Jozef Van Wissem continues to liberate the lute. Once the most popular of portable instrument, it then entered 250 years of neglect, but today suffers from being regarded as a museum piece, only to be played in accordance with theories about authenticity. Van Wissem has improvised with guitarists Gary Lucas and Tetuzi Akiyama, while his solo Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear alternated his own palindromic compositions with processed field recordings of airport lounges. The excellent A Rose By Any Other Name is a ‘straight' lute record, though Van Wissem's scary monochrome cover photo harks back to a more innocent age when lute playing, like vegetarianism, would have been evidence of mild insanity. All 22 pieces here are anonymous- as Van Wissem points out, this could have been because the composer was too much of a celebrity to be worth naming, or else an aristocratic amateur unwilling to demean himself by appearing as a professional musician. There's one 14th century Italian drone-dance, but most are from the early 17th century, late Renaissance and pre-Baroque. Many have a forthright and folksy quality, and it's not until “ En Me Revenant” ( from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge) that we hear the tricky contrapuntal lines typical of upmarket Renaissance lute. This is straight away followed by “General Leslys Godnight”, which sounds like the bastard offspring of a sarabande and the blues. Rendered still stranger by a sharp tuning (an experiment characteristic of the period, apparently). This Scottish melodie illuminates how European tunes were shortly to traverse the Atlantic and mutate in the New World. Van Wissem's playing is unfetterd and lacks tea-party politeness. He ranges from moody to muscular, and coaxes a good range of colors from his ten-course, Canadian-built lute, evoking African kora as well as blues guitar. My favorite, “Untitled”, by Anonymous, is a stirring, spacious Scottish lament, conjuring up windswept wastes.

[ for more info on Jozef van Wissem ]

this performance will feature three abbreviate works:
CORPUS SPECERE
MATINEE
REVOCO



Terry Adkins is a visual artist and musician whose multivalent approach to creative expression has been featured in galleries and museums as well as on the avant-garde music scene since the late seventies. He started out in his native Washington , DC as a charter member of Harmolodica with fellow saxophonist Yahya Abdul-Majid (presently with Sun Ra Arkestra), played in Don Cherry's Community Orchestra and collaborated with performance artist Sherman Fleming's AFRO ( Anti Formalist Reclamation Organization). Since moving to New York in 1982, Adkins has performed with Julius Hemphill, Jemeel Moondoc, Charles Gayle, Vincent Chauncey, Denis Charles, William Parker, Peter Kowald, Reverend Frank Wright, Butch Morris, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Brian Smith, Bern Nix and many others. In 1986 while on a yearlong visiting artist exchange between P.S.1 in New York and Binz 39 in Zurich , Adkins founded the Lone Wolf Recital Corps, a multi media performance unit that premiered at Rote Fabrik. While in Zurich he also collaborated with Gunter Muller's Nachtluft and co-founded and premiered Lithium AZ with Daniela Zehnder at the Rigiblick Theatre.

The Lone Wolf Recital Corps usually performs at the sites of Adkins' sculpturally based installations, which comprise memorial tributes to individuals whose societal contributions are either unheralded or unknown. Recited text, sounding sculpture and ritual actions are combined in an effort to recover and reenact the deeds of the honored, which in the past have included Jimi Hendrix, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Jean Toomer, John Coltrane, Sojourner Truth and John Brown. In his current recital at Pageant, Belted Bronze , Adkins illuminates the life and work of the great blues artist Bessie Smith, who lived and performed in South Philadelphia from 1921 until her untimely death in 1937. Corpus Specere, Matinee and Revoco feature a collaborative reunion with Sherman Fleming and a video by Kristen Gayle from the University of Pennsylvania where Terry Adkins is currently Associate Professor of Fine Arts. The Lone Wolf Recital Corps has performed at the ICA London, Whitney Museum , The Studio Museum in Harlem , The New World Symphony of Miami and ICA Philadelphia among other venues worldwide. Adkins appears on the Nachluft CD Telefonia and on The Regulator by Bazillus.

presented in conjunction with Adkins' current exhibition at Pageant:Soloveev:
BELTED BRONZE - RECITAL IN EIGHT DOMINIONS - TERRY ADKINS AFTER BESSIE SMITH



[ for more info on the current exhibition at Pageant:Soloveev click here ]

photo credit:
Black Beethoven contrabass: Tasha Doremus
Lone Wolf flute: Anthony Rodriguez

Over the past twenty-five years Jack Wright has been a bold saxophonist, as well as an influential musical personality. Either on tour or organizing the next one, he has played in virtually every venue available to experimental improvised music in the US, and many in Europe as well. In 1982 he began Spring Garden Music as a vehicle for organizing an improvisational music community, which continues to grow through regular No Net weekend sessions. As a musical explorer as well, his music passes through radical shifts of style and approach from one year to the next, yet always somehow identifiable as his own. These days he is playing mostly alto and soprano saxophones, in every possible direction, sometimes even recognizable as such. He lives in Easton, which enables him to commute easily to NYC and Phila. He is also active in Europe, touring both sides of the Atlantic with European musicians, and will tour Japan with Michel Doneda and Tatsuya Nakatani.

Toshi Makihara studied drums, percussion and improvisation with Sabu Toyozumi, a prominent percussionist in Tokyo. Since arriving in the United States in the late 1970's he has worked with various new music ensembles as well as with numerous dance and theater companies internationally. Makihara has provided original music to Arden Theater Company, Diversions Dance Company (Wales), Pennsylvania Ballet, ZeroMoving Dance Company and Leah Stein Dance Company among others, and has worked with musicians including Steve Beresford, Peter Brotzmann, John Butcher, Nels Cline, Eugene Chadbourne, Tom Cora, Amy Denio, Thurston Moore, William Parker and John Zorn. He has also collaborated with poets, visual artists, filmmakers and performance artists widely.

