BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//BOWERBIRD ::: MUSIC, DANCE, FILM ::: Philadelphia, PA - ECPv6.16.2//NONSGML v1.0//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://www.bowerbird.org X-WR-CALDESC:Events for BOWERBIRD ::: MUSIC, DANCE, FILM ::: Philadelphia, PA REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H X-Robots-Tag:noindex X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20190310T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20191103T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20200308T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20201101T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20210314T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20211107T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20220313T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20221106T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20230312T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20231105T060000 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:20240310T070000 END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:20241103T060000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230910T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230910T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20230718T180219Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230911T160040Z UID:10001193-1694376000-1694383200@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Beam Splitter DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird is pleased to present BEAM SPLITTER – duo for amplified voice\, trombone & analog electronics \nBEAM SPLITTER have been touring globally since 2015\, playing close to two hundred concerts\nin a wide variety of spaces and contexts\, bringing their own brand of highly amplified dialog\,\nwhich is as intimate as it is equal amounts raw and entirely exposed. They join together their\ntwo individual voices into a distinct language that delves beyond the borders of the corporeal\nelements of un-processed voice and trombone\, while utilizing analog electronics to offset their\nhyper extended physical play. \nThe duo’s latest album “SPLIT JAW” was released on Nat Baldwin’s Tripticks Tapes in 2023.\nThis bite size format packs an entire universe of their crafted sputter\, breath and glitch inside its\nforty-five minute magnetic tape loop. The album is one third introspective Berlin studio\nproduction and the rest\, live from a splintering concert given at Wels Unlimited Festival in\nAustria\, their last concert of 2022 where audience and the duo alike giving it their all center of\nroom\, split open like hollow bones head to clavicle\, muscles twitching and air spewing\, breaking\nground and mending it with alien hums. \nBEAM SPLITTER have taken part in larger commissioned works at the Teatro Colon\, Buenos\nAires and largely conceptualized a theatrical adaptation of MEDEA in front of the Olympic\nStadium in Kiev\, Ukraine (for butoh dancers and musicians) produced by the Ukho Agency.\nSince 2020\, they have been organizing DEDICATED PLAY\, an ongoing concert series and\ncollaborative artistic project\, where they have invited a diverse array of artists from around the\nworld\, primarily from diasporic backgrounds. While spinning a thread through the larger story of\nmigration across continents/oceans and establishing the concept of home in shared\nrelationships\, they are seeking to bring together the commonalities of these experiences and\nexpress this communication in sonic language and music. In the past two seasons\, they have\nworked and recorded with: Mo’ong Pribadi\, Hyunhye Seo\, Elaine Mitchener\, Mariam Rezaei\, Pat\nThomas & Orphy Robinson (Black top)\, Carla Boregas\, Mauricio Takara\, Mieko Suzuki\, Pak Yan\nLau\, Eivind Lønning & Espen Reinersten (Streifenjunko)\, Hugo Esquinca and Yara Mekawei. \n\n\n  URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/beam-splitter/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Bowerbird-Main-Img-32.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230908T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230908T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20230801T175255Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230910T205500Z UID:10001197-1694203200-1694210400@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Sonic Rainbow DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird is pleased to present Andy Thierauf performing SonicRainbow\, a kaleidoscope of acoustic and electronic sounds utilizing a wide spectrum of percussion instruments. This solo performance includes original compositions and improvisations that weave an intricate web of timbres and sonorities from roars to wisps\, drums to gongs\, and vibraphone to tin cans. Pulling from classical\, jazz\, non-Western\, contemporary and avant garde music\, the works are a unique\, postmodern blend of textures and styles. \n\nABOUT THE ARTIST \n\nAndy Thierauf is a Philadelphia based percussionist who specializes in the creation and performance of contemporary music. He is particularly interested in combining percussion with theater\, dance\, and technology. He has appeared in Philadelphia\, New York\, Boston\, Portland\, Argentina\, and across the Midwest at music festivals\, conferences\, and symposiums. In Philadelphia Andy often performs with Arcana New Music Ensemble\, NakedEye Ensemble\, Orchestra 2001\, among others and often collaborates with writers\, dancers\, actors\, choreographers\, and composers. He currently teaches at Settlement Music School and is an adjunct professor of percussion at Kutztown University. \n  \nThis performance is part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/andy-thierauf/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Bowerbird-Main-Img-36.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230824T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230824T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20230801T172243Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230828T144423Z UID:10001191-1692903600-1692910800@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:The Beauty of Moving Wind in the Trees DESCRIPTION:Every film by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub is a challenge: to the political status quo of capitalism\, to the film industry\, even to their own audiences. The films of these married longtime-collaborators are marked by an intellectual rigor\, a purity of form and movement\, and an overriding concern with power and politics. That their ravishing films are also among the most austere in modern cinema is what led Straub to famously joke that “we make our films so that audiences can walk out of them.” D.W. Griffith presented his own challenges\, accelerating cinematic experimentation by synthesizing multiple distinct early filmmaking trends into some of the most innovative and novel films of the nickelodeon era and establishing a “classical” style still felt in contemporary films. This is to say nothing of the challenges of watching some of his films today with their reactionary politics. So what is one to make of Straub-Huillet’s worship of Griffith? \nThis program presents three films by these three giants of cinema situated where the ends of this horseshoe meet. Huillet and Straub revered Griffith’s early Biograph short A Corner in Wheat and it’s easy to see why. It is the story of greedy monopolists who instigate the immiseration of the working class by gouging the price of wheat and thus the cost of food in a way Luc Moullet described as “very close to Karl Marx”. The film is astonishing not only for its novel parallel scenes depicting the differences between the haves and have nots but for its pictographic beauty. Documentary-like shots reminiscent of French realist painting intermix with intricately blocked diagonal breadlines and cramped theatrical interior scenes. It’s a secretly modernist form Straub and Huillet take to a logical extreme in The Bridegroom\, the Actress\, and the Pimp\, which almost seems to track the entire history of film in its conflation of a theatrical staging of a play by Buchner (starring R.W. Fassbinder\, Hanna Schygulla and other members of the Munich Action-Theater before they broke out in Fassbinder’s own films)\, documentary footage\, and a second narrative. A similar trick: multiple cinematic planes intersect to tell a story of power and exploitation. Straub-Huillet’s later Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene” shows us another approach in the couple’s later style where their dry\, intellectual take on fascism and capitalism\, adapted from that famous modernist composer’s own words draws on the simultaneous power of immaterial ideas and the essential vivacious force of photographing and documenting the beauty of gesture\, of people\, of the world. It is no wonder then\, that despite superficial differences\, Straub was so fond of quoting Griffith’s dirge for the passing of a certain style of filmmaking\, “what the modern movie lacks is beauty—the beauty of the moving wind in the trees”. \nPrints of The Bridegroom\, the Actress\, and the Pimp and Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene” courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. \n  \nPROGRAM \nThe Bridegroom\, the Actress\, and the Pimp / Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet / 1968 / 23 min / 16mm\nIntroduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene” / Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet / 1973 / 15 min / 16mm\nA Corner in Wheat / D.W. Griffith / 1909 / 14 min / 16mm URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/the-beauty-of-moving-wind-in-the-trees/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Bowerbird-Main-Img-35.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230817T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230817T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20230614T150810Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230821T155315Z UID:10001189-1692302400-1692309600@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Shiraz Ensemble DESCRIPTION:We are pleased to present the Shiraz Ensemble: Sina Homaee and Sepehr Pirasteh. Shiraz Ensemble embodies a global perspective\, combining their roles as citizens of the world and passionate artists to shed light on crucial socio-political matters through art. Drawing inspiration from their personal journeys as immigrants from Iran to the United States\, they channel their experiences into a transformative musical narrative. Blending contemporary classical music with the rich traditions of Iran\, Shiraz Ensemble aims to engage audiences and promote cultural understanding by fusing different musical aesthetics. Founded in Philadelphia\, Shiraz Ensemble takes its name from the ancient city of Shiraz in Iran\, a place of birth and upbringing for both its founders\, Sina and Sepehr. \nCo-presented with Fire Museum Presents. \nABOUT THE ARTISTS \nSina Homaee (He/Him) was born in Shiraz\, Iran. He is an Iranian musician and educator currently based in Philadelphia\, PA. His primary instruments are santour (سنتور) and tombak (تنبک). He started his first music lessons at the age of nine years old. Sina’s principal mentors for tombak were Jamal Bordbar and Farbod Yadollahi. He also studied santour with Amin Rahaee\, Roozbeh Rahimi\, Alireza Sedighynasab\, Mehran Shirazi\, and Masoud Shenasa. Sina has taught a variety of music courses such as music theory\, Iranian music theory\, form and analysis in Iranian traditional music\, as well as his primary instruments\, santour\, and tombak at Fazel University of Art and music institutions in Shiraz. He was the director of the Sepidar Ensemble in Shiraz\, Iran\, and collaborated with numerous music ensembles in Iran. During his time in Iran\, Sina collaborated with Fars TV and Radio Broadcasting Channel. Sina is currently finishing his Master’s thesis in Ethnomusicology at Guilan University (Rasht\, Iran). His research interests are Qashqaei music (Nomadic people around Fars province)\, music and globalization\, women in Iranian music\, and music in the Iranian diaspora. He pursued his bachelor’s of music in Iranian music performance from the Shiraz University of Art. He currently lives in Philadelphia and plays with a variety of music ensembles. Sina is interested in integrating different musical cultures and is keen to collaborate with a variety of artists from different musical backgrounds. \nSepehr Pirasteh is a composer and conductor born in Shiraz\, Iran. His compositions draw on Persian classical and folk as well as contemporary classical music vocabularies to express his concerns and fears about the political and social realities of the world we are living in. Sepehr’s works have been performed by ensembles such as Argus String Quartet\, PRISM saxophone quartet\, Pushback Ensemble\, Unheard-of Ensemble\, Orquestra Criança Cidadã\, Hole in the floor\, fivebyfive\, and members of the Fifth House Ensemble. He has been commissioned by Susan Horvath Chamber Music\, ENA chamber opera ensemble\, Philadelphia Student Composers Project\, Detroit Composers’ Project\, YInMn project\, Fresh Inc. Festival\, Yara Ensemble\, Central Michigan University’s (CMU) Percussion Ensemble\, and the CMU Saxophone Ensemble. His music has been performed in Argentina\, Brazil\, Iran and the United States. Sepehr has also been a fellow in festivals and residencies such as Harvard University’s Fromm Foundation Fellowship (Composers Conference)\, CCI Initiative\, and Fresh Inc Festival. As a conductor\, he has been focusing on premiering new music written by young and emerging composers as well as conducting the classical repertoire. Sepehr served as the director of the CMU New Music Ensemble\, Pierrot Ensemble\, and Concert Orchestra\, and Vintage community orchestra in Mount Pleasant\, Michigan. He was also the assistant conductor of the CMU Symphony Orchestra. In 2020 he started serving as the director of Temple Composers’ Orchestra (TCO). Sepehr currently is a Ph.D. student in Music Studies at Temple University. He pursued his MM in Composition and Orchestral Conducting at Central Michigan University. Sepehr studied composition with Dr. Jose-Luis Maurtua\, Dr. Evan Ware and conducting with Dr. Jose-Luis Maurtua. He received his BA in Composition from Tehran University of Art (Iran). He plays a Persian Kamancheh and Tanbour and is currently based in Philadelphia. URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/sina-homaee-sepehr-pirasteh/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Bowerbird-Main-Img-33.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230720T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230720T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20230706T150853Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230727T180504Z UID:10001190-1689879600-1689886800@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Mohsen Makhmalbaf's "The Silence" DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird\, in collaboration with Nightletter\, are pleased to present Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s 1998 film “The Silence”. “The Silence” follows Khorshid\, a blind 10-year old living with his mother in a small Tajikistan village. Khorshid earns money tuning musical instruments\, while Nadereh — the beautiful protege of the instrument maker for whom Khorshid works — acts as his eyes\, fetching him every day at the bus stop and leading him through the streets. About to lose his job and home\, Khorshid creates a world where he can be happy — where hypnotic sounds and the music of the world shows him how to experience life. The film is banned in Iran since 1998. \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\nPROGRAM \nThe Silence / Mohsen Makhmalbaf / 1998 / 76 min / digital \n\n  URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/mohsen-makhmalbafs-the-silence/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Mohsen-Makhmalbafs-THE-SILENCE-Bowerbird-Main-Img.