Man Forever + Elliott Sharp, Frank Vigroux, Zeena Parkins and Hélène Breschand
Elliott Sharp is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer and central figure in the avant-garde music scene in New York City for over thirty years. He leads the projects Carbon and Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction. His collaborators have included Ensemble Modern; Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Radio-Symphony of Frankfurt; pop singer Debbie Harry, computer artist Perry Hoberman; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; jazz greats Jack deJohnette, Sonny Sharrock, Oliver Lake, and Billy Hart; turntable innovator Christian Marclay; and Bachir Attar, leader of the Master Musicians Of Jahjouka from Morocco. Sharp’s work was featured in the 2008 New Music Stockholm festival with the premiere of “Sidebands” and at the Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale in May 2007 with the premiere of his orchestral work “On Corlear’s Hook”. He is now woorking on a commissioned opera for the Bavarian Opera in Munich. The documentary film about Sharp’s work by Bert Shapiro, “Doing The Don’t”, has just been released on DVD and screened at international film festivals
Franck Vigroux works in the fields of electronic music, new media, composition and improvisation. He leads many bands and projects such as Push the triangle, Supersonic Riverside Blues. He has played or recorded with musicians such as Bruno Chevillon, Elliott Sharp, Marc Ducret, Ben Miller, Helene Breschand, Joey Baron, Michel Blanc, Stephane Payen,Andrea Parkins, Matthew Bourne, Edward Perraud, writer Kenji Siratori, video artists Scorpene Horrible, Philippe Fontes, Mariano Equizzi. In 2009 he won the prize Villa Medicis Hors les Murs for an artist residency in New York. Franck Vigroux is also the founder of d’Autres Cordes a record label dedicated to aventurous music. He has played in hundreds of festivals and clubs in Europe and Asia, as a guitarist or turntablist and conducted improvisers orchestras worldwide ( Nagoya, Barcelona, Leeds,etc…), he has been commissioned by Ars Nova ensemble instrumental and Radio France . He also presents audiovisual installations such as Recolte and O. Recent works for theater “septembres” by philippe malone, music for films “the nishiazabu affair” by mariano equizzi, “dust” 30mn, directed by franck vigroux in 2007, “recolte” video suite, 2009, by franck vigroux
Zeena Parkins Multi-instrumentalist, composer, improvisor, well-known as a pioneer of the electric harp she describes her harp as a “sound machine of limitless capacity”. Zeena’s unique vision is one that seeks to both meld and highlight opposites. She has broken musical boundaries to create a highly personal and stunning body of work. Or, to quote the WDC Period “Music that makes you hike up your britches and howl like a coyote”.
Made possible with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, FAJE, Chamber Music of America, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Florence Gould Foundation, SACEM, and CulturesFrance.
MAN FOREVER is the solo endeavor of ONEIDA drummer Kid Millions. The self-titled debut–two monolithic, hypnotic improvisations for arrays of drums in just intonation– is due out in an edition of 300 LPs featuring hand-pulled screens on recycled record jackets from Jagjaguwar vinyl imprint St. Ives. The touring quintet of Kid Millions, YEAH YEAH YEAHS drummer Brian Chase, Oneida cohort and KNYFE HYTS drummer Shahin Motia, drummer Allison Busch of AWESOME COLOR, and SIGHTINGS bassist Richard Hoffman, will be augmented by local percussionists in each city.
“Kid Millions, who, as drummer, is unsurpassed in his generation, finds an opportunity with slippery polyrhythmical approaches here, as if to say that the human drummer is the thing that is most controversial in the age of the click track, so there’s no pulse, no melodic home, no melody at all, really, just the thunderous ebbing and flowing of multiple rolls and fills, to replace the massaged rhythmic pulse of the Pro Tools era. It’s a provocation, yes, and a welcome one. And with the provocation comes a fair amount of dizzy joy, and a ritualized release of dammed-up energy.” – Rick Moody, therumpus.net
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/arts/music/23drummer.html
With accompanying live 16mm film performance by Mighty Robot AV Squad!!!