Evan Lipson is a bassist/composer currently residing with three other musicians in Jack Wright's Spring Garden Music house, located in West Philadelphia. His principal teachers included both Michael Formanek & Robert Kesselman (Phila. Orch). Other private teachers have included Mark Dresser, Mark Helias, Ralph Alessi, and Brad Shepik, as well as Robert Black (Bang On A Can) at the Festival Eleazar Carvalho in Fortaleza, Brazil. He attended the Peabody Conservatory, as well as Temple University. Evan works with several bands/ensembles/gangs including: NORMAL LOVE, SATANIZED, DYNAMITE CLUB, Mike Pride's FROM BACTERIA TO BOYS, and Gene Coleman's ENSEMBLE NOAMNESIA He has also performed and/or recorded with artists such as: Charles Cohen, Maria Chavez, Gene Coleman, Alvin Curran, Andrew D'Angelo, Stuart Dempster, Dr. Dog, Andrew Drury, Helena Espvall, Bryan Eubanks, Peter Evans, Cynthia Folio, Mike Gamble, Ben Gerstein, Devin Gray, Mary Halvorson, Andy Hayleck, Katt Hernandez, Charlette Hug, Rick Iannacone, Michael Johnson, Darius Jones, Matthias Kaul, Jesse Krakow, Andrew Lafkas, Charlie Looker, Lukas Ligeti, John McLellan, Toshi Makihara, Mat Maneri, Tatsuya Nakatani, Pauline Oliveros, Mike Pride, Gregory Reynolds, Jane Riggler, Make A Rising, Jamie Saft, Christine Sehnaoui, Alex Waterman, Veryan Weston, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and Yoshida Tatsuya (RUINS). Evan Lipson strongly values and enjoys the evolving process of social collaboration/exchange in order to produce various states of excitement, tension, confusion, and perceptual revelation."

[ for more info on Jack Wright ]
[ for more info on Toshi Makihara ]
[ for more info on Evan Lipson ]

EMBARKER
michael barker, electroincs
philadelphia

Michael Barker (b 1976) has attention deficit disorder. He even has the doctor's note to prove it. Since 1998 mb has improvised as a double bassist, with voice and laptop, using analog and homemade electronics, while collecting found sound and video. After moving to Philadelphia from Baltimore in 2002, Michael organized improvised music shows at the short lived Table Space Gallery. He played in The High Zero Festival in 2002 which "allegedly" ruined/changed his (music) life. He has been a resident artist at the Experimental TV Center in collaboration with RF Avatar (2005 & 06) and will be at STEIM (NL)in early 2007. He has improvised with many players from around the country, none of whom deserve name dropping in this short bio. He currently plays in Sharks with wings, PIMA group, Wet Cement and The George Steeltoe Ensemble.

A harsh static signal carrying a hushed cacophony of confessions out into everything. SweetNothing is Jared Burak. Burak lives in North Philadelphia and runs Lowest Fidelity Recordings. He also performs in Black Blood, RLStein, Sanguine Vessel, Seekers of the Claw, WetCement, and Whine.

A discussion about the social and political implications of the practice of improvised and experimental music outside of academia and traditional high-art institutions. We will discuss the political content of the music itself as well as implications arising from the way it is practiced (small and inexpensive concerts, little money changing hands, self-released CD-R recordings, performances by ad hoc ensembles, etc.). Is this music more or less welcoming of women, minorities, and the economically disadvantaged than other musical cultures? Why? Is self-styled "difficult music" inherently elitist? Or is it a bulwark against reductive reasoning in other spheres? Is this music anti-capitalist and anti-hierarchical? Or is it another manifestation of bourgeois cultural privilege?

with panelists:
Shaun Brady, music journalist and critic
Gene Coleman, composer, musician, director of Soundfield
Katt Hernandez, musician, community activist, bowerbird collective member
Jack Wright, musician, runs an independent label
Jesse Kudler (moderator), musician, bowerbird collective member

"What is the relationship of politics to experimental music?"
PANEL DISCUSSION @ 7pm
*Light refreshments will be served*

TIM FEENEY percussion, electronics
JAMES COLEMAN theremin
Boston, MA

James Coleman is one of the most astounding living players of the Theremin, a touch-less early electronic instrument invented by Russian Emegree Leon Theremin originally intended for the performance of Classical music. Known for his work with extremely quiet sounds, James' intense involvement in the Boston underground includes the nine-piece free improvisation ensemble, the bsc, and the experimental chamber music group, the undr quartet. He has also performed with Nmperign, Joe McPhee, John Voigt, Peter Kowald, Eddie Prevost, Dan DeCellis, David Gross, Dave Bryant (Ornette Colemans' Primetime) and composer & pianist John Thomas. James has presented lecture-performances and master classes at the Berklee College of Music, Tufts University & The George Eastman House Archive of Motion Pictures. Before re-locating to Boston , James wrote and recorded numerous electronic sound environments & installations in Perth , Western Australia , including an architectural site/sound installation at Gotham Artists Studio, and Drone Piano, a collaborative sound installation at the Perth Institute Of Contemporary Arts with Chris Mann.

Tim Feeney seeks to explore and examine the timbral possibilities inherent in everyday found and built objects.  He treats his percussion setup as a friction instrument, using bows, scrapers, and rosined drumheads to capture and amplify frequencies that go unheard when an object is struck with a traditional mallet.  He supplements this acoustic console with an electronic instrument, arranged from no-input mixers, contact microphones, and effects pedals, that synthesizes and alters the spectral characteristics of low-fidelity sine tones, feedback, and noise. Tim performs regularly with musicians including thereminist James Coleman, cellist/electronic musician Vic Rawlings, tape-deck manipulator Howard Stelzer, and the trio ONDA. His concerts have been held at experimental spaces such as the Red Room in Baltimore, Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art, Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut, the Knitting Factory New York, the inaugural Counter Fit Festival in Rochester, New York, and the August 2005 NoNet workshop and series in Philadelphia. He is the founder and curator of OpenSound, a Boston series for experimental music.

Their music sounds kind of like a fly, stuck to drying paint, under a microscope.