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230602T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230602T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20230321T145829Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230606T143410Z UID:10001186-1685736000-1685743200@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Music of Raven Chacon DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird is excited to present Philadelphia’s Arcana New Music Ensemble performing a portrait concert of Raven Chacon. \nPROGRAM \nWhisper Trio\nTessa Ellis\, Andy Thierauf\, Chelsea Meynig \nQuiver\nTom Kraines\, cello \nTááʼtsʼáadah\nTessa Ellis\, trumpet \nLats’ aadah\nCarlos Santiago\, violin \nBiyan\nJonathan Leeds\, clarinet; Chelsea Meynig\, flute; Carlos Santiago\, violin; Tom Kraines\, cello; Andy Thierauf\, percussion \nABOUT THE ARTISTS\nRaven Chacon is a composer\, performer\, and installation artist from Fort Defiance\, Navajo Nation\, now based in the Hudson Valley\, whose works combine contemporary chamber music with self-made electronic and acoustic instruments while conveying the perspectives of Indigenous people. He composes for chamber instruments but notes that his work is “deliberately performed for non-traditional audiences and in non-classical venues\,” like American Ledger No. 2\, performed and displayed as a billboard along I-244 in Tulsa\, OK\, and Tremble Staves\, performed among the ruins of the Sutro Baths in San Francisco’s Lands End. His commissions include Sweet Land for opera company The Industry and The Journey of the Horizontal People for Kronos Quartet. Chacon was a member of the Indigenous art collective Postcommodity from 2009 to 2018 and\, since 2005\, has taught experimental chamber composition to high school students on the Navajo and Hopi reservations as part of the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project. He has performed his work at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival\, Transmissions Festival in Italy\, Borealis in Norway\, and the Kamias Triennial in the Philippines. Chacon holds an MFA in music from the California Institute of the Arts and a BA in music from the University of New Mexico. \nFounded in 2016\, the Arcana New Music Ensemble is a group of Philadelphia-based musicians dedicated to presenting interesting\, beautiful\, and unconventional music in interesting\, beautiful\, and unconventional places. Built on a flexible roster of 25 musicians\, Arcana is able to perform a broad range of repertoire in numerous configurations. Composers featured in recent programs include Julius Eastman\, Morton Feldman\, Galina Ustvolskaya\, Pauline Oliveros\, Tom Johnson\, Moondog\, and James Tenney. Arcana has performed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art\, Fleisher Art Memorial\, The Rotunda\, The Kitchen (NYC)\, and collaborated with Variant Six\, Prometheus Chamber Orchestra\, and Pig Iron Theater Company. URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/music-of-raven-chacon/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Bowerbird-Main-Img-26.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230524T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230524T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20230509T144223Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230530T155028Z UID:10001188-1684954800-1684962000@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Sounding Ornaments: Experiments with Optical Sound DESCRIPTION:Dedicated to Daphne Oram \nOn 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 have turned their eye to this strip which is most frequently the site of pre-recorded music and sound. Sounding Ornaments presents films which use the optical track and the projector as their sonic instruments. \nThe Whitney Brothers pioneered experimental animation influenced by vanguard composers like Schoenberg. Using a homemade weighted pendulum\, the Whitneys created abstract patterns on the optical track of Five Film Exercises resulting in incredible congruity between image and sound. With the ensuing minimalist turn of American experimental filmmaking\, Peter Kubelka examined flickering black and white frames in Arnulf Rainer alongside flickering black and white noise. Paul Shartis’ Ray Gun Virus continues one step further by examining what would happen if the film print’s sprocket holes were to run through the photoelectric sound cell. Barry Spinello extended McLaren’s experiments into pure abstraction by hand painting on both the image and the soundtrack of Soundtrack\, creating a frenzy of sounds. And finally with Newsprint\, Guy Sherwin collaged strips of newspaper between clear film resulting in an image and a sound of the projector “reading” the newspaper. \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\nPROGRAM \nFive Film Exercises / John Whitney & James Whitney / 1943-45 / 21 min / 16mm\nArnulf Rainer / Peter Kubelka / 1960 / 7 min / 16mm\nRay Gun Virus / Paul Sharits / 1967 / 14 min / 16mm\nSoundtrack / Barry Spinello / 1969 / 10 min / 16mm\nNewsprint / Guy Sherwin / 1972 / 5 min / 16mm \nPaul Sharits: Ray Gun Virus (low res excerpt) \n\n  URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/sounding-ornaments-experiments-with-optical-sound/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Sharits-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230421T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230421T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220823T160244Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230502T163451Z UID:10001161-1682107200-1682114400@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Sacred & Profane DESCRIPTION: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 Gorgon\, and the Manticore. Their sole a cappella show of the season\, Variant 6 explores how text and music can intertwine in strange and beautiful ways. \n\nTEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS \n\n\nABOUT THE ARTIST \nVariant 6 is a virtuosic vocal sextet\, led by co-artistic directors Rebecca Myers and Elisa Sutherland. Variant 6 explores the expressive potential of the human voice through vocal chamber music that is at once virtuosic\, poignant\, and approachable. Composed of artists with a diverse set of skills and a wide range of expertise\, we seek out repertoire that embodies this potential. We collaborate with artists of many disciplines\, creating refreshing interpretations of music of the past and innovative premieres of new works. Our concerts are unique and intimate musical experiences that foster deep conversation between artists and audience. Variant 6’s artists have performed with internationally recognized ensembles\, including Roomful of Teeth\, Bang on a Can\, American Composers Orchestra\, Seraphic Fire\, Santa Fe Desert Chorale\, the Los Angeles Philharmonic\, Chicago Bach Project\, Piffaro\, Tempesta di Mare\, the Philadelphia Orchestra\, Opera Philadelphia\, and more. Our singers have appeared as soloists with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra\, the Opera Philadelphia\, the American Bach Soloists\, Philadelphia Orchestra\, Lyric Fest Philadelphia\, and with the Apollo Chorus of Chicago. Many of our members regularly sing with Philadelphia’s contemporary music choir\, The Crossing. Collectively\, we hold degrees from Indiana University\, Northwestern University\, Westminster Choir College\, Temple University\, and the University of the Arts. \n\n\n\n  \n\nPLEASE NOTE: As of January 2023\, masks are welcomed\, but no longer required at Bowerbird events. URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/sacred-profane/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Bowerbird-Main-Img-15.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230301T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230301T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20221024T173618Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230307T160526Z UID:10001173-1677700800-1677708000@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Scott Wollschleger: Dark Days DESCRIPTION: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 the introspective immediacy of the solo piano medium\, as we hear coloristic harmonies\, a penchant for using displaced rhythms and repetition to subvert phrasing expectations\, and an intuitively driven approach to form and structure. \n  \nDark Days by Scott Wollschleger & Karl Larson \n  \nABOUT THE ARTISTS \nKarl Larson is a Brooklyn-based pianist and specialist in the music of our time. A devoted supporter of contemporary composers and their craft\, Larson has built a career grounded in commissioning and long-term collaborations. He frequently performs in a variety of chamber music settings\, most notably with his trio\, Bearthoven\, a piano / bass / percussion ensemble focussed on cultivating a diverse new repertoire for their instrumentation. As a soloist\, Larson is known for championing the works of his peers and the recent canon alike\, often gravitating towards long-form\, reflective works of the 20th and 21st centuries. Through his work with Bearthoven\, collaborations with a wide variety of chamber musicians\, and his solo projects\, Larson has helped to generate a large body of new work\, resulting in world premiere performances of pieces by notable composers including David