Brooklyn, NY (For Release 01.05.2011) ---- Described as Brooklyn’s “Little Carnegie” (New York Magazine), ISSUE Project Room hosts a plethora of chamber music ensembles dedicated to using new technologies and straddling the line between chamber and rock/folk/improvisational music.  Proving that the genre is alive and kicking, performances include:  indie-classical band Build (2/04); NewBorn Trio (2/10); global collective Dawn of Midi and premiere works for guitar quartet Dither (2/18); quartet Yarn/Wire (2/19); Toomai Quintet (2/24); Dan Joseph Ensemble (2/25); and the trio called Heresy of the Free Spirit (2/26). 

 

Also gracing ISSUE’s stage this month are a few rock-influenced groups such as Seaven Teares (2/04) and Frank London’s Brass Quartet followed by the big band SKELETON$ (2/16), as well as explorations in jazz, noise and drone from Acid Birds (2/05), the composer/performer collective Ensemble Pamplemousse (2/19), ISSUE’s new Artist-in-Residence Prince Rama (2/20), the multimedia group Collide-O-Scope Music (2/24), and the Gianni Lenoci/Gianni Mimmo Duo (2/23).

 

Leading the roster of solo shows is a commissioned work by Michelle Nagai for MARtLET, a tree bark that comes to life through light and sound (2/02).  Others include: composer/electric violinist/vocalist Mia Zabelka presents her new solo project “M” (2/03); Michael Sperone performs his Harmonic Symbols for cymbal and computer (2/10); world-renowned cello virtuoso Frances-Marie Uitti transforms her cello into a polyphonic instrument (2/12); composer/pianist Ramin Arjomand brings his improvisational music (2/23); and vocalist Daniel A.I.U. Higgs shares his lyricism (2/26). 

 

Finally, Artist Music Journal remembers Joshua White’s trailblazing light shows in a special archival evening of photos and film hosted by author Dan Nadel (2/17).  Complete February 2011 schedule is below.

ISSUE’s ongoing Sonic Bed_Marfa sound installation continues to feature new works during the month of February. Sonic Bed_Marfa, installed in the loft above ISSUE’s concert space, is a permanent installation of sound making furniture.  Designed by sound artist Kaffe Matthews, the bed is upholstered in bright yellow felt and capped in plexiglass.  Everyone is welcome to visit the bed for free by appointment.

Based in Brooklyn, sound artist, composer, and core member of SHARE, Uenishi is known for her sound works formed through experiments in restructuring and analyzing one's relationship with sounds, through kinesthetic response as well as aural cognition. Her "Aboard: Fillip 2", a site-specific audio-light interactive piece for a cargo container, was one of three sound art exhibitions simultaneously opened in East London in 2005, as part of the 'six sites for sound' project curated by dosensos.org. Also, she was an invitee to perform at Tate Britain for the 'six sites' opening. She received a Van Lier Foundation/Harvestworks fellowship in 2001 and was artist-in-residence in 2004, creating a sound-movement composition tool "Che Shire" in collaboration with Viennese composer/programmer, Klaus Filip. She was an artist-in-residence 2006-07 at Center for Computer Music, Brooklyn College, NY, and is working on a Master of Science degree in Integrated Digital Media at Brooklyn’s Polytechnic University.

 

Zach Layton is a composer, curator, improviser and video artist based in Brooklyn with an interest in biofeedback, generative algorithms, mental telepathy, free improvisation and indeterminacy. As an improviser and composer he is interested in the use of the unconscious as a means of production and often utilizes an EEG as a means of generating brainwave music.  He is also founder of the experimental music series, “Darmstadt: Classics of the Avant Garde,” a former co-curator of the PS1 summer warmup music series and curator at ISSUE Project Room.  Zach as received grants from the Netherlands America Foundation, Turbulence.org, the Jerome Foundation, NYFA, Experimental Television Center, Free103.9, the Danish Council for Visual Art, the City of Copenhagen Artist in Residence Program and is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and the Interactive Telecommunications Program.