BARRIOS / LIPSON / LAGOMASINO
Jon Barrios - guitar
Evan Lipson - bass
Ricardo Lagomasino - percussion
Philadelphia, PA

Evan Lipson is a bassist/composer currently residing with three other musicians in Jack Wright's Spring Garden Music house, located in West Philadelphia. His principal teachers included both Michael Formanek & Robert Kesselman (Phila. Orch). Other private teachers have included Mark Dresser, Mark Helias, Ralph Alessi, and Brad Shepik, as well as Robert Black (Bang On A Can) at the Festival Eleazar Carvalho in Fortaleza, Brazil. He attended the Peabody Conservatory, as well as Temple University. Evan works with several bands/ensembles/gangs including: NORMAL LOVE, SATANIZED, DYNAMITE CLUB, Mike Pride's FROM BACTERIA TO BOYS, and Gene Coleman's ENSEMBLE NOAMNESIA He has also performed and/or recorded with artists such as: Charles Cohen, Maria Chavez, Gene Coleman, Alvin Curran, Andrew D'Angelo, Stuart Dempster, Dr. Dog, Andrew Drury, Helena Espvall, Bryan Eubanks, Peter Evans, Cynthia Folio, Mike Gamble, Ben Gerstein, Devin Gray, Mary Halvorson, Andy Hayleck, Katt Hernandez, Charlette Hug, Rick Iannacone, Michael Johnson, Darius Jones, Matthias Kaul, Jesse Krakow, Andrew Lafkas, Charlie Looker, Lukas Ligeti, John McLellan, Toshi Makihara, Mat Maneri, Tatsuya Nakatani, Pauline Oliveros, Mike Pride, Gregory Reynolds, Jane Riggler, Make A Rising, Jamie Saft, Christine Sehnaoui, Alex Waterman, Veryan Weston, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and Yoshida Tatsuya (RUINS). Evan Lipson strongly values and enjoys the evolving process of social collaboration/exchange in order to produce various states of excitement, tension, confusion, and perceptual revelation."

Jon Barrios has performed with Toshi Makihara, Dan Blacksberg, Jack Wright, Tatsuya Nakatani, Anne West, Dustin Hurt, Alban Bailly, Christine Shenoui, Gerald Sloan, John Dikeman and others. Barrios also runs the small label Lift Records which focuses on limited edition short run releases of curious projects. He's been touring the mid-west and recording, performing within Philadelphia and New York since he moved to Jack Wright's Spring Garden house in the Spring of 2006.

Ricardo Lagomasino has been playing music for longer than he hasn't. He grew up studying drums, guitar, and trombone. He has since graduated from the Jazz Program at Oberlin Conservatory in Oberlin, OH, with a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Drums Performance. He has accumulated a list of noteworthy performances. He has performed with such jazz giants as Joe Chambers, Roscoe Mitchell, Wendell Logan, and Marcus Belgrave, as well as with Soundpainter Walter Thompson. He has studied drum set with Joe Chambers, Ralph Peterson, Jr., and Billy Hart, classical percussion with Michael Rosen, frame drum and drum set with Jamey Haddad, and Tabla with Guruji Hasu Patel. He has written compositions and arrangements for different types of groups, most recently an ensemble featuring alto sax, trombone, violin, acoustic bass, harp, drums, and percussion. Although he is well versed in Jazz, he also has performed with a variety of Pop, Metal, and Indie groups, such as Vicious Ambitious and Capillary Action, with whom he tours regularly. His other projects currently including the drums and electric sax duo, Pads & Steel. He is now based in Philadelphia, PA and is exploding into the local music scene, playing at various clubs in various settings, and continuing to walk the line connecting all of the various genres of music he has loved to play in the past.



TOSHI MAKIHARA
solo percussion
Philadelphia, PA

Toshi Makihara studied drums, percussion and improvisation with Sabu Toyozumi, a prominent percussionist in Tokyo. Since arriving in the United States in the late 1970's he has worked with various new music ensembles as well as with numerous dance and theater companies internationally. Makihara has provided original music to Arden Theater Company, Diversions Dance Company (Wales), Pennsylvania Ballet, ZeroMoving Dance Company and Leah Stein Dance Company among others, and has worked with musicians including Steve Beresford, Peter Brotzmann, John Butcher, Nels Cline, Eugene Chadbourne, Tom Cora, Amy Denio, Thurston Moore, William Parker and John Zorn. He has also collaborated with poets, visual artists, filmmakers and performance artists widely.

http://www.toshimakihara.com

Eliot Gattegno is the Co-Director of the Second Instrumental Unit and Deputy Executive Director of World-Wide Concurrent Premiers and Commissioning Fund Inc. Since 2002, he has premiered and commissioned over 90 works. He is a founding member of Radnofsky Quartet, the Kenners, Satori, and White Rabbit, and regularly works with ensembles including Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Columbia Composers Ensemble, Wet Ink., and Calithumpian Consort. Mr. Gattegno is a recipient of the "Scholarship Prize," of Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, the New England Conservatory Tourjee Alumni Award, the Interlochen Arts Academy Fine Arts Award, the Downbeat Magazine Student Music Award, and a three-time recipient of the New England Conservatory Performance Outreach Fellowship. He has recently created a music education program and concert series in collaboration with The Home For Little Wanderers in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He has also has earned grants from the Fromm Foundation, the St. Botolph Club Foundation, Impuls Festival and Arts Recognition and Talent Search (ARTS/NFAA), and won the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and New England Conservatory Concerto Competitions. A Selmer Performing Artist, he recently performed at Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, Miller Theatre, Lincoln Center, Tanglewood Music Center, and the Darmstadt Festival, and was the first saxophonist to be invited to the Yellow Barn School and Festival since it was founded in 1970. A graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy, where he studied with William Sears, he holds a Bachelor's Degree with Distinction in Performance from The New England Conservatory of Music, where he is currently a graduate student studying saxophone with Kenneth Radnofsky and Composition with John Mallia. Mr. Gattegno can be heard on Mode, Cantaloupe, and Sedimental Records and has several recordings awaiting release on labels including Innova and Furious Artisans. He currently serves on the faculty of New England Conservatory Preparatory School and Eastern Nazarene College. Eliot wishes to thank all of his teachers.