Lang\, Sarah Hennies\, Chris Cerrone\, and Michael Gordon. \nScott Wollschleger (b. 1980) is a composer who grew up in Erie\, Pennsylvania and now lives in Brooklyn\, New York. His music has been highly praised for its arresting timbres and conceptual originality. Wollschleger “has become a formidable\, individual presence” in the contemporary musical landscape (The Rest Is Noise\, Alex Ross). His distinct musical language explores themes of art in dystopia\, the conceptualization of silence\, synesthesia\, and creative repetition in form. His music has been described as “apocalyptic”\, “distinctive and magnetic” and possessing a “hushed\, cryptic beauty” (The New Yorker\, Alex Ross) and as “evocative” and “kaleidoscopic” (The New York Times). Much of Mr. Wollschleger’s music features a sense of “timeless lyricism”\, something that influential avant-garde jazz pianist and blogger Ethan Iverson described as “the highlight of the disc” in his enthusiastic review of Mr. Wollschleger’s Brontal No. 3\, on Barbary Coast\, a 2014 New Focus Records release. \n\nPLEASE NOTE: As of January 2023\, masks are welcomed\, but no longer required at Bowerbird events. URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/scott-wollschleger-dark-days/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Bowerbird-Main-Img-19.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230222T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230222T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20221121T173615Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230223T160230Z UID:10001178-1677096000-1677103200@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Laraaji Returns DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird is pleased to bring Laraaji back to our home venue at University Lutheran performing for a second improvised solo piano set this season. \nABOUT THE ARTIST\nPhiladelphia-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 faiths and transcendental research in his long-time home in Harlem\, in 1979 Brian Eno stumbled upon him busking in Washington Square Park in New York\, improvising celestial meditations with his electric zither. The producer invited him to contribute to his influential Ambient series\, resulting in the 1980 album Day of Radiance. Ever since he’s remained an outsized figure in new age and ambient music\, eschewing synthesizers in favor of hand-made sounds\, consistently embracing a human presence in his ever-seeking performances. Whether using monochord instruments\, singing\, or deploying electronics-kissed percussion\, Laraaji’s music remains connected to cosmic African-American tradition\, and as hypnotically beautiful as his work has been he’s never been afraid to inject ripples of tension and dissonance into his trance-inducing journeys. \nPhoto: Ryan Collerd \n\n\n  \n\n  \n\nPLEASE NOTE: As of January 2023\, masks are welcomed\, but no longer required at Bowerbird events. URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/laraaji-returns-2023/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Bowerbird-Main-Img-21.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230215T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230215T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20221128T172008Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230217T164711Z UID:10001170-1676491200-1676498400@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:LIGAMENT DESCRIPTION: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 heels and sometimes there are electric toothbrushes (and sometimes both). The duo is equally at home with extended techniques as with extra-musical elements. LIGAMENT is currently based in Baltimore and Philadelphia. \nPhoto by Tina Tallon \nPROGRAM \nTo be announced. \nABOUT THE ARTIST \nLIGAMENT means business: they’ve been ensemble fellows at New Music on the Point and Cortona Sessions for New Music; have performed in concert series iHearIC\, Feed Me Weird Things\, and the University of Iowa Center for New Music; have been tapped as the collaborating ensemble for dance performances not I but that which works within me (Alyssa Gersony) and Struggle for Pleasure (Armando Duarte). They’ve been featured on the Kansas City Contemporary Music Festival and Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project’s Re:Sound\, and were the 2022 ensemble-in-residence for Washington DC’s District New Music Coalition. They have premiered many new works\, and have an upcoming album of pieces written expressly for the duo. \n  \n\n\n  \n\nPLEASE NOTE: As of January 2023\, masks are welcomed\, but no longer required at Bowerbird events. URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/ligament/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Bowerbird-Main-Img-10.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230125T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230125T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20221206T025925Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230126T165046Z UID:10001177-1674673200-1674680400@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Derek Bailey's "On The Edge" - Parts 3 & 4 DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird and Nightletter are pleased to present the four-part documentary series On The Edge: Improvisation in Music written and produced by Derek Bailey. \nFor 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 but advocated for the appreciation of improvisation in all forms. For every atonal skronk that echoed from Bailey’s guitar there was an equal appreciation for the sweetly melodic and rhythmic improvisations from musicians far removed from the avant-garde. In 1980 Bailey put his findings\, both personal and researched\, into a book Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice. Much of Bailey’s attention is paid to musics whose excursions into improvisation are frequently misunderstood: Indian music\, indigenous music\, jazz. \nOn The Edge: Improvisation in Music\, Bailey’s four-part documentary adaptation of his earlier book features deep and detailed explorations of music as diverse as blues and jazz\, Sufi Qawwali\, Indian classical music\, liturgical music\, flamenco\, turntablism\, and the Grateful Dead. Tied together with Bailey’s voice-over the documentary also includes prime footage and interviews with John Zorn\, Max Roach\, Butch Morris\, Jerry Garcia\, Buddy Guy\, George E. Lewis\, as well as Bailey himself. Bowerbird and Nightletter will present Parts I and II on January 18th and Parts III and IV on January 25th. \n  \nPROGRAM \nOn The Edge: Improvisation in Music / Jeremy Marre / Digital \nPart 3: A Liberating Thing  (52 min)\nPart 4: Nothin’ Premeditated  (52 min) \n\nPLEASE NOTE: As of January 2023\, masks are welcomed\, but no longer required at Bowerbird events. URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/derek-baileys-on-the-edge-parts-3-4/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/OnEdge34.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230118T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230118T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20221206T013902Z LAST-MODIFIED:20230126T164958Z UID:10001176-1674068400-1674075600@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Derek Bailey's "On The Edge" - Parts 1 & 2 DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird and Nightletter are pleased to present the four-part documentary series On The Edge: Improvisation in Music written and produced by Derek Bailey. \nFor 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 but advocated for the appreciation of improvisation in all forms. For every atonal skronk that echoed from Bailey’s guitar there was an equal appreciation for the sweetly melodic and rhythmic improvisations from musicians far removed from the avant-garde. In 1980 Bailey put his findings\, both personal and researched\, into a book Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice. Much of Bailey’s attention is paid to musics whose excursions into improvisation are frequently misunderstood: Indian music\, indigenous music\, jazz. \nOn The Edge: Improvisation in Music\, Bailey’s four-part documentary adaptation of his earlier book features deep and detailed explorations of music as diverse as blues and jazz\, Sufi Qawwali\, Indian classical music\, liturgical music\, flamenco\, turntablism\, and the Grateful Dead. Tied together with Bailey’s voice-over the documentary also includes prime footage and interviews with John Zorn\, Max Roach\, Butch Morris\, Jerry Garcia\, Buddy Guy\, George E. Lewis\, as well as Bailey himself. Bowerbird and Nightletter will present Parts I and II on January 18th and Parts III and IV on January 25th. \nPROGRAM \nOn The Edge: Improvisation in Music / Jeremy Marre / Digital \nPart 1:Passing It On (52 mins)\nPart 2:Movements In Time (52 mins) \n  \n\nPLEASE NOTE: As of January 2023\, masks are welcomed\, but no longer required at Bowerbird events. URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/on-the-edge-parts-1-2/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/OnEdge12.