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Archives January 2008
Thursday, January 3rd If Tony Conrad's powerful sound has its roots in "minimalism", M.V. Carbon's music introduces a more contemporary but equally aggressive practice. Meeting as they do with violin and cello above a unifying drone, Conrad and Carbon explode the space we normally think of in connection with string quartets, waltz music, and country fiddlin'. Chaotic parameters are bent and rigorously sculpted using techniques that have been revealed through enduring experimentation. Their tangles of sounds incite a tumbling clash of traditions. The interplay of their approaches reflects the split personality of today's listeners, who want to discover the thrill of music in a rich sonic imbroglio. 8 pm $10
Friday, January 4th rob schwimmer +david simons +dorit chrysler +scott burland and frank schultz Tonights performance features 2 new works for theremin PELLUCID DREAMS by Rob Schwimmer and ASSENT David Simons for theremin, tuba, cello and voice commissioned by The Department of Cultural Affairs for ISSUE Project Room. Also featured is new work by Dorit Chrysler in collaboration with Danish Artist Jesper Just and new members to the Society, Scott Burland and Frank Schultz and their duet for theremin and lapsteel 8 pm $10
Saturday, January 5th “It's gwine to be fine to be back near the Gowanus once again to air some tonal hash. We'll be rollin' in with the golden road, core duo exchange of mv & ee augmented with Samara Lubelski, Willie Lane and John Moloney. Psyched to jam with real time presentation of the 'Gettin' Gone' song cycle and other tone petals. Hope to see ya in the tapers pit blossoming, until that time...” mv 8pm $10
Thursday January 10th shawn onsgard Maguire x Cleaver x Halvorson "Then I reflected that all things happen to oneself, and only in
the This decidedly unbalanced trio of drums, electric guitar, and exposed Mary Halvorson is a guitarist, composer and improviser
living in Gerald Cleaver, born and raised in Detroit, is a product
of the city’s Carl Maguire grew up in Madison, Wisconsin where his
early piano 8pm $10
Friday, January 11th Byron Westbrook is a sound/intermedia artist living in
Brooklyn, NY. His work involves performance of processed instrumental and
environmental recordings through a multi-channel environment with a focus
on redistributing energy distilled from sound and light. In solo performances
under the name CORRIDORS, a system of multiple amplifiers
is used in conjunction with PA speakers to create a dynamic space within
a space using sound and video projection. He has also collaborated with
Rhys Chatham in the drone metal group Essentialist (Table of the Elements),
as well as performed in the ensembles of Phill Niblock, Chatham, Glenn
Branca and Jonathan Kane. Releases are forthcoming in 2008 for both Corridors
and Essentialist. The Holy Experiment is the solo performance of Brooke Hamre Gillespie, who was born in Ely, Minnesota in 1979. She plays bells, Tibetan singing bowls, suling flutes, recorders, electric violin, electric guitar, and uses her voice to navigate the new worlds created through the sounds. Gillespie writes. “My work is intended to reach not only those in the immediate area who listen, but consciousness is given to the sounds and vibrations produced with insight into the idea that all vibration is interactive and that every sound created eventually makes its way through the cosmos…” Ateleia is Brooklyn resident James Elliott. His music combines crystalline pulse with submerged aquatic drones and subtle ghost melodies, evoking the grand echo of "My Bloody Valentine" and the long-standing tradition of psychedelic minimalism while informed by contemporary electronic music. "Hypnotically gorgeous…" - Jon Dale, Stylus Magazine 8 pm $10
Saturday, January 12th Drums, Christine Bard Join Jim Pugliese’s Phase III with many special guests celebrating the release of their newest CD on the Italian label “Improvvisatore Involontario”. "Phase III" is Jim Pugliese’s newest project and is a continuation of his ongoing quest to combine his diverse performing experiences into a single new sound with its base in rhythm. The music skirts and shifts along the edges of free improvisation, deep groove and African influenced Rhythms. It reflects Jim's ongoing quest to explore the powerful, enlightening and spiritual secrets of drumming and is inspired by his recent association and work with Nii Tettey Tetteh, master musician from Ghana, with Milford Graves, learning drumming and healing through the heartbeat and his study of the spiritual songs of the Mbira Dzavadzimu from Zimbabwe. The Band includes some of downtowns most astounding musicians 8 pm $10
Wednesday, January 16th The Trojan Pony Tour, presented by Specific Recordings, features films and live music by artists and musicians from the fabled city of Troy, New York. Featured in the show is infectious, charming, and subversive live music from Specific Recordings artists Ross Goldstein and Jesse Stiles, sexy/patriotic short videos and the debut of Sittin' on a Million, a surprisingly funny new documentary about a famous Troy madam by Penny Lane and Annmarie Lanesey. The program raises questions about memory and nostalgia in the construction of our shared national narratives - in a ridiculously fun way. About Specific Recordings - Specific Recordings specializes in audio recordings that are unique as a result of historical circumstances or other unusual factors. They represent singular moments that cannot be recreated and are presented here in the highest quality possible. Ross Goldstein is an American Musician and Artist/Photographer. His "United States of Belt" recording project is a subliminal exploration of the American landscape/mindscape, combining field recordings, experimental music, and studio magic. Goldstein resides in Troy, NY where his collection of hand-painted signs play a vital role in keeping the public bewildered about what the hell is going on. Jesse Stiles is a composer, multimedia artist, and sound designer. Stiles received a Watson Fellowship in 2000 to compose electronic music while traveling in India, Australia, and the UK for one year. His MFA thesis performance in Troy, New York opened the historic Gasholder Building to the public for the first time in 25 years, immersing hundreds of attendees in a performance of improvised electro-acoustic music and computer-controlled LED sculptures. He has performed and exhibited multimedia artwork internationally. Penny Lane is an independent filmmaker and video artist living in Troy, NY and Northampton, MA. Her collaborative and solo experimental, narrative and documentary videos have screened at AFI FEST, Int'l Film Festival Rotterdam, San Francisco Int'l Film Festival, Seattle Int'l Film Festival, Women in the Director's Chair, Santa Fe Art Institute, MOMA, and DUMBO Art Under the Bridge. Her award-winning documentaries The Abortion Diaries and Independent Media in a Time of War (the latter made with Hudson-Mohawk Indymedia) are regularly screened in classrooms, community centers and microcinemas across the U.S. and internationally on Free Speech TV and Yes! Television. And yes, that is her real name. 8 pm $10
Thursday, January 17th Totem is a noise rock free improvisation trio that ventures from walls of sound to exploring microscopic sound worlds. Andrew Drury grew up near Seattle (USA) and works primarily in avant-jazz and free improvisation, with regular forays into other genres and media. He has performed in Europe and North America, made four CDs as a bandleader, and appeared on about 20 others. He is an acclaimed leader of percussion workshops. Drury has collaborated with artists that include Jason Kao Hwang, Myra Melford, Wadada Leo Smith, John Tchicai, Kenny Wolleson’s Himalayas, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and many more. Drury currently leads four groups that play his compositions. The Andrew Drury Trio, Content Provider, Breathe, and his latest project is a percussion quartet that features Jim Black, Mike Pride, and Michael Sarin. His music for dance has been presented at DTW, Joyce Soho, NW New Works Festival, and five cities in Romania. Drury has received 18 grants for his work from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Seattle Arts Commission, the Artist Trust, the Puffin Foundation, and others. Bruce Eisenbeil is a composer, improviser, and guitar
instrumentalist who has dedicated his life to the advancement of modern
guitar techniques through the growth and evolution of modern improvised
music. He has seven CD's released and has performed throughout the USA,
Canada, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Brasil, and at many festivals.