[ for more info on Eliot Gattegno ]

COMMON SENSE
ian fraser laptop and electronics
tim albro guitar and electronics
philadelphia, pa

Common Sense is the improvised music duo of Ian Fraser and Tim Albro. They have been working together on a focused duo music since meeting in the Philadelphia SoundExchange Workshop TM. This is the debut of the group, which will feature a more composite form of improvising. The two also work together in the quintet Benito Cereno.

Born in worcester, ma in 1980, currently based in philadelphia, Tim Albro studied english at wesleyan university.  Current research interests include: -african american anarchism, modernism, and music-, -improvisation-, and -good advice-.  He is a member of the band sympathizers.

Ian M Fraser is a Philadelphia based artist working both visually and aurally. He plays bass for Relay and is currently participating in Pauline Olivero's Sound Exchange Project. His currant interest is in electronics, improvising with extremely high/low sine wave frequencies, contact microphones, and radio waves. He is twenty six years old.

This Allentown, PA area located black cloud generator is currently bellowing out upside down crossed brown waves directly into the smog zone. Following in the tradition of old school shape-shifters like STARFUCKERS and RAMLEH - AIR CONDITIONING hot wire the amplified hearse with a lunatic fringe of barf--breathed fuck lust. Do not expect anything but a journey into the mekano wiring of tweeter fry. Long after the autopsy on the music of the 2000 begin and we forget about the STROKES/ARCADE FIRE et al as the disposable college musiks, important and timeless soundz such as AIR CONDITIONING, SIGHTINGS and MOUTHUS will emerge as thug fisted bouncers ready to kick your ass on dispatch of the needle to the rekkid. Beware, where there is leather, there is lace.


[ for more info on Air Conditioning ]

Please join us on Saturday, April 20, 2007 from 10pm-12am at Slought Foundation for "Nighttime Cinema Re-imagined: Kwaidan & Ensemble N_JP ." Join us for green tea and Japanese beer, then stay up a little later than usual for this dynamic fusion of film and live music. Contemporary experimental Japanese musicians with Ensemble N_JP, including Yumiko Tanaka, Rei Hotoda, and Taku Unami will play original compositions to accompany selections from the film "Kwaidan" (1964), a collection of chilling tales of ghostly visitation. This concert at Slought Foundation is part of Soundfield's Transonic + Crosswork series, and has been organized in conjunction with the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia and Bowerbird.

Plot Synopsis: This film contains four distinct, separate stories. "Black Hair": A poor samurai who divorces his true love to marry for money, but finds the marriage disastrous and returns to his old wife, only to discover something eerie about her. "The Woman in the Snow": Stranded in a snowstorm, a woodcutter meets an icy spirit in the form of a woman spares his life on the condition that he never tell anyone about her. A decade later he forgets his promise. "Hoichi the Earless": Hoichi is a blind musician, living in a monastery who sings so well that a ghostly imperial court commands him to perform the epic ballad of their death battle for them. But the ghosts are draining away his life, and the monks set out to protect him by writing a holy mantra over his body to make him invisible to the ghosts. But they've forgotten something. "In a Cup of Tea": a writer tells the story of a man who keep seeing a mysterious face reflected in his cup of tea.

More info: A masterpiece of filmmaking artifice and mood-setting atmosphere, Kwaidan consists of four ghost stories adapted from the fiction of Greek-born Lafcadio Hearn (a.k.a. Yakumo Koizumi, 1850-1904), who assimilated into Japanese culture so thoroughly that his writings reveal no evidence of Western influence. So it is that these four cinematic interpretations--perhaps more accurately described as tales of spectral visitation--are sublimely Japanese in tone and texture, created entirely in a studio with frequently stunning results. There are painterly images here that remain the most beautiful and haunting in all of Japanese cinema, presented with the purity of silent film (showing) the otherworldly effect of director Masaki Kobayashi's meticulous imagery. When viewed in a receptive frame of mind, Kwaidan can be intensely hypnotic. Each of the four stories find their protagonists confronted by spirits that compel them to (respectively) make amends for past mistakes, maintain vows of silence, satisfy the yearnings of the undead, or capture phantoms that remain frightfully elusive. As each tale progresses, their supernatural elements grow increasingly intense and distant from the confines of reality. With careful use of glorious color and wide-screen composition, Kwaidan exists in a netherworld that is both real and imagined, its characters never quite sure they can trust what they've seen and heard. Vastly different from the more overt shocks of Western horror, the film casts a supernatural spell that remains timelessly effective. --Jeff Shannon

The Voltage Spooks is a newly formed, all-star trio of improv luminary, Keith Rowe, Texas-based sound artist, Rick Reed, and electro acoustic composer, Michael Haleta.

Keith Rowe (born March 16, 1940 in Plymouth, England) is an English free improvisation guitarist. Rowe is a founding member of AMM in the mid-1960s (a group from which he quit in 2004) and a founding member of M.I.M.E.O. After years of obscurity, Rowe has achieved a level of relative notoriety, and since the late 1990s has kept up a busy recording and touring schedule. He is seen as a godfather of electroacoustic improvisation, and many of his recent recordings have been released by Erstwhile Records. Rowe began his career playing jazz in the early 1960's--notably with Mike Westbrook. His early influences were guitarists like Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian and Barney Kessel. Eventually, however, Rowe grew tired of what he considered the form's limitations, and gradually expanded into free jazz and free improvisation, eventually abandoning conventional guitar technique. "How could I abandon the technique? Lay the guitar flat!" Rowe thus developed various prepared guitar techniques: placing the guitar flat on a table and manipulating the strings, body and pickups in unorthodox ways enabled him to produce sounds that have been described as dark, brooding, compelling, expansive and alien. He has been known to employ objects such as a library card, rubber eraser, springs, hand-held electric fans, alligator clips, and common office supplies in playing the guitar. A January, 1997 feature in Guitar Player magazine described a Rowe performance as "resemble a surgeon operating on a patient." Rowe sometimes incorporates live radio broadcasts into his performances, including shortwave radio and number stations (the guitar's pickups will also pick up radio signals, and broadcast them through the amplifier) AMM percussionist Eddie Prévost reports that Rowe has "an uncanny touch on the wireless switch", able to find radio broadcasts which seem to blend ideally with, or offer startling commentary on, the music. On AMMMusic, towards the end of the cacophonous "Ailantus Glandolusa," a speaker announces via radio that "We cannot preserve the normal music."