Duane Pitre + Tristan Perich
ISSUE Project Room’s Artist In Residence: Duane Pitre *
Admission: $10
Duane Pitre (originally from New Orleans) is a Brooklyn-based, avant-garde composer and performer. His current works explore both chaos and discipline—and the relationship that exists between the two. Pitre primarily works with long-tones and utilizes alternate tuning schemes that focus on microtonally, enabling him to explore unaccustomed harmonic intervallic relationships.
Composing primarily for acoustic and electro-acoustic instrumentation, Pitre has scored works for large String/Wind Ensembles, String Quintet, his own Bowed Harmonic-Guitar Ensemble, solo performers, among other instrument configurations. In 2008 Pitre started exploring simple electronic sounds and their role in a dualistic relationship with acoustic instruments, as well as utilizing them in his recent “tape” pieces.
Pitre has releases on Important Records, Trome Records, NNA, and Quiet Design, among others. He has appeared on compilations with artists such as Keith Rowe (AMM), Sir Richard Bishop, Tetuzi Akiyama, Jandek, Sebastien Roux, and Thierry Muller/Ilitch. He recently curated and contributed a track to an upcoming Just Intonation compilation (Important Records), alongside Pauline Oliveros, Ellen Fullman, Michael Harrison, Greg Davis, Charles Curtis, and others.
Pitre has presented his works in NYC at such spaces as Roulette, The Stone, Phillips de Pury & Co., St. Marks Church, The Knitting Factory, and ISSUE Project Room (where he will be Artist in Resident for spring 2009). He has also performed in other cities across the U.S., as well as in Europe at Les Voûtes (Paris), St. Giles-in-the-Fields Church (London), and in Bristol, U.K.
In 2009, Pitre is planning more performances (national and abroad), a variety of releases, recording sessions, new works, and further exploration of electronic sound material.
Tristan Perich
In all of his creative activities, Perich is inspired by the aesthetics of math and physics, and works with simple forms and complex systems. The challenge of elegance provokes his compositions for solo instruments, small ensemble and orchestra. As a visual artist, he works primarily with machines to create pen-on-paper drawings that explore the limits of traditional drawing through randomness and order.
In 2004 he began work on 1-Bit Music, combining his music with primitive, hand-programmed electronics that investigate the foundations of digital sound. The Village Voice, BOMB Magazine, BPM Magazine, Res Magazine, Wired News, Cool Hunting and Spin Magazine covered the release, which has also been featured on television. Surface Magazine called the boxes “profound throwbacks to the traditional album, a response to the intangibility of iTunes and mp3s in the form hand-held artwork.”
Perich’s compositions have been performed by ensembles including Bang on a Can (2008 People’s Commissioning Fund),counter)induction, Calder Quartet, New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Due East, Y Trio and Ensemble Pamplemousse at venues including the Whitney Museum, P.S.1 and Mass MoCA. His recent activities include electroacoustic pieces for 1-Bit Musicwith instrumental accompaniment. His experimental electronic music group, the Loud Objects, has performed in Germany, Japan, Italy (Screen Music 2), Norway (Piksel), England (Evolution) and the USA (including at the NIME festival). He has spoken twice at Dorkbot. Perich studied math, music and computer science at Columbia University after attending Philips Academy, Andover. More recently, he studied art, music and electronics at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU.
Duane Pitre with special guest Tony Conrad
ISSUE Project Room’s Artist In Residence: Duane Pitre *
Admission: $10
Duane Pitre (originally from New Orleans) is a Brooklyn-based, avant-garde composer and performer. His current works explore both chaos and discipline—and the relationship that exists between the two. Pitre primarily works with long-tones and utilizes alternate tuning schemes that focus on microtonally, enabling him to explore unaccustomed harmonic intervallic relationships.
Composing primarily for acoustic and electro-acoustic instrumentation, Pitre has scored works for large String/Wind Ensembles, String Quintet, his own Bowed Harmonic-Guitar Ensemble, solo performers, among other instrument configurations. In 2008 Pitre started exploring simple electronic sounds and their role in a dualistic relationship with acoustic instruments, as well as utilizing them in his recent “tape” pieces.
Pitre has releases on Important Records, Trome Records, NNA, and Quiet Design, among others. He has appeared on compilations with artists such as Keith Rowe (AMM), Sir Richard Bishop, Tetuzi Akiyama, Jandek, Sebastien Roux, and Thierry Muller/Ilitch. He recently curated and contributed a track to an upcoming Just Intonation compilation (Important Records), alongside Pauline Oliveros, Ellen Fullman, Michael Harrison, Greg Davis, Charles Curtis, and others.
