Alvin Lucier’s Queen of the South performed by loadbang and Pygmy Jerboa + On Structure
In Alvin Lucier’s Queen of the South, performed here by the ensembles loadbang and Pygmy Jerboa, a metal plate is put into motion by amplified voices, such that sand on the plate forms into beautiful designs. Tom Johnson wrote, “[Lucier’s] own strongest association is with alchemy and that The Queen of the South is an alchemical term…He was attracted to the idea because of an appreciation for basic substances and for the mystery of how they interact with one another.”On Structure is a sound-centric performance duo featuring Jessie Marino and Natacha Diels. The
New York based ensemble uses improvised and composed
Sounds {and the fluctuation of these sounds} to brew
Transferable art pieces which may
Ravage the realms of the performer, audience or space itself.
Uncovering the hidden motions of sound, freeing
Compositions from the fluorescence of the concert expectation.
Topsy-turvy.
Use of lasers, wigs, electronics, cellosandflutes;
Repurposing life experiences for music glitches and muscle twitches.
Eclipse boundaries of the stage.
(more…)
Tom Hamilton with Jacqueline Martelle
Tom Hamilton – electronics
Jacqueline Martelle – flute
Music by Ashley, Lucier, Margolis, and Hamilton
Robert Ashley: El/Aficionado Harmony (arr. Hamilton)
Alvin Lucier: 947
Tom Hamilton: What Fell Through (from Local Customs)
Al Margolis: Rushin’ Lisa
TOM HAMILTON has composed and performed electronic music for over 30 years, and his work with electronic music originated in the late-60s era of analog synthesis. His ongoing series of concerts, installations and recordings contrast structure with improvisation and textural electronics with acoustic instruments. Rather than addressing traditional modes of expression, presentation and observation, Hamilton often explores the interaction of many simultaneous layers of activity, prompting the use of “present-time listening” on the part of both performer and listener.
Hamilton is a 2005 Fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, participating in a residency at the foundation’s center in Umbria. His CD London Fix received an honorary mention in the 2004 Prix Ars Electronica. Hamilton’s performing and recording colleagues include Peter Zummo, Bruce Gremo, Karlheinz Essl, Bruce Arnold, Rich O’Donnell, Jonathan Haas, Jacqueline Martelle, Thomas Buckner and Richard Lerman. He has been a collaborator with visual artists, including Fred Worden (filmmaker), Van McElwee and Morey Gers (video artists), and the late Ernst Haas (photographer).
An active participant in New York’s new music scene, Hamilton was the co-director of the 2004 Sounds Like Now festival, and he has co-produced the Cooler in the Shade/Warmer by the Stove new music series since 1993.
Since 1990, Hamilton has been a member of composer HYPERLINK “http://www.lovely.com/artists/a-ashley.html”Robert Ashley’s touring opera ensemble, performing sound processing and mixing in both recordings and concerts. His audio production can be found in over 50 CD releases of new and experimental music, including recordings by Muhal Richard Abrams, Bruce Arnold, David Behrman, Thomas Buckner, George Lewis, Annea Lockwood, Alvin Lucier, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, and “Blue” Gene Tyranny.
Hamilton appears on synthesizer in his own ensembles, and has performed as a member of Slybersonic Tromosome and the Noisy Meditation Band (Peter Zummo), The Spinozas (David Soldier), and Analogos (Michael Schumacher). He has recently performed with Thomas Buckner, Lisle Ellis, Chris Mann, Al Margolis, and Jacqueline Martelle. Hamilton was a 2005 Fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy. His CD London Fix received an award in the 2004 Prix Ars Electronica. He is a longtime member of composer Robert Ashley’s touring opera ensemble, performing sound processing and mixing in both recordings and concerts. His audio production can be found in over 50 CD releases of new and experimental music, including recordings by Muhal Richard Abrams, Bruce Arnold, David Behrman, Thomas Buckner, George Lewis, Annea Lockwood, Alvin Lucier, Al Margolis, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, and “Blue” Gene Tyranny.
Tom Hamilton has two recent CD releases: “Shadow Machine” (Pogus), with guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil, and “Local Customs” (Mutable), for a small ensemble with electronics.
Flutist JACQUELINE MARTELLE has performed in diverse settings in New York, including Experimental Intermedia, Symphony Space, Issue Project Room, Roulette, Third Street Music School Settlement, Merkin Concert Hall, and Carnegie Hall. She has been a featured artist in the World Music Institute’s Interpretations series. Martelle has presented concerts highlighting the flute in combination with electronic media and has premiered works written for her by Larry Austin, David Behrman, Tom Hamilton, Alvin Lucier, Al Margolis, and Robert Rowe. A native of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Martelle was given her first flute lesson by a trombonist. Her teachers include Samuel Baron, Israel Borouchoff, and Charles DeLaney. She has recorded for the Pogus, Mutable, Mode, and Centaur labels.
A WEEK OF STRINGS I
February 20, 2008
music on a long thin wire
A sound installation by Alvin Lucier
Installed by Ben Manley
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
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.
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Ben Manley
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
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