Rick Reed (b. 1957) is an entirely self-taught composer/visual artist who has been working in the Austin music underground for the past 25 years. Using old battered electronic devices like sine wave generators, short wave radios and a vintage EMS analogue synthesizer, Reed has performed solo and with various electronic/noise groups including Frequency Curtain, Abrasion Ensemble, FTC and many others. The Spring 2006 issue of Signal To Noise Magazine said of his most recent CD release, Dark Skies at Noon, that "(Reed works) a complex weave of sounds plucked from the dawn of electronic music-or maybe stolen from some future fading memory of it's passing". Since the early 90s, Reed has released several LPs and CDs on labels such as Ecstatic Peace, Beta-Lactam Ring, Pale Disc Japan and Elevator Bath. Among other projects, he's been the host of Commercial Suicide, a long running 'other worldly' music radio program heard on a local station, KOOP FM . He is also the musical director of an experimental music concert series called Toneburst, which is dedicated to promoting unheard,or underexposed musicians from the Austin new music community. Since 2004, he has worked closely with New York filmmaker Ken Jacobs on three soundtracks for his Nervous Magic Lantern displays, one of which, entitled "Capitalism:Child Labor", had it's world premiere at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival. Reed has 3 new releases due out later this year, a new CD on Spectral House, a Ken Jacobs DVD project and a picture disc LP on Elevator Bath.

Michael Haleta (b. 1978) is a multidisciplinary artist based in New Jersey. A classically trained cellist turn electro acoustic composer interested in individual sounds and bits rather than complete things. (BG) Has released audio for: Alienation, Raw Special Effects (RSE), Carpark and Hoss records. Michael and his wife Dawn run the small edition label/shop, Raw Special Effects (RSE) which is scheduled to release material by EVOL, Peter Rehberg and others within the upcoming year.

Daniel Peterson is a multi-instrumentalist performer on most woodwinds, including saxello, saxophones and clarinets. He is well known in Philadelphia, because of his involvement with groups led by Odean Pope, Bobby Zankel and the Puzzlebox Experiment. His own groups Truth & Consequence, Fraternity of Void and The Bottmfeeders feature unique compositions, a varied array of sounds and approaches to modern music. He is the creator of the Collective Voices Festival (2000-2004) and a member of the Risk-Taking Type music collaboration (2004-2005) and currently promotes through the Cross-Pollination concert series. His Subito Grant awarded composition "5 Simple Worlds and Ways of Getting There" will debut in June of 2007 and his album,released in 2004, "The Mythic Belief" is available at the Sound of Market. Aside from his local connections he has performed with Billy Harper, Ravi Coltrane, Dave Liebman, Dave Burrell and many others. On August 24th, 2007 his band Truth & Consequence will be featured at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Mike Barber has been studying music for over 25 years. A Canadian currently living in West Philadelphia, Barber describes himself as a free-jazz bassist who seeks to merge Zen meditation with his playing: "Zen practice and music practice are the same. Playing is meditation, meditation is playing."

Toshi Makihara studied drums, percussion and improvisation with Sabu Toyozumi, a prominent percussionist in Tokyo. Since arriving in the United States in the late 1970's he has worked with various new music ensembles as well as with numerous dance and theater companies internationally. Makihara has provided original music to Arden Theater Company, Diversions Dance Company (Wales), Pennsylvania Ballet, ZeroMoving Dance Company and Leah Stein Dance Company among others, and has worked with musicians including Steve Beresford, Peter Brotzmann, John Butcher, Nels Cline, Eugene Chadbourne, Tom Cora, Amy Denio, Thurston Moore, William Parker and John Zorn. He has also collaborated with poets, visual artists, filmmakers and performance artists widely.

[ for more info on Mike Barber ]
[ for more info on Toshi Makihara ]

Charles Curtis studied at Juilliard under Harvey Shapiro and Leonard Rose. Since the early eighties he has pursued a dual path, working in the worlds of experimental rock and sound art while continuing as a highly respected performer of the traditional cello repertoire. In 1983 he was a founding member of the ground-breaking poetry-rock group King Missile, and he appeared in the downtown New York rock scene with groups such as You Suck, Dogbowl, Borbetomagus and Bongwater, on record and in live shows. In 1985 he was awarded the Gregor Piatigorsky Prize of the New York Cello Society, and was appointed to the faculty of Princeton University. In 1987 he began a long and fruitful relationship with La Monte Young, becoming director of the Theatre of Eternal Music String Ensemble and giving premières of Young's work throughout the world. He also established an ongoing practice of experimentation with sound, electronics and improvisation, originally with composer/performer Michael J. Schumacher as Dual, and later leading his own groups combining experimental rock with spoken texts and sine wave environments. From 1989 until 2000 he was first solo cellist of the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg, and he has appeared as soloist with major conductors and orchestras worldwide. Currently Curtis is Professor of Contemporary Music Performance at the University of California, San Diego.

Recently Curtis has premiered solo works made expressly for him by La Monte Young, Alvin Lucier and Eliane Radigue. This summer he will premiere a new concerto for cello and orchestra by Lucier at the Ostrava New Music Days in the Czech Republic. Curtis also collaborates regularly with painter/filmmaker Raha Raissnia, making gallery works in Paris and New York and performing live sound/projection pieces.