 

WED 2.02 – Emerging Artists Commission: Michelle Nagai presents Tree Set *FREE*  

Michelle Nagai presents new work for the MARtLET, a handsome, wearable hunk of tree bark that's been fitted with light-sensing circuitry, machine learning software and sound synthesis algorithms. Responding to the ambient light in spaces, and the slightest hand and body movements, the MARtLET looks, listens, and thinks before she speaks. Just as nature intended.             

Composer Nagai creates site-specific performances, installations, radio broadcasts, dances and other interactions that address the human state in relationship to its setting. Her work has been presented throughout the US, Canada and Europe with the support of the American Composers Forum, the American Music Center, the Deep Listening Institute, Eyebeam, free103point9, Harvestworks, the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance, the Jerome and McKnight Foundations, Meet the Composer, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is a founding member of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology and holds a teaching certificate from the Deep Listening Institute. Nagai is currently a Ph.D. candidate in music composition at Princeton University. She holds an undergraduate degree with concentration in music composition and multi-media performance from Bennington College and an M.A. in composition from Princeton University.

Michelle Nagai’s new work is commissioned as part of ISSUE Project Room’s Emerging Artists Commission and is made possible, in part, through generous support from: the Greenwall Foundation; the Suzanne Fiol Memorial Fund; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.     
 
THU 2.03 – Mia Zabelka’s “M”   

"M", Mia Zabelka's new solo project, focuses on the development of experimental, improvisational techniques with the voice and violin, a process she calls "automatic playing.” She explores the relationships among the body, gesture, sound, machines and space using live electronics to expand the electro-acoustic sonic spectrum.   Composer, electric violinist and vocalist from Vienna, she lives in the Austrian region of southern Styria. As a composer and performer of improvised, experimental and electro-acoustic 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.   

Tickets: $10 (Advance $9, Members $8)   

FRI 2.04 - Seaven Teares + Build

 

Seaven Teares is a new band led by New York vocalist/composer Charlie Looker, primarily known as the frontman of avant rock band Extra Life, co-founder of classic Brooklyn noise ensemble Zs and composer of various chamber music. Named after the lute piece by 17^th Century English composer John Dowland, Seaven Teares draws most of its influence from ancient European music, post-industrial folk and simple pop.

 

Looker’s voice is joined by mezzo-soprano Amirtha Kidambi, known for her unique interpretations of contemporary composers, opera and Carnatic music and for her work with L.A. experimental rock band Sequins and Skeletons. Seaven Teares’ instrumental arrangements are fleshed out with Renaissance pipe organ, various woodwinds and guitars by multi-instrumentalist Robbie Lee, whose production and arrangement credits include Dax Riggs, Howling Hex and several records for the Drag City label. The quartet is completed by vibraphone and assorted percussion by Russell Greenberg, co-founder of contemporary music ensemble Yarn/Wire and long-time member of progressive pop group Hi Red Center.

Seaven Teares’ current repertoire includes several brand new original songs, two re-worked versions of songs from the Extra Life songbook and a small handful of covers including John Dowland himself, Alice in Chains and Angelo Badalamenti. All of the music will be available in mid-2011 on the bands’ debut album Pow’r Ballads.

Build is a Brooklyn-based indie-classical band led by composer/violinist Matt McBane. Described by Steve Smith in Time Out New York as "a new quintet that straddles the increasingly permeable line between chamber music and instrumental rock,” Build has developed a body of work and a performance style that freely and intuitively draws on chamber music, art rock, minimalism, electronic music, modal jazz, American fiddle music, and experimentalism (to name a few).

 

The members of Build (Andrea Lee, cello, Ben Campbell, bass, Matt McBane, violin/compositions, Mike Cassedy, piano/Rhodes, Adam Gold, drums) have individually trained at some of the country’s most prestigious music schools (USC Thornton School of Music, Yale School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and New England Conservatory) in both classical and jazz performance, have extensive backgrounds in indie-rock and other musical genres, and have performed around the world. 

