Bowerbird is pleased to present a rare performance by George Stavis, an American banjo player perhaps best known for his 1969 album Labyrinths , an album considered a landmark in the development of improvisational banjo performance. Opening the evening will be Elkhorn, the Philadelphia based guitar duo Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner, who are celbrating…
Bowerbird is thrilled to present Ensemble Pamplemousse in Philadelphia performing a brand-new collection of pieces about the elephant in the room, the devil is in the details, the cat's meow, The Whole Nine Yards, and the bottom line. Using instruments new and old, mechanical and human-operated, digital and digitized, some of the pieces explode various…
Bowerbird is pleased to present Philadelphia's Bismuth Quartet in a special concert featuring compositions by quartet members Carlos Santiago and Veronica Jurkiewicz. For this performance the Bismuth Quartet welcomes special guests Tom Kraines and Matt Engle. PROGRAM Carlos Santiago: Arc for string quartet Veronica Jurkiewicz: Chora for string quartet Arc/Chora sonically explores being alone and…
Bowerbird is pleased to present Yarn/Wire performing the Philadelphia premiere of Catherine Lamb's "Curvo Totalitas". On the score, Lamb describes the piece: "Synthesizer musicians play their material (which are filtered partials of the percussion recordings) in an unforced manner. Melodic contours unfold slowly, relative to the total time. Tones in contours may occassionally be articulated…
Held in the Belgian spring and summer of 1958, the Brussels Exposition was the apogee of World’s Fairs. With its slogan “evaluation of the world for a more humane world” celebrating a new post-war optimism about technology and progress, it was also full of the contradictions of the age, and was equally a celebration of…
Bowerbird is pleased to present Matt Davis' Aerial Photograph at The Rotunda. The ensemble will perform Davis' recent compositional suite, The Sway of Rivers, exploring the elusive nature of time: how it is inconsistently felt, marked, and expressed in sound. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Established in 2002, Matt Davis’ Aerial Photograph is a “wildly imaginative” (Jazziz…
Bowerbird and Nightletter are pleased to present the four-part documentary series On The Edge: Improvisation in Music written and produced by Derek Bailey. For more than four decades, Derek Bailey was one of musical improvisation’s foremost apostles. The English guitarist and experimental musician not only has a litany of classic improvised recordings to his name…
Bowerbird and Nightletter are pleased to present the four-part documentary series On The Edge: Improvisation in Music written and produced by Derek Bailey. For more than four decades, Derek Bailey was one of musical improvisation’s foremost apostles. The English guitarist and experimental musician not only has a litany of classic improvised recordings to his name…
Bowerbird is pleased to present Philadelphia favorites Alash at The Rotunda for a FREE concert. Alash are masters of Tuvan throat singing (xöömei), a remarkable technique for singing multiple pitches at the same time. Masters of traditional Tuvan instruments as well as the art of throat singing, Alash are deeply committed to traditional Tuvan music…
Bowerbird is pleased to present Ensemble Terrain (Theo Bleckmann*, Jodie Landau, Ashley Bathgate, and Jacob Cooper) performing selections from Jacob Cooper's acclaimed album "Terrain" (Amsterdam Records, 2020). "Terrain" displays Cooper’s passion for kinetic collaboration. He worked intensively with three poets who created original text for each work, and developed the music alongside vocalists Theo Bleckmann…
Bowerbird is pleased to present the acclaimed new music duo Ligament. Described as “perverse and nihilistic”, Anika Kildegaard (voice) and Will Yager (double bass) perform as LIGAMENT, an ensemble dedicated to commissioning new music and creating work for their unique instrumentation. LIGAMENT’s performances are a fusion of standard and non-standard elements; sometimes there are high…
Bowerbird is pleased to bring Laraaji back to our home venue at University Lutheran performing for a second improvised solo piano set this season. ABOUT THE ARTIST Philadelphia-born, New Jersey-raised polymath Laraaji has maintained a pursuit of spiritual transcendence through music since the mid-70s. After several years of studiously developing an aesthetic informed by Eastern…
Bowerbird is pleased to present pianist Karl Larson performing work from the recently released album Dark Days featuring solo piano compositions of Scott Wollschleger. Dark Days chronicles Scott's solo piano repertoire written between 2007 and 2020. Aspects of style that are heard on his first album Soft Aberration are present again, but now filtered through…
Bowerbird is pleased to present the TAK Ensemble in Philadelphia. Painting a portrait of new American composition through intensely virtuosic and visceral works TAK Ensemble will perform works by Tyshawn Sorey, Natacha Diels, Ashkan Behzadi, Erin Gee, Golnaz Shariatzadeh, and David Bird. PROGRAM Natacha Diels: Second Nightmare for KIKU Ashkan Behzadi: Arqueros Erin Gee:…
Bowerbird is pleased to present Ikue Mori and Charmaine Lee at The Rotunda for an evening featuring solos from each artist as well as a duo performance. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Since her emergence in New York’s No Wave scene in the late 1970s as a percussionist in DNA, Japanese native Ikue Mori has used…
Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond our control, this event is unable to take place as previously planned. We hope to reschedule it for the Fall. Please stay tuned. Bowerbird is pleased to present musicians Nate Wooley and Carol Robinson performing several works from Éliane Radigue's Occam, a series of pieces developed directly with the musicians for…
Bowerbird is pleased to present vocal group Variant 6 at University Lutheran performing "Sacred & Profane" - madrigals in a kaleidoscope of texts and sounds: medieval prayers set by Benjamin Britten, fables and fairy-tales conjured by Maurice Ravel, solemn meditations by Pablo Ortiz, and excerpts from Gian Carlo Menotti’s strange and beautiful The Unicorn, the…
Dedicated to Daphne Oram On a celluloid film print, even sound is made of light. Running alongside the picture is the optical soundtrack, an image in itself. A beam of light penetrates it, exciting a photoelectric cell with its sound determined by the pattern of black and white. Ever since sound first joined film, artists…
