Zach Layton, Alex Waterman, Ryan Sawyer Trio + Michael Evans’ Swirling Lotus Blossom Bandits Band
Zach Layton
Zach Layton is a composer, curator, improviser, teacher, and new media artist based in Brooklyn with an interest in biofeedback, generative algorithms, experimental music, buddhism and indeterminacy. His work investigates complex relationships and topologies created through the interaction of simple core elements like sine waves, minimal surfaces and kinetic visual patterns.
Zach’s work has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and he has performed and exhibited at the Kitchen, ISSUE Project Room, Roulette, Diapason, PS1/MoMa, Anthology Film Archives, Joe’s Pub, Exit Art, SCOPE Art Fair, Art Forum Berlin, New York Electronic Art Festival, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Eyebeam, Sculpture Center, Millenium Film Workshop, St. Mark’s Ontological Theater, Dumbo Arts Festival, New York Digital Salon, Miguel Abreu Gallery, Participant Gallery, Monkeytown and many other venues in New York, South America and Europe. He has collaborated with Luke Dubois, Vito Acconci, Joshua White, Jonas Mekas, Tony Conrad, Bradley Eros, Alex Waterman, Nick Hallett, Andrew Lampert, Matthew Ostrowski, Michael Evans, MV Carbon, Seth Kirby, Matthew Welch, Christine Bard, Andy Graydon, Ryan Sawyer, Matt Mottel, Bradford Reed, Anthony Huberman, Sarina Basta, Gareth James, Emily Manzo, Patrick Hambrecht, Marissa Olsen, Angie Eng, Adam Kendall, Chika Ijima, Peter Gordon, Peter Zummo, Tristan Perich and Ray Sweeten among many other artists, filmmakers, curators, musicians and friends.
Zach is also founder of Brooklyn’s monthly experimental music series, “Darmstadt: Classics of the Avant Garde” co-curated with Nick Hallett featuring leading local and international composers and improvisers, was the co-curator of the PS1 summer Warm Up music series from 2007 -2009 and curator at Issue Project Room. Zach has received grants from the Netherlands America Foundation, Free103.9’s AIRtime fellowship, Turbulence, Jerome Foundation, Experimental Television Center, NYFA, the Danish Council for Visual Art, the City of Copenhagen Artist in Residence Program, and is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Alex Waterman
Alex Waterman is a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. In New York he performs with the Either/Or Ensemble. Alex has worked with musicians such as Robert Ashley, Richard Barrett, Helmut Lachenmann, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Elliot Sharp, Ned Rothenberg, Gerry Hemingway, David Watson, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, and Michael Finnissy. He has performed as guest musician with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d’Action-Antwerp, Q-O2-Brussels, and Magpie Music and Dance Company. Waterman has made music for numerous European ballet and modern dance companies including Freiburg Ballett/Pretty Ugly, Scapino Ballet, Nederland Dans Theater III, and others. As a curator he has organized events at Les Bains:Connective in Brussels, OT301 in Amsterdam, Miguel Abreu Gallery and The Kitchen. His duo projects with the dancer Michael Schumacher have toured in Switzerland, Italy, Holland, the Opera of Monaco and most recently in all 5 boroughs of New York in a Joyce Theater production in association with the City Parks Foundation in July of 2008.
In 2007, Alex curated two exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agapê (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 participated in Dexter Sinister’s residency at the Armory for the 2008 Whitney Biennial writing a new work based upon Herman Melville’s Bartleby The Scrivener. Alex Waterman and Beatrice Gibson’s film, A Necessary Music, narrated by Robert Ashley and with original music by Waterman, premiered at the Whitney Museum ISP show and won the Tiger Prize for Best Short Film at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2008. Alex lectured and performed as part of the exhibition, The Possibility of Action at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona in 2008, and was in residence at the ICA in May 2009 with his ensemble, in addition to performing solo works. He installed a permanent 12 speaker sound installation out in Napa Valley in July of 2009, at the residence of Norah and Norman Stone, is presently working on a new film project in Vieques, and starting up his record label (D.S. al coda). He also plays the music of Arthur Russell with Arthur’s Landing whenever he can. His writings have been published by Dot Dot Dot, Paregon, FoArm, and Artforum.
Ryan Sawyer
Ryan Sawyer aka Lone Wolf (b. 1976) grew up in San Antonio, Texas, where he played drums in various punk rock bands, most notably, At The Drive-In. After 21 years in Texas, he decided to move to New York to pursue a formal education of music and broaden his understanding of music making on the drum set. While in New York, he studied under Bobby Previte, Susie Ibarra, Hamid Drake, and Thurman Barker, and was a regular fixture in the New York free jazz and noise scene, frequenting legendary venues such as Tonic, The Cooler, and The Knitting Factory. Interested in combining elements of improvisation, jazz, and aesthetics of the musical avant garde, Sawyer performed his music in underground parties and rock clubs in hopes of making his music widely accessible to the public.
Ryan has played and recorded with hundreds of improvisors and bands while maintaining his own groups (Tall Firs, Glass Rock, Stars Like Fleas) throughout the years. Some of his collaborations include, Charles Gayle, Thurston Moore, Jandek, TV on the Radio, Celebration, Scarlett Johansson, and Rhys Chatham. Ryan also led and co-wrote the New York Chapter of The Boredoms’ 88 Boadrum, a piece that incorporated 88 drummers playing an 88 minute piece of music co-written by Ryan Sawyer and Gang Gang Dance.
Michael Evans’ Swirling Lotus Blossom Bandits Band (a South-African tinged jazz-blues-improvisational band) celebrates the expatriates of South Africa (Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Louis Moholo and Johnny Dyani) that relocated to Great Britain in the early 1960’s. Tunes by Gwi Gwi’s band, Blue Notes members…Chris Mcgregor, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani and Llouis Moholo as well as Sun Ra, Howlin’ Wolf and Stan Kenton.
Featuring: Michael Attias : alto saxophone, Michael Evans: drums, Evan Gallagher: keyboard, Jeff Hudgins: alto saxophone and Adam Lane: upright bass, Peter Zummo: Trombone
Michael Evans is an improvising drummer/percussionist/thereminist/composer whose work investigates and embraces the collision of sound and theatrics. As well as being a drumset player, his work with unusual sound sources includes found objects, homemade instruments, the theremin and various digital and homemade analog electronics. His work with the theremin varies the quality of its sound through set-up and technique. On the theremin he has performed with dancers and in group settings playing experimental, jazz, rock, ersatz lounge and chamber music. In 2000, he was photographed playing a Moog ether wave theremin for the front of Bob Moog’s Big Briar catalog. He has performed in multiple performances of the NYC Theremin Society’s Issue Project Room concerts during 2005, 2006 and 2007. He has studied movement/sparring/drumming with Professor Milford Graves, drum technique with Joe Morello, tabla with Misha Masud, kanjira with Ganesh Kumar and Haitian/Afro-Cuban hand drumming with John Amira. He has studied musicianship with Helen Hobbs Jordan, composition with Richard Cameron Wolf, Blue Gene Tyranny and the theremin with Pamelia Kurstin.
