Haunted House + Che Chen & Robbie Lee + Helena Espvall & Sondra Sun-Odeon
Haunted House played at Tonic, the Cooler, Brownies and other venues in the late 1990s, until one of its band members moved away. The band was comprised of avant blues guitarist Loren Connors, vocalist/lyricist Suzanne Langille, avant guitarist Andrew Burnes (of San Agustin) and Neel Murgai (soundtrack for “The Yes Men Fix the World”) on the daf. They re-unite for this performance, after roughly a 10-year hiatus. Simon Hopkins in Motion Reviews writes: “…There’s something extraordinarily alien about the blues that all the ‘rootsy’ marketing in the world can’t deny. Loren MazzaCane Connors is one of a handful of musicians helping his audience rediscover that other worldliness, and seldom has he done so with more clarity than here, as single blues phrases are seemingly extended across minutes rather than bars. Langille’s ethereal voice adds to the tension and exoticism, Murgai’s daf perhaps even more so. Meanwhile, Burnes’s guitar is the perfect foil for LMCs.”
Che Chen & Robbie Lee are Brooklyn, NY-based multi-instrumentalists who have been steadily and intensively developing their unique approach to free improvisation over the last several years. Using a shifting constellation of instruments that has included bass clarinets, baroque recorders, reed and pipe organs, renaissance keyboard instruments, flutes, saxophones, bowed and plucked strings, little drums, bells, tape machines and their voices, Che Chen and Robbie Lee create earthy, slow moving improvisations that are informed as much by the ethnic folk traditions of the world as they are by 20th century composition and improvisation. Their music places precedent in listening, attention and dynamic interaction in the moment. Chen and Lee have released an LP and several cd-r’s on their own Telegraph Harp imprint.
Sondra Sun-Odeon is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist/vocalist transplanted from California where she spent her childhood taping classical music pieces off the radio and sneaking a hand held transistor radio into bed surreptitiously. She writes and performs in the Brooklyn band Silver Summit, as well as performing solo. Lyrically inhabiting an ethereal cloud of longing and elation, her solo songs range over stoner-rock and goth lullabye territory all at once.
Born and raised in Sweden, and having played the guitar and cello in several rock bands (as well as performing in a silent movie orchestra and an Arabian Music ensemble), Helena Espvall moved to the US in the year 2000. Besides performing with renowned Philadelphia band Espers, Helena collaborates with many others in the psychedelic folk and free improvisation world. She has recorded with folk guitar legend Bert Jansch, toured with Vashti Bunyan and Damon & Naomi, and released two albums consisting of Swedish folk songs and improvisations together with Tokyo musician Masaki Batoh, on Drag City records.
Espvall and Sun-Odeon will be performing a special collaborative set for this performance.
Tom Hamilton/Susan Alcorn/Steve Swell Trio + Gunn-Truscinski Duo
Trombonist Steve Swell brings together a new trio with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn and electronic improviser Tom Hamilton. Drummer John Truscinski and guitarist Steve Gunn have played together over a span of years in various formations and projects, influenced by the blues, raga, and the New York underground scene.
A BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FOR SUZANNE FIOL: Jonathan Kane’s February + Audrey Chen
Join us as we celebrate the birthday of our beloved founder, Suzanne Fiol, with some of her favorite musicians.
Before creating February in 2005, drummer Jonathan Kane was a co-founder of the No Wave legends, Swans and instigated their half time, slow rhythmic crawl. He played in LaMonte Young’s Forever Bad Blues Band, and is the only drummer in Rhys Chatham’s 100 electric guitar orchestra. He plays with a galaxy of downtown luminaries including Kropotkins, Transmission, and Elliott Sharp. As teenagers in the 70s, Jonathan and his brother Anthony took their freshly inked fake IDs to Chicago where they ended up opening for the likes of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and James Cotton.
Come dance, trance, and (most importantly) make some NOISE for the band that WFMU describes as “Avant Roadhouse, the music that makes me proud to be human”.
‘Wedding the brutal severity of Delta country boogie and Seventies German pulse rock – all dead-ahead motion and mounting detail…Epic.” – Rolling Stone
“Somewhere between Sonic Youth and Steve Reich is the drummer Jonathan Kane. Interested in the crossroads of new-music iconoclasm and experimental rock, he has a drummers sense of steady dynamic development and an unapologetic love of noise. Virtuosic.” – New York Times
“Intensely propulsive motorik blues…its muscularity and greased relentlessness is never less than exhilarating.” – Uncut
AUDREY CHEN is a Chinese-American musician who was born into a family of material scientists, doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. Parting ways with the family convention, she turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and conservatory training in both instruments, with a resulting specialization in early and new music, she parted ways again in 2003 to begin new negotiations with sound in order to discover a more individually honest aesthetic.
Now, using the cello, voice and analog electronics, Chen’s work delves deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is extremely personal and visceral. Her playing explores the combination and layering of a homemade analog synth, preparations and traditional and extended techniques in both the voice and cello. She works to join these elements into a singular ecstatic personal language.