Pitre has presented his works in NYC at such spaces as Roulette, The Stone, Phillips de Pury & Co., St. Marks Church, The Knitting Factory, and ISSUE Project Room (where he will be Artist in Resident for spring 2009). He has also performed in other cities across the U.S., as well as in Europe at Les Voûtes (Paris), St. Giles-in-the-Fields Church (London), and in Bristol, U.K.
In 2009, Pitre is planning more performances (national and abroad), a variety of releases, recording sessions, new works, and further exploration of electronic sound material.
Tony Conrad (b. 1940) teaches on the media study faculty of SUNY at Buffalo. Over the last twenty years he has been especially active in video. His work with music composition and performance started while he was a mathematics student, after which he was associated with the founding of “minimal” music and “underground” film. His movie The Flicker is one of the key early works of the “structural” film movement. His art videotapes are widely seen, and he has produced more than 250 programs for public access cable in Buffalo. Conrad performs his recent music regularly at festivals, clubs and new music venues in the US and Europe.
“Tony Conrad is a pioneer, as seminal in his way to American music as Johnny Cash or Captain Beefheart or Ornette Coleman, one of those really savvy Old Guys whom all the kids want to emulate because their ideas, their style are electric and new and somehow indivisible.” - Steve Dollar
*ISSUE Project Room’s Artist In Residence is made possible through the generous support of the Jerome Foundation
ISSUE Project Room’s Artist In Residence: Duane Pitre *
Duane Pitre (originally from New Orleans) is a Brooklyn-based, avant-garde composer and performer. His current works explore both chaos and discipline—and the relationship that exists between the two. Pitre primarily works with long-tones and utilizes alternate tuning schemes that focus on microtonally, enabling him to explore unaccustomed harmonic intervallic relationships.
Composing primarily for acoustic and electro-acoustic instrumentation, Pitre has scored works for large String/Wind Ensembles, String Quintet, his own Bowed Harmonic-Guitar Ensemble, solo performers, among other instrument configurations. In 2008 Pitre started exploring simple electronic sounds and their role in a dualistic relationship with acoustic instruments, as well as utilizing them in his recent “tape” pieces.
Pitre has releases on Important Records, Trome Records, NNA, and Quiet Design, among others. He has appeared on compilations with artists such as Keith Rowe (AMM), Sir Richard Bishop, Tetuzi Akiyama, Jandek, Sebastien Roux, and Thierry Muller/Ilitch. He recently curated and contributed a track to an upcoming Just Intonation compilation (Important Records), alongside Pauline Oliveros, Ellen Fullman, Michael Harrison, Greg Davis, Charles Curtis, and others.
Pitre has presented his works in NYC at such spaces as Roulette, The Stone, Phillips de Pury & Co., St. Marks Church, The Knitting Factory, and ISSUE Project Room (where he will be Artist in Resident for spring 2009). He has also performed in other cities across the U.S., as well as in Europe at Les Voûtes (Paris), St. Giles-in-the-Fields Church (London), and in Bristol, U.K.
In 2009, Pitre is planning more performances (national and abroad), a variety of releases, recording sessions, new works, and further exploration of electronic sound material.
Duane Pitre
ISSUE Project Room’s Artist In Residence Duane Pitre presents Perfect/Imperfect, for Amplified String Quintet and Sine Tones.
Perfect/Imperfect (x5)
For Amplified String Quintet & Electronic Sine Tones
A new work by Duane Pitre
March 8, 2009 • ISSUE Project Room • Brooklyn, NY
(The artist’s first of four presentations as Spring 2009 Artist in Residence)
Duane Pitre – composition
Damon Holzborn – programming
Jesse Peterson – violin
Chris Otto – violin
Frantz Loriot – viola
Chris Welcome – cello
Emily Dufour – cello
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Bow a violin (or instrument from the violin family) to match a predetermined electronic sine tone pitch as closely and steadily as possible, without vibrato.
This “pairing process” can be carried out once or multiple times, by a solo performer or by multiple performers, in the same pitch or in different pitches, and arranged however one chooses.