He has worked with a wide variety of artists of all sorts including Ron Anderson, Jeff Arnal, Audio Artists, Claire Barratt, Samm Bennett, Jac Berrocal, Carla Bley, Naval Cassidy, James Chance, Martha Colburn, Combustible Edison, Lol Coxhill, EasSide Percussion(ESP), Roger Ely(the Devil’s Chaueffeur), Nicolas Dumit Estevez, Ken Filiano, Fast Forward(Gobo), Chris Ferris, Michael Gira (Angels of Light, Swans), Gisburg, Gilbert Godfried, God Is My Co-Pilot, David Grubbs, Alexander Hacke(Einsturzende Neubauten), Susan Hefner, Steve Horowitz’s Code Ensemble, Jarboe (Swans), Pamelia Kurstin, Skip LaPlante’s Music for Homemade Instruments, Zach Layton, Gen Ken Montgomery, Neil Leonard, Aimee Mann, Karen Mantler, Sean G. Meehan, Donald Miller, Eric Mingus, Gordon Monahan, Joe Morris, Anders Nilsson, Evan Parker, Andrea Parkins, Maxime De La Rochefoucauld, William Parker, Yvette Perez’s Birdbrain, Gino Robair, Lary Seven, Elliot Sharp, Moe! Staiano, LaDonna Smith, David Simons, Jesse Stewart, Toronto Dance Theatre, Stephen Vitiello, Christopher Walken, Jason Willet, Peter Zummo’s Noisy Meditation Band and John Zorn.
He continues his ongoing collaborations with: Jeff Arnal(MEJA duo), Anders Nilsson & Ken Filiano(Fulminate Trio), Peter Zummo’s Noisy Meditation Band, Lary Seven and composes music for and performs with Susan Hefner and Dancers. Recorded examples of his work can be found on EasSide Percussion’s ESP release on Avant records, MESuperstar on A.T.M.O.T.W. records, Karen Mantler’s Farewell and Pet Project releases on XtraWatt records, Just Drums 2 – The Project(a compilation of 35 drummers) on Fever Pitch records, MEJA(Michael Evans/Jeff Arnal) on C3R records, Fulminate Trio: s/t on Generate records and Deviant Shakti: Ladonna Smith and Michael Evans on Trans Museq records.
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: MV Carbon
ISSUE Project Room is pleased to present the third Artist-in-Residence performance by MV Carbon.
MV Carbon is a Brooklyn based musician and artist. Her work frequently involves tape machines, voice, cello, analog synthesizers, field recordings, along with hand built electronics. She has recently been developing and performing new works which utilize physical computing and sensor controlled synthesis. Carbon is interested in spatial integration and site-specific consideration.
She has performed nationally and internationally with her solo work as well as in collaborations at spaces including Arnolfi (UK), ISSUE Project Room (NYC), Lehman Maupin Gallery (NYC), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Museum of Contemporary Art (Detroit), Nefertiti Jazz Club (Sweden), PS1 Contemporary Art (NYC), Roulette(NYC), The Sage, (UK), The Stone (NYC), the Tate Modern (UK), and Tesla (Berlin) . Her work with the dark-wave electronic duo, Metalux,has releases out on a number of experimental and independent labels including LOAD, 5RC and Hanson. Her solo release, The Dislodged Perihelion (LP), is coming out sometime in the future on Ecstatic Peace.
Her paintings and installations have been exhibited at galleries including the Butcher Shop (Chicago), D’Amelio Terras (NYC), Louis V.E.S.P.(NYC), MCCaigwelles Gallery (NYC), Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (PGH), Salon Invisible (Chicago), Three Rives Arts Festival (PGH), and West Nile (NYC).
ISSUE’s Artist-in-Residence program is made possible, in part, through generous support from the Jerome Foundation and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York’s 62 counties.
SWANS + Baby Dee @ The Brooklyn Masonic Temple
ISSUE Project Room in collaboration with Haunting The Chapel and the Blackened Music Series is thrilled to present Swans’ first NYC show in 
more than a decade. It will take place at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, the loudest venue in the city.
Michael Gira has handpicked performance artist, harpist and accordionist Baby Dee to open the show, this time featuring keyboards accompanied by cello.
Formed in 1982 and led by Gira, a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Swans instigated and heavily influenced New York’s NoWave scene. They are considered one of the most influential post-punk bands to date, often incorporating droning vocals, thunderous rhythms, and varied, complex instrumentation.
“THIS IS NOT A REUNION. It’s not some dumb-ass nostalgia act. It is not repeating the past. After 5 Angels Of Light albums, I needed a way to move FORWARD, in a new direction,” says Gira of the pending new album. “It just so happens that revivifying the idea of Swans is allowing me to do that. I’ll be using what I learned in the last several years to inform the way this new material develops, while carrying forward from where Swans left off with its final album Soundtracks For The Blind, and in particular, Swans Are Dead.” (More here from Stereogum)
The Swans Presented by ISSUE Project Room in collaboration with Haunting The Chapel and the Blackened Music Series
Brooklyn Masonic Temple
Friday, October 8, 2010
8:00 PM (7:00 PM Doors)
317 Clermont Ave (@ Lafayette Ave)
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: Metalux + Aki Onda/MV Carbon duo
ISSUE Project Room is pleased to present the second Artist-In-Residence performance by MV Carbon.
Metalux is M.V. Carbon and J. Graf
Portraying physical and architecturally improbable spatial themes, Metalux seeks to situate the individual within a tangled web of technological interfaces. Their music can be heard as abstract sonic fiction. The processed human voice, with manipulated guitars, bass and samples, depicts a fictional engagement with the environment. Instruments alternate in carrying dominant themes, rhythm and melody. Metalux employs the use of rock music, only to suggest their compositions’ distant relationship to pop music. Using modified electronic instruments, bass, guitars, vocals and percussion, Metalux expands pre-written ideas with improvisation.
MV Carbon and Aki Onda duo
MV Carbon on cello and electronics, voice and tapes.
Aki Onda on tapes and electronics.
MV Carbon is a Brooklyn based musician and artist. Her work frequently involves tape machines, voice, cello, analog synthesizers, field recordings, along with hand built electronics. She has recently been developing and performing new works which utilize physical computing and sensor controlled synthesis. Carbon is interested in spatial integration and site-specific consideration.
She has performed nationally and internationally with her solo work as well as in collaborations at spaces including Arnolfi (UK), ISSUE Project Room (NYC), Lehman Maupin Gallery (NYC), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Museum of Contemporary Art (Detroit), Nefertiti Jazz Club (Sweden), PS1 Contemporary Art (NYC), Roulette(NYC), The Sage, (UK), The Stone (NYC), the Tate Modern (UK), and Tesla (Berlin) . Her work with the dark-wave electronic duo, Metalux,has releases out on a number of experimental and independent labels including LOAD, 5RC and Hanson. Her solo release, The Dislodged Perihelion,(LP) is coming out sometime in the future on Ecstatic Peace.
Her paintings and installations have been exhibited at galleries including the Butcher Shop (Chicago), D’Amelio Terras (NYC), Louis V.E.S.P.(NYC), MCCaigwelles Gallery (NYC), Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (PGH), Salon Invisible (Chicago), Three Rives Arts Festival (PGH), and West Nile (NYC).
Jenny Graf Sheppard (J.Graf) is an artist and improvisor who works with various mediums. Graf is concerned with the construction of sounds in order to radically shift social space. Using sound, video and collaborative performance that often take cues from the “audience” to direct the work, her work addresses such broad issues as gender, age and social convention. Her improvisiation and scored pieces include long-term investigations such as The Guitars Project and Proud Flesh.
J. Graf has been an active participant in the ongoing thriving international avante garde music scene since 1996. Building vivid, compelling soundworlds using intuitive homebrewed electronics, guitar and voice, her music as one half of Metalux and Harrius as well as her solo project J.Graf has bent the ears and minds of those who venture into her world.
Aki Onda is an electronic musician, composer, and photographer. Onda was born in Japan and currently resides in New York. He is particularly known for his Cassette Memories project – works compiled from a “sound diary” of field-recordings collected by Onda over a span of two decades. Onda’s musical instrument of choice is the cassette Walkman. Not only does he capture field recordings with the Walkman, he also physically manipulates multiple Walkmans with electronics in his performances. In another of his projects, Cinemage, Onda produces slide projections of still photo images set to live guitar improvisation. Onda has collaborated with artists such as Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs, Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi, Noël Akchoté, Jac Berrocal, Linda Sharrock, and Shelley Hirsch. http://www.akionda.net/
ISSUE’s Artist-in-Residence program is made possible, in part, through generous support from the Jerome Foundation and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York’s 62 counties.