Eisenbeil has performed, recorded and collaborated with some of the best
musicians in the world, including Cecil Taylor, David Murray, Milford Graves,
Evan Parker, Ellery Eskelin, Andrew Cyrille, William Parker, and Katsuyuki
Itakura. Critics have compared him not only with guitarists such as Wes
Montgomery, Django Reinhardt, Grant Green, Billy Bauer, Derek Bailey, Sarnie
Garrett, Sonny Sharrock, Curtis Mayfield, John McLaughlin, Jimi Hendrix
and Jeff Beck but also with saxophonists John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman
and pianists McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor. His ensemble writing has been
associated with that of Miles Davis, Don Cherry, Brian Ferneyhough, Sun
Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Revolutionary Ensemble. Tom Blancarte is a bassist, improviser and composer living
and working in New York City. He has performed his music across North America,
Europe and Japan. His primary focus is on improvisational music and finding
new roles for the bass in a variety of musical contexts. He is an active
performer in a variety of ensembles in the New York area, his most active
groups being the hyperactive duo Sparks with trumpeter Peter Evans, Dave
Smith's Who Put The Bad Mouth On Me, and the Peter Evans Quartet. Blancarte
has toured extensively throughout Europe and has received critical acclaim
for his work on the self-titled Peter Evan Quartet CD released by Firehouse12
records. blackberg/Hernandez/evans/lipton Blacksberg/Hernandez/Evans/Lipson is a collective ensemble
that plays improvised music. In this music, we strive to call on as much
of our personal and shared experiences in every moment. We do this to challenge
ourselves to explore our relationships with each other to find new spaces
of communication and to bring joy. Michael Evans is an improvising drummer/composer whose
work investigates and embraces the collision of sound and theatrics. As
well as being a drum set player, his work with unusual sound sources includes
found objects, homemade instruments, and various digital and homemade analog
electronics. He has worked with a wide variety of artists including Samm
Bennett, Jac Berrocal, EasSide Percussion, Fast Forward(Gobo), God is my
Co-Pilot, Alexander Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten), Susan Hefner, Skip
LaPlante's Music for Homemade Instruments, Sean Meehan, Toronto Dance Theatre
and Peter Zummo. Friday January 18th 8pm $10
Friday February 1 and Saturday February 2 Apestaartje / Incunabulum Festival : *The Apestaartje and Incunabulum labels present 2 nights of music focusing on the use of traditional instrumentation (lute, acoustic guitar etc) and styles (Baroque Music, Folk forms etc) in combination w/ contemporary experimental practices and adaptations. Fri Feb 1st Sat Feb 2nd James Blackshaw Initially inspired by the folk/classical guitarists of the 60's Takoma label to teach himself fingerpicking, James Blackshaw writes long-form pieces primarily for solo 12-string guitar that are heavily influenced by minimalist composers and European classical music and which use drones, overtones and repeating patterns alongside a strong inclination for melody to create music that is both intelligent, hypnotic and emotionally charged. Born in London, England in 1981, Blackshaw has so far released five solo studio albums, one live recording and has also appeared on numerous compilations. "O True Believers" (2006, Important Records/Bo'weavil Recordings) and "The Cloud of Unknowing" (2007, Tompkins Square) received huge critical acclaim from printed and online publications including Pitchfork, The Wire, The Observer, The Times, Uncut, The Rolling Stone, Magnet and Acoustic Guitar Magazine. "The Cloud of Unknowing" was also listed as one of the 50 best albums of 2007 by The Wire (no. 24), Pitchfork (no. 34) and Uncut. Blackshaw has toured the UK, Europe, Japan and U.S, most of Jose Gonzales, and has also played with Espers, Brightblack Morning Light, Sir Richard Bishop, Simon Finn, Marissa Nadler, Josephine Foster, Glenn Jones and many more. He has improvised live with Seiichi Yamamoto (ex-Boredoms) and recently released a collaboration with composer/lutist Jozef Van Wissem under the moniker "Brethren of The Free Spirit". www.jamesblackshaw.com Mountains is an ongoing collaboration between Apestaartje co-founders Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp. Having worked in parallel and often overlapping contexts within their respective solo projects, 'Mountains' was created as an outlet for live performance. They have released two critically acclaimed albums and toured throughout the US and Europe performing everywhere from festivals, art galleries, and museums to basements, hippie communes, churches, and rock clubs. Mountains has performed with Fennesz, Tony Conrad, Greg Davis, Minamo, Tape, Nicholas Collins, Carsten Nicolai, Lichens, Supersilent, Alog, etc. They have also been included in several exhibitions, most notably at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. There current performances utilize acoustic instruments and objects played through a series of both analog and digital electronics to create an extremely gradual and hypnotic listening experience. 'Mountains Mountains Mountains', a new LP only release will be out on the Catsup Plate label in early 2008. "Infinite sheets of grainy sound build and renew themselves to immensely pleasing effect." www.staartje.com Byron Westbrook is a composer/sound artist living in Brooklyn, NY. He performs solo under the name CORRIDORS using a system of multiple amplifiers and video projections to create a dynamic space within a space using sound and light. He has performed with Sawako, Tony Conrad, Lichens, Anette Krebs, Soft Circle among others. He has also collaborated with Rhys Chatham in the drone metal group Essentialist (Table of the Elements), as well as performed in the ensembles of Phill Niblock, Chatham, Glenn Branca, and Jonathan Kane. This performance will premiere a multi-channel sound piece called *68 Footsteps (x8)*, which explores the use of an acoustic guitar to unify dissimilar location recordings broadcast within a space. www.byronwestbrook.com Tetuzi Akiyama is a highly unique and experimental guitarist heavily applying free improvisation and noise. Besides guitar, he also plays electronics, viola, and self-made instruments. Akiyama became an enthusiastic hard rock fan when he was eleven years old, and started playing electric guitar at the age of thirteen. Later, he also came to be very interested in free improvisation and classical music. He formed the improvised music band Madhar in 1987. He also started playing classical viola, and formed the Hikyo String Quintet in 1994. The band, Recently Akiyama has two improvised music projects: Sutekina Tea Time, a duo with Takashi Matsuoka (guitar, vocal); and Mongoose, a trio with Sugimoto and Utah Kawasaki (analog synthesizer). Since 1998, together with Sugimoto and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-imput mixing board), he has been organizing an inspiring monthly concert series, The Improvisation Meeting at Bar Aoyama (renamed The Experimental Meeting in '99, and Meeting at Off Site in 2000). www.japanimprov.com/takiyama Composer/lute player Jozef Van Wissem is renowned for his unusual approach of the Renaissance lute. He cuts and pastes classical pieces, reverses melodies, adds electronics and processed field recordings The unusual wedlock of composition and improvisation creates an unheard amalgam of contemporary folk and late Renaissance music Van Wissem probably plays the most unlikely instruments in the world of contemporary improvised music: the Renaissance and Baroque lute and has accomplished the strange feat of bridging the idiom of seventeenth century lute literature and twenty-first century free improv of the silent type. Although he 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 composed 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 – an aspect that makes Van Wissem a natural ally of the current post-reductionist improvising musicians. He also runs the Incunabulum label, and performs regularly around the world in duo with guitar-wizard of Captain Beefheart-fame, Gary Lucas. He also works with M.B./ Maurizio Bianchi, James Blackshaw, Chris Forsyth, Tetuzi Akiyama and Elliot Sharp. www.*jozef**van**wissem*.com Chris Forsyth is perhaps best known as a guitarist and founding member of the group Peeesseye, who have been described in various quarters as "the most remarkable smorgasbord of back porch minimalism, sound poetry and urban decay of recent memory," "ritual music balanced precariously between the sacred and the profane," and "Situationist field recording rock.". Their constantly evolving music has been documented on 6 CDs, and Peeesseye has performed throughout the US and Europe since their formation in 2002. 8pm $10 February celebrates the individuality of instrumentation with a week of horns, percussion, string and voice. ISSUE Project Room's artistic director Suzanne Fiol curates in collaboration with 4 outstanding musicians, Chris McIntyre for a week of horns, Billy Martin for a week of percussion, Zach Layton for a week of strings and Sarah Ibrahim for a week of voice. A WEEK OF HORNS TILT Brass Band's SIXtet project reconvenes for opening night IPR's Horn Week with music from composer, guitarist and Cunningham Co. music co-director John King, TILT's own Chris McIntyre, and improvisations featuring its stellar roster of brass players. New York-based TILT Brass Band is a collective of creative brass and percussion artists. Its music nods in all directions, fearlessly taking on works from the fringes of experimental concert music, arrangements of left-of-center pop tunes, blatant and oblique political pieces, full-band improvisations and beyond. TILT negotiates its tastes with programs ranging from far-flung aesthetic combinations to singular thematic and conceptual investigations, often dealing with the fusion of written and improvised material. More info at www.tiltbrass.org. Chris Jonas' The Sun Spits Cherries A deeply nuanced world -- distinctive, accessible, simple and achingly beautiful. (Michael Kremer, Jazziz). Started in NYC in 1997, the Sun Spits Cherries consists of soprano saxophone (Jonas), tenor and bass trombones (Joe Fiedler and Christopher Washburne) and percussion (Andrew Barker). Neither pure improvisation, nor entirely composed, these pieces braid cues and conducting techniques to layer and juxtapose composed materials, improvisations, and scored forms in order to disrupt and modify habits and place focus on space, color, timbre and interaction. This will be the first concert of the group since Jonas' departure from NYC in 2001 and will include partner, Molly Sturges on extended vocals. Throughout the 1990s in NYC, Jonas was long term member of bands led by Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, William Parker, the Brooklyn Sax Quartet, Butch Morris conduction ensembles and his own critically acclaimed ensemble, the Sun Spits Cherries. During this period he traveled to cities worldwide guest conducting and composing for orchestras and creative ensembles. Since his move to Santa Fe in 2001, Jonas has worked primarily as a composer and video artist, receiving numerous commissions and awards and has written numerous scores for motion pictures, new operas (as Artist in Residence at the Santa Fe Opera), intermedia installations and live soundtracks to silent films. Currently, Jonas leads a number of regular New Mexico-based ensembles including Rrake and, along with partner, Molly Sturges, BING (www.worldofbing.com). Jonas is faculty at the College of Santa Fe's Contemporary Music Program and co-founder of Littleglobe, a Santa Fe-based performance non-profit that creates intermedia community-dialog projects. More info: www.littleglobe.org, www.chrisjonas.com, www.worldofbing.com 8pm $10 Thursday February 7th herb robertson Robertson's jazz and new music improvisation combines a thorough command of traditional and extended techniques with a prodigious imagination yielding an utterly original voice. Along with Paul Smoker and Kenny Wheeler, Robertson is among the