Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut St Thursday May 18th, 6:00pm to 7:30pm Join Dustin Hurt, director of Bowerbird, for a presentation on the music of Julius Eastman. Topics include: (1) a brief overview of Julius musical development and (overlapping) compositional styles - graphic scores, minimalism, improvisatory, etc (2) the survey of status of the archival material…
ABOUT THIS EVENT Julius Eastman perfected his multifarious minimalism in three works of the late seventies: "Crazy Nigger", "Evil Nigger", and "Gay Guerrilla". Each work is scored for multiple instruments of the same kind. This concert features two of the works performed as a piano quartet and Gay Guerrilla performed by a large ensemble of…
Bowerbird and Slought present an Artist Talk moderated by Tiona McClodden, curator of Predicated+A Recollection. Gallery hours and more information: https://www.thatwhichisfundamental.com/exhibition/ TIONA NEKKIA MCCLODDEN is a curator, visual artist, and filmmaker whose work explores and critiques issues at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and social commentary. Themes examined in McClodden’s films and works have been…
For the final concert, Eastman's powerful work for 10 cellos The Holy Presence of Joan D'Arc and its introspective companion vocal piece Prelude to The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc will be performed. Far ahead of their time, these pieces incorporate a much more atonal language into Eastman's minimalist aesthetic. The concert will open with…
ABOUT THE EVENT 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 and into each other. In performance, Erik scrolls the paper-cut continually…
ABOUT THE EVENT Bowerbird is pleased to present "The Music of Moondog", a survey of the idiosyncratic rounds and songs by composer Louis Thomas Hardin Jr (1916 - 1999). The eccentric street musician known as Moondog dressed in Viking garb and regularly performed on the sidewalks of New York's Sixth Avenue. This concert is the…
ABOUT THE EVENT Bowerbird is pleased to present the next installment of the BEGIN ANYWHERE series, a performer-driven, salon-style concert series curated and performed by the musicians of the Arcana New Music Ensemble. THE PROGRAM Oliver Messiaen: Le traquet stapazin (no. 4 of Catalogue d'oiseaux) -- Michael Tan, piano Franco Donatoni: Fili -- Emma Resmini,…
ABOUT THE EVENT Bowerbird and Sebastian Petsu are pleased to welcome WOLF DEM, and Tessa Ellis and Dan Blacksberg to the Double Decker Music Series. Join us on Sunday, July 30th at 8:00 p.m. (rain date, July 31st) for a unique and intimate mobile concert experience on an open-top double-decker bus. Half of the performance…
ABOUT THE EVENT Bowerbird and Sebastian Petsu are pleased to welcome Settled Arrows and Shinjoo Cho to the Double Decker Music Series. Join us on Sunday, August 27th at 8:00 p.m. (rain date, August 29th) for a unique and intimate mobile concert experience on an open-top double-decker bus. Before, between, and after the music, tour…
ABOUT THE EVENT Bowerbird and Sebastian Petsu are pleased to welcome Tether and Jo Nelson to the Double Decker Music Series. Join us on Sunday, September 10th at 8:00 p.m. (rain date, September 12th) for a unique and intimate mobile concert experience on an open-top double-decker bus. Before, between, and after the music, tour guide…
Bowerbird is pleased to present the international collaboration between daxophone masters Daniel Fishkin (Philadelphia) and Kazuhisa Uchihashi (Japan). The daxophone is a thin hardwood strip played with a bow, created by German improviser/inventor Hans Reichel in 1987. The instrument’s sound, somewhere between a cello and a badger, ranges from furtive gurgles to wild screams.…
Bowerbird is pleased to present The World According to Sound, an immersive sonic experience by Sam Harnett and Chris Hoff. During the performance, the audience sits blindfolded at the center of a ring of loudspeakers. Listeners will be transported inside another person's head, and back in time a hundred years to the streets of Berlin.…
Bowerbird is pleased to present a triple bill featuring New York Bassist, James Ilgenfritz, composer and performer Bhob Rainey, and Philadelphia sound artist Gabrielle Losoncy.
Bowerbird is thrilled to welcome master percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani back to the Philadelphia for both a solo set and leading the "Nakatani Large Ensemble", a group consisting of workshop participants. Also on the evening will be CERBERUS- Alban Bailly (cello), Dan Capecchi (drums), and Matt Engle (bass) - a new Philadelphia based Trio that uses…
Bowerbird is excited to present a screening of "Wild Combination", director Matt Wolf's visually absorbing portrait of the seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, and disco producer Arthur Russell. Before his untimely death from AIDS in 1992, Arthur prolifically created music that spanned both pop and the transcendent possibilities of abstract art. Now, over fifteen years…
The American composer Tom Johnson (b. 1939) has made a career of quite literally composing by numbers. Motivated by mathematical concepts such as self-similarity, transformations, and tiling patterns, Johnson's compositions are rigorously formalistic, but his use of repetition and familiar musical materials makes the underlying processes recognizable and (usually) enjoyable. The centerpiece of this concert…
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…