PROPENSITY OF SOUND: Eliane Radigue’s Naldjorlak performed @ 110 Livingston by Charles Curtis, Carol Robinson & Bruno Martinez
**At ISSUE Project Room @ 110 Livingston**
Co-presented by Crossing the Line, the fall festival of the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)
Eliane Radigue will introduce the American premiere of her 2009 acoustic composition Naldjorlak, a two and a half hour work in three movements. The concert will mark only the 3rd performance in ISSUE Project Room’s future home at 110 Livingston: a McKim Mead & White-designed jewel box theater, featuring marble floors and 40-ft high vaulted ceilings.
Naldjorlak - After more than 30 years of infinitely discrete electronic music, Eliane Radigue abandoned her cherished Arp 2500 synthesizer to devote herself entirely to acoustic composition. Monumental in length but delicate due to the acoustic treatment of the pulsing and murmuring sounds, Naldjorlak was conceived as a trilogy with incredibly subtle harmonics, sub-tones and partials interacting continuously. The piece was elaborated in close collaboration with three virtuoso musicians who will be performing the piece: cellist Charles Curtis and basset horn players Carol Robinson and Bruno Martinez.
The suspension of time, the dialog with eternity, the proximity to silence, an appeal to contemplation, and exceptional concentration… all that has characterized Eliane Radigue’s music since 1970, is now more relevant than ever. But, Naldjorlak takes her even further on her musical journey, because with these three performers, she has found the ideal means of coming ever closer to the “impalpable chimerical” music of her dreams.
Eliane Radigue - Born in Paris, France Radigue studied electroacoustic music techniques at the Studio d’essai at the RTF, under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry (1957-58). She was married to the artist, Arman, and devoted ten years to the education of three children, deepening classical music studies and instrumental practice on the harp and piano at the same time. In 1967-68 she worked again with Pierre Henry, as his assistant at the Studio Apsome.
Radigue worked for a year at the New York University School of the Arts in 1970-71. Her music, its source an Arp synthesizer and medium recording tape, attracted considerable attention for its sensitive, dappled purity. She was in residence at the electronic music studios of the University of Iowa and California Institute of the Arts in 1973. Becoming a Tibetan Buddhist in 1975, Radigue went into retreat, and stopped composing for a time. When she took up her career again in 1979, she continued to work with the Arp synthesizer which has become her signature. She composed Triptych for the Ballet Théâtre de Nancy (choreography by Douglas Dunn), Adnos II & Adnos III, and began the large-scale cycle of works based on the life of the Tibetan master, Milarepa.
In 1984 Radigue received a “bourse à la creation” from the French Government to compose Songs of Milarepa, and a “commande de l’état” in 1986 for the continuation of the Milarepa cycle with Jetsun Mila. Notoriously slow and painstaking in her work, Radigue has produced in the last decade or so on average one major work every three years. Very recently, in response to the demands of musicians worldwide, she has begun creating works for specific performers and instruments together with electronics. The first of these was for bass player Kaspar Toeplitz, and more recently the American cellist Charles Curtis.
Performances of her music have taken place at galleries and museums such as the Salon des Artistes Decorateurs (Paris), Foundation Maeght (St. Paul de Vence), Albany Museum of the Arts (New York), Galerie Rive Droite (Paris), Gallery Sonnabend (New York), Galerie Yvon Lambert (Paris), and Galerie Shandar (Paris); at festivals including the Festival de Como (Italy), the Festival d’Automne a Paris, Festival Estival (Paris), International Festival of Music (Bourges, France); and at the New York Cultural Center, Experimental Intermedia Foundation (New York), The Kitchen (New York), Columbia University (New York), Vanguard Theatre (Los Angeles), LACE (Los Angeles), Mills College (Oakland), University of Iowa, Bennington School of Music, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the NEMO Festival (Chicago 1996). She has appeared on many broadcast programs including France Culture, France Musique, distribution via satellite covering over 50 stations in the U.S. including special programs on KPFK (Los Angeles) and KPFA (San Francisco).
Charles Curtis
The cellist Charles Curtis performs a unique repertoire of major solo works created expressly for him by La Monte Young, Alvin Lucier, Éliane Radigue and Alison Knowles, rarely-heard compositions by Terry Jennings and Richard Maxfield, and works by Cardew, Wolff, Feldman and Cage. La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s four-hour long solo composition, Just Charles and Cello in the Romantic Chord, has been heard in Paris, Berlin, Lyon, New York, Dijon, Polling and Bologna. Éliane Radigue’s recent Naldjorlak for solo cello has received over thirty performances worldwide and, as part of a new trilogy, was premiered in the Auditorium of the Musée du Louvre last October. Lucier’s compositions for Curtis include music for cello and piano, cello and sine waves, and solo cello with large orchestra. A former faculty member at Princeton University, and for eleven years the first solo cellist of the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, Curtis is now professor for contemporary music performance at the University of California, San Diego, and tours and records internationally. In the Bavarian village of Polling Curtis performs and teaches every summer in the Regenbogenstadl, a space devoted to the work of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. His performances in recent seasons have taken him to the Guggenheim in New York, the CAPC in Bordeaux, the Galerie Renos Xippas in Paris, the MaerzMusik Festival in Berlin, Dundee Contemporary Arts, the Kampnagelfabrik in Hamburg, the Emily Harvey Foundation in New York, as well as Chicago, Ferrara, Austin, Los Angeles and Harvard University. He continues to perform and record the traditional repertoire for cello, both as soloist and as artistic director of the chamber music project Camera Lucida.
Carol Robinson
Composer and clarinetist, Carol Robinson has a multifaceted musical life. Equally at ease in the classical and experimental realms, she performs in major concert halls and international festivals (Wien Modern, RomaEuropa, MaerzMusik, Huddersfield, Archipel, Musica, Musica Contemporanea, etc.). In addition to working closely with composers, she pursues the new in more alternative contexts, collaborating with video artists, photographers, and musicians from divers horizons. Improvisation is her passion. Carol Robinson plays all types and sizes of clarinets, including more exotic instruments such as the Lithuanian birbyne.
She began composing by writing for her own music theater productions, subsequently receiving commissions for concert pieces, installations, radio, dance and film productions. Her works often combine acoustic sounds with electronics, and her musical aesthetic is strongly influenced by a fascination for aleatoric systems. Particularly interested in dance, she has collaborated with choreographers Susan Buirge, Nadège MacLeay, Thierry Niang, François Verret, and Young Ho Nam. In 2008, she was awarded a composition fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbertide, Italy.
Her works have been recorded by the Hessischer Rundfunk, Saarlandischer Rundfunk, Lithuanian National Radio, and Radio France. A CD of her composition Billows, for clarinets and live electronics, was released by PLUSH in 2009. Other recent releases include solo monograph recordings of music by Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman, Luigi Nono, and Luciano Berio for MODE, Phil Niblock for TOUCH as well as classical music and jazz for SYRIUS, BTL and NATO. A DVD of the aleatoric musical system Cross-Currents is currently in production for the label Shiiin, with support from IRCAM,
Carol Robinson was born in the United States and graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory. After receiving a H.H. Wooley grant to study in Paris, she settled in France.