most innovative improvising trumpeters of the last 25 years. Born and raised in New Jersey, he attended the Berklee School of Music before playing in various jazz and rock bands, eventually joining both saxophonist Tim Berne's band and bassist Mark Helias' groups in early 1980's New York. In 1985, Robertson recorded as a leader for the first time. Transparency featured Berne, guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Lindsey Horner, and drummer Joey Baron and was followed by four more recordings for the important JMT label. He recently began his own record label, Ruby Flower Records, with Ana Isabel Ordonez. As a leader and sideman, Robertson has performed with Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis, Bobby Previte, David Sanborn, Barry Guy, Agusti Fernandez, Evan Parker, Bill Frisell, and Paul Motian among many. He tours Europe several times yearly, is featured regularly on many of their major festivals and media broadcasts, and also composes music for dance and theater. For more information, see http://www.herbrobertson.com/ matt bauder 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, Rob Masurek, Jeff Parker, Taylor Ho Bynum and Ken Vandermark. He appears on recordings with Jason Ajemian (Locust Music), Warn Defever (Perforate My Heart), 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 on 482 Music and I & Ear Records have received wide critical acclaim. sara schoenbeck is a bassoonist who dedicates herself to expanding the sound and role of the bassoon in the worlds of contemporary notated and improvised music. The Wire places her in the "tiny club of bassoon pioneers" at work in contemporary music today and the New York Times has called her "riveting, mixing textural experiments with a big, confident sound." From being a member of creative music ensembles, like Wayne Horvitz's Gravitas Quartet, Anthony Braxton's 12+1tet and Vinny Golia's Large Ensemble to backing Mos Def in Dakah hip hop orchestra and backing Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder in the Mancini Orchestra, Sara continues to defy categorization as an artist. She has also also shared the stage in improvised music performances with Yusef Lateef, Fred Frith, John Butcher, Mark Dresser, Pauline Oliveros, Wadada Leo Smith and Nels Cline among many others. A recent transplant from Los Angeles, she spent a portion of her time there recording and also as adjunct faculty at California Institute of the Arts. Feature films she has worked on include the Matrix Trilogy, Spanglish and Dahmer. She performs regularly at jazz festivals and venues throughout North America and Europe, notably the Du Maurier Jazz Festival in Vancouver, B.C., the Improvised Music Fest in Antwerp, Belgium and the Berlin Jazz Festival. Sara has received grants from Meet the Composer and the Durfee foundation for outreach work and composition. 8pm $10 Friday February 8 nmperign: bhob rainey - soprano saxophone, greg kelley – trumpet + daniel carter + Marianne Giosa nmperign has been hailed the world over as the leading purveyors of whatever that strange thing they do is. Their palette of sounds makes laptops seem as flexible as doorbells, and their precise but wildly unpredictable improvisations would have you at the edge of your seat if you weren't so afraid of the noise you would make getting there. Fierce and fragile, lush and fractured, nmperign is tough to pin down and all the better for it. "(nmperign's) attention to the architecture of improvisation, control over a huge palette of sonic material, and ability to explore the extremes of music-making with subtley and wit mark them as two of the most original thinkers in free improvisation today." Ed Hazel, Boston Phoenix "nmperign's music seems to unwind as two parallel soundtracks being put in line by a kind of Leibnizian god. The duo has a disturbing (turmoil) serenity; they seem to have been set up in this new monadology for an eternity. nmperign has collaborated with Le Quan Ninh, Gunter Mueller, Jason Lescalleet, Jerome Noetinger, Lionel Marchetti, Gino Robair, Vic Rawlings, Mike Bullock, and many others. Daniel Carter Over the past three decades-plus, Daniel Carter has performed with: Sun Ra, Billy Bang, Roger Baird, William Parker, Roy Campbell, Sabir Mateen, Simone Forti, Joan Miller, Thurston Moore, Nayo Takasaki, Earl Freeman, Dewey Johnson, Nami Yamamoto, Matthew Shipp, Wilber Morris, Denis Charles, MMW (Medeski, Martin, & Wood), Vernon Reid, Raphé Malik, Sam Rivers, Sunny Murray, Hamiet Bluiett, Cecil Taylor, David S. Ware, Karl Berger, Don Pate, Gunter Hampel, Alan Silva, Susie Ibarra, D.J. Logic, Margaret Beals, Douglas Elliot, Butch Morris, TEST, OTHER DIMENSIONS IN MUSIC, ONE WORLD ENSEMBLE, SATURNALIA STRING TRIO, LEVITATION UNIT, WET PAINT, THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS, and many many many many others (meaning more every week or day practically). MARIANNE GIOSA (sound and movement artist) Native born New Yorker, is trained in musical, kinesthetic, visual and healing arts. She received a BA in Fine Arts from Queens College in 1984 and picked up the trumpet which was her childhood instrument in 1995. Studied music in various New York City schools including Mannes College, School of Jazz, and the classical division of Manhattan School of Music. She has performed musically in many different settings from orchestra to free jazz. In the late 90's, she worked in City Center Orchesta and The Doctors Orchestra. She also worked with Hot Lavendar Big Band. She met the legendary Daniel Carter in 1999 and became immersed in the improvised world of music. Trained in dance in early childhood, she also returned to the dance world in 1987 where she become immersed in West African Dance and music. Traveled to West Africa both in 1993 and 1999 and studied with core members of Les Ballets Africains (Guinea) and Sing Sing Rythm (Senegal). She currently works as a guest teacher with Toukounou under the direction of Sidiki Conde. She joined Cilla Vee Movement Project in 2005 and began to explore movement and breath in improvised setting. Coupled by her dedication to healing and yogic practices she has become immersed in somatic awareness, movement and breath. Presently working with Brandish , muscians Daniel Carter and Todd Nicholson with sculptor Alain Kirili, "it is a meeting point where dance music and a visual space come together". She is also performing with other improvisational groups including Open Music Ensemble, MMP, and Cilla Vee Movement Project.
8pm $10 Saturday February 9th marty ehrlich four alto(s) w/ Michael Attias, Marty Ehrlich, Andy Laster, and Ned Rothenberg Call it a conceit. One times Four into One. An orchestra of its own. 8pm $10 A WEEK OF PERCUSSION Wednesday February 13th Billy Martin is best know for his band Medeski Martin and Wood, and performing/recording with John Zorn, John Scofield, Cibo Mato, Iggy Pop and Cyro Baptista. Iktus Percussion Quartet is a funky-frenetic Percussion/ New Music group on a mission to change the way music is perceived by the lay listener. Influenced by a broad range of world music and instrumentation, and committed to playing fresh new compositions from up and coming artists, Iktus is on the cutting edge of the percussion genre. In addition to performance, we are also available for educational programs ranging from school age workshops to master classes. Let us inspire you! Projects in the works: Concert of "New Works" with Random Access Music(RAM), "Dance & Beat" Collaboration with Modern Dance. Endorsed by: Mike Balter Mallets www.mikebalter.com, & Grover Pro Percussion www.groverpro.com 8pm $10 Thursday February 14th This evening Mesinai will premier several exciting new works for percussion and electronics featuring the versatile drummer Ches Smith among others TBA. RAZ MESINAI Composer and multi instrumentalist Raz Mesinai was born in Jerusalem in 1973. His first two decades were spent in frequent transit between Jerusalem and New York City, where he became immersed in both the worlds of traditional Middle Eastern music, and the dub and hip-hop scenes of the eighties and earlynineties in New York City. Mesinai's electronic and electro-acoustic music exists at the crossroads of composition, sound design and modern studio production. Raz was a featured artist in the "Next, Next Wave" festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and opened for Nubian master musician Hamza El Din at Lincoln Center, a personal highlight. Raz has received commissions from the Lincoln Center Festival in both 2000 and 2001, and In 2004, following his developing interest in visual narrative and storytelling in music, Mesinai was a Fellow at the Sundance Composer's Lab. This year Mesinai was commissioned to compose works for Ethel, Maya Beiser, VIA, and The Kronos Quartet. "Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick" drum & percussion pieces by Amir Ziv & Steve Honoshowsky with special guest, Billy Martin AMIR ZIV "The astounding drum work of Amir Ziv may convince even the most ruff-neck kids that they're in the hands of a master." URB - Chris Muniz Since arriving in the US in 1990 from his native country of Israel, Amir Ziv has emerged as one of the country's most forward-thinking & visionary drummers, setting deep marks in both the Nu-Jazz as well as the "live" electronica scenes. His work with his band Droid featuring the work of Miles’ musical director/producer/synthesist – Adam Holzman, bassists Tim LeFebvre and Yossi Fine and trumpeter Jordan McLean, produced some of NYC’s most on-the-edge “live” electronica. Amir’s other band that he leads is KOTKOT, featuring percussionist to the stars Cyro Baptista, NYC’s “down-town” guitar-God Marc Ribot and bassist Shahzad Ismaily. Notable sideman credits such as Trey Anastasio, Cibo Matto, Beat The Donkey and Graham Haynes and his educator status has brought recent demand for his musical skills the world over. STEVE HONOSHOWSKY Steve Honoshowsky has been a percussionist for almost fifteen years and has professionally performed on drums and percussion for almost nine years. Steve teaches private instruction and is a facilitator of the TRAP (The Rhythmic Arts Project) program. He has performed for audiences all over the country in a variety of different musical groups ranging from jazz, funk and metal to many solo drum performances as well. One of the many groups he has performed in called No Use For Humans has had very positive reviews from many international music publications such as Progression, READ, and High Times magazines among many others. No Use For Humans have performed throughout the tri-state area and have opened for Skeleton Key, Captured By Robots, and The Legendary Pink Dots. In addition, 8pm $10 Friday February 15th Susie Ibarra solo percussion Susie Ibarra, percussionist and composer lives in New York City. She received a music diploma from Mannes College of Music and B.A. from Goddard College. Susie Ibarra studied Kulintang with Danongan Kalanduyan and drum set with Buster Smith, Vernel Fournier and Milford Graves. As a percussionist, she has performed southeast Asian gong music, jazz, avant-garde, improvised and solo concert works. She has performed with many great artists such as John Zorn, Dave Douglas Pauline Oliveros, Derek Bailey, Ikue Mori, Sylvie Courvoisier, William Parker, Dr. L Subramaniam, Kavita Krishnamurti, John Lindberg, Wadada Leo Smith, Mark Dresser, Thurston Moore, Savath and Savalas, Prefuse 73, Yo La Tengo, among others. Susie Ibarra has taught across the U.S and attended. Artist Residencies including: The Walker Art Center, Mills College, Bard College, Swarthmore College, Fundacio Joan Miro, University of Michigan, Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, The New School. She was nominated "Best Drummer" in the Village Voice, Downbeat, Jazziz, The Wire. Susie Ibarra is a Yamaha, Paiste & Vic Firth Artist. She currently performs solo works and with Susie Ibarra Trio with Jennifer Choi & Craig Taborn; Mephista, collective electro-acoustic trio with Sylvie Couvoisier & Ikue Mori; Shapechanger with poet Yusef Komunyakaa; Mark Dresser & Susie Ibarra Duo; Mundo Ninos children’s music; and Filipino trance music, with Roberto Rodriguez, Electric Kulintang.