Eliane Radigue
Naldjorlak (2005) for solo cello
65 minutes

Created in close collaboration with Charles Curtis, Naldjorlak is the first entirely acoustic composition by a composer who has pioneered pure electronic sound for over thirty years. Delicate in its dynamic range, the work explores highly diffuse bowed textures that defy perceptual focus; the hidden, untamed ur-sonority of the cello is revealed as a deeply unstable and complex source. The Tibetan title refers to the motion of all life toward unity; in a seamlessly interwoven three-part structure, the audible shape mirrors the geography of the cello.

The New York Times describes Eliane Radigue's music as "a steady stream of sonic activity taking place right at the edge of one's perception". Qualities of intense concentration, focus, and selflessness inform the spirituality of all of Radigue's work.

[ for more info on Charles Curtis ]

Dan Scofield, alto saxophone, is originally from Vermont, and has lived in Philadelphia for seven years. He graduated from The University of the Arts in 2004. He plays the saxophone in various groups including Kuru Kuru Pa (formerly "Wolf vs."), Bobby Zankel's Warriors of the Wonderful Sound , Sonic Liberation Front , Alban Baily's "Inzinzac", and Dan Peterson's "Bottom Feeders". He is a founding member of Shot × Shot, an avid follower of the Philadelphia improvised-music scene, and has been teaching saxophone lessons privately for four years.

Matt Engle, bass, grew up ten minutes outside of Philadelphia in South Jersey. He now resides in Philadelphia where he is a working member of the music scene. Matt studied with Kevin McConnell and Tony Marino while attending The University of the Arts. He has an integral role in Shot by Shot as both a performer and composer. In addition to Shot × Shot, Matt plays with Trio Rhizome, Seth Meicht and Sonic Liberation Front .

Evan Lipson is a bassist/composer currently residing with three other musicians in Jack Wright's Spring Garden Music house, located in West Philadelphia. His principal teachers included both Michael Formanek & Robert Kesselman (Phila. Orch). Other private teachers have included Mark Dresser, Mark Helias, Ralph Alessi, and Brad Shepik, as well as Robert Black (Bang On A Can) at the Festival Eleazar Carvalho in Fortaleza, Brazil. He attended the Peabody Conservatory, as well as Temple University. Evan works with several bands/ensembles/gangs including: NORMAL LOVE, SATANIZED, DYNAMITE CLUB, Mike Pride's FROM BACTERIA TO BOYS, and Gene Coleman's ENSEMBLE NOAMNESIA He has also performed and/or recorded with artists such as: Charles Cohen, Maria Chavez, Gene Coleman, Alvin Curran, Andrew D'Angelo, Stuart Dempster, Dr. Dog, Andrew Drury, Helena Espvall, Bryan Eubanks, Peter Evans, Cynthia Folio, Mike Gamble, Ben Gerstein, Devin Gray, Mary Halvorson, Andy Hayleck, Katt Hernandez, Charlette Hug, Rick Iannacone, Michael Johnson, Darius Jones, Matthias Kaul, Jesse Krakow, Andrew Lafkas, Charlie Looker, Lukas Ligeti, John McLellan, Toshi Makihara, Mat Maneri, Tatsuya Nakatani, Pauline Oliveros, Mike Pride, Gregory Reynolds, Jane Riggler, Make A Rising, Jamie Saft, Christine Sehnaoui, Alex Waterman, Veryan Weston, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and Yoshida Tatsuya (RUINS). Evan Lipson strongly values and enjoys the evolving process of social collaboration/exchange in order to produce various states of excitement, tension, confusion, and perceptual revelation."

Gunda Gottschalk plays improvised and contemporary music and combines her musical work with other art forms such as dance, theater, film, composition, visual art and literature. Classical violin studies with Johannes Prelle and Susanne Imhof at the State Hochschule for Music in the Rhineland. Further master classes and private studies with Stefan Picard, Antje Weithaas, Sascha Bron and Angelika Budde . Since 1991, Gunda Gottschalk has been a member of Partita Radicale , a quintet for new and improvised music. Besides developing original improvisation cycles, Partita Radicale became known to a broader audience through their silent movie programs with live music, music theater productions and collaborations with composers. In 1994/95 the violinist met the bassist Peter Kowald , who during this year carried out his project "365 Tage am ORT " (365 Days in Place) in Wuppertal. She performed in Peter Kowald's Ort-Ensemble and with important international soloists for improvised music such as Joelle Leandre, Carlos Zingaro, Even Parker . 1995-2002 Together with Xu Feng Xia she made up the core trio of Peter Kowald's "Global Village" Ensemble, which brought together musicians from radically different cultural heritages. In ensembles ranging from trio to sextet, "Global Village" concertized in Europe and the USA. Among the many guest artists collaborating with the trio were Jin Hi Kim, Savina Yannatou, Pamela Z, Jeanne Lee, Otomo Yoshihide, Le Quan Ninh . Since 1995 Gunda Gottschalk has worked with the Belgian bassist Peter Jacquemyn . Their duo-CD "e pericoloso sporgersi" was awarded a prize in the young artist forum of the international Society for New Music and Ensemble Modern. In 1998 the French pianist Christine Wodrascka founded the Trio "KRIZDA" with Isabelle Duthuit and Gunda Gottschalk. Together with Thomas Beimel , Gunda Gottschalk received a work and production stipend in 2001 from the Film Foundation of North Rhine - Westphalia which was used to realize the radio play "Das Paradies" (Paradise). Solo tours in 2002 and 2003 took the musician all over the USA. There she played with William Parker, Susie Ibarra, Assif Tsahar, Michael Zerang, Oliver Lake and Fred Frith among many others. Gunda Gottschalk has been well represented on festivals of contemporary and improvised music all over Europe and is a regular guest at the avant-garde festival "visions" in New York.

