NAKATANI GONG ORCHESTRA - ten gong ensemble + TATSUYA NAKATANI - solo percussion set Vibrating metal. Glacial ambiance. Percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani returns to Philadelphia for a solo set and to lead a performance of the Nakatani Gong Orchestra (NGO) - an ensemble of 10 gongs played by local musicians and conducted by Natakatani. Anyone who…
Built upon shared interests in technology, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, Axon Ladder is a multimedia performance installation by Bhob Rainey and Catherine Pancake. Combining algorithmic electronic composition with real-time video manipulation, this world premiere evening length work offers a timely view into the intersection of advancing technology and human intuition. The performance features footage…
The powerhouse JACK Quartet returns to Philadelphia for a concert featuring the hypercomplex string quartets by Iannis Xenakis. A leading figure in twentieth century music, Xenakis (1922 - 2001) was trained as a civil engineer, then became an architect and developed revolutionary designs while working with Le Corbusier. Utilizing his technical background, Xenakis approached composition…
Bowerbird is pleased to present this concert portrait of the early electronic music of composer Andrew Rudin. The concert will feature Rudin’s Tragoedia performed with a live video accompaniment and Il Giuoco (1966), which Robert Moog said to be the first large-scale, original, serious composition created on his synthesizing instruments. Il Giuoco is accompanied by…
Bowerbird is very excited to present Trefoil, a trio of singer-instrumentalists that specialize in European Medieval music, performing works by Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, and others from their new CD Fleur de Valeur: A Medieval Bouquet. Like poets of all ages, medieval songwriters invoked the imagery and natural magic of flowers in the service of…
Bowerbird is pleased to present a rare screening of Werner Herzog's peculiar 1995 documentary film Death in Five Voices about the troubled life of eccentric sixteenth century composer Don Carol Gesualdo. Shot on location in Italy and featuring interviews with Gesualdo Consort director Gerald Pace, Il Complesso Barocco musical director Alan Curtis. From his sexual deviance…
International Ensemble N_JP (featuring Sho master Ko Ishikawa and live electronics from Toshimaru Nakamura) will give the Philadelphia premiere of new works by composer and director Gene Coleman. The program includes his new music and film piece "Sendai Transmissions" and "Bairo", a new work made in collaboration with contemporary Indian choreographer Shaily Dadiala.
Flutist Claire Chase, "the young star of the modern flute" (The New Yorker) and a 2012 MacArthur Fellow, celebrates the release of her third solo album, DENSITY, featuring tour de force flute works by Steve Reich, Alvin Lucier, Philip Glass, Marcos Balter, Mario Diaz de Leon, and the seminal 1936 flute solo Density 21.5 by…
The internationally acclaimed JACK Quartet returns for a concert featuring masterworks by Witold Lutoslawski, Helmut Lachenman, and the world premiere of Philadelphia based composer Adam Berenson's String Quartet No. 3. In addition to the new work, JACK will perform Lachenmann's own String Quartet No. 1 "Gran Torso" (1972), and Lutoslawski's radical aleatoric contribution to the…
SOUND POETRY EFFECTS CATALOG curated by Danny Snelson, with live performances by Caleb Beckwith, Mark Johnson, Timothy Leonido, Kate McGuire, John Paetsch, and Danny Snelson Join Bowerbird for its first event exploring sound poetry, an artistic form that bridges literary and musical composition. As Joan La Barbara reminds us, voice is the original instrument. Already…
ALASH ENSEMBLE wth beat boxer Shodekeh, double bassist Garth Stevenson, and vocalist/guitarist Annie Lynch 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 Tuvan music and…
Created the year he died, Cages only feature-length film One11 (1992) was composed entirely using 1,200 random operations devised by a computereach determining the movements of a crane-mounted camera and the qualities of lighting within an empty room. A meditation on the perception of emptiness that harks back to Cages much earlier 433 (1952), One11…
• Variations I (1958) performed by Christopher Colucci and Jorge Cousineau • Variations II (1961) performed by Nate Wooley and Susan Alcorn • Variations III (1962) performed by Bonnie Jones and Jesse Kudler With vastly open and indeterminate scores and happenings, Variations I – VIII (1958 – 1967) is a series of compositions that foreshadows…
Bernard Parmegiani (b. 1927): "De natura sonorum" (1975) Suite in twelve movements Digital artist Peter Price will perform live projected visuals to accompany the digital playback. The concert will be preceded by a brief introductory talk by Thomas Patteson. ABOUT THE EVENT Building on the acoustic investigations of his teacher Pierre Schaeffer, the founder of…
Difficult to summarize, yet unified in ethos and affect, this evening features three solo projects - Diamond Terrifier (Sam Hillmer of the Zs's), Partrick Higgins (in an extensive reworking of JS Bach's music), and Wait (a solo electronics project by Robert J). Also on the evening is a new quartetFemme Tops featuring Alex Hampshire, Rick…
When we think of documentary films, we probably call to mind certain familiar forms, such as archival footage of World War II battles or British-accented narration of natural scenes. But conceived in the broadest terms, the documentary is an extremely diverse cinematic genre with at least as much room for artistic experimentation as the fictional…
Bowerbird pays homage to the eclectic past of the GATE series, and offers a synth laden night of psychedelic slow jams and industrial thrashes. Headling the evening will be New York City's post-punk electronic band OUTPOST featuring Mark C of the 80s no wave band Live Skull on guitar, synths, and vocals, with Stuart Argabright…
There is something wonderfully fleeting about improvised music. The music itself lives for only the briefest of moments, and collaborations, even extended ones, can come and go quite often. Maybe this has to do with the relative ease with which partners can interchange with one another, or the transient nature of its practitioners, but in…