Tal (tal) adj. having to do with rhythmic cycles in Indian music Described by the New York Times as an ensemble Based in New York City, Talujon performs regularly at For the Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts series, Talujon's new CD, "...the speed of the passing Percussionist Michael Lipsey has performed at Michael is a full-time professor at the Aaron Copland ______________________ David Cossin is a specialist in new and experimental David Cossin has recorded and performed David has performed as a soloist with orchestras Through composition, inventing new instruments, and 8pm $10 Saturday Fevruary 16th tonight Baptista and Martin will perform their magic in a mix of duets and music to films Since arriving in the U.S. in 1980 from his native country Brazil, Cyro Baptista has emerged as one of the premier percussionists in the country. Coinciding with the rise in the public’s interest of world music, Cyro has managed to record and tour with some of music’s most popular names. His mastery of Brazilian percussion and the many instruments he creates himself, have catapulted him into world renown. With his own project, the percussion and dance ensemble known as 'Beat the Donkey' Cyro gives free reign to his imagination, mixing his tremendous musical skills, his natural humor and theatrical ways with instruments from Brazil, Middle East, Indonesia, Africa and US. Cyro's credits read like a "Who’s Who" of modern music. He toured extensively with Yo-Yo Ma's Brazil Project, Trey Anastasio's Band (of Phish), John Zorn's Electric Masada, Herbie Hancock's Grammy award winning "Gershwin’s World" , Sting and Paul Simon's "Rhythm of the Saints". 8pm $10 SUNDAY FEBRUARY 17 Brave New World Reperatory Theatre 5th annual play reading salon series. Returns to Issue Project Room with BRUNCH 12:30; READING 1:00. Director’s note:
A WEEK OF STRINGS Wednesday February 20th Extend a long metal wire... Drive the wire with a sine wave oscillator...(to produce) nodal shifts, echo trains, noisy overdrivings,rhythmic figures at low frequencies, phase-related time lags, simple and complex harmonic structures, larger self-generative cyclic patterns, stops and starts, and other audible and visible phenomena. (from the score, 1977) Alvin Lucier was born in 1931 in Nashua, New Hampshire. He was educated in Nashua public and parochial schools, the Portsmouth Abbey School, Yale, and Brandeis and spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship. While at Yale he studied music theory with Howard Boatwright and composition with Richard Donavan, David Kraehenbuehl and Quincy Porter; at Brandeis with Arthur Berger and Harold Shapiro. During summers of 1958-60 he studied orchestration with Aaron Copeland and composition with Lukas Foss at Tanglewood. From 1962 to 1970 he taught at Brandeis, where he conducted the Brandeis University Chamber Chorus, which devoted much of its time to the performance of new music. In 1966 he co-founded, with Robert Ashley, David Behrman and Gordon Mumma, The Sonic Arts Union, which, until 1979, gave numerous concerts in the United States and Europe. Since 1970 he has taught at Wesleyan University where he is John Spencer Camp Professor of Music. Lucier’s early electronic music includes the use of brain waves in live performance (Music for Solo Performer, 1965); the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media (The Queen of the South, 1972), and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes (Vespers, 1969, and I am sitting in a room, 1970). His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which rhythms and spatial phenomena are created by means of close tuning. His most recent instrumental works include Coda Variations for 6-valve solo tuba; Twonings for cello and piano; Canon, commissioned by the Bang on a Can All Stars, and Music with Missing Parts, a re-orchestration of Mozart’s Requiem, premiered at the Mozarteum, Salzburg in December 2007. Alvin Lucier has collaborated with John Ashbery and Robert Wilson and is currently working with Italian artist Maurizio Mochetti on an exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, in October 2008. His recent sound installation, 6 Resonant Points Along a Curved Wall, accompanied Sol LeWitt’s enormous sculpture, Curved Wall, in Graz, Austria, and in the Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University in January 2005. Mr. Lucier has participated in numerous festivals and residencies including the DAAD Kunster Program in Berlin, New Music Days, Ostrava, Czech Republic; June in Buffalo, and the Sparks Festival at the University on Minnesota. In April 1997, Lucier presented a concert of his works on the Making Music Series at Carnegie Hall. In March 2008 he will present a concert of his works on the musicadhoy Festival in Madrid. Lucier regularly contributes articles to books and periodicals. Reflections/Reflexionen, a bi-lingual edition of Lucier’s scores, interviews and writings, is available from MusikTexte, Köln. In addition, several of his works are available on Antiopic (Sigma Editions), Cramps (Italy), Disques Montaigne, Source, Mainstream, Mode, New World, CBS Odyssey, Lovely Music, Nonesuch and Wergo. In 2006, Alvin Lucier was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States and in December 2007 received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Plymouth, England, during the Dartington College of the Arts Awards. --- Composer and experimenter Ben Manley explores the natural variability of wind, amplified small vibrations, and resonant objects to generate dynamic musical environments. Manley has worked extensively in music and audio in New York City and has presented solo performances and installations of light and sound across the country and overseas. Manley has collaborated with Sean G. Meehan, Connie Crothers, Ursula Scherrer, Jim Staley, Dan Evans Farkas, Jens Brand, Linda Austin, the Manley Family Trio, and has appeared with Composers Inside Electronics at the Lincoln Center and with Essential Music and the Downtown Ensemble. He has installed realizations of works by Alvin Lucier, including The Queen of the South and Music on a Long Thin Wire, at Studio Five Beekman, Greenwich House Music School, Subtropics 18 in Miami, and MFA, Boston. As a curator, Manley has presented festivals of experimental music at the Jack Tilton Gallery and elsewhere including House Mix: 19 Pianos, 19 Improvisers & 19 Microphones (a collective performance/recording/playback event), Electro-Whammy (w/ Ron Kuivila, Ben Manley, Matt Rogalsky), and say YES! to experimental music (w/ Jens Brand, Dan Evans Farkas, Ben Manley, Phill Niblock). As an audio engineer for concert events, Manley has recorded over 1,000 performances in more than 200 NYC venues and serves as technical consultant to arts organizations, recording studios, architects, and visual/media artists. 8pm $10 Thursday February 21st Composer/cellist Ha-Yang Kim explores naturally occurring acoustical phenomena in a set of meditative pieces for solo amplified cello with electronics. Gorgeous difference tones, beating patterns, sound transformations through extended string techniques and much more are illuminated in pieces by Kim, Lucier, and Tenney. Ha-Yang Kim- Lens Born in Seoul, Korea, Ha-Yang Kim made her professional solo debut at age 16 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. A cellist, composer, and improvisor, she has developed a unique language of extended string techniques and has created her own music based on this work. Her musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, jazz and improvised music, to non-western musical sources. She is the founder of Odd Appetite, a cello-percussion duo which performs and commissions new contemporary works alongside original works and improvisations. In seeking new musical experiences, Ha-Yang has performed traditional and new Balinese music, studied Karnatic music concepts, and has worked with many diverse musicians and bands such as Evan Ziporyn, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Christian Wolff, Lee Hyla, The National, Louis Andriessen, Alvin Lucier, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Lukas Ligeti, Larry Polansky, and Stefan Poetzsch, in addition to collaborations in dance, theatre, film, and multi-media. Ama, a CD of her own compositions is released on Tzadik. She has also recorded for New World, Cold Blue, Beggars Banquet, New Albion, Karnatic Lab and Bridge Records. She has toured the US, Europe, Russia, Cuba, Bali , Turkey, and has appeared as a soloist at Carnegie Hall. Kim is also a frequent artist- in- residence at universities. Currently, she is composing a new program of works to be presented at Roulette later this Spring. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Brooklyn-based composer/performer Dan Joseph presents a new work-in-progress for solo hammer dulcimer and electronics that offers a new perspective on this ancient and largely unknown instrument. Employing state-of the-art digital processing and unconventional playing techniques, Joseph creates slowly unfolding harmonically rich sound fields that engage the heart and mind. Dan Joseph is a free-lance composer based in New York City. He began his career as a drummer in the vibrant punk scene of his native Washington, DC. During the late 1980s, he was active in the experimental tape music underground, producing ambient-industrial works for independent labels in the U.S. and abroad. He spent the ‘90s in California where he studied at CalArts and Mills College. His principal teachers include Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran and Terry Riley. As an artist who embraces the musical multiplicity of our time, Dan works simultaneously in a variety of media and contexts, including instrumental chamber music, free improvisation, and various forms of electronica and sound art. Since the late 1990s, the hammer dulcimer has been the primary vehicle for his music. As a performer he is active with his own chamber ensemble, The Dan Joseph Ensemble, as well as in various improvisational collaborations and as an occasional soloist. 8pm $10 Friday February 22nd + todd reynolds, Satoshi Takeishi, Luke Dubois Alex Waterman is a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. Alex has worked with musicians such as Richard Barrett, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Ned Rothenberg, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, and Michael Finnissy. Alex performs with Either/Or Ensemble in New York, and has performed as guest musician with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d'Action-Antwerp, Q-O2-Brussels, and Black Jackets Company-Brussels. As a curator he has organized events at Les Bains:Connective in Brussels, OT301 in Amsterdam, Miguel Abreu Gallery and The Kitchen. His project with the Bach Cello Suites has toured in Switzerland, Italy, Holland, and the Opera of Monaco. In 2007 Alex curated two exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agap_ (June 2-July 28th, 2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery; and the other on graphic notation, Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music (September 7-October 20, 2007) at The Kitchen in Chelsea. Alex is presently working on his PhD in musicology at NYU as well as writing a book about the composer Robert Ashley with the designer and writer Will Holder. Alex's writings have been featured in FoArm Magazine, Dot Dot Dot, and Artforum. ( www.alexwaterman.com ) 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. In addition to his work as a guitarist, Nagai is also involved in creating multi-media, interactive performance and installation and has collaborated with artists from various fields. These projects include a long-standing collaborative relationship with choreographer Boaz Barkan documented by filmmaker Miana Grafals in the short film "A Moving Portrait" that features the movement and sound of Barkan and Nagai. "A Moving Portrait" was presented at Dance Theatre Workshop in NYC as part of the 2005 Dance on Camera Festival. More recently, Nagai worked with the photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto on the silent film "The Water Magician" (1933, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi) composing film score and performed at Japan Society, NYC and Hershhorn Museum at Smithsonian Institute. In 2005 and 2006, Nagai performed in "Flight of Mind " with choreographer Jennifer Monson. He continues his collaboration with Monson in 2007 through a multi-season project set in the Highland Park Reservoir in NYC. Todd Reynolds is a long-time member of the Steve Reich Ensemble and Bang on a Can, a member of The Silk Road Project and a founding member of the string quartet known as ETHEL. A veteran of both New York and international performing arts scenes, his rock club and concert hall performances are a hybrid of acoustica and electronica, employing technology as an essential and driving element in a compositional style rooted in improvisation. The past two years since his departure from the string quartet world have seen a rise in educational focus, with six week-long residencies nationally, and two tours opening for and playing with indie-sensations, The Books. With a CD due on the Innova label later this year, he is sequestered in his studio when he's not on tour teaching or playing. Season highlights include tours of The Zippo Songs and Meredith Monk's Songs of Ascension, week-long performance/teaching residencies in Colorado and Indiana, Meet The Composer's Soloist Champions project, and performances as soloist with The Albany Symphony and Theo Bleckmann. Satoshi Takeishi, drummer, percussionist, and arranger is a native of Mito Japan. He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. While at Berklee he developed an interest in the music of South America and went to live in Colombia following the invitation of a friend. He spent four years there and forged many musical and personal relationships. One of the projects he worked on while in Colombia was "Macumbia" with composer/arranger Francisco Zumaque in which traditional, jazz and classical music were combined. With this group he performed with the Bogota symphony orchestra to do a series of concerts honoring the music of the most popular composer in Colombia, Lucho Bermudes. In 1986 he returned to the U.S. in Miami where he began work as an arranger. In 1987 he produced "Morning Ride" for jazz flutist Nestor Torres on Polygram Records. His interest expanded to the rhythms and melodies of the middle east where he studied and performed with Armenian-American oud master Joe Zeytoonian. Since moving to New York in 1991 he has performed and recorded with many musicians such as Ray Barretto, Carlos "Patato" Valdes, Eliane Elias, Marc Johnson, Eddie Gomez, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Anthony Braxton, Mark Murphy, Herbie Mann, Paul Winter Consort, Rabih Abu Khalil, Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band, Erik Friedlander and Pablo Ziegler to name a few. He continues to explore multi-cultural, electronics and improvisational music with local musicians and composers in New York. R. Luke DuBois is a composer, performer, video artist, and programmer living in New York City. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University and teaches interactive sound and video performance at Columbia's Computer Music Center and at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. He has collaborated on interactive performance, installation, and music production work with many artists and organizations including Toni Dove, Matthew Ritchie, Todd Reynolds, Michael Joaquin Grey, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gordon, Bang on a Can, Engine27, Harvestworks, and LEMUR, and is the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season. He is a co-author of Jitter, a software suite developed by Cycling'74 for real-time manipulation of matrix data. His music (with or without his band, the Freight Elevator Quartet), is available on Caipirinha/Sire, Cycling'74, and Cantaloupe music, and his artwork is represented by bitforms gallery in New York City.
8pm $10 Saturday February 23rd dave soldier w/rebecca cherry and winsome brown + Elliott Sharp's All-String SyndaKit Rebecca Cherry performs excerpts from "The Compleat Victrola Sessions" scored to film collage in collaboration with composer Dave Soldier. Brilliant young violinist Rebecca Cherry, formerly principal violin in the London Symphony, will present selections from The Complete Victrola Sessions, a collaboration with composer Dave Soldier, with pianist Jerome Tan - an evocation of the allure and danger of addiction in the 1920's, using black and white silent film with nostalgic, surreal virtuoso music. Dave Soldier lives two lives: as neuroscientist and as composer, violinist guitarist, and producer. He founded the the first orchestra for animals, the Thai Elephant Orchestra of Lampang, in 2000, His collaborative music with 2-10 year old children in Brooklyn (the Tangerine Awkestra) and East Harlem (Da Hiphop Raskalz) can be heard on releases from Mulatta Records, of which he is founder. He founded the seminal punk chamber group, the Soldier String Quartet, in 1985, pioneering the use of amplified instruments and a repertoire that erased boundaries between classical and popular music and now leads the Andalusian band the Spinozas, and the Delta punk group, the Kropotkins. Mr. Soldier's compositions include The People's Choice Music, based upon poll results of musical likes and dislikes of the American population, in collaboration with artists Komar & Melamid; collaborations with Kurt Vonnegut; and repertoire performed on specially designed instruments by songbirds and pygmy chimpanzees. Soldier has recorded, composed, and arranged for television and film (Sesame Street, I Shot Andy Warhol), for pop and jazz acts including John Cale, David Byrne, Guided by Voices, Bo Diddley, and for orchestra and opera. As Dave Sulzer (his real name) he is professor in the Neurology and Psychiatry departments at Columbia University. Head of a neuroscience laboratory, he is credited with a discoveries in brain disease and synaptic function underlying learning, among them the molecular mechanism of action of amphetamine.