 

Tickets: $10 (Advance $9, Members $8)

SAT 2.05 – Acid Birds + Charles Gayle  

Acid Birds was formed in 2004 in Brooklyn, NY, by Andrew Barker (drums & percussion), Jaime Fennelly (harmonium + electronics) and Charles Waters (alto saxophone & bass clarinet).   Their second LP, Acid Birds II, was recently released in January 2011 on Sagittarius A-Star, and the new Brooklyn label Electric Temple Records will be releasing their first cassette, entitled Mock Load, to coincide with their Midwest/ East Coast tour in February 2011.        

Andrew Barker has worked with Gold Sparkle Band, Sirone of the Revolutionary Ensemble, Daniel Carter, Roy Campbell's TAZ, Rob Brown, Chris Jonas, Sonny Simmons, Sabir Mateen, Virginia Genta, and many others.  He has appeared on several recordings, including Apostolic Polyphony (with Matthew Shipp and Charles Waters) and The Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra's Mayor of Punkville.  In addition to several ongoing projects, Barker has also recently formed a metal band called Hallux.

Jaime Fennelly is most well-known for his work with Peeesseye (with Chris Forsyth and Fritz Welch), who recently released Pestilence & Joy and a collaborative recording with Talibam!  He has recorded several albums for labels such as Digitalis Industries, Sick Head, Locust and Evolving Ear.  In addition to his work with Peeesseye, he performs solo under his new project Mind Over Mirrors, and is also a member of Phantom Limb & Bison and Manpack Variant.     

Charles Waters is a member of the Gold Sparkle Band, a large collective of musicians that has included Nate Wooley, Sabir Mateen, Matt Lavelle, Hill Greene, and many others.  Waters studied clarinet with Eugene Kavadlo of the Charlotte Symphony, and has also worked with William Parker's Little Huey Music Orchestra, Matthew Shipp, and Chris Jonas' Brooklyn Comprovisers Orchestra.   

 

Charles Gayle plays double bass, tenor sax, piano, and has recently been exploring voice in his free jazz and improvised work. He was born in Buffalo, but moved to New York in the 1960s and played on the streets until (in the 1990s) he was noticed and later played everywhere from The Knitting Factory to a multi-country European solo tour. 

 

Tickets: $10 (Advance $9, Members $8)  

THU 2.10 – NewBorn Trio + Michael Sperone 

NewBorn Trio         
Formed specifically to perform in Kosovo on their day of independence NewBorn Day, Katie Down, Jeffrey Lependorf, and Miguel Frasconi joined forces to become the NewBorn Trio. This unique ensemble combines handmade and found glass instruments, traditional Asian flutes, plucked strings, and odd sound-making objects to evoke unimaginable musical textures.    Katie Down is a sound artist, composer, performer and sound designer for theatre, film, and dance. She performs on a wide range of instruments and leads the infamous ukulele group The Ukuladies. Jeffrey Lependorf is composer of operas and chamber music, as well as a certified master of the shakuhachi, the traditional Japanese bamboo flute. His music has literally been heard around the globe: a recording of his music was launched into space aboard the space-shuttle Atlantis and remained aboard the space station Mir.  Miguel Frasconi is a composer and improviser 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.

Michael Sperone's Harmonic Symbols is a series of pieces written for large cymbal and computer.  He recently expanded his repertoire for solo glockenspiel with the aid of a residency at Better Farm’s “BetterArt” program. He is currently performing with his band Tintinnabulation, which involves glockenspiel, homemade computer software, and as many other instrumentalists as are available to play at the time. Other recent endeavors include a full length solo “pop” album, and new works for iKtus Percussion, and Peter Jarvis.  Michael is a founding member of On The Cusp New Music Ensemble, New Music Unit, and Composers Anonymous as both composer and performer. He has had his works premiered by the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, Joe Bergen, New Music Unit, and Justin Wolf. He has performed with groups such as the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, Mad Coyote, Newband, and iKtus percussion.

