The String Orchestra of Brooklyn (SOB) is a close-knit group of amateur and professional musicians coming together to explore the breadth of the string repertoire, from the concertos of Bach to the latest experimental works by emerging composers. The orchestra also seeks out unique collaborative projects with other like-minded performance organizations, including ISSUE Project Room, American Opera Projects, and Hellgate Harmonie.

Founded in 2007 by violinist and conductor Eli Spindel, the SOB has quickly become an integral part of Brooklyn’s growing musical community. Based at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn Heights, the ensemble also presents an annual summer concert in Fort Greene Park, and holds regular chamber recitals around the Borough. For more information, please visit www.thesob.org

“M,”

Mia Zabelka, composer, electric violinist and vocalist from Vienna, lives in the Austrian region of southern Styria. As a composer and performer of improvised, experimental and electroacoustic music she has developed a unique language based on the de- and reconstruction of the violin’s sonic possibilities, expanding the instrument using live electronic effects and innovative performance techniques. She studied music and composition with Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Dieter Kaufmann, Kurt Schwertsik and Alexander Arenkov in Vienna, creating a foundation on the basis of which she continues to construct and explore the limits of sound and music in a language entirely her own. The violin, voice and her own body transform into sound bodies which are at once organic and primal, screaming, lyrical, composed and explosive.

As a pioneer of electroacoustic performance and composition in Austria, Mia Zabelka developed the process she describes as automatic playing, continuously exploring sound and music as physical phenomena, always pushing back the boundaries in radical and provocative performances and compositions that question established notions and given structures.

Jason Huang – violin
Anne Bourne – cello/voice
David Grubbs – harmonium
Pauline Oliveros – V accordion
Miguel Frasconi – glass harmonica
Suzanne Thorpe – oscillator
Andrew Deutsch – sampler

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.

Jason Kao Hwang (violin) leads his quartet, EDGE, quintet, Local Lingo, octet, Burning Bridge, and improvising string orchestra, Spontaneous River. He has performed with William Parker, the Rova Sax Quartet, Henry Threadgill and received grants from Chamber Music America, the NEA, NJSCA, and Meet the Composer.

Miguel Frasconi is a composer and improvisor who uses electronics and a menagerie of glass objects to create his sound world. He has worked closely with many esteemed composers and choreographers. He presently teaches electronic music at Bard College and is director of the new music ensemble Ne(x)tworks.

Suzanne Thorpe is an electro-acoustic flautist, composer and sound artist.  Her fixed compositions tend to be site-specific multichannel works that employ psycho-acoustic phenomena and tuned filtering techniques, and in performance she extends her instrument with an ever-evolving set-up of analogue and real-time software components. As an improviser she has performed with Chris Brown, Annette Krebs, Maggie Nicols, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Gino Robair, Zeena Parkins, and Ulrich Krieger among others. Thorpe is a founding member of the alternative rock group Mercury Rev, with whom she worked from 1989 – 2001, earning numerous critical accolades, and from time to time she can be heard mucking it up with J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. She has a discography of over 20 recordings released on Sony, V2, Beggars Banquet, Geffen, Specific Recordings, with a most recent release with feedback artist Philip White as the duo thenumber46. Coming up she can be heard with a newly formed quartet, Volume, with Shelley Burgon, Maria Chavez and Stephan Moore, among other configurations.

Deutsch received his BFA in Video Art and Printmaking from Alfred University in 1990. He obtained his MFA in Integrated Electronic Art from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1994. Since 1998 Deutsch has released over 14 CDRs of solo electronic music on his Magic If Recordings.

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.

The Propensity of Sound festival is presented, in part, through generous support from The Barbara Lee Family Foundation and from CHORA, a project of the Metabolic Studio, a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation led by Artist and Foundation Director Lauren Bon. CHORA aims to support the intangibles that precede creativity.

Special thanks to the Electronic Music Foundation for their technical support for this concert.

“…Mr. Dufallo demonstrated the rich sound he produces on an unmodified fiddle. But his playing is no less alluring on the electric violin…he showed how much amplification can expand the instrument’s palette. Far from robbing the violin of its beauty, electronics add textural elements and gradations of timbre that the acoustic instrument cannot approximate.” – Allan Kozinn, NY Times

Heralded by The New York Times as one of the “new faces of new music” in 1999, Cornelius Dufallo has since established himself as a constant innovator at the forefront of the American contemporary music scene. Currently he is director of the creative music ensemble Ne(x)tworks, and a member of the world-renowned amplified string quartet known as ETHEL. His ongoing commitment to cutting edge musical ingenuity has produced fascinating collaborations with many of today’s most compelling performers and composers.

This season Dufallo has crafted a new trajectory with the release of Dream Streets, a solo CD of his own music for electric violin on the Innova label.  Time Out New York hails Dream Streets as “a beautiful, evocative disc of electroacoustic soundscapes…all [of which] serve as apt reminders of this vital artist’s considerable gifts.” Upcoming projects featuring music from Dream Streets include:  solo appearances in New York, Buffalo, and San Francisco; a collaboration with choreographer Stacy Spence at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts; and Journaling, a new series of concerts in which Dufallo documents his own work with extraordinary living composers while tracking various paths in twenty-first century music. Journaling (part one), taking place at The Stone in New York, also presents world premieres by Anna Clyne and Corey Dargel, as well as recent works by Alexandra Gardner, Annie Gosfield, and Huang Ruo. Dufallo’s upcoming recordings include discs of new music by John King and Neil Rolnick.