Elliott Sharp's All-String SyndaKit performers include: Eszter Balint SyndaKit was premiered in 1998 for Elliott Sharp's Orchestra Carbon and has since been performed by the German group Zeitkratzer, the Beijing New Music Ensemble and ensembles in Vienna, Palermo, Tubingen, Bratislava, Los Angeles, plus many more. Constructed of 144 composed cores and a set of simple instructions for their manifestation and manipulation by the players, SyndaKit creates an ever-shifting rhythmic matrix, a pulse bristling with vibrating detail based on the activities of flocking birds, African drum choirs, cellular automata, hunting packs, and recombinant amino acids. The sum effect is that of a lifeform that lives to loop and groove, always mutating. There have been versions of SyndaKit for all guitars, all brass and all percussion but this perfromance presents for the first time SyndaKit for an ensemble of twelve strings: violins, violas, cellos, bass. Elliott Sharp - Composer/multi-insrumentalist/sound artist Elliott Sharp leads Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane. His compositions have been performed by the Symphony of the Hessischer Rundfunk, The Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Rezonanz, Continuum, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Flux Quartet, Sirius Stirng Quartet, and Zeitkratzer and collaborators have included qawaali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, blues legend Hubert Sumlin; playwright Dael Orlandersmith, cello innovator Frances-Marie Uitti, sci-fi writers Pat Cadigan and Lucius Shepard; jazz greats Sonny Sharrock, Jack deJohnette, and Oliver Lake; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians of Jahjoukah. His composition "Quarks Swim Free" was premiered at the Venice Biennale in September 2003 and his chamber opera EmPyre was premiered at the 2006 Biennale. He has recently completed the scores to the feature-films "What Sebastian Dreamt"", "Commune" by Jonathan Berman, and "Spectropia" by Toni Dove. 8pm $10 A WEEK OF VOICE Tuesday February 26th ROBERT ASHLEY: 8pm, $20 Issue Project Room is honored to present Robert Ashley in a rare solo concert for voice. Program notes: "A LAST FUTILE STAB AT FUN is a "lecture to be sung" with accompanying sounds. The text was written in 1979 as a lecture for the Walker Art Center and has not been done since or otherwise. I have always been fond of it because the subject of the commission, post-modernism vs. Bio: Robert Ashley, a distinguished figure in American contemporary music, holds an international reputation for his work in new forms of opera and multi-disciplinary projects. His recorded works are acknowledged classics of language in a musical setting. He pioneered opera-for-television. The operatic works of Robert Ashley are distinctly original in style, and distinctly American in their subject matter and in their use of American language. Fanfare Magazine calls Ashley's Perfect Lives "nothing less than the first American opera...", and The Village Voice comments, "When the 21st Century glances back to see where the future of opera came from, Ashley, like Monteverdi before him, is going to look like a radical new beginning." A prolific composer and writer, Ashley's operas are "so vast in their vision that they are comparable only to Wagner's Ring cycle or Stockhausen's seven-evening Licht cycle. In form and content, in musical, vocal, literary and media technique, they are, however, comparable to nothing else." (The Los Angeles Times). Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1930 Robert Ashley was educated at the University of Michigan and the Manhattan School of Music. At the University of Michigan, he worked at the Speech Research Laboratories (psycho-acoustics and cultural speech patterns), and was employed as a Research Assistant in Acoustics at the Architectural Research Laboratory. During the 1960s, Ashley organized the ONCE Festival, the annual festival of contemporary performing arts in Ann Arbor which, from 1961 to 1969, presented most of the decade's pioneers of the performing arts. He directed the highly influential ONCE Group, a music-theater ensemble that toured the United States from 1964 to 1969. During these years Ashley developed and produced the first of his mixed-media operas, notably That Morning Thing and In Memoriam...Kit Carson, and he composed the sound tracks for films by George Manupelli. In 1969, Ashley was appointed Director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College (Oakland, California), where he organized the first public-access music and media facility. From 1966 to 1976 he toured throughout the United States and Europe with the Sonic Arts Union, the composers' collective that included David Behrman, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma. With the support of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, Ashley produced and directed, Music with Roots in the Aether: video portraits of composers and their music, a 14 hour television opera/documentary about the work and ideas of seven American composers, which premiered at the Festival d'Automne à Paris in 1976 and has since been shown worldwide in over 100 television broadcasts and closed-circuit installations. The Kitchen (New York) commissioned Perfect Lives in 1980, an opera for television in seven half-hour episodes. The opera was co- produced with Great Britain's arts network, Channel Four, in August 1983. First broadcast in Great Britain in April 1984, Perfect Lives has since been seen on television in Austria, Germany, Spain and the United States and has been shown at film and video festivals around the world. It is widely considered to be the pre-cursor of "music-television." Staged versions of the operas Perfect Lives, Atalanta (Acts of God), and the tetralogy, Now Eleanor's Idea, have toured throughout Europe, Asia and the United States. Ashley and his company have been presented at the Avignon Festival, the Festival d'Automne à Paris, Musica Strasbourg, the Almeida Festival (London), the Festival de Otono (Madrid), New Music America (New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Philadelphia), the Inventionen Festival and the Hebbel Theater (Berlin), by the Gaudeamus Foundation (The Netherlands), the USIS Interlink Festival (Japan), the Next Wave Festival (New York) and Site Santa Fe. Wednesday February 27th Eric Mingus was born in New York. He grew up through a maze of twists and turns, some musical, some just bizarre. There was the teenage gig as a lighting and stage director for a "Borscht Belt" resort hotel, an early stint as an amateur boxer, and of course, three months spent as house martini mixer in the boardroom of the Old Grandad whiskey company. All along, music was a staple. After studying voice and bass with various luminaries of the music world and a brief semester at Berklee college of music, Eric sought the education of the road, touring as a vocalist. The artists he worked with included Carla Bley and Karen Mantler. This was also the period where Eric made his first recordings. Karen Mantler And Her Cat Arnold (XTRAWATT) and Mingus Dynasty Next Generation (Columbia). Moving to London in 1994, Eric met trumpeter Jim Dvorak and they formed a poetry based duet which resulted in the recording of This Isn't Sex (SLAM Records UK). Eric worked in many major European venues, including The Jazz Cafe, London; Quasimodo, Berlin; and Momontra, Copenhagen. He also played at all of the major European jazz festivals. Additionally, Eric taught vocal improvisation classes and a Charles Mingus workshop at London's Community Music House. Upon returning to the United States in 1996 Eric was signed to the independent label Some Records, culminating in the release of the CD Um...Er..Uh... Eric toured successfully several times in support of this release highlighted by his billing at the Olympia in Paris. Known for featuring performers from history such as The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Eric has also gained notoriety for working with famed producer Hal Willner on such projects as The Poe Project, two benefits for the Poetry Project (The Music of Doc Pomus and the writing of the Marquis De Sade) and A Tribute to Harry Smith (in support of the Harry Smith archives) having performed in these concerts (including one at the Royal Festival Hall) Eric was able to collaborate with an eclectic group of musicians, Marianne Faithful, Beck, Todd Rundgren, Jarvis Cocker, Nick Cave, Beth Orton and Elvis Costello to name but a few. Eric Mingus has been featured in Vibe, Rolling Stone, Paper, and Bass Player magazines. The New York Daily News named Eric one of "50 New Yorkers To Watch in 2001". Currently Eric is working with musician Elliott Sharp, they can be heard together on many of Elliott Sharp's Terraplane recordings. Elliot produced Eric's second CD. Too Many Bullets, Not Enough Soul (released in Europe May 2002 by Some Records). Eric can often be heard playing with his quartet in New York City at such clubs as Joe's Pub, The Knitting Factory, Tonic and The Cutting Room.. Eric Mingus comes by innovation honestly. He is bold and unafraid to mince words. Echoing Marvin Gaye crooning about death and taxes, or Gil Scott"Heron looking for "Whitey on the Moon", Mingus is bleakly sweet, slyly political, pissed off and informed. Eric Mingus' music surely shows influences from many forms of music.. You will find blues.. hints of jazz.. A touch of electronics.. A dash of R&B And a bit of wailing rock.. He sings deep and soulful.. Sweet and innocent.. Harsh and devilish Speaks words written from his soul Honest an unafraid to show his wounds, but able to heal himself. Catherine Sikora is from Ireland, and spent some time in Leeds, England (at University) and in Berlin, Germany before moving to New York, where she embarked on a serious study of abstract/chromatic improvisation. Currently, in addition to her own projects, she is honored to be working with Eric Mingus, fulfilling a lifelong dream of working with a poet. She spends her time practicing, reading poetry and hitting things. Sikora believes that even when she is not playing the saxophone, she is always playing the saxophone, and also that she is never playing the saxophone. It's very simple, really. Michael Evans has been actively performing, recording and composing for many years. As well as being an accomplished drummer and percussionist, he works with unusual sound sources including homemade instruments, found objects and items not normally used musically._A self proclaimed lover of many different styles of music, his latest obsession is to research the history of one- man bands, and eventually create one himself. With this as his inspiration, he has spent a lot of time developing his virtuosity as a solo percussionist. Sarah Ibrahim is a sound designer/composer and vocalist based in Los Angeles. Using her powerful soprano voice, she creates structured improvisations layered with amplified overtones and digital noise. She has performed at Issue Project Room and the Kitchen in New York and at Dangerous Curve in Downtown LA. Her sound and video work has also appeared in plays in New York and at CalArts, where she is currently working towards an MFA in Sound Design and Integrated Media. 