 

Tickets: $10 (Advance $9, Members $8)  

SAT 2.12 – Frances-Marie Uitti

 

Composer/performer Frances-Marie Uitti pioneered a revolutionary dimension to the cello by transforming it for the first time into a polyphonic instrument capable of sustained chordal (two, three, and four-part) and intricate multivoiced writing. Using two bows in one hand, this invention permits contemporaneous cross accents, multiple timbres, contrasting 4-voiced dynamics, simultaneous legato/articulated playing, that her previous work with a curved bow couldn't attain. György Kurtág, Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, Louis Andriessen, Jonathan Harvey, Richard Barrett, are among those who have used this technique in their works dedicated to her. Collaborating significantly over years with avant-garde artists such as John Cage, she has also worked closely with Iannis Xenakis, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough and countless composers from the new generation.

 

Tickets: $12 (Advance $11, Members $10)

 

 

Trumpeter/composer Frank London is a member of the Klezmatics, the Hasidic New Wave, and has performed with John Zorn, LL Cool J, Mel Torme, Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, LaMonte Young, They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, Jane Siberry, Ben Folds 5, Marc Ribot, Maurice El Medioni and Gal Costa, and is featured on over 100 cds.   He was music director for David Byrne and Robert Wilson’s THE KNEE PLAYS, collaborated with Palestinian violinist Simon Shaheen, taught Jewish music in Canada, Crimea and the Catskills, and produced CD's for Gypsy Legend Esma Redzepova, and Algerian Pianist Maurice el Medioni.  He has been featured on HBO’s Sex and the City, at the North Sea Jazz Festival and the Lincoln Center Summer Festival, and was a co-founder of Les Miserables Brass Band and the Klezmer Conservatory Band.

 

SKELETON$ usual quintet is expanded here for a night of new compositions, arrangements and ideas. This is a rare opportunity to hear the band explore the outer limits of their work - with a huge band of players from the wide spectrum of New York's underground music scene.  "Last year's underrated Money found the Silent Barners delving into dramatic, Afro-punked Gastr del Sol-like sweeps—a thread continued during the band's recent shows with the horn-abetted Skeletons Big Band. Oddly, the effect is similar to how Hall Overton's big band arrangements for Thelonious Monk brought the pianist's bent-note melodies into focus, straightening Mehlan's into something simultaneously dense but with even more voices." - Village Voice

 

Matt Mehlan: guitar, alto sax, singing     
Jason McMahon: guitar      
Jonathan Leland: percussion         
Mike Gallope: piano, farfisa         
Peter Vogl: electric bass, sfx          
Sam Kulik: trombone         
Justin Frye: contrabass       
Elliott Bergman: tenor sax 
Johnny Butler: tenor and baritone sax     
Adam Markiewicz: violin  
Amy Cimini: viola  
Justin Walter: trumpet       
Dan Peck: tuba

 

Tickets: $12 (Advance $11, Members $10)

 

THU 2.17 - Artist Music Journal Presents: Seriously Ecstatic: Joshua White at the Fillmore East 1968-70 release           

Artist Music Journal Volume 1 Edition 11 Artist: Dan Nadel + Joshua White       
Seriously Ecstatic: Joshua White at the Fillmore East, 1968-70 is an account, with exclusive pictures, of the Joshua Light Show’s legendary two years at Bill Graham’s Fillmore East. Performing with the likes of The Doors, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, The Band, and many others, the Joshua Light Show created extravagant visual experiences to accompany the music. Here are photos and film stills from those performances, along with pleasant detours to the set of Midnight Cowboy and the Woodstock festival. Dan Nadel has interviewed Joshua White and scoured his archives to compile this mini-history.           

Joshua White is renowned for his light show at the Fillmore East in the late sixties and early seventies. Employing an arsenal of various trailblazing effects, including the now-iconic “liquid light”, the Joshua Light Show catapulted Fillmore crowds into cosmic depths from which many have yet to return. In his post-Fillmore life, White has gone on to a career in television direction and mixed-media art. But he continues to keep a few fingers dipped in the liquid light.    

