ISSUE PROJECT ROOM PRESENTS
ELLEN FULLMAN’S LONG STRING INSTRUMENT
& TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS FESTIVAL
BROOKLYN, NY 3.31.11 (For Immediate Release) — Throughout the month of May, ISSUE Project Room presents artists and musicians whose work spans noise, psychedelia, and experimental minimalism, including driving blues band Jonathan Kane’s February (“the unadultrated thunder of a parched desert”) and Ellen Fullman’s Long String Instrument at ISSUE’s future home at 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn.
At ISSUE’s future home, the reverberant and visually stunning jewel-box theater at 110 Livingston, Ellen Fullman (5.22 at 3 PM & 7 PM) will be joined by trombonists David Gamper and Monique Buzzarté, cellist Theresa Wong, and David Douglas and Sean Meehan in various configurations. She plays her Long String Instrument, a life-long work begun in her Brooklyn studio in 1981, by brushing rosin-coated fingers across dozens of metallic string, producing a chorus of minimal organ-like overtones which has been compared to standing inside an enormous grand piano.
Table of the Elements (5.12 – 5.14) at ISSUE Project Room celebrates the vital, forward-looking record label as well-known for their cover art as they are for their musical output. Highlights of the festival include experimental electric harpist Zeena Parkins (5.12), Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio with projections by Robert Longo (5.13), and minimalist blues-drone giants Jonathan Kane’s February (5.14), led by the former drummer of seminal no-wave band Swans. Also performing during the festival are Text of Light (5.13) (with Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, DJ Olive, and William Hooker), singer-songwriter Peg Simone (5.13), Stephen O’Malley (5.14) (of Sunn O))) and Burning Witch), and Melissa St. Pierre (5.14), among many others.
|
Unless otherwise noted, doors are at 8pm and shows begin and 8:30.
All events at ISSUE Project Room 232 3rd Street, Brooklyn, NY
(unless otherwise noted)
Train F/G Carroll St-Smith St or F/G/M/R Fourth Ave-9th St
|
5.5: Kenny Millions + Starlicker ($10 / $8 for Members)
Virtuoso saxophonist and clarinetist Kenny Millions invented the hum ha guitar, and unleashes what is sometimes called “creative terrorism,” in performances both comic and enigmatic.
Starlicker, a trio comprised of Rob Mazurek (cornet), John Herndon (percussion), and Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone), is Rob Mazurek's newest project. Deeply rooted in the Chicago and international avant garde, jazz and post rock scenes, they expel sound with pervading energy and other-worldy delicacy. Starlicker is a unique trio, blending the origins of sound with imperative immediacy and sublime power.
5.6: Paul Flaherty Quartet + Indignant Senility + Family Underground w/ DJ Sets by Expressway Yo-Yo Dieting ($10 / $8 for Members)
Saxophonist Paul Flaherty is a pure free-improv player, using no written tunes or pre-arranged outlines. He performs here with his quartet, which includes trombonist Steve Swell, violinist/vocalist and noise artist C. Spencer Yeh, and seminal punk-jazz drummer Weasel Walter.
Pat Maherr performs as both Indigent Senility and his DJ moniker Expressway Yo-Yo Dieting, the second being with Danish free-drone duo Family Underground. Maherr, based in Portland, Oregon, has previously split his time between a plethora of monikers, from the chopped and screwed hiphop of DJ Yo Yo Dieting to Sisprum Vish’s lo-fi noise, developing the gritty collage sensibility which he’s mastered to a disturbing degree.
5.7: David Linton + Bruce Tovsky ($10 / $8 for Members)
David Linton has created sound for many collaborative dance, theater, and performance settings in New York since the early 1980s. With a background in percussion, he is now known equally well for his solo electro-acoustic drumkit performances. His current project, UnityGain, works with instantaneous collaborative audio-visual communication, and is now the basis for a Manhattan cable and webcast project UGTV (UnityGain Television), where he is producer, director, and an occasional performer.
