Esther Venrooy + Pygmy Jerboa
Esther Venrooy (b. 1974, Rosmalen, The Netherlands) is a composer working in the field of audio art.Esther Venrooy has performed her music and presented her sound installations extensively in cities such as Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Madrid, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Washington DC, New York, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. She collaborated with visual artists Hans Demeulenaere and Lieve D’hondt, with architect Ema Bonifacic and with musicans Min Xiao-Fen (pipa), Wu Na (guqin) and Heleen Van Haegenborgh (piano). Apart from her artistic activities, Venrooy is a lecturer on 20th century music and experimental arts at the Ghent school of fine arts, where she also runs the Sound Lab.
pygmy jerboa (b. 2009, usa) is maria stankova (b. 1984, bulgaria) and iván naranjo (b. 1977, mexico) we perform with live electronics the voice gone inhuman homemade/junk instruments surfaces and supercollider our music often transverses composition and improvisation rules and anarchy we’ve hit bulgaria germany mexico the usa and we are currently based in brooklynUnsound New York @ Littlefield: CoH + Carlos Giffoni + Robert Piotrowicz & C. Spencer Yeh + Marcus Schmickler + Instant Coffee + Dawid Szczesny
Robert Piotrowicz, photo by Szymon Roginski
Unsound Festival has invited New York’s CARLOS GIFFONI – the man behind NO FUN PRODUCTIONS and the NO FUN FESTIVAL to co-curate an evening at Littlefield that explores the edges of electronic music with Russian CoH, experimental Polish artist ROBERT PIOTROWICZ in a duo with C SPENCER YEH, German MARCUS SCHMICKLER, Polish artist Dawid Szczesny, and experimental band INSTANT COFFEE featuring one half of the duo Matmos. Unsound Festival New York is presented by Fundacja Tone, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York and the Goethe-Institut New York.
MATA Interval 4.2: In One
Juraj Kojs curates a night where seven composers/performers will introduce their approach to extending, hybridizing and abstracting the principles of instrumental design in a multimodal musical performance. Spencer Topel will present a piece for violin and live electronics. Jorge Variego will perform a composition for clarinet and a joystick controller. Juraj Kojs will manipulate the Slovakian sheep bells with digitally modeled cyberbell structures, and the Zeta cello, novel K-Bow controller and narration will be the focal point for Sarah O’Halloran and Margaret Schedel. Chikashi Miyama’s hands will sculpt musical structures in the air over his non-haptic Peacock instrument, and Paula Matthusen will present a piece for live laptop ensemble.
More information is available on MATA’s blog.
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
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: MV Carbon & Brian Chase
ISSUE Project Room is pleased to present the third Artist-in-Residence performance by MV Carbon.
Part 1
MV Carbon and Brian Chase duo.
Part 2
MV Carbon solo set with sculptural instrument.
For the second half of the evening Carbon will perform a conceptual piece that explores the fluctuating facets of sentiment and nostalgia.
The Thirteenth Assembly + Pierre-Yves Macé presents Miniatures/Song Recycle
Forged from a shared history of collaborations ranging from intimate duos to Anthony Braxton’s sprawling Sonic Genome Project, The Thirteenth Assembly features four distinguished musician/composers working together as equals to create distinctively eclectic, yet cohesive music. Drawing on years of familiarity, as well as its members’ diverse backgrounds in genres ranging classical, folk,rock, jazz and the avant-garde, this collective ensemble has performed across the United States and Europe since 2007, and released its debut recording (un)sentimental (Important Records) in 2009.
“Cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, guitarist Mary Halvorson, violist Jessica Pavone and drummer Tomas Fujiwara are among the most exciting new jazz musicians to emerge on the New York scene,” declares the Wall Street Journal’s Martin Johnson, “and it is hard to talk about any one of these players without mentioning the others. Each of these musicians is a masterly soloist, and they all are creating music that is delicate, complex and eclectic. There isn’t much—if any—repertoire written for cornet-viola-guitar-drum ensembles, but with the appealing blend of unique sonorities and lithe rhythms found on (un)sentimental,that may soon change.”