[ for more info on Gunda Gottschalk ]

Ricardo Arias was born in Bogotá, Colombia and currently lives in Queen, New York. He began improvising as an outgrowth of his studies of electroacoustical music. These studies transformed his idea of musical instrument into the broader concept of “sound source.” He came to consider any object or arrangement of objects capable of producing sound as a potential instrument. He is a flutist who occasionally uses the flute as a sound source for improvisation, but for the last ten years he has most frequently teased improvised sounds from his personal assemblage of rubber balloons which he calls the balloon kit. For the past twenty years he has performed and recorded accross Europe, in The United States, Canada, Colombia, Argentina, and most recently in Beirut (and instance of being “in the right place at the wrong time”-July 12, 2006).

The tuba player and composer Robin Hayward was born in Brighton, England in 1969. He has developed a specific approach to tuba playing, on the one hand treating the instrument as a labyrinth of tubing within which air may be trapped and redirected, and on the other hand as a collection of individual tube lengths, tuned harmonically in whole number proportions to one other. His compositions reveal a conceptual and empirical approach towards musical instuments, draw on the musical qualities of language and explore just intonation and microtonal tuning systems. In 2005 he founded Zinc and Copper Works , a chamber ensemble dedicated to exploring tuning possibilities and noise production on brass instruments.

[ for more info on Robin Hayward ]

Brian Labycz [koura] is a medium artist primarily working with sound and performative media. With a background in Western and Japanese classical performance, his focus is on improvisation and live performance as well as composition and installation works. He draws from a range of sources utilizing field recordings, acoustic instruments, digital manipulations, traditional systems, and interactive media to produce and explore various experiential forms.
Brian has performed and exhibited in the US and Japan and has been lucky to have worked/performed with Bernhard Gal, Vadim Sprikut, Jason Roebke, Aram Shelton, Ayako Kato, Carl Stone, Christophe Charles, Dale Lloyd, Yannick Dauby, Kazuya Ishigami, TV Pow, and Sawako(. He is actively involved in hosting performances and exhibitions in Chicago including the Myopic Improvised Music Series and has released works on and/oar, tiramizu, stasisfield, foreign lands, and boxmedia.


[ for more info on zeropoint ]
[ for more info on brian labycz ]

0UR080R05 (Ouroboros) by jonCates + jake elliott is a realtime audio video project. Chicago based artists jonCates + jake elliott use hacked typewriters, a hand built computerized 16mm film projector + footage of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin to create a cybernetic third mind. Live coding of self-modifying programs and processing of these audio and video signals creates an expansive and contractive recursive system that eats and excretes itself like a data bent digital version of Ouroboros, the dragon who swallows his own tail and symbolizes infinity.


[ for more info on 0UR080R05 ]

"Often featuring Grand Vizier Julius Masri or "Golden Ears" Ricchini on stretched skins, BURRS prolapse malignant audio-thought into porcelain crucibles via a good amp/cheap guitar ---> cheap amp/good guitar symbiosis. Inbred effects, occasional power chords and frequent moments of telepathy (they personally guarantee 5 per show!) populate their sonic environs. Anti-noise noise." -Gregory Werst -- Crutch free performance on this night... no guitars. Only shark ribs, casios, dried seedlings, sheep bells, cheap wine, cassettes and xanax to help us forget what we've done.

[ for more info on Burrs ]

I was born and raised in Butte, Montana where I earned my BS and MS in chemistry. I began playing music as a rock bassist; I then began to play blues guitar and was the guitarist, leader, and singer in the blues band Blues By Five for two years. I then switched to tenor saxophone and was the saxophonist in a group called Blue 7 for several years; I began playing soprano saxophone during this time. Gradually, I gravitated toward free jazz, free improvisation, avant-garde, and experimental music. I still like and listen to many types of music, but I prefer to play freestyle. Playing freestyle allows me to explore any idea or sound that I can imagine. I am only limited by my technique and my imagination, both of which require constant care, work, and nurturing. I have been living in Philadelphia for almost three years and am enjoying its rich and exciting experimental music scene. I currently play in a duo called Grass Hair Duo with drummer Zachariah Leeds, solo soprano saxophone concerts, and am always looking for interesting music, poetry, and performing arts collaborations.

[ for more info on Heath Watts ]

Peeesseye and its many offshoots (Phantom Limb & Bison, Pee in My Face With Surgery, collaborations with Tetuzi Akiyama, Stephen O'Malley, releases on Evolving Ear, ArchiveCD, Utech, Chocolate Monk, etc.) have been slinging mud and clawing at the foundations of the experimental noise underground for a number of years now.

The recent Commuting Between the Surface & the Underworld CD (Evolving Ear) continues Peeesseye's pattern of ignoring virtually all patterns but those that spring forth from the swarm of earthquakes in their collective brain. Recorded following an unamplified tour of US noise venues with groups including Nautical Almanac and Lozenge, this record brings vocals, a more pronounced rhythmic pulse and a wide array of acoustic instruments to the foreground alongside the waves of electronic density that have characterized past releases. Guests on Commuting... include three frequent collaborators of Peeesseye: Clare Cooper, the Australian harpist who adds pedal harp and ghuzeng (Chinese harp) to two tracks; trumpeter Nate Wooley, who adds brass on “Distant Mud;” and the reclusive conceptualist Shawn Edward Hansen, who provides additional percussion and vocals to two tracks. The resulting record is a perverse twist on spaced rock and post-noise ritual. Mayhem in the mansion, shivers in the shack.

Peeesseye's unclassifiable music has been variously characterized by certain sage voices as “coming off like a punk rock AMM” (Edwin Pouncey, the Wire) and like “a slightly more western canon focused Sun City Girls” (Volcanic Tongue). Eric Weddle of Family Vineyard recently wrote thusly in Signal to Noise: "Inhabiting the nether regions between back porch minimalism, Midwestern noise, and electro-acoustic improvisation, the members of Peeesseye confound and confuse with a refusal to fit neatly into any codified music scene."