Visual and sound artist Bruce Tovsky creates live video and sound improvisations, often in collaborations with other artists and musicians. He studied with Fluxus greats Bob Watts, Geoff Hendricks and Daniel Goode, and showed his video work across the USA, Europe and Japan. His most recent project was the samsh LOWLAND show at a secret New York location, exploring the subsonic potential of a monster club sound system with a premier group of improvisors.
5.10: MLB ($10 / $8 for Members)
The collective project MLB, hosted by STEIM and organized by Jamie Allen, is an ensemble performance project featuring a collection of noise and light performance works together in various combinations, live. Performs will include Loud Objects, Phillip Stearns, Yao Chung Han, Jo Kazuhiro, and Atsuhiro Ito. They seek to fuse visual and audible experience, by using material, minimal and abstract approaches.
5.12: Table of the Elements: Zeena Parkins + M2 (Roger Miller & Ben Miller) + Agathe Max + Atelia ($20 / $15 for Members)
Zeena Parkins, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improvisor, well-known as a pioneer of the electric harp, has also extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of digital and analog processing. She accurately describes her harp as a "sound machine of limitless capacity" and has used household objects and hardware store finds, with numerous other digital processing hardware and assorted and varied software.
M2, made up of brothers Roger Miller & Ben Miller, is a long-distance improvisation collaboration in many combinations, whose 1970 recording was described by Michael Azzarad as “Syd Barrett fronting Cream.”
Agathe Max’s upcoming album, the silver string, will be released on Table of the Elements in September. She will play songs from this new album, and will present a new piece based on an Indian raga with distortions and loop effects.
James Elliott, as Ateleia, releases propulsive, abstractly melodic electronic music. Elliott reconfigures a variety of source materials – mainly synthesizer, guitar and electronics – via computer processing into a shifting, constantly mutating framework of psychedelic minimalism.
5.13: Table of the Elements: Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio with projections by Robert Longo + Text of Light + Peg Simone ($20 / $15 for Members)
Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio sparked an electric guitar revolution with three guitars and a single chord. The 2008 Table of the Elements release Guitar Trio is My Life! is celebrated here with a much larger ensemble, the Lords of Tinnitus, anchored by drummer Jonathan Kane and accompanied by images by artist Robert Longo. The ensemble includes Ernie Brooks, Robert Longo, Jonathan Kane, Robert Poss, Bill Brovold, Zach Layton, Adam Wills, and Colin Langenus.
Text of Light (Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, DJ Olive, and William Hooker) was initially formed to perform with American avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage’s film The Text of Light. The group takes on various permutations, and at ISSUE will feature Lee Ranaldo (of Sonic Youth), Alan Licht, DJ Olive, and William Hooker. The group has headlined both film and music festivals, and has toured European and USA club and cinema venues.
New York-based singer-songwriter Peg Simone employs the slide to bone-chilling effect, fracturing raucous rock choruses and sepia-toned ballads into ghost images with its off-tuned eeriness & pure blues tones stuttering across hectic post-punk rhythms. Her recent release is Secrets From The Storm (Table of the Elements, 2010).
5.14: Table of the Elements: Jonathan Kane’s February + Stephen O’Malley + Missi St. Pierre ($20 / $15 for Members)
Jonathan Kane is a Downtown NYC legend — as co-founder of the no-wave behemoth Swans, and the rhythmic thunder behind the massed-guitar armies of Rhys Chatham and the rock excursions of La Monte Young and one of the hardest-hitting drummers on the planet.
Jonathan Kane’s February takes minimalism and blues to the crossroads with “the unadulterated thunder of a parched desert” (Time Out NY, 2009). The band recorded their first live album in a two-day event at ISSUE last year, to be released on Table of the Elements/Radium Records.
Stephen O’Malley is a founding member of Sunn O))) and Burning Witch, both with Greg Anderson. His record Keep an Eye Out was released as part of Table of the Elements’ Guitar Series Vol. 4 in 2008.
Melissa St. Pierre’s CD Specimens, released on Radium/Table of the Elements, is a series of eight short studies for prepared piano, ranging from introspective to playful.