Critics have credited the group with “truly remarkable capabilities”(Nick Storring, Exclaim!), “a knack for detailed and apropos framing of each others’ solo turns” (Bill Meyer, Dusted), and “an admirably relaxed sense of self, and a shared conviction to keep all options open” (Nate Chinen, New York Times). AllAboutJazz.com’s Troy Collins adds, “The unified ensemble sound of The Thirteenth Assembly is centered around empathetic communication and a willingness to subvert ego for the good of the group; there is no grandstanding here, only four longstanding friends conspiring to make adventurous yet accessible music. A stunning achievement,(un)sentimental demonstrates the endless possibilities of contemporary music by players at the top of their game.”
Pierre-Yves Macé (1980) is a French musician whose musical practice
encompasses improvisation on machines, a background in piano and classical percussion, jazz-rock/prog-rock bands, dance accompaniments, and an interest in literature and musicology. He received his PhD in Musicology in 2009, which explored phonography and the “sound document” in contemporary music. His first recordings, Faux-Jumeaux, was released on John Zorn’s Tzadik label in 2002. Subsequently, he released Circulations (Sub Rosa, 2005), and Crash_test ii (Tensional integrity) (Orkhêstra, 2006) for a string quartet. He has held residencies at CalArts in Los Angeles, CNMAT in Berkeley (2004), and GRM in Paris (2006, 2008). Macé has performed in the Octobre Festival in Normandie, MIMI, Villette Sonnique, Brocoli Transnumériques. His artistic collaborations include projects with ON (Sylvain Chauveau & Steven Hess), That Summer, Louisville, artist Hippolyte Hentgen, and writers Mathieu Larnaudie, Philippe Vasset, and Christophe Fiat. He is also a member of the Encyclopédie de la parole, a speech encyclopaedia crew whose goal is to constitute a compositional plan through which different forms of recorded speeches may be compared.
Miniatures / song recycle (2010) for piano and tape (including 12 anonymous found voices):
“I began working on this miniature project when I was asked to perform something for piano and laptop. My first concern was to avoid the typical ambient stuff which melts piano and electronics into long and extended movements. As a limited pianist, I also decided to use the instrument more as an accompaniement to something else (a lead part) than as a soloist in itself. All those thoughts lead me to work on a collection of very small pieces which rigorously alternate between “music concrète” miniatures, and songs made of recycled material. The processed voices we hear on those songs come from anonymous a cappella recordings found on the web (and to a lesser extend on films) ; reversed and cut into small fragments, they constitute a completely new musical material which is then accompanied by the piano. Set up that way, the collection of « songs » unexpectedly evoke a traditional lied form, a song cycle made of recycled raw material.”
Trophies
Composer and sound artist Alessandro Bosetti is joined by Kenta Nagai, and Ches Smith for Trophies. Focusing on mantra loops of spoken/sung abstract and highly emotional poetry, Bosetti has created a powerful trance band where voice and electronic sound melt with the hallucinatory fretless e-guitar playing of Kenta Nagai (Miya Masaoka, Eugene Chadbourne), and the patiently groovy and virtuoso pulses of Tony Buck (The Necks). Trophies uses lengthy, repetitive and highly dynamic text-sound forms in a unique and genre defying way.
Alessandro Bosetti
Metalux + Aki Onda/MV Carbon duo (ARTIST IN RESIDENCE)
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.
Oval (First Set)
Oval, also known as Markus Popp, is an electronic musician from Berlin, Germany. He is a pioneer of “glitch,” a genre of music that embraces the purposeful mutilation of audio equipment to produce fragmented sounds in a rhythmic electronic style. Originally a trio, Oval also included members Sebastian Oschatz and Frank Metzer until Popp decided to pursue solo projects in 1995. Since then, he has released various CDs, most notably Ovalprocess (Thrill Jockey, 2000), Ovalcommers (Thrill Jockey, 2001), and his most recent debut, Oh (Thrill Jockey, 2010). Oval’s music has been featured alongside Björk, Gastr Del Sol, and Japanese singer Eriko Toyada, with whom he performed in a trio entitled So.
Oval – Ah! from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.
