A Festival of Firsts
Saturday,
October 3, 2009,
2-9
pm
The
Brick Elephant
12 Emily Street
Valley
Falls, NY 12185
"For those with big ears and a taste for the adventurous."—Albany
Times Union
a
music and multi-media extravaganza
featuring many premieres (8) and local art work
with running commentary by
Damian of Kalvos and Damian
and Mary Jane Leach
2-3 pm
Dan Evans Farkas music for toys for big and little
kids
Karl Korte - Drops of Water, a world
premiere
3-4 pm
Nicholas Chase - Songs
of The Thirsty Sword ,
a world
premiere
Alfred Brown - live sound processing
4-5 pm
David Gunn - Lunar
Ear Mural,
a world
premiere
Al Margolis and Doug Van Nort - live sound
processing
5-7 pm
Mary Jane Leach - Piano E-Tude, a world
premiere
Karl Korte - Drops of Water, a world premiere
(reprise)
Accordionist Rocco Anthony Jerry Performing
Peter Machajdik - Lines and
Waves in Blue Deep for 5 accordions - 2nd US performance
Yuji Takahashi
- Like a Water Buffalo for solo accordion
Conrad Kehn - Maximinimal
for accordion, electronics, and video - world premiere
Peter Machajdik - Five Mirrors
for solo accordion - US Premiere
Kjell Perder - AGNI god of fire
for accordion quintet -
2nd US performance
Dinner
Break
Richard Lainhart - No
Other Time,
world
premieres 8 pm
Artwork by:
Casey Daurio
Jon Flanders
Howard McAvoy
Tyler Weedon
Admission by donation
There will be a potluck supper between the 6 and 8 pm sets
Top
of page
Dan
Evans Farkas
- MUSIC FOR HACKED TOYS
Dan
Evans Farkas is a music and sound editor who has worked on films by Michael
Moore, Sidney Lumet, Mike Nichols, Jim Jarmusch, the Coen Brothers, and
others. He's
also part of a small but loopy community of circuit benders who make music
with hacked children's toys: walkie-talkies whose exposed circuit boards
are moistened with mist bottles, causing their Morse-code functions to
go freaky; children's telephones and decapitated dolls' heads that have
had output jacks and light-sensitive oscillators surgically implanted;
Baby Drivers (those little plastic dashboards complete with steering wheels
and gear shifts) whose innards have been subjected to Borg-like modifications.
"You open up children's toys and you lick your finger, and you usually
find a resistor that sets the sample speed," Farkas says, explaining
his MacGyver-esque approach to instrument design. "You can't get
electrocuted, because it doesn't plug into a wall." —Wired,
Alexander Gelfand
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Karl
Korte
The world premiere performance of Drops of Water, a computer
piece generated from the sound of water. The
music of Karl Korte has a scope and a variety that makes classification
of it difficult. Recently a Visiting Professor of Music at Williams College,
Korte now lives in Cambridge, NY. He has won two Guggenheim Fellowships.
In addition to his acoustic compositions, Korte has written many works
using electronic media. In the mid 80's with the availability of digital
recording and processing, he wrote a number of works, ioncluding Birds
of Aotearoa.
Listen
to a sound sample here.
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Nicholas
Chase
Songs of The Thirsty Sword Part I (For Lucky Mosko) for piano,
interactive laptop and video. For more info, click here
Alpert Award Nominee, Nicholas Chase's work has been hailed by Strad Magazine
as 'brilliant,' the Los Angeles Times as 'flamboyant, avant-garde' and
'brawling yet taut...the Rite of Spring meets Metallica,' by the Albuquerque
Journal as 'crackling, witty,' by the Whittier Press as 'seamless, powerful...
spectacular' and, dubbing him 'Eye/Ear Explorer,' the LA Weekly writes
of his short opera 22 (Taker of the Total Chance), 'the human brain at
its most imaginative.'
Excerpt
of The Thirsty Sword, click here.
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Alfred
Brown
Alfred
Brown, in solo performance, stacks layers of sonic textures; blocks of
sound placed next to and on top of each other using loops, electric guitar,
prepared tape, turntable, laptop, and various sound processors and small
acoustic instruments. The result is a subtle structure of coherent noise
that sparkles in the sun and sways in the breeze. Constructed live.