Recently, her primary focus has been her SOLO project but she is also involved in many various collaborations. Among musicians, she has worked with Phil Minton, Tetuzi Akiyama, Toshimaru Nakamura, Ko Ishikawa, Elliott Sharp, Aki Onda, Phill Niblock, Frederic Blondy, Jerome Noetinger, C. Spencer Yeh, Alessandro Bosetti, Mats Gustafsson, Mazen Kerbaj, Michael Zerang, Tatsuya Nakatani, Le Quan Ninh, Joe Mcphee, Susan Alcorn, Michele Doneda, Paolo Angeli, Gianni Gebbia, plus many more. Some current projects include: duos with Phil Minton, Frederic Blondy, Robert van Heumen, Katt Hernandez, Nate Wooley, and Id M Theft Able. Trio with Nate Wooley and C. Spencer Yeh. Plus three new quartet projects with Jeff Carey/Morten J. Olsen/Raed Yassin, Miya Masaoka/Hans Grusel/Kenta Nagai and also with Frederic Blondy/Michael Johnsen/Jerome Noetinger.
Chen has performed in Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan, Canada and the USA. She is currently based in Baltimore, MD USA but primarily maintains an active touring schedule throughout Europe.
Jonathan Kane’s February LIVE RECORDING PROJECT
Acclaimed Ensemble to Record First Live Album
@ ISSUE Project Room
Proceeds of Both Performances to Benefit the Suzanne Fiol Memorial Fund
Table of the Elements/Radium Records and ISSUE Project Room present an unprecedented live recording project with Jonathan Kane’s February. The result of this two day affair will be a first-ever live LP by the band that takes minimalism and blues to the crossroads with “the unadulterated thunder of a parched desert.” (Time Out NY, 2009.) All proceeds from both concerts will benefit the Suzanne Fiol Memorial Fund, which supports the future of experimental arts in honor of ISSUE’s Founder and Artistic Director, Suzanne Fiol.
Before creating February in 2005, drummer Jonathan Kane was a co-founder of the No Wave legends, Swans and instigated their half time, slow rhythmic crawl. He played in LaMonte Young‘s Forever Bad Blues Band, and is the only drummer in Rhys Chatham‘s 100 electric guitar orchestra. He plays with a galaxy of downtown luminaries including Kropotkins, Transmission, and Elliott Sharp. As teenagers in the 70s, Jonathan and his brother Anthony took their freshly inked fake IDs to Chicago where they ended up opening for the likes of Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and James Cotton.
Come dance, trance, and (most importantly) make some NOISE for the band that WFMU describes as “Avant Roadhouse, the music that makes me proud to be human”.
“Somewhere between Sonic Youth and Steve Reich is the drummer Jonathan Kane. Interested in the crossroads of new-music iconoclasm and experimental rock, he has a drummers sense of steady dynamic development and an unapologetic love of noise. Virtuosic.” – New York Times
“Intensely propulsive motorik blues…its muscularity and greased relentlessness is never less than exhilarating.” – Uncut
Peg Simone + Wrekmeister Harmonies + MV Carbon and Zach Layton duo
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(listen): the Sun is Leaking – Peg Simone
Peg Simone, out of NYC, employs the slide to bone-chilling effect, fracturing raucous rock choruses and sepia-toned ballads into ghost images with its off-tuned eeriness & pure blues tones stuttering across hectic post-punk rhythms. Her upcoming release “Secrets From The Storm” is due in February/March 2010 & will be released on Table of the Elements. Peg is also a guitarist in Jonathan Kane’s February and collaborated with Kane on the upcoming album for their own 22 minute version of When The Levee Breaks titled “1927/Levee” with intro narrative written by Holly Anderson.
Chicago-based sound artist J.R. Robinson has been creating live, ambient tonefields in museums around the US and Europe over the past two years-including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Pompidou Center in Paris, and The Art Center Berlin.
Robinson has injected these recordings into collaborations with some like-minded heavy hitters from the noise, post-rock and jazz worlds such as David Yow (Jesus Lizard/Scratch Acid), Mark Shippy & Pat Samson (US Maple), Azita Youssefi, John Herndon & Jeff Parker (Tortoise), Keefe Jackson, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Ken Vandermark. The result (dubbed Wrekmeister Harmonies), is a distinctive hybrid of sound art and avant-garde musics, evoking the essences & influences of masterworks like Joe McPhee’s Nation Time, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and the sound collages of Stockhausen.
Jonathan Kane’s February
February
Jonathan Kane is a Downtown NYC legend — as co-founder of the no-wave behemoth Swans, and the rhythmic thunder behind the massed-guitar armies of Rhys Chatham and the rock excursions of La Monte Young and one of the hardest-hitting drummers on the planet.
“Wedding the brutal severity of Delta country boogie and Seventies German pulse rock – all dead-ahead motion and mounting detail…Epic.”
Rolling Stone
“Somewhere between Sonic Youth and Steve Reich is the drummer Jonathan Kane. Interested in the crossroads of new-music iconoclasm and experimental rock, he has a drummers sense of steady dynamic development and an unapologetic love of noise. Virtuosic”
New York Times
“Intensely propulsive motorik blues, its muscularity and greased relentlessness is never less than exhilarating”
Uncut
On January 25, ISSUE Project Room will inaugurate its new space at 110 Livingston with Gaudeamus Muziekweek, a four-day festival celebrating groundbreaking and challenging new music by emerging composers from around the world. Working in partnership ...
ISSUE is starting off the New Year with a change of scenery. That's right, Issue Project Room is moving out of our space at the Old American Can Factory and into 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn. We've had a great run at the Can Factory,...