8pm $10 Thursday February 28 dean bowman - solo Without a doubt an important contributor to the NYC downtown music scene in jazz, rock, and avant-garde, Dean Bowman has recorded with Don Byron, Lester Bowie, Dewey Redman, and Jane Bunnett among many others. For tonight's performance, Dean sings solo unaccompanied (a cappella) traditional folk songs of the Black Americas. “... Go see him. If he doesn’t fill you with joy and make you want to cry at the same time, then your soul must be a sad place...” Lisa Karrer will perform an eclectic set for solo voice, piano, electronics and video, featuring guest artists Stephanie Griffin/viola and David Simons/percussion, jawharp. In addition to English (and pseudo-Slavic), Lisa will sing in Batak Indonesian and Pre-Columbian languages. Her compositions include texts by Olive Schreiner, Mark Leyner, Ariel Dorfman and Sitor Situmorang. Lisa Karrer is a composer, vocalist, performance and video artist, and collaborates with numerous musicians, artists and ensembles. She sings in a variety of languages and is an accomplished stilt dancer. Lisa has produced CDs for ensembles such as Music For Homemade Instruments and Gamelan Son of Lion, and with co-composer David Simons recorded and released their chamber opera “The Birth of George” on Harvestworks’ TELLUS label. Over the years she has received numerous grants to support her multi-arts projects in the U.S. and abroad. In '03 Lisa presented her wayang opera "Woman’s Song: The Story of Roro Mendut" at the Kitchen in co-production with World Music Institute; and in ‘07 she premiered her solo project “Schismism: Fractured America” at The Flea Theater’s Music With A View series. Lisa continues to develop multi-arts projects such as “Mary’s SITE”, a video with accompanying composition for live chamber ensemble, based on the animated sculpture of visual artist Mary Ziegler. She is currently mastering several of her compositions for Gamelan Son of Lion’s upcoming CD on Innova Records. http://www.simons-karrer.com “The one-woman wonder Lisa Karrer creates a vividly staged multi-media re-telling of a 17th century Javanese folktale.” The New Yorker “Lisa Karrer is a living example of how eastern and western tradition and experimental spirit in music creates innovative qualities.” Evi Arujaru, Postimees, Estonia “A fluid vocalist...I especially admired Lisa Karrer's emotively quicksilver vocal techniques.” Kyle Gann, Village Voice 8pm $10
Saturday March 1st sem ensemble About SEM Founded in 1970 by Petr Kotik, S.E.M. Ensemble is dedicated to the Since 1999 S.E.M. has been collaborating with the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the 5 major orchestras of the Czech Republic.Together they have created a repertoire of works for 3 orchestras,which includes Gruppen by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Nest by Martin Smolka, Modules I,II,III by Earle Brown, and Diamonds by Alvin Lucier. These pieces were performed at the Prague Spring Festival, the Warsaw Autumn Festival and the Ostrava Days 2001 Festival, featuring the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra, and conductors Petr Kotik, Christian Arming, and Zsolt Nagy. Over the past ten years, the repertoire of SEM has included 8pm $10 Thursday March 6th an evening of Cage John McDonough and Kurt Gottschalk present a night of John Cage’s music, in preparation for their upcoming CD of Cage’s compositions for radio, to be released in 2009 on Mode Recordings. Indeterminacy / Variations I Cartridge Music Radio Music Landscape Under Construction Kurt Gottschalk writes about music and plays music on stringed instruments and, occasionally, the radio. His music journalism is regualry published in All About Jazz, Signal to Noise, Time Out and Wire, as well as publications in Canada, France, Portugal and Russia. He plays guitar, banjo, bouzouki and other stringed instruments, and his duo Ecstasy Mule has released two CDs on the Batterrie label. A longtime fascination with the music of John Cage led him to organize Twiceband as a way to work through and explore the scores. Kristin Carney plays for the Gotham Girls Roller Derby's Queens of Robert Hardin is a member of the improvising group caledonia & laughing bag, as well as being a member of an industrial band called Church of the Toad of Light. He records solo albums as Laughing Bag and DJs as Grandmaster Pwca. In his spare time, he makes art and is a graphic designer. New Jersey guitarist Barry Chabala, influenced as much by Jimmy Page and Pat Metheny as he is by Derek Bailey, plays music that mixes equally melodic invention with atonal free play. Past partners range widely from electronic artist John Hajeski to Hail/Snail & and lots of stops in between. Currently collaborators include pianist Dan DeChellis, contrabassist Reuben Radding, multi-wind free jazzer Matt Lavelle as well as being a founding member of The Philadelphia Company. Scott Lydon took piano lessons when he was younger, which was the groundwork for an interest in ways to avoid traditional music. He is comfortable with pieces that involve turning knobs and moving levers and has the utmost respect for the musicians who spent years studying theory to get to this performance, even though he will somehow go home with the same amount they will. When possible, he prefers to write. John McDonough is a composer/improviser/trumpeter based in NYC. He was born and raised in Pelham, NY. He received his B.S. in Jazz & Commercial Music in 1990 from Hofstra University, where he studied composition with Herb Deutsch and jazz arranging with Dave Lalama. He studied briefly at Manhattan School of Music with David Berger and Ludmila Ulehla. Since running out of money for higher education, he has tried his hand at a number of projects. His main focus is Brilliant Coroners, a band that plays Thelonious Monk songs in a wide variety of styles, including punk, funk, heavy metal and techno. Their eponymously titled debut album appeared on Yeah Man records in 2001. He has a number of improvisational outfits, including McDonough Warren & Sparke (trumpet/guitar/drums), phYsYcacKle (trumpet/cello/keyboards) and Dr. Benstock (turntable duo). He has played with Joe Gallant’s Illuminati and Drew Gardner’s Flash Orchestra. He was also a regular at the Punk Rock/Heavy-Metal karaoke at Arlene Grocery, where he usually sang Bad Brains songs. Disillusioned Boston University acting major turned jaded rock star wanna be turned...whatever is next, Kristen Persinos is happy to conspire with fellow Springfield High School graduate Kurt Gottschalk. Go Solons. Tubist/Composer/Improvisor Jay Rozen has played in many diverse groups. From 1977-1980 he was the principal tubist with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. During his 'Texas years' (1984-1999), he performed regularly with the Creative Opportunity Orchestra (jazz ensemble), the Austin Klezmorim, and the European Tuba Quartet. Rozen has played at such eclectic venues as the Bang-On-A-Can Marathon Concert in NY and the Zappanalle Festival in Germany where it was his pleasure to perform with ex-Zappa band members Ike Willis and Jimmy Carl Black, as well as Frank's sister Candy . A long-time champion of new music, Rozen has had works written for him by many composers including Virgil Thomson and David Lang. He is a published composer and arranger and has appeared on over 25 CDs, including his own Killer Tuba Songs, , David Lang's Are You Experienced? (on which he plays the electric tuba) and Anthony Braxton's mega- 9 CD/1 DVD set 9 Compositions (Firehouse 12 Records). Russell Scholl has recorded with 99 Hooker's pop music project, Generica along with producing pieces and touring with rev.99 (Olympia Experimental Music, Portland, San Francisco), and is a member of the bluegrass band The Brooklyn Playboys. He also curates and screens film/video programs on a wide variety of subjects (the history of animation; early jazz shorts; burlesque; educational and propaganda films; etc.) at venues in and around New York City. Paul Spencer has played music in a variety of styles for 25 years, from Broadway standards to rock 'n roll. Usually he is behind the turntables but can also be found playing alto saxophone, guitar, vocals and occasionally theremin. He has played many stages around New York including Tonic Underground, the Pourhouse, Downtown Beirut II, Roulette and the indestructible ABCnoRio, with groups ranging from the infamous Death in a Box to current favorites Floyd and Lula and Dr. Benstock. Paul is currently helping make a number of short film subjects and is a notary public for New York State. Gregory John Wildes is a graduate of Wesleyan University where he studied with composers Ron Kuivila and Alvin Lucier. He was the founding member of electro-acoustic improv groups the Ski-A-Delics and Gas Tank Orchestra. Mr. Wildes is currently Director of Exhibits at the Staten Island Children’s Museum. Peter Zummo has been composing for ensemble since 1967, and for trombone since 1971, in pursuit of the evolving boundary of music-making and brass culture. From 1975 to the present, he has performed and recorded for composers, ensembles, bands, film, theatre groups, and dance companies worldwide. As a professor of music at Ohio Wesleyan University, he teaches in the New York Arts Program, a program of the Great Lakes Colleges Association. Since 1978, he has been artistic director of The Loris Bend Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit presenter of music, dance, and media. Professional studies were with Carmine Caruso, Stuart Dempster, James Fulkerson, Dick Griffin, Makanda Ken McIntyre, Roswell Rudd, and Sam Rivers. 8pm $!0 Friday March 7th Ensemble One plays music utilizing both improvised and
Shelley Burgon lives in Brooklyn and plays harp and computer in the avant-chamber ensemble Ne(x)tworks and the avant-rock band Stars Like Fleas. Her duo with bassist Trevor Dunn recently released a full-length, improvised, live record for Skirl Records titled Baltimore. In September 2007 Stars Like Fleas will release their highly anticipated second album for Talitres titled The Ken Burns Effect. For the 2008-2009 season Shelley will join seven other stellar musicians in a collaboration with the legendary Merce Cunningham Dance Company as part of the Dia: Beacon Events series. Shelley has spent many years improvising in and around New York City and has had the pleasure to play and record with many legendary people associated with the vibrant New York downtown scene. Currently she is working on two records, one of original chamber music and one of new songs in which she will be playing a variety of instruments. 8pm $10 Saturday March 8th VERGE ensemble hails from Washington, DC where it is the new music ensemble in residence at the Corcoran Gallery of Art,specializing in the interaction between acoustic instruments and technology. Highlight of the program will feature such a pure force - a piece based on a Pablo Neruda poem by composer Steve Antosca. Special guests include acclaimed author Nick Antosca and cellist Collin Oldham, premiering his electronic instrument inventions, the Cellomobo and Radio Tape Knife.