 

Special guests include Gary Panter and Devin Flynn.  Long one of his generation’s great visual artists, Gary Panter also has a long history as a musician. He began recording and issuing records on his own back in the ‘70s, but he is probably best known for the “Tornader to the Tater” single, engineered & backed by the Residents which came out in ‘81, and the Japanese LP Pray for Smurph which was recently reissued in deluxe digital format. His most recent book is the massive “Gary Panter” two-volume monograph issued by Picture Box. Devin Flynn is another guy whose visual presence is better known – for now – than his “footprint musicale.” A master of animated insanity, his most revered project may well have been the “Y’all So Stupid” series, which destroyed the line between surrealism and Asperger’s Syndrome with all thumbs blazing. What is less known is his deft-ass handling of all-known musical instruments, no matter how obscure.

 

"The Collected," a composers collective, presents new works for celebrated electric guitar quartet, Dither, by Eric KM Clark, Lisa R. Coons, Jascha Narveson & Lainie Fefferman.   Dither, a New York based electric guitar quartet, is dedicated to an eclectic mix of experimental repertoire, spanning composed music, improvisation, and electronic manipulation. With sounds ranging from clean pop textures to heavily processed noise, from tight rhythmic unity to cacophonous sound mass, all of Dither's music wholeheartedly embraces the beautiful, engulfing, and often gloriously loud sound of electric guitars. The quartet’s members are Taylor Levine, David Linaburg, Josh Lopes, and James Moore. 

 

Among Dither's recent collaborators include downtown bagpiper Matthew Welch, composers Eve Beglarian and David Lang, and guitarist/composers Bryce Dessner, Nick Didkovsky, Marco Cappelli, Elliott Sharp, and Mark Stewart. In Fall of 2008, the quartet traveled to Hong Kong to premiere an evening-length theatrical work by Samson Young, “Hong Kong Explodes!” funded by the Hong Kong Council for the Arts. Recent performances in New York include the Performa Biennial, The MATA Festival Interval Series, and the Bang on a Can Marathon, at which they gave a monstrous performance of Eric km Clark's exPAT, a Dither commission for hearing-deprived guitar orchestra. Dither’s debut album was released by Henceforth Records in June 2010. 

 

Dawn of Midi is a collective made up of Indian contrabassist Aakaash Israni, Pakistani percussionist Qasim Naqvi, and Moroccan pianist Amino Belyamani. DoM's sound-world is one of effortless juxtaposition; from the harmonic language of Debussy to the clammer and rattle of extended techniques evoking Cage’s piano preparations. After working as a group since 2007, Dawn of Midi released their debut album First in March of 2010 (Accretions) to unanimous high praise and was named among the top 3 "Best Piano Albums of 2010" by About.com. In the same year, a court-métrage was created for their piece 'A way with words' by French filmmakers Maxime Bruneel and Adèle Miossec. In 2010, DoM has performed concerts in New York, Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, Kyoto, California, Chicago, The Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, and the ISIM Festival at the University of Michigan. In the spring of 2011, Dawn of Midi has been invited to perform at Gasteig in Munich (home of the Munich Philharmonic), Frankfurt, Niederstetten, England, Portugal, and Austria. Dawn of Midi is also in the planning stages of a Large-scale multimedia project, Kashmir.

 

Tickets: $10 (Advance $9, Members $8)

 

 

The emergent product of reducing, restricting, narrowing, squelching, slicing, and otherwise removing all unnecessary fodder.  In extremes what remains is a curious series of decomplexities which the audience is driven to anatomize into a consolified structure.  Space is at a premium; noise is molecular; silence is hypothetical but desired.

 

Ensemble Pamplemousse presents five new works of exploitative self-limitation effectuated through the conflux of adventure and confusion. 

 

Composer/performer collective Ensemble Pamplemousse was founded in 2002 to provide a focal point for like-minded creators with a thirst for sonic exploration.  In the flexible moments of performance, the ensemble weaves together shapes of resonance, clusters of glitch, skitters of hyper action, and masses of absurdity into impeccable structures of unified beauty. Composers: Andrew Greenwald, Rama Gottfried, Dave Broome, Jessie Marino, Natacha Diels.  Performers: Natacha Diels (flute/electronics), Kiku Enomoto (violin), Jessie Marino (vocals), Dave Broome (piano), Russell Greenberg (percussion).