For this concert, Dufallo will be performing music from Dream Streets.

“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.

“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

On November 18, Matana will present COIN COIN Happening II: Fields of Memphis, featuring violinist Mazz Swift

Matana ( mah-tah-nah)Roberts, is a dynamic saxophonist, composer and improviser, who tries to expose in her music the mystical roots and spiritual traditions of American creative expression.

As a Chicago native she was fortunate enough to be surrounded by musicians who showed her 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 true 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 not only in this country, but 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.

ABOUT COIN COIN : a blood narrative in blacks, browns, reds , and blues….

Since 2005 Saxophonist/composer Matana Roberts has been experimenting on a sound narrative about the intricacies, contradictions and questions that surround the human bloodline experience. How when broken down into the most minute details new meanings arise beyond the surface levels of one dimensional human acceptance; generally attached to shades of difference, and fear of the unknown. Transcending sometimes the unbearable in order to create new possibilities of understanding the human condition.

Using herself and research she has done on her own bloodline history and various ensembles she leads as the “guinea pig” in this sound endeavor, she has been able to cull a myriad of rich and awe inspiring stories that speaks many interesting truths about the flexibility and wonder of individual understanding. Transversing the American South of days past– traveling reflections of African, French, Irish, English, Scottish, Canadian, and Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw Native America history, Matana is weaving together stories and lore that speak to a very distinct, historically experimental, yet common, American experience. For her, a very personal search in sound practice that opens a dialogue for possibilities going beyond the specific; regenerating a focus that she hopes in the end celebrates the inherent potential that resides in the overflowing capability of human love, sadness, kindredness, perseverance, and joy

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.

www.matanaroberts.com

ISSUE’s AIR program made possible, in part, through the generous support of the Jerome Foundation.

C. Spencer Yeh was born in Taipei, Taiwan 1975, moved to the US in 1980; studied radio/television/film at Northwestern University, and is now based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Yeh is active both as a solo and collaborative artist, as well as with his primary project, Burning Star Core. As an improviser, Yeh is focused on developing a personal vocabulary using violin, voice, and electronics. As a sound artist/composer, Yeh works with all aspects available surrounding a work, aurally and physically, as elements key to the cumulative experience. He is concerned not only with the sensual aspects of ‘sound organization,’ but the gestural qualities as well. Yeh has collaborated with a deep and ever-growing list of artists and groups, including Tony Conrad, New Humans with Vito Acconci, Evan Parker, Thurston Moore, Amy Granat with Jutta Koether, Okkyung Lee, John Wiese, Don Dietrich and Ben Hall (as The New Monuments), Prurient, and Jandek. He has performed at festivals and venues such as Sonar, FIMAV at Victoriaville, Frieze Arts Fair, No Fun Fest, NADA Art Fair, High Zero, the 24 Hour Drone People at Fylkingen, The Kitchen, ZKM Karlsruhe, and has also exhibited visual art, sound, and video works internationally.  http://www.myspace.com/cspenceryeh

John Wiese is an artist and composer from Los Angeles, California.
His ongoing projects include LHD and Sissy Spacek, with plenty of freelance work
with many artists as diverse as Sunn O))), Wolf Eyes, Merzbow, Evan Parker,
Smegma, Kevin Drumm, Cattle Decapitation, and C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core).
He has toured extensively throughout the world, covering Europe, Scandinavia and
Australia as a member of Sunn O))), the UK as part of the Free Noise tour (a tentet
including Evan Parker, C. Spencer Yeh, Yellow Swans, etc.), the United States
alongside Wolf Eyes, and recently performed in the 52nd Venice Biennale with artist
Nico Vascellari. More information can be found at www.john-wiese.com.

Organic Digits: Kimura-Borissov-Mourad Project

Mari Kimura teams up with visual artists Liubo Borissov and Kevork Mourad, presenting everything from her virtuosic solo works of her signature bowing technique Subharmonics, to realtime interactive audio visual works, using Issue Project Room’s 15 channel diffusion system.   Kimura’s violin and Mourad’s paintings are processed in realtime using MaxMSP/Jitter, a bowing motion sensor “Augmented Violin” (IRCAM), and Borissov’s interactive graphics video processing.   Kimura will present her current works using the Augmented Violin system in collaboration with the Realtime Interaction Team at IRCAM, which allows her to ‘clone’ her playing by recording her bowing gesture along with sound.   The program also includes a virtual video duet of Japanese Shamisen and violin, written by a Shamisen Master Mojibe Tokiwazu IV, the head of the House of Tokiwazu, the traditional Kabuki orchestra since the 1700s.  Kimura will also present an elegant processing work by Japanese MaxMSP guru Takayuki Rai, and a blisteringly fast masterpiece by Conlon Nancarrow.
—————
http://www.marikimura.com

Please visit my Blog: “Extended Violin Diary”
http://subharmonics.blogspot.com/

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.

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