Bruno Martinez
Bruno Martinez was born on September 13, 1963 in Maubeuge France. Principal Bass Clarinetist at the Paris Opera since 1992, he has performed with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Seiji Ozawa, Charles Dutoit, Kurt Sanderling, Myung Wung Chung, Armin Jordan, Georges Prêtre, James Conlon, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Witold Lutoslawski, Yehudi Menuhin, Valery Gergiev, Esa Pekka Salonen, Bernhard Haitink, Semyon Byshkov, Christoph von Dohnanyi, and others.
Bruno Martinez appears as soloist and chamber musician in France and worldwide. Between 1996 and 1998, Bruno Martinez was the Principal Bass Clarinetist with the Lucerne (Switzerland) and d’Aix en Provence International Festival Orchestras. He has premiered several contemporary works. He is also active in feature film recordings among which as clarinet and basset horn soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra for “Alice et Martin” de A.Téchiné. Education: – In 1984, awarded 1st Prize from the Paris Conservatory (CNSM), studying with Guy Deplus – In 1986, awarded “Virtuosity” Prize from the Geneva Conservatory (Switzerland), studying with Thomas Friedli – In 1987, accepted in the “Masters” chamber music seminar at the CNSM, Paris studying with Maurice Bourgue -In 1988, received a French and Canadian government scholarship to study at the Banff Center School of Fine Arts (Canada).
PROPENSITY OF SOUND: Pauline Oliveros’ Primordial/Lift + Carol Robinson presents Billows
The second public performance and NYC premiere of Pauline Oliveros’ 1998 work Primordial/Lift, featuring all original performers from the studio recording: Pauline Oliveros – accordion & electronics, voice; Andrew Deutsch – electronics & toy piano; Tony Conrad – electric violin & ring modulator; Anne Bourne – cello & voice; David Grubbs – harmonium. The work is “based on information concerning the shift in the resonant frequency of the earth”.
Pauline Oliveros – A native Texan, Oliveros has influenced American music extensively in her career spanning more than 60 years as a composer, performer, author and philosopher. She pioneered the concept of Deep Listening, her practice based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation, designed to inspire both trained and untrained musicians to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations.
During the mid-’60s she served as the first director of the Tape Music Center at Mills College, aka Center for Contemporary Music followed by 14-years as Professor of Music and 3 years as Director of the Center for Music Experiment at the University of California at San Diego. Since 2001 she has served as Distinguished Research Professor of Music in the Arts department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where she is engaged in research on a National Science Foundation CreativeIT project. Her research interests include improvisation, special needs interfaces and telepresence teaching and performing. She also serves as Darius Milhaud Composer in Residence at Mills College doing telepresence teaching and she is executive director of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. where she leads projects in Deep Listening, Adaptive Use Interface. She is the recipient of the 2009 William Schuman Award from Columbia University for lifetime achievement. A retrospective from 1960 to 2010 was performed at Miller Theater, Columbia University in New York March 27, 2010 in conjunction with the Schuman award. She received a third honorary degree from DeMontort University, Leicester, UK July 23, 2010. Recent recordings include Pauline Oliveros & Miya Masoka and Pauine Oliveros & Chris Brown on Deep Listening, http://paulineoliveros.us, and http://www.deeplistening.org/
David Grubbs - Grubbs has released eleven solo albums, the most recent of which is Hybrid Song Box.4 (Blue Chopsticks). He is known for his cross-disciplinary collaborations with writers such as Susan Howe and Rick Moody, and with visual artists such as Anthony McCall, Angela Bulloch, Cosima von Bonin, and Stephen Prina. He is an assistant professor in the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College and director of the graduate programs in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA). Grubbs was a 2005-6 grant recipient from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and has been called one of two “Best Teachers for an Indie-Rocker to Admire” in the Village Voice and “le plus Français des Américains” in Libération.
Anne Bourne – With improvised streams of extended cello and voice, Anne integrates the experience of listening and composing for dance, film, experimental context, digital image media, chamber music, and words. She has created with Andrea Nann, Michael Ondaatje, Susie Ibarra, Eve Egoyan, Alvin Lucier, Nicolas Collins, John Oswald, Tom Kuo, Peter Mettler, Fred Frith, and Pauline Oliveros. Anne is interested in each musical expression being an offering of sonic activism, in the sense of resolution between tones, peoples, landscapes, and individual paradoxes through listening.
Carol Robinson’s Billows:
Billows is a twelve-section piece for basset horn or birbyne and a reactive electronic environment. Drawn from a series of recent pieces for solo instruments with live electronics Billows explores the shifting components of timbre and time.
Franco-American composer and clarinetist Carol Robinson has a multifaceted musical life, equally at ease in the classical and experimental realms.
Robinson often works closely with composers, but she also pursues new and alternative contexts for her work through collaborations with video artists, photographers, and musicians from diverse backgrounds. The freely converging musical world of her group Sleeping in Vilna is typical of what interests her. Improvisation is her passion. She began composing by writing for her own music theater productions, subsequently receiving commissions for concert pieces, installations, radio, dance and film productions. Her works often combine acoustic sounds with electronics, and her musical aesthetic is strongly influenced by a fascination with aleatoric systems. Particularly interested in dance, she has collaborated with choreographers Susan Buirge, Nadège MacLeay, Thierry Niang, François Verret, and Young Ho Nam.
In 2008, she was awarded a composition fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Her works have been recorded by the Hessischer Rundfunk, Saarlandischer Rundfunk, Lithuanian National Radio, and Radio France. Billows, for clarinets and live electronics, was released by Plush in 2009. Other recent releases include solo monograph recordings of music by Giacinto Scelsi, Morton Feldman, Luigi Nono, and Luciano Berio for Mode Records, Phil Niblock for Touch, as well as classical music and jazz for Syrius, BTL and Nato.
Carol Robinson was born in the United States and graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory. After receiving a H.H. Wooley grant to study in Paris, she settled in France.
Share – all night free audio & video jam – In the Munch Room @ The (OA) Can Factory
What is share?
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens every Sunday.
open jams and walk-in sets — Bring your equipment/instruments/gear etc. to join the jam!
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join
8pm, free —
Share will take place in the Munch Room tonight. The Munch Room is located on the first floor of The (OA) Can Factory.
Share @ Issue Project Room @ The (OA) Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215
direction/map:
http://issueprojectroom.org/contact
http://is.gd/ljow
SHARE is always 100% FREE!! (no admission!)
Show up early!!! and stay late!!
http://share.dj/share
http://facebook.com/sharenyc
http://issueprojectroom.org
Share – free audio & video jam
What is share?
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens every Sunday.
open jams and walk-in sets — Bring your equipment/instruments/gear etc. to join the jam!
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join
8pm, free —
Share @ Issue Project Room @ The (OA) Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215
direction/map:
http://issueprojectroom.org/contact
http://is.gd/ljow
SHARE is always 100% FREE!! (no admission!)
Show up early!!! and stay late!!
http://share.dj/share
http://facebook.com/sharenyc
http://issueprojectroom.org
Share – free audio & video jam
What is share?
Share is an open jam, not just for digirati, but for all new culture lovers. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. We furnish the amplification and projection. Share happens every Sunday.
open jams and walk-in sets — Bring your equipment/instruments/gear etc. to join the jam!
audio jam: Prepared and spontaneous music from eight plus simultaneous performers. This is the time and place to perform a piece of music you’ve written and hear it on a large sound system, improvise spontaneously with other participants, get feedback on your latest project or try out that new max patch/software setup. Bring your noise maker of choice and an XLR, quarter-inch or RCA cable to join.
video jam: multi-user live video synthesis. Generating an immersive visual environment, in the SHARE tradition, in which multiple participants are able to jointly compose the video output. Try out and learn about new VJ wetware. As with the audio, walk-in sets are encouraged. Bring your clips or camera or laptop/amiga and VGA, S-Video, or RCA cables to join
8pm, free —
Share @ Issue Project Room @ The (OA) Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215
direction/map:
http://issueprojectroom.org/contact
http://is.gd/ljow
SHARE is always 100% FREE!! (no admission!)