 

Yarn/Wire is a chamber quartet specializing in the performance of 21st century music. A unique instrumental combination of two percussionists and two pianists allows Yarn/Wire to interface with both traditional performance practice and emergent stylistic trends with ease. Founded in 2005 at Stony Brook University, the members of Yarn/Wire have extensive performance and pedagogic experiences encompassing international and domestic music festivals, college and university residences, and substantive work in the avant-garde theater and DIY/punk worlds.

 

Tickets: $10 (Advance $9, Members $8)

 

SUN 2.20 - Artist-in-Residence: Prince Rama *FREE* 

ISSUE Project Room is pleased to present the first in a series of three live shows with our new Artist-in-Residence: Prince Rama. In a series of three performances, UTOPIA=NO PERSON, =NO PLACE, =NO TIME is intended to explore the link between music and utopia. To conduct the examination, members of Prince Rama will create a pseudo-utopian cult called THE NOW AGE that will look at musical performance as ritual, musicians as shamans, audience as initiates, records as magic portallic fossils of frozen time, and utopia as a medium between the physical and metaphysical realms.  For the first performance, UTOPIA=NO PERSON, an initiation ceremony will be conducted via a "15 minute exorcise routine". A play off the words "exercise" and "exorcise", UTOPIA=NO PERSON focuses on the body as a vehicle for utopian experimentation, encouraging willing participants to undergo a confrontation with personal demons and shedding of individual identity through the physical exhaustion of the body. Using the famous aerobics instructor Paul Eugene's motto, "Let yourself go", as an existential battle cry, THE NOW AGE will transform the concert space of ISSUE Project Room into a mystical gym where a group exorcise routine will be conducted every hour on the hour from 2 pm to midnight on February 20th. Comfortable workout clothes and running shoes are highly recommended.

Prince Rama (Taraka Larson, Nimai Larson, and Michael Collins) recently released their tribal-psych-freakout album Shadow Temple (2010) on Animal Collective’s label Paw Tracks.  Spawned from the vernal heat of the Florida swamps amidst swirling patterns of pine orchards and pre-Columbian artifacts, Prince Rama of Ayodhya was whispered into the ears of Taraka Larson, Nimai Larson, and Michael Collins in the summer of 2007 by the clanging of prayer bells and goat-skin drums. They left the Hare Krishna farm where they were staying and formed a creative nucleus in Boston, MA, where they gained a cult following in the underground art and psychedelic folk and noise circles who were mesmerized by their captivating blend of campfire surrealism and transcendental anthems of every cosmic order.  Their engaging and often unpredictable live shows reflect their eclectic pool of mysticism; amidst collective chants, werewolf summonings, and Sanskrit invocations, they have been known to distribute hand drums, conch shells, bells, gongs, and other various percussions to members of the audience to create the ultimate communal ritual experience.

WED 2.23 – Gianni Lenoci/Gianni Mimmo Duo + Ramin Arjomand         

Gianni Lenoci/Gianni Mimmo Duo       
Gianni Lenoci performs extensively as a soloist with jazz combos and experimental units with renowned players in both jazz and improvised music fields. Lenoci has played with Massimo Urbani, Steve Lacy, Joelle Leandre, Steve Grossman, Harold Land, Bob Mover, Enrico Rava, Glenn Ferris, Eugenio Colombo, Don Moye, Han Bennink, Antonello Salis, Carlo Actis Dato, David Gross, Paul Lovens, Sakis Papadimitriou, Georgia Sylleou, Jean-Jacques Avenel, John Betsch, Markus Stockhausen, Steve Potts, Carlos Zingaro, John Tchicai, Kent Carter, William Parker, David Murray. He is also a composer and performer of experimental notated and improvised works with a particular focus in Morton Feldman, John Cage, Earle Brown, Sylvano Bussotti and Johann Sebastian Bach.        