The amount of times that this process is carried out within a recording or live performance determines the (x numeral) in its title
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The three paragraphs above comprise the score for Perfect/Imperfect, a composition with simplicity at its core. The score does not address a specific arrangement, performance length, or pitch choices, as these aesthetic-based decisions are not at the core of the piece; they are secondary and can be changed from performance to performance.
The piece came to me while I was walking home from work last summer. When I arrived home I typed out the score on an old typewriter and tucked it away to let it “germinate” (which I find is the best method for my works). After being invited to participate in the ISSUE Project Room Artist in Residence Program, I decided to return to this simple idea and create a special arrangement of it to premiere at ISSUE.
Tonight’s arrangement, titled Perfect/Imperfect (x5), utilizes an amplified string quintet (two violins, two cellos, and viola), is 50 minutes in length, and uses pitches calculated from ratios that adhere to the tuning system known as Just Intonation. These pitch relationships are found in nature’s own Harmonic Series.
It is worth noting that the title of this piece came to me immediately; it may have even started the thought that led to the score. The title possessed a certain strength and made me think about aspects of modern society in which perfection is expected from “imperfect” creatures. This spiraled into me asking myself what “perfect” even means. It is a term relative to the cultural context in which it is used, changing from country to country, village to village. These thoughts made the piece all the more interesting to me.
The most relevant topic, both for me and for the piece, centers on the interaction of computer technology and the human race — and the relationships that exist between the two. As we strive for “perfection” we look for the most efficient (in terms of time, money, etc.) ways to carry out various tasks — important ones, menial ones, and everything in between. Can a computer do the job better or can a human? What about a mixture of both? Automated 1’s and 0’s or human flesh operated? Is the computer output too cold? Does the human touch give, well, life?
As I began writing these program notes, it occurred to me that my initial choice to type out the score for this composition on an old typewriter is significant. It offers a contrast to the 50+ hours a week I spend working with computers, often keying out perfectly rendered typeface characters. It is this contrast between the computer-generated and the handmade that this composition seeks to explore.
My Perfect/Imperfect experiment intends to put its performers in a silent space (a vacuum of sorts) to enable them and the audience to focus on the differences between the tireless stability of pitch offered by the electronic sine tones and the human-generated pitches of the sustained bowed strings, which over time will inevitably fluctuate to some degree. On a theoretical level Perfect/Imperfect is my way of creating a balance within the computer/human relationship. On an aural level it is a focus-piece, a concentration-piece, for both performers and audience.
- Duane Pitre (February 2009)
Duane Pitre (originally from New Orleans) is a Brooklyn-based, avant-garde composer and performer. His current works explore both chaos and discipline—and the relationship that exists between the two. Pitre primarily works with long-tones and utilizes alternate tuning schemes that focus on microtonally, enabling him to explore unaccustomed harmonic intervallic relationships.
Composing primarily for acoustic and electro-acoustic instrumentation, Pitre has scored works for large String/Wind Ensembles, String Quintet, his own Bowed Harmonic-Guitar Ensemble, solo performers, among other instrument configurations. In 2008 Pitre started exploring simple electronic sounds and their role in a dualistic relationship with acoustic instruments, as well as utilizing them in his recent “tape” pieces.
Pitre has releases on Important Records, Trome Records, NNA, and Quiet Design, among others. He has appeared on compilations with artists such as Keith Rowe (AMM), Sir Richard Bishop, Tetuzi Akiyama, Jandek, Sebastien Roux, and Thierry Muller/Ilitch. He recently curated and contributed a track to an upcoming Just Intonation compilation (Important Records), alongside Pauline Oliveros, Ellen Fullman, Michael Harrison, Greg Davis, Charles Curtis, and others.
Pitre has presented his works in NYC at such spaces as Roulette, The Stone, Phillips de Pury & Co., St. Marks Church, The Knitting Factory, and ISSUE Project Room (where he will be Artist in Resident for spring 2009). He has also performed in other cities across the U.S., as well as in Europe at Les Voûtes (Paris), St. Giles-in-the-Fields Church (London), and in Bristol, U.K.
In 2009, Pitre is planning more performances (national and abroad), a variety of releases, recording sessions, new works, and further exploration of electronic sound material.
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,...