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20221207T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20221207T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20221026T153209Z LAST-MODIFIED:20221214T174253Z UID:10001174-1670439600-1670446800@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Expo ‘58: A More Humane Art DESCRIPTION: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 nationalism\, corporate collaboration\, and ongoing colonialism. But it also served as the premiere of some of the most important and radical artistic works of the second half of the twentieth century\, previewing currents that continue to this day. \nThe Le Corbusier designed Phillips Pavilion was a masterpiece of modernist architecture where new works in the emerging idioms of electronic music and musique concrète by Edgard Varèse and Iannis Xenakis were first presented. Brussels was also the first major meeting place of the international film community following the second World War where not only did critics and filmmakers from dozens of countries vote on a list of the greatest films of all time but more than 100 novel experimental works from around the world were presented as a radical change in this young art form. These films included not only what we would typically label “experimental film” including early works by members of the American underground cinema movement as well as key figures of the European avant-garde tradition but also some of the first works of the coming New Waves of narrative filmmaking such as Agnes Varda\, Roman Polanski\, Ken Russell\, and Alain Tanner as well as some of the first independent animated films. Expo ‘58: A More Humane Art will survey the breadth of this incredible exposition drawing from all of these currents and celebrating the Brussels festival as the debutante ball of numerous cinematic forms. \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\nFILM PROGRAM \nAdebar / Peter Kubelka / 1957 / 3 min / 16mm\nThe Very Eye of Night / Maya Deren / 1958 / 15 min / 16mm\nAnticipation of the Night / Stan Brakhage / 1958 / 42 min / 16mm\nJamestown Baloos / Robert Breer / 1957 / 8 min / 16mm\nFree Radicals / Len Lye / 1958 / 5 min / Digital\nL’Opera Mouffe / Agnès Varda / 1958 / 16 min / Digital \n\nHEALTH & SAFETY\nThis is an “in person” event.   In consideration of the ongoing pandemic and the safety of those in our community\, Bowerbird is requiring all audience members\, staff\, and performers to wear a mask while inside the venue (please note that musicians will have the option to perform without masks once on stage). URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/expo-58-a-more-humane-art/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Bowerbird-Main-Img-20.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20221202T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20221202T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220831T154839Z LAST-MODIFIED:20221205T155426Z UID:10001164-1670011200-1670018400@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Catherine Lamb's "Curvo Totalitas" DESCRIPTION: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 more than once to discover a well situated phase relation in a given moment. Tonal development consists of blurring together to form harmonic densities from melodic contours\, more isolated highlighting aggregates\, as well as lingering sustain points being collected and released. Responsiveness and resonance is depending upon the width of the filter around particular partials in time. Shiftings are very gradual.” \n\nPROGRAM \nCatherine Lamb: Curvo Totalitas (2017 version)\nfor 2 synthesizers\, steel sheet\, tam tam \n\nABOUT THE ARTISTS\nCatherine Lamb (b. 1982\, Olympia\, WA. U.S.) is an active composer exploring the interaction of tone\, summations of shapes and shadows\, phenomenological expansions\, the architecture of the liminal (states in between outside/inside)\, and the long introduction form. She began her musical life early\, later abandoning the conservatory in 2003 to study Hindustani music in Pune\, India. She received her BFA in 2006 under James Tenney and Michael Pisaro at CalArts in Los Angeles\, where she first developed her research into the interaction of tone and continued to compose\, teach\, and collaborate with musicians (such as Laura Steenberge and Julia Holter on Singing by Numbers). \n\nYarn/Wire is a New York-based percussion and piano quartet (Sae Hashimoto and Russell Greenberg\, percussion; Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer\, pianos) dedicated to the promotion of creative\, experimental new music. The ensemble is admired globally for the energy and care it brings to performances of today’s most adventurous music\, and New York Classical Review states that “Yarn/Wire may well be the most important new music ensemble on the classical scene today.” Founded in 2005\, the ensemble seeks to expand the representation of composers so that it might begin to better reflect our communities and their creative potential. Yarn/Wire has performed internationally at festivals including the Lincoln Center\, Edinburgh International\, Rainy Days (Luxembourg)\, Ultima (Norway)\, Festival 20/21 (Belgium)\, Contemplus (Prague)\, and Wien Modern (Austria) Festivals\, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall\, Dublin SoundLab\, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles)\, Brooklyn Academy of Music\, and New York’s Miller Theatre. Their numerous commissions include works from composers such as Annea Lockwood\, Enno Poppe\, Michael Gordon\, George Lewis\, Ann Cleare\, Catherine Lamb\, Tyshawn Sorey\, Peter Evans\, Alex Mincek\, Thomas Meadowcroft\, Misato Mochizuki\, Sam Pluta\, Tyondai Braxton\, Kate Soper\, and Øyvind Torvund. The ensemble enjoys collaborations with genre-bending artists such as Tristan Perich\, Ben Vida\, Mark Fell\, Sufjan Stevens\, and Pete Swanson. Through the Yarn/Wire International Institute and Festival\, plus other educational residencies and outreach programs\, the quartet works to promote not only the present but also the future of new music in the United States. Their ongoing commissioning series\, Yarn/Wire/Currents\, serves as an incubator for new experimental music. Yarn/Wire has recorded for the WERGO\, Kairos\, New Amsterdam\, Northern Spy\, Shelter Press\, Distributed Objects\, Black Truffle\, Populist\, and Carrier record labels in addition to maintaining their own imprint. For more information\, please visit www.yarnwire.org. \n\n  \n\nHEALTH & SAFETY\nThis is an “in person” event.   In consideration of the ongoing pandemic and the safety of those in our community\, Bowerbird is requiring all audience members\, staff\, and performers to wear a mask while inside the venue (please note that musicians will have the option to perform without masks once on stage). URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/catherine-lambs-curvo-totalitas/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Bowerbird-Main-Img-16.