Gianni Mimmo plays soprano sax and has composed in the fields of jazz and experimentation for over 25 years. His current projects include collaboration with musicians as John Russell, Jean-Michel van Schouwburg, Hannah Marshall, Lawrence Casserley, Martin Mayes, Gino Robair, Damon Smith, Scott, R.Looney, Kjell Nordeson, Gerard Uebele, Chino Shuichi, Nicola Guazzaloca, Xabier Iriondo, Gianni Lenoci, Enzo Rocco, Angelo Contini, Stefano Pastor, Stefano Giust, Cristiano Calcagnile, Harry Sjöström, Marcello Magliocchi and with dancer Marcella Fanzaga, video artists, and poets as well. He extensively tours in Europe and USA invited at International festivals and venues and runs the indie label Amirani records.

Ramin Arjomand is a New York-based composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. His concert music has been performed by the New York Virtuoso Singers, Speculum Musicae, So Percussion Ensemble, the Columbia Collegium Musicum, and numerous independent ensembles and soloists.  As a pianist, his activity has focused on total improvisation. His electro-acoustic music, based in a ProTools digital editing environment, works primarily with recorded improvised sound material. His interest in vocal music and in speech as music has led to a wide variety of concert, electro-acoustic and music theater works that experiment with the human voice in different ways. In 2007, his work Alma Redemptoris mater (2005) for 12-part a cappella choir was awarded First Prize in the New York Virtuoso Singers Choral Composition Competition and was premiered in New York City with Harold Rosenbaum conducting.  Arjomand has worked extensively as a composer, pianist, lecturer, and musical adviser with the Barnard College Department of Dance. Arjomand completed his doctoral work in Music Composition at Columbia University in 2006. A much sought-after teacher, he has taught Harmony and Counterpoint, Composition, Piano, Chamber Music Coaching, Ear Training, and Masterpieces of Western Music. He is currently on the faculty at Columbia University.

 

Tickets: $12 (Advance $11, Members $10)

THU 2.24 – Collide-O-Scope Music / Toomai Quintet

 

Collide-O-Scope Music presents "Dream Of The Noctilucent City"

 

Dream of the noctilucent city… This program draws its inspiration from the phenomenon of noctilucent clouds, which offer a diaphanous window partially obscuring the intense light of higher, more brightly dense cloud layers. The works on this program were chosen to evoke the brightly lit density of the urban environment, and represent a view of that intense energy through partially translucent sonic veils, which paradoxically bring forth a stillness and meditative calm even from the frenetic activity of the urban experience. This concert makes use of live electronics and sound processing by Christopher Bailey and Stephen Gorbos to synthesize this aesthetic environment. The music will be accompanied by original video works prominently featuring city nightscapes, as well as architectural drawings of city lighting design by Joseph Clarke.  The performers on the concert are Alejandro Acierto (clarinet), Augustus Arnone, (piano), and composers Stephen Gobos and Christopher Bailey (live electronics). They have appeared at Carnegie’s Weill Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, BargeMusic, and have appeared with such groups as the Argento Chamber Ensemble, and the International Contemporary Ensemble.

 

Program to include:

Luigi Nono: Sofferte Onde Serene

Iannis Xenakis: Mists

Christopher Bailey: Urban Fountain with video by Kichiiro Muto

Douglass Geers: TurnStyles

Bailey: Quiet Play of Light on my Grandmother's Bedroom Ceiling

John Cage: Etudes Australes (selections)

Alvin Lucier: Memory Space 

 

The Toomai String Quintet is an ensemble devoted to performing music from the classical and contemporary repertoire while exploring and arranging music from around the world. Winner of the 92nd St. Y’s 2007 Music Unlocked! Competition for emerging ensembles interested in educational outreach, the Toomai String Quintet is dedicated to creating engaging interactive concerts for listeners of all ages.  The Toomai String Quintet has performed in Kaufmann Concert Hall at the 92nd St. Y, Juilliard’s chamber music series at Lincoln Center, The Kitchen in downtown NYC, and public schools, hospitals, and alternative care facilities throughout the New York City area. In Spring 2009, the quintet was featured in the Miami Civic Music Association, the Con Vivo chamber music series in Jersey City, NJ, among others, and was awarded a 2009 grant from the Sparkplug Foundation. Most recently, Toomai was selected to be on the roster of Carnegie Hall’s “Musical Connections” series for the 2009/2010 season.  The Toomai String Quintet is comprised of violinists Emilie-Anne Gendron and Pala Garcia, violist Erin Wight, cellist John Popham, and bassist Andrew Roitstein.