Show up early!!! and stay late!!
http://share.dj/share
http://facebook.com/sharenyc
http://issueprojectroom.org
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.
Artist-In-Residence: Matana Roberts, post-concert talk with Nate Chinen
“Ms. Roberts isn’t just mildly curious to expand her medium: She seems driven to do it.” – NY Times
“Matana is definitely nondescriptive. She’s not a lady, she’s not a man; she’s just a being…” – Jazz Times
“Roberts is a deep traditionalist who looks beyond the rigid distinctions and definitions of musical style” – Chicago Defender
“…alto saxophonist and clarinetist Matana Roberts –add this name to the frustratingly short list of excellent, female reed players…” – All About Jazz
“…Roberts is a fluid, elegant player who rejects the star soloist approach of many a saxophonist….” – BBC Jazz
“The sound of Matana Roberts’ alto sax spans jazz her-story, from its roots in New Orleans, through the swinging ‘30s-40s, to the New Thing.” – All About Jazz
A CAN CAN FOR COIN COIN…
Rooted in her strong belief that sharing honest creativity is a catalyst for instant community, Matana Roberts and ISSUE Project Room will join together for A CAN CAN FOR COIN COIN, a concert and food drive for her last performance as Artist-in-Residence on December 9th. While developing her blood narrative COIN COIN, she has been trying to connect the work to the social activism inherent in sharing art, and the devotion to community activism prevalent throughout in her family tree. In honor of her ancestors, she is creating this community-focused food drive benefiting the Bread and Life Soup Kitchen, a healthy food initiative that brings both physical and mental nourishment to in-need areas around Brooklyn.
Matana Roberts (Reeds)
Amelia Hollander (Viola)
Jessica Pavone (Viola)
Daniel Levin (Cello)
Keith Witty (bass)
Tomas Fujiwara (drums)
Daniel Givens (projections)
The concert will be followed by a talk with Nate Chinen, a regular music contributor to the New York Times, JazzTimes and The Village Voice.
COIN COIN: In Essence, a Musical Monument to the Human Experience
Matana will premiere the last of three new COIN COIN pieces which focus on spacial and environmental interplay while excavating themes relating to her familial heritage and own personal history.
Matana cultivates an environment where every surface, from walls to floors, to furnishings to large instruments, serve as sonic reciprocators. Keeping visual aesthetics in mind just as much as the auditory experience, and having utilized raw space and various architectures before, Matana creates a comprehensive sensory experience for the audience, attempting to create an intimate “womb” feeling.
Her work during the Residency focuses on and attempts to deconstruct recent discoveries in her lineage and family histories. Researching back to the 1700’s, Matana explores themes of hardship and perseverance while trying to find and construct her own identity. Since beginning this project, she has found that her lineage includes Irish, Dutch, Danish, English, Scottish, African and others, imploring a critical look
at the title “African American”.
Since her youth, Matana was surrounded by musicians who showed by distinct example the importance of listening to one’s personal creative voice while at the same time using the profound and many layered traditions of jazz and improvised musics to act only as her creative guide, not as her creative definer. By using their mentorship, she has been able to craft a voice and creative focus that truly speaks to her own artistic individuality. She feels strongly that her music should not only reflect the many colors and moods of universal human emotions, but that it should also testify, critique, document, and respond to the many socio-economic, historical, and cultural inequalities that exist all over the world.
Matana, a 2006 Van Lier fellow, Brecht Forum fellow, and 2008 and 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts nominee, has appeared as a collaborator on recordings and performances in the U.S., Europe, and Canada with her own ensembles as well as with the collaborative jazz trio Sticks and Stones, Black Rock Coalition founder Greg Tate’s Burnt Sugar, Reg E Gaines and Savion Glover’s homage project to the late John Coltrane, the Oliver Lake Big Band, and the Julius Hemphill Sextet and Merce Cunningham dance. She recently released a homage project to her hometown entitled The Chicago Project, on Barry Adamson’s Central Control International, produced by pianist extraordinaire Vijay Iyer, featuring friends and supporters of her Chicago development. She has also recorded as a side person on recordings with such iconic bands as Godspeed You Black Emperor, TV on the Radio, Guillermo Scott Herren’s Savath and Savalas, Silver Mt Zion, and sound artist Daniel Given’s Day Clear/Day dark. Matana is a member of the AACM– Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the BRC– Black Rock Coalition.
To learn more about Matana’s vision for her residency, read her interview “In conversation with Matana Roberts, ISSUE’s Current Artist-In-Residence” with David Martinson or visit www.matanaroberts.com
ISSUE’s AIR program made possible, in part, through the generous support of the Jerome Foundation.
Artist In Residence: Ha Yang Kim
Cellist, composer and improviser Ha-Yang Kim was born in Seoul, Korea. Ha-Yang made her professional solo debut at age 16 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Hailed as “phenomenal” and playing with “brilliant technique full of energy, concentration, musicality and expression” (Mainpost, Germany), she performs new music as a soloist and with ensembles and artists in festivals and concert venues throughout the world. She is the founder of Odd Appetite, a cello-percussion duo which performs and commissions new contemporary works alongside original works and improvisations. Ms. Kim has developed a unique language of extended string techniques and has created her own music based on this work, as well as collaborating on new pieces from other composers. Her musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, jazz, and improvised music, to non-western musical sources from Bali, Korea and South Indian classical music (Karnatic). Her music has been performed in the US, Turkey, The Netherlands, Belgium, Korea, and Germany. In seeking new musical experiences, Ha-Yang has performed traditional and new Balinese music as a member of Gamelan Galak Tika, and has collaborated/ performed with many diverse musicians such as Evan Ziporyn, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Christian Wolff, Lee Hyla, Louis Andriessen, Lukas Ligeti, Larry Polansky, and Stefan Poetzsch, with whom she has presented original compositions incorporating electronics, dance, theatre, and multi-media.
Past performances include as soloist at Carnegie Hall, touring and playing at festivals in the US, Europe, Cuba and Bali, Indonesia, performing at the Bang on a Can Marathon with both her duo and the All-Stars, composing for and performing at the Kwacheon International Theatre Festival in Seoul, Korea, a solo recital at the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg, Germany, and broadcast recordings for the Bavarian Radio Network. Upcoming performances of her music include at festivals in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia, Holland, Belgium and in the US. Ama, a CD of her own compositions, is released on Tzadik. Ms. Kim has also recorded for New World, Cold Blue, New Albion, Karnatic Lab and Bridge Records.
She has received prizes and awards including a grant from Meet the Composer, Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Argosy Foundation, the Ruth Schwob Foundation, and The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Kim has been an artist-in-residence at Princeton University, Brown University, Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Bates College, Brandeis University and at the Walden School for Young Composers. Ha-Yang studied cello, improvisation, and microtonality at the New England Conservatory of Music, Karnatic music concepts at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, and was on the faculty at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, USA. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
ISSUE Project Room’s Artist In Residence Program is made possible through generous support from the Jerome Foundation
Ha Yang Kim
Artist In Residence: Ha-Yang Kim
Admission: $15
Cellist, composer and improviser Ha-Yang Kim was born in Seoul, Korea. Ha-Yang made her professional solo debut at age 16 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Hailed as “phenomenal” and playing with “brilliant technique full of energy, concentration, musicality and expression” (Mainpost, Germany), she performs new music as a soloist and with ensembles and artists in festivals and concert venues throughout the world. She is the founder of Odd Appetite, a cello-percussion duo which performs and commissions new contemporary works alongside original works and improvisations. Ms. Kim has developed a unique language of extended string techniques and has created her own music based on this work, as well as collaborating on new pieces from other composers. Her musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, jazz, and improvised music, to non-western musical sources from Bali, Korea and South Indian classical music (Karnatic). Her music has been performed in the US, Turkey, The Netherlands, Belgium, Korea, and Germany. In seeking new musical experiences, Ha-Yang has performed traditional and new Balinese music as a member of Gamelan Galak Tika, and has collaborated/ performed with many diverse musicians such as Evan Ziporyn, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Christian Wolff, Lee Hyla, Louis Andriessen, Lukas Ligeti, Larry Polansky, and Stefan Poetzsch, with whom she has presented original compositions incorporating electronics, dance, theatre, and multi-media.
