Claire Chase + Rebekah Heller and Lee Hyla’s “We Speak Etruscan”
Claire Chase + Rebekah Heller
Perform works by Edgar Guzman, Marcelo Toledo, Evan Johnson, Edgard Varese, Zach Layton and Frank Zappa
Featuring special guest star: Ann Aldburger, Virtuoso Whistler!
Declared “dynamic” and “indefatigable” by Time Out New York, flutist Claire Chase is First Prize Winner of the 2008 Concert Artists Guild Competition. A passionate performer, leader and innovator who combines “extravagant technique, broad stylistic range and penetrating musicality” (The New York Times), she creatively links traditional, contemporary and experimental music with program choices that range from Bach and Brahms to Boulez, Saariaho, Zorn and beyond..
Rebekah Heller is a uniquely dynamic chamber, orchestral and solo musician. Equally comfortable playing established classical works and the newest of new music, Rebekah is a fiercely passionate advocate for the bassoon. Called an “impressive solo bassoonist” by The New Yorker, she is tirelessly committed to collaborating with composers to expand the modern repertoire for the instrument.
As a member of the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Rebekah has played at some of the world’s most prestigious music festivals, including the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Lincoln Center Festival, the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, and The Helsinki Musica Nova Festival. She has worked closely with world-renowned composers and conductors such as John Adams, Matthias Pintscher, Dai Fujikura, Ludovic Morlot, Kaija Saariaho and many more.
Josh Sinton and Ken Thomson will open thet evening with Lee Hyla’s, “We Speak Etruscan” for baritone saxophone and bass clarinet
The Darmstadt Institute is made possible, in part, through generous support from the Dedalus Foundation and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council
Alvin Lucier’s Queen of the South performed by loadbang and Pygmy Jerboa + On Structure
In Alvin Lucier’s Queen of the South, performed here by the ensembles loadbang and Pygmy Jerboa, a metal plate is put into motion by amplified voices, such that sand on the plate forms into beautiful designs. Tom Johnson wrote, “[Lucier’s] own strongest association is with alchemy and that The Queen of the South is an alchemical term…He was attracted to the idea because of an appreciation for basic substances and for the mystery of how they interact with one another.”On Structure is a sound-centric performance duo featuring Jessie Marino and Natacha Diels. The
New York based ensemble uses improvised and composed
Sounds {and the fluctuation of these sounds} to brew
Transferable art pieces which may
Ravage the realms of the performer, audience or space itself.
Uncovering the hidden motions of sound, freeing
Compositions from the fluorescence of the concert expectation.
Topsy-turvy.
Use of lasers, wigs, electronics, cellosandflutes;
Repurposing life experiences for music glitches and muscle twitches.
Eclipse boundaries of the stage.
(more…)
Suzanne Thorpe + Zeena Parkins
Extreme Terrains by Suzanne Thorpe
Extreme Terrains is a multi-channel work that present’s its audience with opportunities to listen to instinct and interact with the piece on a visceral level, asking listeners to trust what they feel as much as what they hear.
Featuring
Alex Chechile on Higher Ground (Oscillators)
http://alexchechile.com/
The body and the brain produce measurable information during the act of musical creation. Chechile uses this information is one part of a significantly connected recursive relationship between the musician and the music.
Joro Boro on the Horizon (Balkan Beats)
http://www.joro-boro.org/about.htm
He plays and promotes Etnoteck (or EthnoMesh1) – the dirty and uninhibited side of globalization force-fed back into a party without borders, a three-day Gypsy wedding in a post-national state where noise, libido and extasy detonate the market mono-culture.
Jawwaad Taylor on the Midway (Trumpet/Words)
He combines his freestyle rapping skills with the sensibilities of Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton. A free-improvising trumpet player, Jawwaad has worked for several years to craft creative music that kept the authenticity of its sources and maintained the spontaneity of free improvisation.
Suzanne Thorpe on Low Valleys (Flute/Electronics)
www.suzannethorpe.com
Suzanne Thorpe is a musician, composer, educator and arts-activist who strives for instances of intimacy and understanding through a network of sonic signals. As an electro-acoustic flutist and sound artist, Thorpe works within the peripheral consciousness, exposing coexisting perspectives and concurrent realities via composition, performance and installation. Thorpe performs both acoustically and electronically, extending her instrument with an ever-evolving set-up of analogue and real-time software components. She plays on the tightrope of feedback systems and composes for multi-channel installations.
