The Flea Theater
41 White St., NYC
$15/$10 Students
PURCHASE TICKETS
Electronic Music Foundation presents the first annual EMF Lab, a new concert series bringing together emerging and established composers and improvisers to explore the convergence of sound and technology. The series finale features three groups straddling the line separating band from ensemble. The first half features performances by new electroacoustic improv ensemble Rusty Limited Company, and performance ensemble Airband, which uses homebuilt midi devices and hi-jacked video game controllersto perform eccentric covers of popular tunes and abstract soundscapes. The second half features the renowned improv group Text of Light, featuring guitarist Alan Licht, Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, and saxophonist Ulrich Krieger, improvising with Stan Brakhage's The Lost Films.
PROGRAM
Pop. .......................................................................................................................Rusty Limited Company
Jessica Schmitz, flute; James Moore, guitar, Eleonore Oppenheim, bass; Aleksei Stevens, laptop
Free Electron..........................................................................................................................The Airband
Langdon C. Crawford, MIDI Air Guitar: Rhythm
Laura Sinnot, MIDI Air Guitar, Drum & Bass
William David Fastenow, MIDI Air Guitar: Controlled Explosions
-intermission-
The Lost Films..........................................................................................................................Text of Light
Alan Licht and Lee Ranaldo, guitars; Ulrich Krieger, saxophones
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable who's who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Rashied Ali, Derek Bailey) and electronica wizards (Fennesz, Jim O'Rourke) to turntable masters (DJ Spooky, Christian Marclay) and veteran Downtown New York composers (John Zorn, Rhys Chatham). Licht is also renown in the indie rock scene as a bandleader (Run On, Love Child) and supporting player to cult legends like Tom Verlaine, Arthur Lee, Arto Lindsay, and Jandek. He has released five albums of compositions for tape and solo guitar, and his sound and video installations have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe.
Lee Ranaldo is a musician, writer, and visual artist. An original member of the group Sonic Youth, formed in 1981 in New York City, they have recorded and performed around the world since that time. Their last record was Sonic Nurse. The group has just completed a 'Goodbye 20th Century' tour of Europe, performing the compositions of John Cage, Christian Wolfe, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich and others.
Saxophone player and composers Ulrich Krieger has won several awards and residencies in New York, Los Angeles, Venice, Rome, Bologna, Darmstadt and others. His pieces are widely performed by ensembles in Europe and the USA. Krieger's recent interest lies in the experimental fringes of contemporary pop culture, the limbo between noise, metal, ambient and silence. He transcribed and arranged Lou Reeds’ Metal Machine Music for classical instruments. Collaborations include: LaMonte Young, Phill Niblock, Christian Marcley, Mario Bertoncini, Merzbow, Lou Reed, Lee Ranaldo, Michiko Hirayama, John Duncan, Zbigniew Karkowski, DJ Olive, Kasper T Toeplitz, Radu Malfatti etc.
Langdon C. Crawford used to eat granola and ride mountain bikes in the luscious Green Mountains of Vermont. Now he makes computer music in the experimental perfromance venues of NYC. He is interested in developing new ways to interact with music and technology. He has a Master of Music degree from New York University and teaches interactive computer music technology to composers at Manhattan School of Music.
Willie Fastenow (air guitar)
Composer, producer, and performer William David Fastenow’s recent projects include the multimedia work Lifelines: A Voiceless Opera; Efflorescence; and the debut CD Ullswater, featuring William David Fastenow Jazz Orchestra. Film and television credits include NBC's The Jane Pauley Show, HBO's Baghdad CSH and House Arrest, John Michael Williams' The Easter Anthony Lover's My Brother, and Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation. He has an MM from the Manhattan School of Music.
Laura Sinnott grew up playing music in Utica, NY. After her Colorado undergraduate years, she caught the travel bug and English teacher in Taiwan, a dance instructor in Havana, Cuba, and a figure skater in Europe. She has since then returned musical roots and is now immersed in the world of sound and technology. Her current interests include post-production sound/video, and work with New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME).
James Moore is a versatile guitarist performing on a wide variety of acoustic and electric guitars, banjos, and homemade instruments. James’s solo and chamber performances have brought him to concert halls and experimental music venues across the country, including Merkin Hall Ear Department Series, Northwestern University, Santa Cruz New Music Works, D’Addario Strings, The Connecticut Classical Guitar Society, Manhattan School of Music’s TACTUS ensemble, Newspeak, Anti-Social Music, and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. As an orchestral guitarist, James has performed with Ridge Theater Productions’ run of Michael Gordon’s Decasia, and the Bang on a Can Marathon.