Past performances include as soloist at Carnegie Hall, touring and playing at festivals in the US, Europe, Cuba and Bali, Indonesia, performing at the Bang on a Can Marathon with both her duo and the All-Stars, composing for and performing at the Kwacheon International Theatre Festival in Seoul, Korea, a solo recital at the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg, Germany, and broadcast recordings for the Bavarian Radio Network. Upcoming performances of her music include at festivals in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia, Holland, Belgium and in the US. Ama, a CD of her own compositions, is released on Tzadik. Ms. Kim has also recorded for New World, Cold Blue, New Albion, Karnatic Lab and Bridge Records.
She has received prizes and awards including a grant from Meet the Composer, Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Argosy Foundation, the Ruth Schwob Foundation, and The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Kim has been an artist-in-residence at Princeton University, Brown University, Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Bates College, Brandeis University and at the Walden School for Young Composers. Ha-Yang studied cello, improvisation, and microtonality at the New England Conservatory of Music, Karnatic music concepts at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, and was on the faculty at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, USA. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
ISSUE Project Room’s Artist In Residence Program is made possible through generous support from the Jerome Foundation
MV Carbon + Okkyung Lee
MV Carbon is a Brooklyn based sound artist and composer. She collects field recordings and builds samples to create moody soundscapes. Her cello is manipulated and processed through reel-to-reel tape machines and numerous electronic devices, including an accelerometer on the cello bow programmed to effect pitch. Her orchestrations are designed to form visualizations as the woven sounds swell, stutter, contort and resolve. She is interested in discovering the place in music that flutters between the serene and the overwhelming. Carbon has collaborated sonically with many artists including Aki Onda , Evan Parker, John Wiese, Tony Conrad, and C. Spencer Yeh. She has releases out with Metalux and Bride of No No on labels (5RC, Atavistic, Hanson, Load, Nihilist, No Fun, Troubleman Unlimited, Veglia…). Her first solo LP, The Dislodged Perihelion, is to be released on Ecstatic Peace this fall.
Her performance at Issue Project Room in July will use the multi –speaker system to portray concepts of time passage in moments of stillness. She is gathering field recordings in open-air industrial and urban environments and shaping these sounds into percussive form. Her instruments for this performance will be the cello, samplers, tape machines, and oscillators.
Artist In Residence: Ha-Yang Kim
Cellist, composer and improviser Ha-Yang Kim was born in Seoul, Korea. Ha-Yang made her professional solo debut at age 16 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Hailed as “phenomenal” and playing with “brilliant technique full of energy, concentration, musicality and expression” (Mainpost, Germany), she performs new music as a soloist and with ensembles and artists in festivals and concert venues throughout the world. She is the founder of Odd Appetite, a cello-percussion duo which performs and commissions new contemporary works alongside original works and improvisations. Ms. Kim has developed a unique language of extended string techniques and has created her own music based on this work, as well as collaborating on new pieces from other composers. Her musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, jazz, and improvised music, to non-western musical sources from Bali, Korea and South Indian classical music (Karnatic). Her music has been performed in the US, Turkey, The Netherlands, Belgium, Korea, and Germany. In seeking new musical experiences, Ha-Yang has performed traditional and new Balinese music as a member of Gamelan Galak Tika, and has collaborated/ performed with many diverse musicians such as Evan Ziporyn, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Christian Wolff, Lee Hyla, Louis Andriessen, Lukas Ligeti, Larry Polansky, and Stefan Poetzsch, with whom she has presented original compositions incorporating electronics, dance, theatre, and multi-media.
Past performances include as soloist at Carnegie Hall, touring and playing at festivals in the US, Europe, Cuba and Bali, Indonesia, performing at the Bang on a Can Marathon with both her duo and the All-Stars, composing for and performing at the Kwacheon International Theatre Festival in Seoul, Korea, a solo recital at the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg, Germany, and broadcast recordings for the Bavarian Radio Network. Upcoming performances of her music include at festivals in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia, Holland, Belgium and in the US. Ama, a CD of her own compositions, is released on Tzadik. Ms. Kim has also recorded for New World, Cold Blue, New Albion, Karnatic Lab and Bridge Records.
She has received prizes and awards including a grant from Meet the Composer, Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Argosy Foundation, the Ruth Schwob Foundation, and The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Kim has been an artist-in-residence at Princeton University, Brown University, Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Bates College, Brandeis University and at the Walden School for Young Composers. Ha-Yang studied cello, improvisation, and microtonality at the New England Conservatory of Music, Karnatic music concepts at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, and was on the faculty at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, USA. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
ISSUE Project Room’s Artist In Residence Program is made possible through generous support from the Jerome Foundation
Francesco Dillon & Emanuele Torquati
“Simple Space”
New Music for cello and piano
Emanuele Torquati, piano
Francesco Dillon, cello
Program
G. Scelsi: To the Master for cello and piano
M. Van der Aa: Oog for cello solo and electronics
S. Sciarrino: Melancolia 1 for cello and piano
M. Srnka: Simple Space
J. Harvey: Tombeau de Messiaen for piano and DAT
Silvestrov: Postludium 3 for cello and piano
Cellist Francesco Dillon was born in Torino in 1973.He graduated with the maximum of degrees at the Conservatorio “L.Cherubini” in Firenze under the inspirational guidance of Andrea Nannoni. Other very influential teachers where David Geringas, Mario Brunello and Amedeo Baldovino and for the composition studies Salvatore Sciarrino. Beside his solo activity (with Orchestra nazionale della RAI, Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana,Orchestra Haydn among the others) he’s very active as cellist of the Quartetto Prometeo (wich tours regularly in Europe, Japan and South America). His deep interest in contemporary music led him to collaborate closely and regularly with some of the most important composers of today such as Gavin Bryars,Philip Glass,Vinko Globokar,Jonathan Harvey,Toshio Hosokawa,Giya Kancheli,David Lang,Henri Pousseur,Kaja Saariaho,Salvatore Sciarrino and with well renowned electronic musicians such as Matmos,Pansonic,Scanner,Midaircondo.
As a member of the internationally acclaimed group AlterEgo he has performed in all the major contemporary music festivals (Stockholm New Music, MaerzMusik, Festival Archipel, Ircam, Romaeuropa Festival, Ultima Festival Oslo, Wien Modern, Gaida Festival, Huddersfield Festival, Nous Sons Barcellona, Taktlos Berna, Musica Electronica Nova Wroclaw,Temporada Buenos Aires,Milano Musica,Biennale Venezia among others). He regularly plays chamber music with partners such as I.Arditti,G.Carmignola,M.Campanella,P.Farulli,V.Hagen,A.Lonquich,A.Lucchesini,E.Pace,R.Schmidt (Hagen string quartet),P.Vernikov. He won several competitions and with the quartet prizes at Pague spring (1st prize 1998), ARD Munich, Bordeaux. His performances were broadcasted by the German ARD, Saarländischer Rundfunk and Bayerische Rundfunk, the English BBC, Radio France, the Austrian ORF, Australian ABC and regularly for the Italian RAI Radio 3. He recorded for the labels Aulos,Dynamic,Ricordi,Stradivarius and Touch. His next releases will be the first world recordings of Variazioni for cello and orchestra by Salvatore Sciarrino and the Ballata by Giacinto Scelsi with the Italian National Radio Orchestra. He teaches at the Scuola di musica di Fiesole.