Brown is graduate of Houghton College school of music with a BMus in composition,
Brown writes for both traditional and nontraditional performance instruments
as well as makes unperformable recordings. In both, he focuses primarily
on texture and sound density through the use of harmony, dissonance, electronic
ambiances, and silence. He creates works that draw the listener into an
artificial landscape that simultaneously feels familiar and alien; and
that forces the listener to consider every nuance of the produced sound.
Click here to hear a sound
sample.
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David
Gunn
David Gunn will premiere Lunar Ear Mural, a piece for flute and
playback, performed by Laurel
Ann Maurer. Gunn’s music is equally at home in Carnegie Hall
as in a gravity-depleted observation chamber aboard an outer space research
vessel. He has written for full symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles
and soloists, as well as adventurous vocal groups. Ray Bradbury’s
Pandemonium Theatre Company has five times trod the California boards
accompanied by his incidental music. (If you were wondering, one of the
“incidents” occurred on the spaceship.) He has written three
fabulous tunes for Ethel and is contemplating a fourth. The Vermont Contemporary
Music Ensemble has commissioned no fewer than 13 pieces from him. (Also
no more than 13: a composer’s life is not an easy one.) In 2003,
Albany Records released Somewhere East of Topeka, a CD of his chamber
music performed by VCME. Brisk sales are anticipated any day now. Gunn’s
compositions have earned him an ASCAP pecuniary award every year since
1997. And in 2004, the Vermont Arts Council awarded him its Citation of
Meritorious Service to the Arts, which, unlike his other citations, added
no points to his driver’s license. For 101⁄2 years, Gunn co-hosted
the weekly radio show Kalvos & Damian’s New Music Bazaar, which
won an award once. Or twice, actually. Gunn is also a writer and humorist,
and lives simultaneously in Barre, Vermont and in hope of, in order, peace
on earth, good will towards men, and a pile of cash in the bank.
Listen to a sound sample here.
Back to concert program
Al
Margolis
and Doug
Van Nort
Al Margolis and Doug Van Nort will be presenting a collaborative performance
on laptops.
Margolis was one of the prime movers in the cassette underground scene
of the 1980s (between 1984 and 1991 his Sound Of Pig label released over
300 cassettes of music by the likes of Merzbow, Costes, Amy Denio, John
Hudak and Jim O'Rourke) and is the éminence grise behind twenty-three
years of music under the name If, Bwana. He is the man behind the Pogus
label, as well as label manager for Deep Listening, XI Records, and Mutable
Music.
What has been said about his work:"It's as if one of Eliane Radigue's
pristine works had been left out in the garden to accumulate a layer of
sonic moss and dirt." "A kind of scary cross between the lunatic
fringe of English esoteric explorers (Nurse With Wound, pre-menstrual
Current 93) and late 60s AMM."(Dan Warburton)
Doug
Van Nort is a sonic experimentalist currently living in Troy, NY. He tends
to prefer the harmony found in textured layers of noise, and the rhythms
found inside a drone. His work explores the sounds of technologically-mediated
processes, from broken electronics to machine learning algorithms. Recent
projects have focused on interactive fabric instrument, electroacoustic
composition, sound analysis/synthesis systems that listen for noise, pieces
for large ensembles of "laptop performers" over the internet,
and intelligent agents for musical improvisation. Van Nort improvises
regularly with electronic and acoustic musicians using his custom granular-feedback
software and amplified objects, currently performing in the trio Triple
Point with Pauline Oliveros and Jonas Braasch. Recent and upcoming events
include an installation at the international computer music conference
(ICMC) in Montreal, a piece on the 2009 Leonardo Music Journal compilation,
a theoretical discussion of digital instrument building in Organised Sound,
a release with Triple Point and Stuart Dempster on the Deep Listening
label, a performance with Chris Chafe at Casa da Musica in Porto, duo
performances with Al Margolis, presentation of a new composition at the
Flea theater's fall 2009 "music with a view" series, a performance
with Triple Point at Roulette for the 2009 NYEAF festival and a lecture/demo
at Harvestworks.