Bram Stadhouders+ Audrey Chen, Nate Wooley, Gill Arno trio + Kenta Nagai
BRAM STADHOUDERS (NL)
Bram Stadhouders (b. 1987) is a freak/free ambient jazz guitarist and composer from Tilburg, The Netherlands, currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. Playing the guitar from age 6, he won several classical guitar competitions during his childhood years and got the chance to play with his rock and jazz groups on major Dutch festivals. His own talent, both in playing the guitar as in improvising music was recognised in 2008 when he was elected the most promising improvisation talent of The Netherlands, a very prestigious price for up and coming musicians. His music is very atmospheric, meandering in between free jazz, ambient and classical composed music. (http://www.myspace.com/bramstadhouders)
Audrey Chen/ Nate Wooley/ Gill Arno Trio
Audrey Chen
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. www.myspace.com/audreychen
SOLO sound on myspace and: http://download.yousendit.com/FC35C831016A0A28
Gill Arno
Gill Arno was born in Italy and lives in Brooklyn, NY. His work explores areas where sound and image overlap, and is often constructed with found objects and found sound. In the project /mpld/ he utilizes two old modified slide projectors to create performances where static images become pulsating and fade continuously into one another. The projector’s mechanical sounds are tapped and manipulated to reveal their musical potential. Other activities include performances with the New York Phonographers and in various other collaborative and improvised settings. He publishes books, recordings and other multiples via his own imprint, Unframed Recordings, and runs Fotofono, a small studio in Brooklyn where sometimes public events are held.
www.m-i-c-r-o.net/mpld
www.unframedrecordings.net
www.fotofono.net
Nate Wooley
Nate Wooley (b. 1974) grew up in a Finnish-American fishing village in Oregon. He has spent the rest of his life trying musically to find a way back to the peace and quiet of that time by whole-heartedly embracing the space between complete absorption in sound and relative absence of the same. He began playing trumpet professionally at age 13 with his father, and after studying he moved to Colorado where he studied more with Ron Miles, Art Lande, Fred Hess, and improvisation master Jack Wright. His tenure with Jack began to break Nate out of self-imposed molds and into the sound world that he has embraced as his own.
Nate currently resides in Jersey City, NJ and performs solo trumpet improvisations as well as collaborating with such diverse artists as Anthony Braxton, Paul Lytton, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Marilyn Crispell, Joe Morris, Steve Beresford, Akron/Family, David Grubbs, C. Spencer Yeh, Daniel Levin, Stephen Gauci, Harris Eisenstadt, Taylor Ho Bynum and Peter Evans.
Kenta Nagai
Kenta Nagai crafts sound and vision from his base in NYC and Princeton, NJ. His fretless guitar playing is featured on Eugene Chadbourne’s “Guitar Festival Summer 1999”. On shamisen, a traditional Japanese string instrument, Nagai has performed widely including the Sculpture Center in Long Island City and Carnegie Hall. From 1999 until 2002 he was a composer in residence at The Cave Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Emil de Wall & Erik Sanko, andy green, bruce tovsky, CHIKA and kato hideki + Mikkel Hess
Play- and joyful freeform acoustic/electronic music by dane Emil de Waal and the great artists of the evening.
Accompanying artists will make improvised music interplaying with Emil and his prerecorded material, a.o. adding improvisations and backing to the preliminary (live) recordings from his laptop.
Emil de Waal on drums, percussion, electronics and laptop is one of the most heavily engaged drummers in Danish music, and has toured internationally and appeared on 150 releases since his debut in 1986. Emil de Waal is also known as a band-leader, programmer, composer and arranger. Since 2004, Emil de Waal+ has released two albums with his “Emil de Waal+” project that have been appraised by reviewers a.o. in British “The Wire”. Emil de Waal+ has toured in China, US, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark with diverse guests such as Wayne Horvitz, Danny Frankel, Erik Sanko, Bruce Tovsky, Andy Green and Yan Jun.