Ha Yang Kim
Cellist, composer and improviser Ha-Yang Kim was born in Seoul, Korea. Ha-Yang made her professional solo debut at age 16 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Hailed as “phenomenal” and playing with “brilliant technique full of energy, concentration, musicality and expression” (Mainpost, Germany), she performs new music as a soloist and with ensembles and artists in festivals and concert venues throughout the world. She is the founder of Odd Appetite, a cello-percussion duo which performs and commissions new contemporary works alongside original works and improvisations. Ms. Kim has developed a unique language of extended string techniques and has created her own music based on this work, as well as collaborating on new pieces from other composers. Her musical influences draw equally from a range of western classical music, American experimentalism, rock, jazz, and improvised music, to non-western musical sources from Bali, Korea and South Indian classical music (Karnatic). Her music has been performed in the US, Turkey, The Netherlands, Belgium, Korea, and Germany. In seeking new musical experiences, Ha-Yang has performed traditional and new Balinese music as a member of Gamelan Galak Tika, and has collaborated/ performed with many diverse musicians such as Evan Ziporyn, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Christian Wolff, Lee Hyla, Louis Andriessen, Lukas Ligeti, Larry Polansky, and Stefan Poetzsch, with whom she has presented original compositions incorporating electronics, dance, theatre, and multi-media.
Past performances include as soloist at Carnegie Hall, touring and playing at festivals in the US, Europe, Cuba and Bali, Indonesia, performing at the Bang on a Can Marathon with both her duo and the All-Stars, composing for and performing at the Kwacheon International Theatre Festival in Seoul, Korea, a solo recital at the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg, Germany, and broadcast recordings for the Bavarian Radio Network. Upcoming performances of her music include at festivals in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia, Holland, Belgium and in the US. Ama, a CD of her own compositions, is released on Tzadik. Ms. Kim has also recorded for New World, Cold Blue, New Albion, Karnatic Lab and Bridge Records.
She has received prizes and awards including a grant from Meet the Composer, Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Argosy Foundation, the Ruth Schwob Foundation, and The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Kim has been an artist-in-residence at Princeton University, Brown University, Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Bates College, Brandeis University and at the Walden School for Young Composers. Ha-Yang studied cello, improvisation, and microtonality at the New England Conservatory of Music, Karnatic music concepts at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, and was on the faculty at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire, USA. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Angie Eng, Okkyung Lee & Satoshi Takeishi
Live video artist, Angie Eng revives cinepoetry with miniature cameras, object manipulation and a light table with cellist Okkyung Lee and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi. A garden of digital improvisational delights, a cross between music for silent film, a surrealist appetizer and a magic act. Angie Eng- Live camera, video effects, object manipulaiton Angie Eng is a media artist who works in video, installation and time-based performance. In 1993 she moved to New York City and became involved in the downtown electronic arts scene with The Poool a live video performance group with Nancy Meli Walker and Benton Bainbridge in 1996-1999. She has collaborated with artists/musicians: Ron Anderson, Vincent Epplay, Yuko Fujiyama, Jon Giles, Andy Grayton, Jason Kao Hwang, Simon Hostettler, Jessica Higgins, Hoppy Kamiyama, Gabriel Latessa, Zach Layton, Jarryd Lowder, Thierry Madiot, Matthew Ostrowski, Jean Jacques Palix, Zeena Parkins, Ludovic Poulet, Liminal Projects, Kyoko Kitamura, David Linton, Geoff Matters, Ikue Mori, Karine Saporta, Jane Scarpantoni, Peter Scherer, Jim Staley, Yumiko Tanaka, Keiko Uenishi, Nancy Meli Walker , David Weinstein. Her work has been performed and exhibited at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, Lincoln Center Video Festival, The Kitchen, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, Experimental Intermedia, and Roulette. She has received numerous grants and commissions: New Museum of Radio and Performing Arts, Art In General, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation and Experimental TV Center. She recently relocated to Paris in 2008. Okkyung Lee. After being in music schools from age of 3 to 25, korean cellist/improviser/composer okkyung lee finally found her artistic freedom in new york’s lower east side where she moved in 2000. Her performances have been featured in festivals: Whitney biennial 2006, BAM Next Wave Festival, San Francisco Jazz Festival, Time Based Arts Festival, Kill Your Timid Notion Festival, International Festival Musique Actuelle Victoriaville, Sons d’Hiver Festival, Kontra.com Festival, Moers Festival, Taktlos Festival, La Biennale di Venezia and Saalfelden Jazz Festival 2008. She has performed and recorded with numerous artists such as Laurie Anderson, Lotte Anker, Derek Bailey, Kjell Bjørgeengen, Carla Bozulich, Nels Cline, Chris Corsano, Sylvie Courvoisier, Mark Dresser, Fred Frith, John Hollenbeck, Vijay Iyer, Lindha Kallerdahl, Andrew Lampert, Christian Marclay, Billy Martin, Miya Masaoka, Min Xiao-fen, Thurston Moore, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Larry Ochs, Jim O’rourke, Zeena Parkins, Marc Ribot, Wadada Leo Smith, Skuli Sverrisson, Spencer Yeah and John Zorn. Satoshi Takeishi, drummer, percussionist, and arranger is a native of Mito Japan. In Columbia, he combined traditional, jazz and classical music with composer Francisco Zumaque. 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. In NYC since 1991, he has collaborated with: 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. He continues to explore multi-cultural, electronics and improvisational music with local musicians and composers in New York. |
VERGE Ensemble
VERGE Ensemble
an evening of electronic/computer music
Another Face for solo violin & video David Felder
Lina Bahn, violin
come into – a cello & computer improvisation Steve Antosca & Ignacio Alcover
Ignacio Alcover, cello
Steve Antosca, computer
threnody for clarinet and audio Larry Austin
David Jones, clarinet
Video IX for piano, computer and video Frederick Weck
Jenny Lin, piano
reaLive2008 (Steve Antosca)
Ignacio Alcover, cello
Steve Antosca, computer
Lina Bahn, violin
David Jones, clarinet
Jenny Lin, piano
VERGE ensemble, formerly known as the The Contemporary Music Forum, has been presenting concerts of new music to Washington audiences for 35 years. Throughout its existence, the ensemble has pioneered the performance of works involving music and technology, and supported music by American women composers, Native American composers and the music of African-American composers.
The ensemble recently performed an all John Cage concert at the National Gallery of Art as part of the Gallery’s 62nd American Music Festival in conjunction with the Gallery’s exhibit Jasper Johns: An Allegory in Painting 1955 – 1965. In May 2007, the ensemble joined Ensemble Aleph at Theatre Dunois in Paris for the Festival de musique Americaine to present four concerts of American music.
For the 2007/2008 season, VERGE worked with the Embassy of France to create a unique, year-long collaboration between French and American musicians, promoting new American and French music. A consortium of venues in Washington participated in these events including The National Gallery of Art, La Maison Francaise, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Loyola College in Baltimore.
In November 2007, this collaboration produced a world premiere of Sanctuary, a work for percussion and computer by Roger Reynolds at the National Gallery of Art East Building and a concert of French violin and piano music at La Maison Francaise. The festival included a series of three concerts in Washington with VERGE and Ensemble Aleph in April 2008.
During the 2008/2009 season, VERGE promoted the 3-gen festival in Washington. The festival included special concerts throughout the Fall celebrating the centennial birthdays of Elliott Carter and Oliver Messiaen at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Gallery of Art, La Maison Francaise and the Library of Congress.