Steve Antosca is Artistic Director and composer member of VERGE ensemble, new music ensemble in residence at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The ensemble has recently been described as putting “modern classical music in front of the public with more dedication and skill than any other group in Washington.” In 2007, Mr. Antosca was awarded a McKim commission from the Library of Congress and a Fromm commission from Harvard. As Artistic Director of VERGE, he was awarded an NEA grant to present a festival of new music in Washington. His work One becomes Two, premièred by violinist Lina Bahn at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC in March 2007, was described by the Washington Post as “the afternoon's most exciting composition.” One becomes Two received its European première in Paris at the Festival de musique Américaine in May 2007. Lina Bahn is violinist in the award-winning Corigliano Quartet, which served as lecturers at Indiana University and has had residencies at the Juilliard School and Dickinson College. Their travels have brought them to festivals and performances around the world, and throughout the United States, in venues including: The Library of Congress, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Recital Hall, Ravinia, Carnegie Hall, Library of Congress, and Lincoln Center’s “Great Performance Series”. As a soloist, Ms. Bahn has appeared with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, La Orquesta Sinfonica de la Serena (Chile), and the Malaysian National Symphony Orchestra. She has performed recitals, concerts and in festivals such as the Costa Rican International Chamber Festival, the Sierra Summer Festival, the Grand Canyon Music Festival, the Garth Newel Music Series, and the Festival de Música de Cámara de San Miguel de Allende. Ms. Bahn holds a Doctoral degree from Indiana University, a Masters degree from Univeristy of Michigan, and she completed her undergraduate studies under Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School. Jenny Lin is one of the most respected young pianists today, admired for her adventurous programming and charismatic stage presence. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Miller Theatre, MoMA, the Whitney Museum, Chopin Festival, BAM's Next Wave Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, with orchestras such as Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI and SWR German Radio Orchestra. She records for Koch International Classics, Hänssler Classic, BIS Records and is the subject of the documentary, "Zahara", by Elemental Films Spain. She is a member of the Verge Ensemble and resides in New York City. www.jennylin.net Collin Oldham began exploring electronic music in 2005, at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA,) moving his studio to the klangquadrat in Berlin in 2006. He studied cello at Northwestern University, University of Louisville (where he was a Louisville Orchestra Fellow), Moscow Conservatory, and the University of Southern California, where he studied with Ron Leonard. He has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington Opera. With violinist Lina Bahn, he founded the Mount Pleasant Chamber Music Players, which was awarded an NEA grant. He first performed with the Verge Ensemble in 2003. The cellomobo is a computer music instrument that attempts to model the behavior of a bowed string. It gives haptic feedback to the bow at audio rate to simulate the stick-slip action of a bowed string. This feedback stream finds it way back into the audio stream, creating a unique hybrid of digital and analog synthesis. Nick Antosca's stories and essays have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Nerve, The New York Sun, Identity Theory, The New York Tyrant, The Antietam Review, Hustler, Opium, elimae, and others. His first novel, Fires, was published in 2007 by Impetus Press, and his second, Midnight Picnic, will be published in fall 2008. DAISY PRESS: Morton Feldman's THREE VOICES w Video by Zach Layton A specialist in the field of contemporary music, Daisy Press, soprano, Additional credits include being the featured soloist for the New York Daisy Press has appeared with the VOX vocal ensemble. She is currently Ms. Press was for two years singer-in-residence; Attila-Joszef Having been raised on a rock and roll tour (literally under the daisypress.net 8pm $10 Thursday March 13th an evening of peacock recording artists jessica pavone ...no way to say goodbye + anti social music ...No Way to Say Goodbye is a collection of songs for string quartet that substitutes a second violin for a double bass.The music is influenced by an interest in the simplistic beauty of folk songs and a belief that one's ability to accompany oneself in song as one of the more natural expressions of music. Jessica Pavone - composition, viola Brooklyn based string instrumentalist/composer Jessica Pavone, has been active in New York City for the past eight years. She is best known for her work performing all over the world with Anthony Braxton in his current septet and twelve+1tet and for her duo project with guitarist, Mary Halvorson, whose music has been described as“distinct and beguiling...its core is steely, and its execution clear” (The New York Times) As a composer, Pavone has received grants from The American Music Center and commissions to write chamber music from the MATA foundation and the chamber music collectives; Till by Turning and The Eastern Winds. She has been noted as having the "ability to transform a naked tonal gesture into something special" (The Wire). She currently leads and plays bass guitar and viola in her 60's soul inspired band The Pavones (trumpet, alto, tenor, bari, guitar, bass guitar, and drums), plays viola and composes for... No Way to Say Goodbye, and a CD of her indeterminate works for solo viola was recently released by the Nowaki label in Paris, France. As an instrumentalist, she improvises in bands led by William Parker, Taylor Ho Bynum, and Matana Roberts and has interpreted new music by Glenn Branca, James Fei, Elliot Sharp, Butch Morris, David Grubbs, Matthew Welch, Aaron Siegel, Loren Dempster and Tristan Perich Since 2000, she has documented her music via her self-run label Peacock Recordings, which was recently awarded a grant from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording Program, and her growing discography and list of works can be witnessed via her web site, Jessicapavone.com. ANTI SOCIAL MUSIC Music by Andrea La Rose, Pat Muchmore, John Wriggle, and Peter Hess. 8pm $10 Friday March 14th Till by Turning is the collective effort of Amy Cimini, Erica Dicker, Working as performers, educators, improvisers, scholars, composers, "There's an old Shaker dance number, written in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett, that likely serves as inspiration for...Till by Turning. The group belongs to a new generation of adventurous musicians The members of Till by Turning met while studying instrumental Since then, we have commissioned and premiered music by Jessica
Invert is a unique New York City based string quartet performing original new music composed by its members, and their own arrangements of other composers’ works. Invert’s name is taken from their literal inversion of the traditional string quartet format - they feature two cellos instead of the usual two violins. The group's members are cellists Steven Berson and Chris George, violinist Helen Yee, and violist Chris Jenkins. Since coming together in 1999, the group has created its own brand of chamber music by blending numerous genres into its compositions and performance style. Drawing from diverse, eclectic musicalbackgrounds, Invert’s members defy tradition by being firmly rooted in rock, jazz and world musics rather than the classical upbringing typical of most string players. The group’s compositions range from moody pieces evocative of soundtracks from expressionist cinema, to driving melodic works, often leaving open sections for improvisation that add to the excitement of their live performances. This return performance at Issue will feature pieces from their most 8pm $10
Saturday March 15th silent music
'We get so caught up in everything we "have" to do. And what we do when we aren't doing what we "have" to do is so often an escape. I'm looking for something that's not an escape from someting, but an escape to something.' Program: Lines -Craig Shepard Peckinpah Trios - Antoine Beuger November - Craig Shepard piano works tbd - Morton Feldman Silent Music: Pieces on the program are on the edge of audibility. Craig Shepard was born in 1975 in Connecticut. Performances of his compositions have been called "touchingly beautiful" (Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Berliner Zeitung) and "ab-original" (Tanja Hell, Westdeutch Zeitung). On the trombone, he has performed with Christian Wolff, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Jürg Frey, and Collegium Novum Zürich. On the sacbut, he has recorded with the Münchner Vokal Ensemble. He lives in Weehawken, New Jersey. Antoine Beuger was born in 1955 in Oosterhout, Netherlands. He studied composition with Ton de Leeuw at Sweelinck Conservatory, Amsterdam. In 1992, he founded Edition Wandelweiser with Burkhard Schlothauer, of which he has been the managing director since 2004. Since 1994 he has been the artistic director of the concert series Klangraum at the Kunstraum Düsseldorf. His work has been performed throughout Europe and North America. A graduate of the Peabody Institute, Jeremy Lamb has been an active orchestral cellist, playing with the Columbus, Akron, Youngstown and Mansfield Symphony Orchestras. In 2003, he was the winner of the Baltimore Music Club Competition. He has performed in masterclasses with Lynn Harrell, David Finckel and Wu Han, Matt Haimovitz, and Amidt Peled, He currently resides in New York City, where he studies privately with Alan Stepansky, former associate principal of the New York Philharmonic. Christian Kesten lives in Berlin, Germany and works as composer, stage director, performance artist and vocalist; performances worldwide.He is member of the ensemble "Maulwerker" and has been performing Cage's Song Books throughout Europe for the past 17 years; he co-directed and performed in a complete version at Theater Bielefeld in 2001. Recently composers like Chico Mello, Iris ter Schiphorst, Alessandro Bosetti and Makiko Nishikaze wrote operas, music theatre pieces or vocal solos for him. About Wandelweiser (pronounced (VOHN-dell-vizor): The Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble is an international group of composers/performers. It was founded in 1992 by Dutch-born flautist Antoine Beuger and German violinist Burkhard Schlothauer. In 1993 Swiss clarinetist Jürg Frey was invited to join, followed by American guitarist Michael Pisaro, Swiss pianist Manfred Werder, Austrian trombonist Radu Malfatti the following year, American trombonist Craig Shepard, and others. The group runs its own publishing operation, Edition Wandelweiser, and its own record label Wandelweiser Records. What holds the Wandelweiser together is a love of the music of John Cage and a commitment to continue work in experimental classical music. At the center of the group is an exchange; the composer/performers periodically come together to perform each other's music. Some of the music that has come out of this exchange so far has included long periods of silence, sounds at the edge of audibility, and using the experience of time as a musical element. 8pm $10 Wednesday March 19th gerry hemingway w/ alex waterman + wolter wiebos + ashley paul + eli keszler Gerry Hemingway, Alex Waterman & Wierbos Together with very special guest Wolter Wierbos from Holland, Gerry BIOS: Wolter Wierbos is considered one of the world's leading trombone Like many Dutch brass players Wierbos started out in a |