Multi-instrumentalist Erik Sanko “Erik Sanko is the leading light in the much admired Skeleton Key and was an original member of John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards. He also helps out such luminaries as Yoko Ono and John Cale from time to time. ”
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Guitarist and technician Andy Green is known for his work with John Cale & The Velvet Underground, among others.
bruce tovsky is a visual/sound artist, who began painting at the age of 7 and started playing with tape recorders at the age of 10. Ever since then he has been figuring out ways of putting sound and pictures together. For the past several years he has been creating live video and sound improvisations, often in collaboration with artists such as John Hudak, David Linton, Kim Cascone and Michael Schumacher in a variety of spaces around New York City, such as Diapason, Experimental Intermedia, Issue Project Room, Tonic, and his own installation space 106BLDG30 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. His audio/video duo with video artist Shimpei Takeda has been appearing in planetariums, rural arts festivals and galleries around New York.
Kato Hideki (Kato:family name; Hideki: given) is a Japanese-born composer/bassist/multi-instrumentalist, who lives in NYC. He is the co-founder of Death Ambient with Ikue Mori & Fred Frith. His other groups as a leader are: Green Zone with Otomo Yoshihide & Uemura Masahiro; OMNI wtih Nakamura Toshimaru & Akiyama Tetsuji. His compositions include: solo bass piece Turbulent Zone, Mystic Ship of Life, (commissioned by the Kitchen, NYC) and Tremolo of Joy for his quartet with Charles Burnham, Briggan Krauss & Calvin Weston. Besides his own projects, Kato collaborates with Nicolas Collins and James Fei. He is also a member of analog synthesizer collective, Analogos. (http://www.katohideki.com/)
CHIKA
BIO
CHiKA is a live media artist working in the international VJ and experimental music scene. Her performances vary from minimalist geometric patterns to unique compositions overflowing with a variety of forms and color.
She has performed at THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, THE HAMMER MUSEUM, MUTEK, THE MAPPING FESTIVAL,DECIBEL FESTIVAL, Platform Bohenstrasses, THÉÂTRE MAISONNEUVE, ASIA CONTEMPORARY WEEK, SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE, REMIX HOTEL MIAMI, Eyebeam, Monkeytown, THE ISSUE PROJECT,GALAPAGOS ART SPACE, Tonic, EYEWASH as well as private parties, festivals, events, galleries and night clubs.
She is recently resident vj at monthly event at “THE FUTURE IS BEAUTIFUL” Her wrok was featured CLUB CHROMA onJOOST and EYEWASH 3 DVD by FORWARD MOTION THEATER AND IS SUPPORTED BY MODUL8, KORG,EXPERIMENTAL TELEVISION CENTER and FORWARD MOTION THEATER.
Mikkel Hess
“If you think of a piece of music as a rubberband – I like to try and stretch it. Let’s say melancholy in one end, and humor in the other, and
see how far you can take it. Bringing oppositions together. “ Welcome to the playfull world of New York based Mikkel Hess aka HESS IS MORE.
Originally from Denmark, HESS IS MORE is something like the Danish answer to both Jon Brion and The Flight of The Conchords. Like Brion, Hess is a
skillful singer, songwriter, composer with the virtuosic ability to play multiple instruments and a eclectic sense of instrumentation that
encompasses rock, Jazz and experimental electronica. And like Brion, Hess doesn’t let his natural tendencies for eclecticism sink his ship but uses
them to craft a distinct sound all his own firmly grounded in the art of proper song form. Unsurprisingly, also like Brion, Hess has got vast
experience in both multimedia and film work. In his native Denmark Hess is a well known name with MTV and itunes chart topping success alongside work with the likes of the Danish Royal Theatre, National Danish TV, the Danish Film Academy as well as collaborations with Danish celebrities like Saatchi Gallery represented modern artist Tal R and hyped fashion designer Henrik Vibskov. Like The Flight of The Conchords duo, Hess has a unique distinctly very poppy Steve Martin style sense of humor that is very appealing and inviting even though it’s often filtered through quite a dark almost Lars
von Trier outlook.
Unsurprisingly Mikkel’s first musical memory is banging the Cookie jars with wooden spoons in the kitchen around 3 or 4 years old. It’s something he
continued to do in a more refined manner getting his first drum kit at 7 years old and then later taking up conservatory training and becoming a
student of Denmark based Chicago born Jazz drummer Ed Thigpen.
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,...