personal experience to address issues such as Methamphetamine use, environmental catastrophes, and man’s relationship to nature.

http://www.marthacolburn.com

Thollem McDonas

Thollem McDonas is a pianist and composer of Irish and Cherokee descent, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Not long after birth, he began studying the keyboard repertoire from the Medieval era to the 20th century. After graduating with degrees in both piano performance and composition, he dedicated his time to grassroots political movements and ecological restoration projects, before returning to music with his full focus. Currently on tour, his extensive travels as a performer and teacher have covered much of the North American continent and Europe (he often leads listening and group improvisation workshops). He is a founding member of several innovative ensembles, all of varying and disparate musics. In the past 6 years, he has added 20 albums to his discography on 9 different vanguard labels in 4 different countries.

http://www.thollem.com

As the founder and Artistic Director of Estamos Ensemble, Thollem McDonas is the recipient of the 2009 US Artists International Award,  as well as a 2010 CAP grant from the American Music Center. He was commissioned by The Limon Dance Company for a large-scale commemorative piece for their 50th year anniversary. In September 2008, he was invited to perform the late works of Claude Debussy on the piano on which they were written, as well as his own comprovisations with Stefano Scodanibbio. On Debussy’s Piano And…(Die Schachtel, Fall 2010) is the first album ever recorded on Debussy’s piano.

“Thollem’s keyboard flights unleash cascades of notes of seemingly impossible velocity and no matter where he goes tonally, it always seems right, fresh and satisfying.  He should be on everyone’s listening list who appreciates great piano music.  As an improviser, he inhabits a world uniquely his own, rhythmically, harmonically and formally.  A true original.” - Terry Riley