Double Bassist Eleonore Oppenheim just finished touring with the Philip Glass Ensemble as part of book of longing. She is dedicated to playing new works by living composers from a variety of genres, and has commissioned and premiered a wide range of pieces for the double bass by young and emerging composers including Jenny Olivia Johnson, Florent Ghys, Douglas Fisk, Wil Smith, Missy Mazzoli, and Eric km Clark. She has played with numerous chamber ensembles as well as sharing a stage with Meredith Monk, Edgar Meyer, and Dan Zanes among others.
Drawn to both contemporary and traditional repertoire, New York-based flutist Jessica Schmitz has performed many world premieres and worked with such composers as Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, Robert Dick, Steve Mackey, and Harold Meltzer. Schmitz’s recent collaborations include those with Signal Ensemble, June in Buffalo Festival, NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression), S.E.M. Ensemble, So Percussion, Bang On a Can, Electronic Music Foundation, and the Chelsea Symphony Orchestra. Her work has been heard in Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, Merkin Hall, Lincoln Center, and The Kitchen, among others. A winner of the Artists International Competition in 2006, she is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and New York University.
Aleksei Stevens is a composer, sound artist, and creator of interactive multimedia performance works. He has written music for the concert stage, dance, film, theater, and installation, and his work has been performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, Rome's Tevereterno Festival, The Stone, Symphony Space, White Box, Chelsea Art Museum, 3-Legged Dog, and many others. Composers and performers with whom he has collaborated include, among others, Joan La Barbara, Joel Chadabe, Alvin Curran, Madeleine Shapiro, Bora Yoon, Okkyung Lee, and Jessica Schmitz. He is the recent recipient of a residency at the MacDowell Colony.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
Pop.
Pop.is about accumulation, and about the emergence of structure from randomness. Each performer independently navigates an ever-widening field of musical choices while custom software records his playing into a memory bank, any snippet of which can be recalled at any time. Through the accumulation of sounds and playing techniques, the piece begins to discover an emergent regularity of tempo and harmony, mimicking the 4-bar chord progression structure of a pop song.
The Airband
The Airband is a performance ensemble of composers, musicians, mad scientists. They perform using homebuilt midi devices and laptop computers. Their music ranges from eccentric arrangements of pop tunes to abstract soundscapes, and a verity of experimental and improvised forms in between. The Airband has performed in experimental music venues, art galleries and comedy venues in NYC. The Airband gets its name from the first hand held controllers the band used to make music. The device known as the MIDI Airguitar works much like a traditional air guitar, except the air guitarist can actually create and control the music. The Airband members eventually developed software programs such as techno-matic(drums) and super-synth(lead) to create a full range of expressive instruments. The Airband members have several independent projects that inform and inspire the work of the ensemble.
The Lost Films
Of The Lost Films, Stan Brakhage writes, "They are travelogues in photographic fact and in the mind. Unable to afford printing them, I had stuck them in a drawer. The first was made in 1991, the second through sixth in 1992, seven and eight in '93, and the ninth in '92. 1) A travelogue "nocturne" on the city of London as illuminated by "glaze" finally off the surfaces of Turner's paintings. 2) A travelogue to the north of Finland shepherded by the midnight sun. 3) A hand-painted work, a "midsummer's night dream," still reflective of the experience of the previous summer in Finland. 4) A multiply pastel toned balloon of optical fog triumphing over the barest hints of photographic representation in the lower right hand corner. 5) A mountain meditation primarily in blue "mountains" of the mind shaped by amorphous dull yellows and faded violets. 6) A hand-painted film -- some of the same colors of the previous films moving through the sandbars and oceans of thoughtful recollection. 7) This is the eternally ephemeral process of attempts to remember imagery "giving way"/being-displaced-by the contemporaneously practical sighting of what confronts any given viewer at every shift of open eyes (or, as in the film, at every shift of camera, optical focus and montage of edit) -- the skeins of The Atlantic, the particularities of Boston night lights, and illuminated points West ending on a garbage truck in a parking lot by the deserts of New Mexico. 8) A dark "sea chante" of absolute photography. 9) The color negative of "truth" -- that is to say it is the whole truth (insofar as hand-painted film might aspire to achieve it) and a counterbalance epiphany to any such "truth" as might be put in quotes."
SITES
EMF :: Arts Electric :: EMF Productions :: Ear to the Earth :: CDeMusic :: EMF Media :: EMF Institute