ABOUT THE EVENT Three Voices, written in 1982 for Joan La Barbara, was the last solo vocal piece he wrote before his death in 1987 (For Stefan Wolpe, dedicated to his composition teacher and written for chorus and two vibraphones, post-dates it). It sets part of Wind, a poem by his friend Frank O'Hara that…
ABOUT THE EVENT The evening features two sets by Moor Mother, working under the theme of Community Futurism, in collaboration with Black Quantum Futurism and the Community Futures Lab. The first set includes improv collaboration of live instrumentation with drums, saxophone, bass, synth, and text. The second features music from the album Fetish Bones as…
Bowerbird is pleased to present the duo of Loren Connors and Chris Forsyth and a performance by Philadelphia's Taiwan Housing Project LOREN CONNORS has improvised and composed original guitar music for over four decades. His music - which embraces the aesthetics of blues, Irish airs, blues-based rock and other genres while letting go of…
Bowerbird is pleased to present a screening of David Scott Kessler's evolving documentary The Pine Barrens: Whitesbog Edition with a live score performance by The Ruins of Friendship Orchestra. Guiding the viewer through the New Jersey Pineland's winding, rust-colored rivers; its dark, sandy forests and slowly developing towns, The Pine Barrens creates a contemplative, complex,…
Bowerbird and The Rotunda are pleased to welcome back a Philadelphia favorite: The Alash Ensemble. ABOUT THE EVENT ALASH are masters of Tuvan throat singing, 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…
Bowerbird is pleased to present Svitanya, a Philadelphia-area women's vocal ensemble that specializes in folk music of Eastern Europe. Founded in 2001, the ensemble started with six singers performing purely a cappella arrangements. The early members included two mother-daughter pairs, fitting for a genre in which songs have been passed from mother to daughter for…
Bowerbird is pleased to present a screening of Shirley Clarke's 1985 film "Ornette: Made in America". "Ornette: Made In America" captures Ornette's evolution over three decades. Returning home to Fort Worth, Texas in 1983 as a famed performer and composer, documentary footage, dramatic scenes, and some of the first music video-style segments ever made, chronicle…
Bowerbird is pleased to screen three documentary films marking the 50th anniversary of "9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering". In 1966 ten New York artists and thirty engineers and scientists from Bell Telephone Laboratories collaborated on a series of innovative dance, music and theater performances, "9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering", held in October at the 69th…
ABOUT THE EVENT The third installment of Composing the Tinnitus Suites: 2016 consists of compositions for and by Daniel Fishkin, Cleek Schrey, and Ron Shalom. Shalom, Schrey, and Fishkin are members of New Perplexity, a collective of new wartime composers and scholars. Schrey performs on the Hardanger Fiddle, a Norwegian folk instrument lined with sympathetic…
ABOUT THE EVENT The second installment of Composing the Tinnitus Suites: 2016 consists of solos and duets between Ellen Fullman and Daniel Fishkin. Fullman is the inventor of the Long String Instrument, an 80 foot long string instrument consisting of stainless steel wires that she strokes with rosined fingertips. Fullman has used her instrument to…
ABOUT THE EVENT The first installment of Composing the Tinnitus Suites: 2016 is the premiere performance of Philadelphia Hearing Damage. This band of broken ears is a crowd-sourced creation of local Philadelphia artists. Fishkin worked with these musicians in the summer of 2016, teaching them how to play the Lady's Harp, and to apply its…
Bowerbird is excited to present the Philadelphia record release celebration of Bombogenic, a new album by Sonic Liberation 8 with the The Classical Revolution Trio & Oliver Lake. The album celebrates the 15 year anniversary of Sonic Liberation 8 with a new collection of compositions and arrangements showcasing a unique confluence of loft jazz, Afro…
Bowerbird is pleased to present an encore screening of Philippe Garrel’s visually arresting silent film Le Révélateur, performed live with an original score by Philadelphia’s own Mary Lattimore and Jeff Zeigler. Le Révélateur was one of the first films of the Zanzibar group (a coterie of mostly French artists and filmmakers who began making experimental…
ABOUT GLENN JONES Glenn Jones is a master of American Primitive Guitar, a style invented in the late 1950s by John Fahey, whose traditional fingerpicking techniques and wide-ranging influences were used to create modern original compositions. Jones, who led the post-rock ensemble Cul de Sac, brings his own made-up tunings, the use of custom-crafted partial…
PRISONER'S SONG Erik Ruin, shadow puppets and projections Gelsey Bell, voice, metallophone, and sound design Rick Burkhardt, director ABOUT THE EVENT Prisoner's Song is a performance created by composer Gelsey Bell and visual artist Erik Ruin about the prison experience. Using shadow puppets and projections alongside a variety of musical idioms, the piece draws…
A brazen multidisciplinary artist who studied film history and theory, C. Spencer Yeh presents a program of two new moving image works combining diaristic and documentary footage as part of his as part of his ISSUE Project Room residency in 2015. The recently completed TRAVELOGUE: CAIRO EGYPT crosses long takes and static shots captured via…
TRAVELOGUE: CAIRO EGYPT 2015, 33 min, digital video, color 2002 2015, 60 min, digital video, color and nightvision b&w ABOUT THE EVENT A brazen multidisciplinary artist who studied film history and theory, C. Spencer Yeh presents a program of two new moving image works combining diaristic and documentary footage as part of his as…
Bowerbird is pleased to present Philadelphia based filmmaker and artist Tiona McClodden conducting a live presentation and artist talk for her project Af·fixing Ceremony: Four Movements for Essex, which recently debuted in recognition of 2015's Day With(out) Art. Af·fixing Ceremony commemorates the life and work of celebrated African-American poet Essex Hemphill who was a important…