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20221116T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20221116T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220919T155459Z LAST-MODIFIED:20221129T130658Z UID:10001169-1668628800-1668636000@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Ensemble Pamplemousse DESCRIPTION: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 implications of system failure and its echoes into ecosystems of organized wiggling air molecules. Others explore the concept of shadow— shadows shorten and lengthen as time speeds up and slows down in reaction to situation and thought\, a useful analog for musical composition. New works performed and composed by David Broome\, Natacha Diels\, Andrew Greenwald\, Bryan Jacobs\, and Weston Olencki. \n\nABOUT THE ARTISTS:\nComposer/performer collective Ensemble Pamplemousse was founded in 2003 to provide a focal point for like-minded creators with a thirst for sonic exploration. The ensemble is a close-knit group of divergent artistic personalities\, emergent from training in disparate musical fields. Their collective love for the exquisite in all sonic realms leads the ensemble to persistently discover new vistas of sound at the frayed edges of dissective instrumental performance technique. Compositions aggregate each member’s unique virtuosic talents into extraordinary magical moments. In the flexible moments of performance\, the ensemble weaves together shapes of resonance\, clusters of glitch\, skitters of hyper action\, and masses of absurdity into impeccable structures of unified beauty. \nwww.pamplemoussies.bandcamp.com/album/shadows \n\n\n\n  \n\nHEALTH & SAFETY\nThis is an “in person” event.   In consideration of the ongoing pandemic and the safety of those in our community\, Bowerbird is requiring all audience members\, staff\, and performers to wear a mask while inside the venue (please note that musicians will have the option to perform without masks once on stage). URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/pamplemousse/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Bowerbird-Main-Img-17.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20221001T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20221001T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220831T154104Z LAST-MODIFIED:20221003T164028Z UID:10001163-1664654400-1664661600@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Telescoping DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird is pleased to present a double bill featuring Seattle’s Telescoping and Philadelphia’s Jesse Kudler.  Telescoping is a quartet of Dave Abramson (drums\, percussion)\, Al Jones (guitars\, electronics\, voice)\, Greg Kelley (trumpet\, electronics)\, and Robert Millis (guitars) that performs “dense\, nocturnal improvised music.”  Jesse Kudler will be premiering a new site-specific work developed on and for the pipe organ of University Lutheran’s sanctuary. \nABOUT THE ARTISTS\nTelescoping is an electroacoustic improvising quartet formed in early 2020 in Seattle & the Olympic Peninsula. Consisting of Dave Abramson (Diminished Men\, Spider Trio\, MMOB – drums\, percussion\,) Al Jones (Marginal Frequency\, MANKINDA – guitars\, pedal steel\, electronics\, voice\,) Greg Kelley (nmperign\, Heathen Shame – trumpet\, electronics) & Robert Millis (Climax Golden Twins\, Sublime Frequencies\, Idol Ko Si – guitars\, electronics\,) the group’s initial collaboration started in isolation in the nascent days of the COVID-19 pandemic. They recorded a self-titled album from their respective quarantine studios which Noise Not Music called “dense\, nocturnal improvised music” that is “gorgeous\, masterfully constructed\, and essential listening for anyone feeling any of the following: confused\, frightened\, bored\, sad\, alone.” Further recording took place in an abandoned generator building on Bainbridge Island in the Puget Sound in April of 2020\, after which Kelley relocated back to his native Massachusetts. Abramson and Jones released duo material under the name What earlier this year on the Eiderdown Records label thus continuing the trajectory that brings the quartet back together for a string of East Coast dates in late September/early October 2022. \nJesse Kudler is a musician\, composer\, performer\, and sound artist using improvisation\, collaboration\, and site-specificity to examine authorship\, intention\, agency\, ambiguous affects\, and modes and practices of listening. He works with guitar\, electronics\, recordings\, keyboards\, synthesizers\, radios\, tapes\, movement\, and text. \n  \n\nHEALTH & SAFETY\nThis is an “in person” event.   In consideration of the ongoing pandemic and the safety of those in our community\, Bowerbird is requiring all audience members\, staff\, and performers to wear a mask while inside the venue (please note that musicians will have the option to perform without masks once on stage). URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/telescoping/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Telescoping.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220921T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220921T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220815T164202Z LAST-MODIFIED:20221003T164238Z UID:10001160-1663790400-1663797600@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Morton Feldman's "For Bunita Marcus" DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird is pleased to present New York City based pianist Adam Tendler performing American composer Morton Feldman’s (1926 – 1987) late period masterpiece For Bunita Marcus . Music critic James Pritchett describes the work: “For Bunita Marcus \, like all the late Feldman works\, is an adventure that takes a relatively long time to play out\, but which is remarkably lacking in heaviness. We may expect an epic\, but we get something much subtler. Indeed\, what we get is the present moment\, in all its beauty\, over and over again. If we surrender to the musical image that is right in front of us\, a piece like For Bunita Marcus  is an easy world to enter into and to explore with Feldman. We step into the silence after that first six-note motto\, and we wonder: What comes next? The next hour and a quarter is spent doing nothing more than discovering what comes next—and the next thing after that\, and the next after that.” \n\nABOUT THE ARTIST \nA recipient of the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists\, “currently the hottest pianist on the American contemporary classical scene” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)\, a “remarkable and insightful musician” (LA Times)\, and “relentlessly adventurous pianist” (Washington Post) “joyfully rocking out at his keyboard” (New York Times)\, Adam Tendler is an internationally recognized interpreter of living\, modern and classical composers. A pioneer of DIY culture in concert music who has commissioned and premiered major works by Christian Wolff and Devonté Hynes alike\, at age 23 Tendler performed solo recitals in all fifty United States as part of a grassroots tour he called America 88×50\, which became the subject of his memoir\, 88×50\, a Kirkus Indie Book of the Month and Lambda Literary Award nominee. He has gone on to become one of classical and contemporary music’s most recognized and celebrated artists\, active as a soloist\, recording artist\, composer\, speaker and educator. He has curated and performed series for the Broad Museum and Little Island\, and in 2022 alone\, appeared as soloist at BAM and Carnegie Hall\, and with the LA Philharmonic. Tendler recently released an album of Liszt’s Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses on the Steinway Label\, Robert Palmer: Piano Music on New World Records\, and published his second book\, tidepools. In 2022 he will premiere 16 newly commissioned works by composers including Laurie Anderson\, Nico Muhly\, Missy Mazzoli\, Christopher Cerrone\, Timo Andres and Pamela Z as part of a project called Inheritances. Adam Tendler is a Yamaha Artist. \n\n\n  \n\n  \n\nHEALTH & SAFETY\nThis is an “in person” event.   In consideration of the ongoing pandemic and the safety of those in our community\, Bowerbird is requiring all audience members\, staff\, and performers to wear a mask while inside the venue (please note that musicians will have the option to perform without masks once on stage). URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/adam-tendler-performs-feldman/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Tendler-performs-Feldman.