Ann Adachi + Marie Evelyn + Nick Lesley + Todd Merrill
Ann Adachi is a flutist, pianist and multi-media performer, working with sound, the moving image, and performance. Compositions involve through-composed music for one or more acoustic instruments, and in some pieces, interaction with video and light as sculptural and environmental element. Ann is a member of the Eidolon Ensemble which performs original compositions monthly in New York. Education includes Berklee College of Music (B.M.), and Massachusetts College of Art (course work).
Marie Evelyn is an extended vocalist and interdisciplinary artist. She works with amplified and unamplified extended voice rooted in mimicry and reenactment. She is the founder of Analogous, for which she directs several sound-based projects. Her work has been reviewed in The Wire, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. Marie holds a B.A. in Mathematics and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University.
Nick Lesley is a musician and video artist. He primarily plays improvised drums and interactive electronics (analog or laptop). His drumming style is in the realm of “free-improvisation” but infused with the distinct hardcore-punk he grew up with in San Diego. On any instrument, he focuses on allowing space and creating energy and drama in an improvised performance. Nick holds an MFA in Performance and Interactive Media Arts from Brooklyn College, and a BA in Media Arts from U.C. San Diego.
Todd Merrill
From a young age, Todd Merrell has been fascinated with the continuum connecting melody, harmony, timbre, tempo and dynamic. These ambiguities form the nexus of his work.
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1967, he spent his early years in isolated, remote areas of New England and New Mexico, and found deeply human connections through radio transmissions, and inspiration from music synthesis. In 1978 he discovered the imperceptible environment of electromagnetic radiation that shortwave radio and processing can capture, and transform into an immersive, musical environment. In 1991 he began exploring the musical possibilities of this world in a collaboration with Patrick Jordan. The result was ‘SWR’, a two movement work that was performed several times in Chicago, and on WBEZ National Public Radio. Composer Lou Mallozzi, of the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, wrote in P-Form Magazine:
“It soon becomes clear that the focus of the work is not on acheiving any particular musical moment, but on the ephemerality of sonic transformation itself. Unlike compositions that utilize radio in part for its referential or signifying qualities, SWR is more in the minimalist tradition of relying on the primacy of the material itself. The work is a celebration of the radio as material and of the belief that minutiae and limited systems can yield rich results. But it is also a celebration of the rich, ragged, unstable thickness of analog sound in a world anesthetized by the crisp and clean precision of digital audio.”
He has since developed these techniques, incorporating the melody, harmony and timbre blurring possibilities of granular synthesis and other contemporary electronic compositional methods, to create a larger, more sonically, visually and emotionally evocative world, with an emphasis on live performance, and the thrilling contingency and danger that such site- and time- specifically dependent work produces. Along with several current solo projects, he continues to work with like-minded musicians and sound artists, and completed a project with Aidan Baker, who joined him in 2004 on a mini-tour of the Northeastern United States.
Todd Merrell studied music composition and voice at Berklee College of Music, and with James Sellars of The Hartt School. A 2008 New Boston Fund Individual Artist Fellowship recipient, AIRtime resident artist and transmission artist at free103point9, his work has been performed by many ensembles, including Chicago A Capella, Jan Williams Percussion Ensemble and The New York Festival of Song. He has contributed live and recorded work to festivals and exhibitions throughout the world, from MACBA (Barcelona) to The New Museum (New York), and Orange 94.0 (Vienna) to The New American Art Union (Portland, Oregon, USA). His work has been reviewed in The Wire, Signal To Noise, and The New Art Examiner, and he has been interviewed for Monitoring Times, as well as WBEZ and WFMT in Chicago, East Village Radio in New York, and WWUH in Hartford. He has performed at many venues, including The Guggenheim Museum, The Stone, Issue Project Room, Knitting Factory, and HotHouse, collaborated with BT, Aidan Baker, and bassist Robert Black, and recorded for the Whirlybird, Dreamland, Archive, Mode and Mille Plateaux labels. He makes his home in Connecticut, New York, and the rest of the world.
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,...