Listen
to a sound sample here (If
Bwana) and here
(Van Nort)
Back
to concert program
Mary
Jane Leach
Mary Jane Leach will be presenting Piano E-Tude, a NYSCA (New
York State Council on the Arts) commission, for taped e-bowed piano and
live piano. An e-bow is a device usually used with guitars, but works
equally well on piano - placed on an undamped string, it will continuosly
vibrate that string. The sound is very delicate, though, so by combining
them on tape, a resultant fuller sound emerges.
Leach is a composer/performer whose work reveals a fascination with the
physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with
space. She currently lives in The Brick Elephant, a resonant former church,
in Rensselaer County.
Sample sound file (massed oboes), click here.
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to concert program
Rocco
Anthony Jerry
Rocco
Anthony Jerry was born in Welch, West Virginia in 1962. At the age of
six, he began studying the accordion with Paul Bertollozzi of Poughkeepsie,
New York. In 1975, he began lessons on the free-bass accordion with Carmen
Carrozza. Mr. Jerry's interests lie primarily in modern music, including
the works of Sofia Gubaidulina, Luciano Berio, and others. He has also
worked
with Hollywood film composer, Arthur B. Rubinstein, in the premiere run
of his new musical "He Who Gets Slapped".
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Richard
Lainhart
Richard Lainhart will present the world premiere of No Other Time,
a NYSCA (New York State Council on the Arts) commission. It is a full-length
intermedia performance designed for a large reverberant space, combining
live analog electronics performance in four-channel playback and high-definition
computer-animated film projection. Lainhart will be accompanying his cycle
of four new abstract films, whose imagery is inspired by the organic processes
of nature, with his Buchla 200e/Haken Continuum modular analog synthesizer
system.
Richard Lainhart is an award-winning composer, author, and filmmaker—a
digital artisan
who works with sonic and visul data. Since a child, he's been interested
in natural processes
such as waves, flames and clouds, in harmonics and harmony, and in creative
interactions
with machines, using them as compositional methods to present sounds that
are as beautiful
as he can make them. "Lainhart crafts sounds in a tonal, musical
fashion— sustained tones,
drones, melodic fragments—and electronically manipulates them into
beautiful tapestries of
sound." (Waterfront Week) [His] "music reflects the spirit of
possibility that once defined
electronic music, bringing with it a sense of past, present and future
that transcends time,
technology and cultural assumptions. The spell- binding music seemed to
evoke feelings that
can't quite be named, and suggest music I might rather imagine for myself
in silence than trust
most composers to compose." (The Village Voice)."He's evolved
a singular vision as a
composer, performer and engineer of darkly seductive minimalism."
(Peter Marsh, BBC) .
Listen to a sound samples on Lainhart's site, click here.
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to concert program
Kalvos
and Damian
The Kalvos & Damian New Music Bazaar is an award-winning radio show
and website bringing composers to the wider world through their music,
interviews, pictures, photos, artwork, essays, biographies, attitudes,
catalogs and ideas. The Bazaar was begun in 1995 solely to present the
eclectic world of newly composed music in a try-it-you'll-like-it format,
and to connect composers with each other and with audiences.
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WHERE:
The concerts are held in the Brick Elephant, formerly an old church, in
Valley Falls, New York.
12 Emily Street, Valley Falls, NY 12185.
Admission by donation.
CONTACT INFO:
Mary Jane Leach, director
telephone (518-753-0244)
email
DIRECTIONS:
Valley Falls is in northern Rensselaer County,
20 minutes north of Troy, 25 minutes west of North Bennington, Vermont.
From the west: at the intersection of Routes 40 and 67 in Schaghticoke, drive 1.5 miles east, turn right just as you get over the bridge, then drive on State Street (117) two blocks and turn left. The Brick Elephant is the red brick former church on the left at the next corner - it's the biggest building in the village - you can't miss it.
From
the east: when 67 branches off to the west from 22 (Eagle Bridge), continue
driving for 11 miles, turn left just before the curving bridge, then drive
on State Street (117) two blocks and turn left. The Brick Elephant is
the red brick former church on the left at the next corner - it's the
biggest building in the village - you can't miss it.
CREDITS:
This project is made possible in part through COMMUNITY ART$GRANTS, a
program funded through the State and Local Partnership Program of the
New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency and The Arts Center
of the Capital Region.
Re:Soundings is a non-profit 501c3 organization dedicated to the arts. Any donations are tax deductible and will be greatly appreciated.