5.18: Lukas Ligeti + Arrington De Dionyso’s Malaikat dan Singa
($10 / $8 for Members)
Transcending the boundaries of genre, composer-percussionist Lukas Ligeti has developed a musical style of his own that draws upon downtown New York experimentalism, contemporary classical music, jazz, electronica, and world music, particularly from Africa. He performs frequently on electronic percussion often using the marimba lumina, a rare instrument invented by California engineer and synthesizer legend Don Buchla.
Musician, performance and visual artist Arrington de Dionyso traverses the nameless territories held between surrealist automatism, shamanic seance, and the folk imagery of rock and roll. His most recent project, Malaikat dan Singa, is a trance-punk outfit featuring bass clarinet, guitars, multiple drummers and his trademark wild vocals (multi-spectral harmonic throatsinging combined with grunts, yelps, and barks), all sung in Indonesian.
5.20: Lycaon Pictus + Thank You Rosekind ($10 / $8 for Members)
Art-punk band Lycaon Pictus recalls “the apocalypse imagined by Pere Ubu,” (New York Times). Their keyboard/bass/drums trio combines drones and heavy synthesizers with dark humor.
Thank You Rosekind will play selections from their forthcoming album ATTENTION INTENTION! They express various forms of thanks through song, dance, action and the visual spectrum.
5.22: 3 pm & 7 pm at 110 Livingston – Ellen Fullman with David Gamper (3 PM ONLY), Monique Buzzarté (7 PM ONLY), David Douglas, Theresa Wong & Sean Meehan ($15 / $12 for Members)
Ellen Fullman, composer, instrument builder, and performer, will perform on her life-long work the Long String Instrument, where multiple strings are held tight across an entire room. Originally developed in the early 1980s in her Brooklyn studio, Fullman brushes rosin-coated fingers across dozens of metallic strings, producing a chorus of minimal organ-like overtones which has been compared to standing inside an enormous grand piano. Installed for a two-day special event at ISSUE’s future home, 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn, the reverberant and visually stunning jewel-box theater at will amplify this transcendent two-set event.
Fullman will collaborate in various combinations with trombonists David Gamper (3 PM) and Monique Buzzarté (7 PM), cellist Theresa Wong, and musicians David Douglas and Sean Meehan.
5.25: Bill Thompson + Telebossa ($10 / $8 for Members)
Sound artist and composer Bill Thompson uses a combination of found objects, field recordings, repurposed live electronics, and digital media to create evolving sonic structures for sound installations and live performance.
Telebossa, made up of Brazilian Chico Mello and Berlin-based cellist and producer Nicholas Bussmann explore the intersections of bossa nova and European chamber music. Repetitive cello figures, spacious, pounding bass and gently bubbling electronics, with the occasional tenderly strummed guitar and hushed vocals, are reminiscent of the transparent sambas of the Argentinean Juana Molina or the minimalist disco cellist Arthur Russell.
5.26: Jooklo Duo + Bill Nace ($10 / $8 for Members)
Jooklo Duo (Virginia Genta, saxophone; David Vanzan, drums) record on the eclectic Italian label Qbico. Their music ranges from deep-psychedelia to free-jazz. They have collaborated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and have collaborated with everyone from Famodou Don Moye to John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin.
Bill Nace is an itinerant guitarist in the improv-minstrel mode. He plays with X.O.4, Northampton Wools, Vampire Belt, and in a uo with Chris Cooper. Nace will join Jooklo Duo for a final trio set.
###
Media Contact:
Andrew Smith
718.330.0313
ABOUT ISSUE PROJECT ROOM ISSUE Project Room, a registered 501(c)(3) organization, was established in 2003 by visionary artist Suzanne Fiol, and is a vibrant nexus for cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary arts in Brooklyn. ISSUE supports emerging and established experimental artists through more than 200 programs each year including music concerts, literary readings, films, videos, dance, visual and sound art, new media, critical theory lectures and discussions, site-specific work, commissions, educational workshops, master classes, and genre-defying interdisciplinary performances that challenge and expand conventional practices in art.
www.issueprojectroom.org
Support for ISSUE has been provided by 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.