[ for more info on Peeesseye ]

BASILICA is a virtuoso chamber music group that was founded in 2005 by composer Ben S. Jacob in order to create uniquely powerful and intimate musical experiences. The current instrumentation of amplified string instruments and percussion is the latest step in the evolution of a music that seeks to combine bold rhythms, incisive harmonies, broad yet angular melodies, and towering sonorities into an experience of relentless intensity, a raging discourse on the fundamental emotionality that is at the core of human existence. The team of classically trained musicians that has been assembled for this project is dedicated to the perfection of sound and spirit that yields performances and recordings of uncommon precision, power, and beauty.

In 2006, BASILICA began expansion into the realm of multi-media performance with the incorporation of interactive video projection during live performances. In addition to this new element, BASILICA continues its work in growth and refinement of its sonic enhancement techniques, expansion of the depth and duration of its live performances, international collaboration with composers and other artists, and production of high-quality, high-impact audio and video recordings and other media. Future endeavors include performances throughout North America, including appearances at experimental music festivals and other performance art events.

[ for more info on BASILICA ]

Sparks is: Peter Evans on piccolo trumpet and Tom Blancarte on the double bass. Sparks is: attempting to play our instruments beyond their capabilities, taking them ouside their traditional boundaries and into new places, where they might very well blow up. Sparks is: about improvisation, but with a very specific language. Sparks is: about communication. Sparks is: doing as much possible, with the most energy possible. Peter Evans is a trumpeter, improvisor, and composer living in New York City. He grew up near Boston, and moved to New York after graduating Oberlin Conservatory. He co-leads the New York Trumpet Ensemble with Mark Gould, is half of the duo Victrolophone, plays in the improvisation groups Imaginary Folk & Effects on Man and Animals, and leads a maximalist jazz quartet with Mary Halvorson, Moppa Elliott and Kevin Shea. Other collaborators have included Perry Robinson, Taylor Ho Bynum, Stefan Tcherepnin, David Taylor, Marcus Rojas, Butch Morris, and Dave Douglas. Tom Blancarte is a bass player living in New York City. He grew up in Austin, Texas, and moved to New York after graduating from the University of North Texas and spending two years teaching and playing in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. He plays with the improvising trios Torus and Apama, Dave Smith's Who Put The Bad Mouth On Me and in various ad hoc combinations.

[ for more info on Sparks ]

Vic Rawlings is active as an improviser and instrument builder. His performances focus on the metamusical potential of unstable sounds and silences. He has developed instruments that are specific to this compositional aesthetic. As an instrument builder he specializes in modifications of existing instruments and has developed extensive cello preparations. He also continually develops an electronic instrument from extant exposed circuitry, producing, in effect, a modular analog synthesizer with a highly unstable interface. This electronic instrument is paired with a flexible array of exposed speaker elements, chosen for their often unpredictable and idiosyncratic acoustic qualities. He performs as a soloist and as a member of undr quartet, The BSC, and in duo and trio ensembles with Michael Bullock, Greg Kelley, Bhob Rainey, Sean Meehan, Jason Lescalleet, James Coleman, Liz Tonne, Tatsuya Nakatani, and Howard Stelzer, among others. Collaborators have included such diverse musicians as Eddie Prevost (AMM), Donald Miller (Borbetomagus), Daniel Carter (Other Dimensions in Music), Laurence Cook, Jaap Blonk, Masashi Harada, and Stephen Drury.

Tim Feeney seeks to explore and examine the timbral possibilites inherent in everyday found and built objects. He treats his percussion set-up as a friction instrument, using bows, scrapers, and rosined drumheads as implements and sympathetic resonators to capture and amplify frequencies that go unheard when an object is struck with a mallet. He supplements his acoustic console with an electronic instrument activated from a laptop or no-input mixer, which synthesizes and alters the spectral characteristics of sounds from pure sine tones to speaker pops and white noise. As an improviser, Tim works with such Boston artists as thereminist James Coleman, cellist/electronic performer Vic Rawlings, and the trio ONDA, with whom he has performed at such experimental spaces as the Knitting Factory New York, The Red Room in Baltimore, Boston's Zeitgeist Gallery, the new Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut, and Chicago's 3030. With saxophonist Jack Wright, Tim appeared on the inaugural Counter Fit Festival in Rochester, New York, and participated in the August 2005 No Net workshop in Philadelphia.

[ for more info on Tim Feeney ]

Nicole Bindler is an experimental dance artist whose work ranges from complex personal and political commentaries to abstract explorations of form. Her movement vocabulary is inspired by her studies of Modern Dance, Butoh, Contact Improvisation, Yoga, Body-Mind Centering, Feldenkrais and Martial Arts. She has worked with many experimental musicians including Bhob Rainey, Greg Kelley, Jonathan Vincent, Vic Rawlings, Mike Bullock, John Berndt, Katt Hernandez, Chris Cooper, Kyle Bruckmann, Ernst Karel, Axel Dorner, Andrea Neumann, Annette Krebs, Dan Breen, Andy Hayleck, Kristen Toedtman, Audrey Chen, Le Quan Ninh, Carol Genetti, Susan Alcorn, Sean Meehan, Kate Porter, Helena Espvall, Leonel Kaplan, Leandro Barzabal, Tim Feeney, Jack Wright, Gene Coleman among others, and with video artists, Janene Higgins and Walter Wright. She is also the director of the 20 member company: Amnesiac Music and Dance.

Andy Hayleck (b. 1972) composer/ musician and recordist. Explores the aesthetics of sound, especially regarding how sound is perceived by the ear. He uses extremes of volume, pitch, and sound complexity, and variations in change over time. For the past few years he has concentrated on using unamplified bowed metal (cymbals and saw) in performance and using contact mics, hydrophones and regular mics in recording. Although he has used a computer for many years, recently he has begun to use one live. Currently a member of Trockeneis, he recently made a solo tour of the west coast of the United States (playing the amplified gong/wire). Recordings include: "Gong/Wire" (earlids), "Various Recordings Involving Ice" (HereSee), and "The Disappearing Floor" (Recorded).

[ for more info on Nicole Bindler ]