 

Tickets: $12 (Advance $11, Members $10)

 

 

The Dan Joseph Ensemble was founded by New York-based composer Dan Joseph as a vehicle for his growing body of post-minimal compositions. With a unique instrumentation anchored by hammer dulcimer and harpsichord, a mix of winds, strings and percussion, the ensemble sound is harmonically rich and deeply resonant, evoking a musical world both old and new, and ancient and modern.  Described as, “one part classical minimalism, one part rustic European mountain music. . . and maybe one part sunshine” (Time Out New York), and “hypnotic webs of sound reminiscent of early minimalism and psychedelia”  (Newmusicbox.org), the ensemble’s latest focus is Dan's newest composition Tonalization for the Afterlife, an expansive 35-minute multi-movement work that takes the ensemble deeper into the composer’s ecstatic realms of rhythm and color. The current ensemble lineup includes Tom Chiu (violin), Loren Dempster (cello), Maria Ilic (harpsichord), Leah Paul (flute), Danny Tunick (percussion) and the composer on hammer dulcimer.

 

Tickets: $10 (Advance $9, Members $8)

 

SAT 2.26 – Daniel A.I.U. Higgs + Heresy of the Free Spirit (Jozef van Wissem/Che Chen/Robbie Lee)           

Daniel A.I.U Higgs, Interdimensional Song-Seamstress and Corpse-Dancer of the Mystic Crags began singing 25 years ago.  He is perhaps best known as the singer and lyricist of the band Lungfish, which is now, as it often has been, quasi if not entirely defunct. Presently, the music Daniel manifests proceeds without the blessing/curse and help/hinderance of collaborative influence.           

Heresy of the Free Spirit is a trio comprised of Dutch lute player/composer, Jozef Van Wissem and Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalists Che Chen (violin, bowed rewap, bass recorder, percussion and tape machine) and Robbie Lee
(portative organ, bass recorder, electric guitar, banjo and tape delay). Using early European as well as non-western instruments and electronics, the trio plays arrangements of Van Wissem's lute compositions as well as free improvisations that draw on early music, folk traditions, modern composition and noise. 

Composer-lute player Jozef van Wissem is renowned for his unusual approach of the renaissance and baroque lute. The unusual wedlock of composition and improvisation creates an unheard amalgam of contemporary folk and late renaissance music. He has accomplished the strange feat of bridging the idiom of seventeenth century lute literature and twenty-first century composition. Van Wissem runs the incunabulum record label, and performs extensively around the world. He has worked with Tetuzi Akiyama, Maurizio Bianchi, Smegma, Gregg Kowalski and James Blackshaw. With Blackshaw he has formed Brethren of the Free Spirit his latest solo records entitled It Is All That is Made and ex patris were released by Important records.

Che Chen is a sound and graphic artist based in Brooklyn, New York. As a solo performer, Che uses stringed, wind, reed and percussion instruments, reel to reel tape machines, oscillators and other musical and "non-musical" objects in works that explore his interests in perceptual phenomena and folk music traditions from around the world. Che's current performances utilize acoustic and electronic sound sources placed in various locations around the performance area in order to explore the phenomena of difference tones (closely tuned pitches that result in beating patterns), phasing, repetition, decay, the spacialisation of sounds, and the structural relationship between "audience" and "performer". As an anthologist, he has produced the private press artists' magazine, O Sirhan, a publication inspired by Wallace Berman's Semina, Aspen Journal and the Fluxus design work of George Maciunas, and Attention Patterns, a 2 LP + booklet set featuring Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue, Yoshi Wada and Sun Circle.  

 

When not making new music on old instruments, Robbie Lee is also a member of H.M.S. Beagle (with Che Chen), and records with the likes of The Howling Hex, Baby Dee, Love As Laughter, Talibam!, and collaborates with all sorts of improvising musicians.

Tickets: $12 (Advance $11, Members $10)