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220914T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220914T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220823T161844Z LAST-MODIFIED:20221003T164020Z UID:10001162-1663185600-1663192800@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Laraaji DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird is pleased to present Laraaji in our home venue at University Lutheran performing an improvised solo piano set on our Steinway Model O. \nABOUT THE ARTIST\nPhiladelphia-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 faiths and transcendental research in his long-time home in Harlem\, in 1979 Brian Eno stumbled upon him busking in Washington Square Park in New York\, improvising celestial meditations with his electric zither. The producer invited him to contribute to his influential Ambient series\, resulting in the 1980 album Day of Radiance. Ever since he’s remained an outsized figure in new age and ambient music\, eschewing synthesizers in favor of hand-made sounds\, consistently embracing a human presence in his ever-seeking performances. Whether using monochord instruments\, singing\, or deploying electronics-kissed percussion\, Laraaji’s music remains connected to cosmic African-American tradition\, and as hypnotically beautiful as his work has been he’s never been afraid to inject ripples of tension and dissonance into his trance-inducing journeys. \nPhoto: Daniel Oduntan \n\n\n  \n\n  \n\nHEALTH & SAFETY\nThis is an “in person” event.   In consideration of the ongoing pandemic and the safety of those in our community\, Bowerbird is requiring all audience members\, staff\, and performers to wear a mask while inside the venue (please note that musicians will have the option to perform without masks once on stage). URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/laraaji-solo-piano/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Laraaji-piano2.jpeg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220824T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220824T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220725T153817Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220829T140954Z UID:10001158-1661367600-1661374800@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Kidlat Tahimik's Turumba DESCRIPTION:Commissioned by the German public service broadcaster ZDF\, Kidlat Tahimik shot this movie in Laguna in the Philippines in 1981 as a contribution to the ZDF teleplay series “Vater Unser” (“Our Father”). These comprised six 45-minute short movies by a group of international directors\, which interpreted key phrases from the lexicon of the Apostles’ Creed. Tahimik opted for the phrase “give us this day our daily bread”\, and shot a movie about a family in Pakil in Laguna\, a small town about 100 kilometers from the capital Manila reputed for its “Turumba” procession and its musical tradition\, which also play an important role in the film. The family earned their living producing paper mache figurines\, a handicraft for which the region is known nationwide. They sell the figurine-toys during the annual Turumba festivities and live off the proceeds throughout the year. An imperious\, German entrepreneur visits their market stall and commissions them to manufacture 30\,000 Olympic Waldi dachshunds\, the official mascot for the 1972 Munich Olympics. The family then embarks upon a quasi-industrial production of paper mache figures; suddenly\, time is money. Tahimik commented that Turumba is a movie about the “incursion of capitalism into a Philippine village”. \nTurumba / Kidlat Tahimik / 1981 / 95 min / 16mm \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\nThis is an “in person” event.   In consideration of the ongoing pandemic and the safety of those in our community\, Bowerbird is requiring all audience members\, staff\, and performers to show proof of Covid 19 vaccinations status *and* wear a mask while inside the venue (please note that musicians will have the option to perform without masks once on stage).  Proof of vaccination can be the physical ID card or a photo/copy (a photo on your phone is acceptable). URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/kidlat-tahimiks-turumba/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Bowerbird-Main-Img-8.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220727T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220727T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220602T181907Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220811T192230Z UID:10001156-1658948400-1658955600@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Pat O’Neill’s Water and Power DESCRIPTION:NEW DATE \n\nPat O’Neill’s rarely-screened masterpiece of West Coast cinema is a dazzling synthesis of fast motion and superimposition\, appropriated footage and time lapse photography\, chroma keying and long exposures. Water and Power layers images drawn from urban Los Angeles\, its water source in the Owens Valley\, and an otherworldly interior space in increasingly complex permutations. What results is a fractured history\, not just of California and its environment but of the cinematic imagination. Through subtitles O’Neill also weaves a story of industrial expansion’s impact on the landscape from Sir Francis Drake’s exploration to situations that seem ripped from Golden Age Hollywood. \nIn the hands of O’Neill\, landscape becomes not just the industrial and natural world but the reflection of how humans have imagined it\, as the site of epics of silent film to ideal locations for resource extraction. The film abounds with visual rhymes\, becoming unclear where human architecture ends and nature begins. And this is to say nothing of the surreal dreamlike figures that litter O’Neill’s imagined Los Angeles. Shot on 35mm\, a rare luxury in experimental filmmaking\, and masterfully utilizing the optical printer\, Water and Power contains some of the most beautiful images in all of American cinema. \nWater and Power / Pat O’Neill / 1989 / 57 min / 16mm \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\nThis is an “in person” event.   In consideration of the ongoing pandemic and the safety of those in our community\, Bowerbird is requiring all audience members\, staff\, and performers to show proof of Covid 19 vaccinations status *and* wear a mask while inside the venue (please note that musicians will have the option to perform without masks once on stage).  Proof of vaccination can be the physical ID card or a photo/copy (a photo on your phone is acceptable). URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/pat-oneills-water-and-power/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Bowerbird-Main-Img-6.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220714T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220714T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220614T171801Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220707T174523Z UID:10001157-1657825200-1657832400@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Wildflower Composers: Concert of Faculty Works with Arcana New Music DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird is pleased to present a collaboration between the Arcana New Music Ensemble and the annual Wildflowers Composer Festival to present works by the festival faculty. The festival is open to composers who identify as part of gender-marginalized communities\, which includes cis-women\, trans-women\, trans-men\, and those who are nonbinary or gender-nonconforming. The summer festival is intended for composers between the ages of 13 and 19 who have not yet started college. \nPROGRAM \ninti figgis-vizueta: to give you form and breath\nAndy Thierauf\, Emily Roane\, Travis Goffredo – percussion \ninti figgis-vizueta: INBHIR (many waters)\nTom Kraines – cello \nRajna Swaminathan: Consilience\nRajna Swaminathan – mrundangum\, piano\, voice \nFlannery Cunningham: We are the same as we have always been\nSean Bailey – clarinet \nFlannery Cunningham: Songs of myself//songs for myself\nAlize Rozsnyai – voice \nErin Busch: refract (world premiere)\nCarlos Santiago – violin \n\nThis is an “in person” event.   In consideration of the ongoing pandemic and the safety of those in our community\, Bowerbird is requiring all audience members\, staff\, and performers to show proof of Covid 19 vaccinations status *and* wear a mask while inside the venue (please note that musicians will have the option to perform without masks once on stage).  Proof of vaccination can be the physical ID card or a photo/copy (a photo on your phone is acceptable). URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/wildflower-composer-concert/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Bowerbird-Main-Img-7.