VERGE ensemble was in residence at Cleveland State University in October 2008 and will be in residence at June in Buffalo in 2009.
VERGE ensemble is the new music ensemble in residence at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Ai Ensemble + MIVOS Quartet
ai ensembl
Based in New York, the ai ensemble is a duo founded by clarinetist Alejandro Acierto and cellist Isabel Castellvi in Chicago 2007 to promote contemporary works for clarinet and cello. Alejandro and Isabel met while pursuing performance degrees at DePaul University and have worked together on several projects including performances with ensemble dal niente, TACTUS, Millennium Chamber Players, and Chicago Composers Forum. Since their conception, they have already had over a dozen works written for them by emerging young composers featured on programs that also included works by established composers such as Xenakis, Lim, Saariaho, and Ran. The 2007-2008 debut season featured 9 concerts in New York and Chicago in various venues, drawing a diverse crowds. This season will feature several premieres, collaborations, and touring. Currently Alejandro and Isabel are pursuing a Master’s Degree at Manhattan School of Music for Contemporary Music Performance.
Isabel Castellvi
Cellist Isabel Castellvi is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Contemporary Music Performance at Manhattan School of Music, studying with Fred Sherry. Isabel received her B.M. from DePaul University in 2006, where she studied with Katinka Kleijn and Steve Balderston. Previous teachers include Fred Zlotkin and Danny Morganstern. As a versatile musician she performs a broad range of music including contemporary classical, experimental, world, free-improvisation, electro-acoustic, ambient, hip-hop and rock. Collaborative creation is an integral part of her work, which has led to various projects with composers, dance, theater and visual art. Currently she is the cellist for the new music ensembles: ai ensemble, WetInk, ThingNY, dal niente, and TACTUS. She has premiered over 50 compositions. On going collaborations and recent touring include Copal, Love in the Mud; CelloVox; Stone Forest Ensemble; ai ensemble. Past ensembles and performances include The Raw and the Cooked, ICE, Oistrach Orchestra, Millennium Chamber Players, New Millenium Orchestra, Ensemble Akasha and the Accende Ensemble. She has also participated in the SLSQ Chamber Music Seminar at Stanford University, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Symphony Orchestra Academy of the Pacific in British Columbia, Las Vegas Music Festival and performed a recital and taught in Argentina. Isabel is dedicated to performing for diverse audiences, expanding consciousness and promoting peace.
Alejandro Acierto
Alejandro Acierto is a Chicago clarinetist, composer, and activist living, working, and organizing within the community. He has completed degrees in clarinet performance and composition studies with a minor in Asian American Studies at DePaul University. Currently pursuing a degree in Contemporary Performance at the Manhattan School of Music, he studies with David Krakauer and has worked with teachers John B. Yeh, Julie DeRoche and Wagner Campos in addition to composers Kurt Westerberg, Pat Morehead, and David Smooke. As a performer, Alejandro has performed with several ensembles such as the Millenium Chamber Players, Yes is a World, Chicago Composers Forum, the improvising trio Preclear, and is also a principal and founding member of dal niente and the ai ensemble. He has also performed in such festivals and series as Opera Cabal in Chicago, New Music Northwestern and the New Music Marathon at Northwestern University, and the Midwest Consortium of Graduate Composers. An active performer of new and contemporary classical music, Alejandro has given local premieres by prominent composers such as Giacinto Scelsi, Steve Reich, and Jason Eckart, as well as world premieres by Drew Baker, Kirsten Broberg, and Nicholas DeMaison. As a composer, Alejandro received a Union League Civic and Arts Award for Composition in 2003 and the Sidney and Mary Kleinman Prize in Composition in 2007 for his work ’strangers in our own land’. His current work focuses on using music as a means of social transformation and is committed to playing new works, particularly by historically marginalized people.
MIVOS Quartet
Olivia de Prato and Joshua Modney violins, Victor Lowrie, viola, and Isabel Castellvi, cello.
Jonathan Golove
(note….Chris McIntyre postponed due to weather related circumstances beyond our control)
jonathan golove
“Suite-ness Expanded”: Bach’s Suite No.1 in G major for cello is opened up to include works by contemporary composers from the USA, Mexico, and Italy.
Music of:
J.S. Bach
Jeffrey Stadelman
(World premier)
Andrew Rindfleisch
Luciano Berio
and Mexican composers
Mario Lavista and
Nicandro Tamez
Cellist/composer Jonathan Golove is a native of Los Angeles, California and a resident of Buffalo, New York, where he serves as Associate Professor in the University at Buffalo’s Department of Music. Mr. Golove’s career is marked by its versatility, sense of adventure, and commitment to the performance of both new and traditional works, as well as of improvised music. Mr. Golove has been featured as soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Slee Sinfonietta, New York Virtuoso Singers, and, as a baroque cellist, with the USC Early Music Ensemble. He has recorded for the Albany, CRI, ICMC, Sunken Gong, and Nine Winds labels, and his performances and interviews have been broadcast by public radio stations of Colorado, Buffalo, and Dayton, as well as the West German Radio and Radio France. His summer festival appearances include the Sebago-Long Lake and Roycroft Chamber Music Festivals, as well as numerous festivals devoted to new works, including June in Buffalo, the North American New Music Festival, the Aki Festival of New Music, and the Festival del Centro Histórico, Mexico City. A member of the critically acclaimed Baird Trio, Mr. Golove is a former member of the Elisha and June In Buffalo String Quartets, and has performed as a guest with the Cassatt Quartet and the Cleveland Octet.
Mr. Golove is also active as an electric cellist, particularly in the field of creative improvised music. He has performed and recorded with groups including the Michael Vlatkovich Quartet, Ubudis Trio, and Vinny Golia’s Large Ensemble, and made appearances at the Vancouver Jazz Festival, the Eddie Moore Jazz Festival (Oakland), and the International Meeting of Jazz Musicians (Monterrey, Mexico). He has also been honored to perform with such leading figures as Andrew Cyrille, Rashied Ali, Sonny Fortune, Ramón Lopez, and Andre Jaume. His collaborators in experimental electronic improvisation have included Cort Lippe, Barry Moon, and Misha Nogha.
Jonathan Golove’s original works have been performed in a variety of locations in the North America and Europe (USA, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Italy), by such ensembles as the Slee Sinfonietta, VOXNOVA, the Ensemble Court Circuit, the Bozzini String Quartet, the Amherst Saxophone Quartet, Maelstrom Percussion Ensemble, and The Instrumental Factor. Some of the important venues where his music has been heard are the Kennedy Center, Washington D.C., Venice Biennale, Festival of Aix-en-Provence, Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society II, the Kitchen, and the Sonic Circuits and June in Buffalo festivals. The 2004 season featured two world premieres of his chamber works at Carnegie (Weill) Hall. His opera (in progress) Red Harvest was commissioned by the European Academy of Music and received its premiere in Festival of Lyric Art of Aix-en-Provence in 1998. He has received commissions, awards and grants for his works from organizations including ASCAP, the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust for New Music, Meet the Composer, the Darius Milhaud Society, and the Hyde Foundation. His primary interests as a composer are the integration of music and text, the combination of electronic resources in the realm of acoustic music, and the exploration of human relationships within musical settings.
A WEEK OF STRINGS III
February 22, 2008
Alex Waterman, Kenta Nagai + todd reynolds, Satoshi Takeishi, Luke Dubois
Alex Waterman
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
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
A WEEK OF STRINGS II
February 21, 2008
ha-yang kim + dan joseph
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
Alvin Lucier- Indian Summer
James Tenney- Cellogram
Ha-yang Kim
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.
Dan Joseph
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
tony conrad + m.v. carbon
January 03, 2008
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.
mv carbon
8 pm $10
