Bowerbird is pleased to welcome San Francisco's Friction Quartet to their premiere Philadelphia performance. The program will feature the world premiere of a new string quartet by New Zealander composer (and Philadelphia based) Rosie Langabeer. Opening the evening will be Murmuration celebrating the debut album, "Revised Notes" FRICTION QUARTET Otis Harriel, Violin; Kevin Rogers, Violin;…
Bowerbird is excited to present the Philadelphia premiere of the Quince Vocal Ensemble performing Morton Feldman's "Three Voices" with all three parts performed live. Feldman's "Three Voices" was written for the experimental vocalist and composer Joan LaBarbara in 1982. The original concept involved the live performer singing along with two pre-recorded parts projected through on-stage…
Bowerbird is pleased to present Liminar, a Mexico City based ensemble for contemporary music. The program features "Acustica", Kagel's extraordinary masterwork for "experimental sound producers". PROGRAM Mauricio Kagel: Acustica Michael Pisaro: Tombstones Samuel Cedillo: Monologo III for viola Christian Wolff: Exercise 14 plus more tba. LIMINAR Wilfrido Terrazas, flutes Omar López, sax Carmina Escobar, voice…
90 mins, black and white, German with English subtitles
Bowerbird is pleased to present a night featuring New York-based pianist Anthony Coleman + Philadelphia trombonist Dan Blacksberg. These far-reaching musicians will each play full solo sets before coming together at the end to play an extended duo piece A key figure of the downtown New York scene since the early 1980s, pianist Anthony Coleman…
Currently over 100 feet in length, LONG/GONE is a single intricately-cut piece of paper which flows freely from image to image. Narratives and scenarios (often drawn from classic works of literature from Homer to Dante) emerge and collapse and spill over into each other. In performance, Erik scrolls the paper-cut continually across the surface of…
One of the most influential American composers of the 20th century, James Tenney (1934-2006) combined the experimental spirit of Cage and company with a rigorous grounding in acoustics, perception, and information theory. This program explores Tenney’s music for string instruments, from his diagrammatic Postal Pieces (1965-71) to his last major work, the string quartet Arbor…
The Double Decker Music series is a unique, intimate mobile concert experience on an open-top double-decker bus. Each evening features live music performances in an urban setting paired with a guided tour of Philadelphia's attractions. The Double Decker Music Series is hosted by Sebastian Petsu, a Philadelphia tour guide on buses and on foot since 2005 His love of both Philadelphia's music…
Louis Thomas Hardin, Jr., better known as Moondog, is one of the most famous and influential outsider musicians of the twentieth century. Born in Kansas to a devoutly religious family, Hardin was blinded at age 16 when he dug up a live dynamite cap. For 30 years, from the early 1940s to the early 1970s,…
The Double Decker Music series is a unique, intimate mobile concert experience on an open-top double-decker bus. Each evening features live music performances in an urban setting paired with a guided tour of Philadelphia's attractions. The Double Decker Music Series is hosted by Sebastian Petsu, a Philadelphia tour guide on buses and on foot since 2005 His love of both Philadelphia's music…
The Double Decker Music series is a unique, intimate mobile concert experience on an open-top double-decker bus. Each evening features live music performances in an urban setting paired with a guided tour of Philadelphia's attractions. The Double Decker Music Series is hosted by Sebastian Petsu, a Philadelphia tour guide on buses and on foot since 2005 His love of both Philadelphia's music…
Bowerbird is pleased to welcome pianist Marilyn Nonken and cellist Stephen Marotto to perform Morton Feldman's 1981 masterpiece - "Patterns in a Chromatic Field". This 80-minute odyssey offered an opportunity for contemplation, as cello and piano explored different degrees of stasis and patterns of harmony and color. Patterns in a Chromatic Field reflects his lifelong…
The Berlin-based Reidemeister Move pushs the possibilities of long tones in natural harmonies for low instruments. Robin Hayward's self-designed microtonal tuba and contrabassist Christopher Williams' slow bows meld in an unearthly fusion of overtones, undertones, noise, bodily rhythms, and spatial resonance. The members' work with Berlin's echtzeitmusik scene and LaMonte Young's legendary Theatre of Eternal…
Los Angeles-based composer Tashi Wada presents his new group featuring Julia Holter and percussionist Corey Fogel performing music from Wada's new album “Nue” out this fall on Brooklyn-based label RVNG Intl. Opening the evening will be a new synthesizer duo project from Jeff Zeigler (Philadelphia) and Dash Lewis (Richmond). In Japanese, ‘nue’ is a mythological…
Boston based composer/performer Howard Stelzer performs "Crossing Parallel", a live score to Joe Taylor's poetic film footage of the American southwest. Accompanying this work will be a screening of Philadelphia based film maker David Scott Kessler's Icelandic short film Lopapeysa (with a recorded score by Mary Lattimore and Benjamin Warfield). ABOUT CROSSING PARALLEL "Crossing Parallel", an…
Praised by The Washington Post for “captivating” performances that draw from its notable “meld of intellect, technique and emotions,” the Aizuri Quartet was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2018 M Prize Chamber Arts Competition, along with top prizes at the 2017 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan, and the 2015 Wigmore Hall International…
Pressure Wave is a new evening length audio /visual piece by composer/ performer HPrizm (Kyle Austin). The work uses amplified resonance of urban spaces and the intersectional space between Sonic Activism, Musique concrète, and Rap's early roots to examine the dense environments and circumstances that birthed Hip Hop. HPrizm is known for "Evoking images of…
Bowerbird is excited to present a night of electronic and experimental music inside the Philadelphia Insectarium's 7,000 square foot Butterfly Pavilion. Portland, Oregon-based duo of Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile are the open-source musical entity known as Visible Cloaks, whose debut album Reassemblage and affiliated mini-album Lex both beamed to the world via RVNG last year.…