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220615T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220615T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220524T150848Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220708T020341Z UID:10001155-1655319600-1655326800@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Babette Mangolte’s The Cold Eye (My Darling\, Be Careful) DESCRIPTION:By the time Babette Mangolte began work on The Cold Eye (My Darling Be Careful)\, her first overtly fictional narrative film\, she was already deeply enmeshed in the artistic vanguard of two continents. She had served as the cinematographer for the early groundbreaking films by Chantal Akerman and Yvonne Rainer\, photographed and filmed the development of postmodern theater and dance\, and directed her own experimental works. With The Cold Eye seeing Mangolte operate in a semi-autobiographical mode\, how then would an artist with a lifetime spent behind a lens inhabit a character? Mangolte’s answer: by constructing a film entirely out of shots from the subjective point of view of her protagonist. \nWe see The Cold Eye through the lens of Cathy\, an avatar for Mangolte’s early experiences after moving to the United States. Cathy is a young painter\, deeply self-conscious and insecure\, developing as an artist in the midst of her sentimental education. And we follow Cathy as she considers her own work and reflects on the role of the artist. Strikingly we also inhabit her gaze as she talks to friends and members of the art world often while her (or perhaps our) attention wanders around the room and we are struck when they look at her\, or rather us\, directly in the eye. As we stare at these characters\, portrayed by dancers James Barth (who also co-wrote the screenplay) and Valda Setterfield\, painter George Deem\, filmmaker Ela Troyano\, and character actor extraordinaire Powers Booth among others\, Mangolte offers up one of the most daring attempts to capture on film what previously seemed the domain of novels\, to describe a central character not just through what they do and say but through their observation and understanding of others. \n\n\nThe Cold Eye (My Darling\, Be Careful) / Babette Mangolte / 1980 / 90 min / 16mm-to-Digital \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\n\nThis is an “in person” event.   In consideration of the ongoing pandemic and the safety of those in our community\, Bowerbird is requiring all audience members\, staff\, and performers to show proof of Covid 19 vaccinations status *and* wear a mask while inside the venue (please note that musicians will have the option to perform without masks once on stage).  Proof of vaccination can be the physical ID card or a photo/copy (a photo on your phone is acceptable). URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/babette-mangoltes-the-cold-eye-my-darling-be-careful/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Bowerbird-Main-Img-5.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220521T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220521T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20211118T020751Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220524T203611Z UID:10001137-1653163200-1653170400@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:New Suns DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird is pleased to present vocal sextet Variant 6 in a concert celebration of their first full-length album\, New Suns. The album explores myriad universes of a cappella vocal music featuring works by Jeremy Gill\, Gabriel Jackson\, Joanne Metcalf\, Benjamin C.S. Boyle\, and Bruno Bettinelli. This album is a celebration of everything they love about the versatility and virtuosity of the human voice. \n\nThis is an “in person” event. All those attending must show proof of COVID 19 vaccination status (vaccination card or legible photo on your smartphone\, plus photo ID) and wear a mask during the entirety of the event. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Capacity will be limited – advanced tickets are strongly encouraged. \n\nABOUT THE ARTIST \nVariant 6 is a virtuosic vocal sextet that explores and advances the art of chamber music in the twenty-first century. The ensemble’s work includes concertizing throughout the United States\, commissioning substantial new works\, collaborating closely with other ensembles\, and educating a new generation of singers and composers. Variant 6 believes that the process of compromise achieved from the diversity of opinion and specialty of its six individual artists can create deeply impactful experiences for its audiences\, collaborators\, and students. URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/new-suns-variant-6/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NewSuns_Main.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220518T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220518T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20220317T151459Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220520T142430Z UID:10001153-1652900400-1652907600@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Raúl Ruiz’s The Golden Boat DESCRIPTION:Over the course of a half century long career\, Chilean-born Raúl Ruiz established himself as cinema’s greatest surrealist this side of Luis Buñuel. And like Buñuel\, Ruiz was a vagabond\, making films wherever funds were available. After the establishment of Chile’s military junta under Augusto Pinochet in 1973\, Ruiz fled to Paris\, making films in France\, Portugal\, The Netherlands\, among other locales. The Golden Boat brought him to the U.S. for the first time while the director hones in on an artistic mecca\, the downtown New York art scene of the 1980s. Produced in collaboration with The Kitchen\, the film takes the form of one of our homegrown police procedurals crossed with a telenovela. The film wanders through Manhattan as a murderer and a philosophy-student rock critic pursue the object of the cut-throat’s affection\, a Mexican soap opera star. But the meandering plot is mainly an excuse for Ruiz to engage in his love of dreamlike black comedy where streets are populated by a veritable who’s who of no wave New York including Jim Jarmusch\, Kathy Acker\, Annie Sprinkle\, Vito Acconci—featuring a score by John Zorn. \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\nThis is an “in person” event. All those attending must show proof of COVID 19 vaccination status (vaccination card or legible photo on your smartphone\, plus photo ID) and wear a mask during the entirety of the event. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Capacity will be limited – advanced tickets are strongly encouraged. \n\nPROGRAM \nThe Golden Boat / Raúl Ruiz / 1990 / 83 min / 16mm-to-Digital URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/raul-ruizs-the-golden-boat/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Bowerbird-Main-Img-4.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220507T200000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220507T220000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20211118T021720Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220517T200658Z UID:10001139-1651953600-1651960800@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:J. Pavone String Ensemble DESCRIPTION:Bowerbird is pleased to present the J. Pavone String Ensemble led by New York based composer and performer Jessica Pavone. \nThe foundation of Jessica Pavone’s recent ensemble compositions is research on the effects of sonic vibration on human physiology and emotional health. Sustained pitches and clusters of ensemble sounds generate specific physical and cognitive benefits intended to impact the audience physically and mentally\, existing within and beyond music’s canonical role. The compositional techniques borrow from and elaborate on traditional music notation. Pavone experiments with improvisatory techniques\, alternating between metered and time-based scores and improvised and notated instructions. The ensemble approach focuses on a vision of collective improvisation that prioritizes a collaboratively sewn musical fabric\, in contrast to the traditional improvisatory method that prizes the individuality and uniqueness of the soloist. The rehearsal method\, influenced by her solo work\, attends to how the body plays a role in sound and intention. \nIn 2019\, the string ensemble’s debut album\, Brick and Mortar\, was hailed by the Chicago Reader’s Peter Margasak as “the most assured\, bracing work of Pavone’s career.” Astral Spirits Records released their second\, Lost and Found\, in 2020 to critical acclaim from publications such as; The Wire\, The New Yorker\, NYC Jazz Record\, NPR\, Jazzwise\, and was named a “Best Contemporary Albums of 2020” by Bandcamp Daily. Chris Ingalls from Pop Matters described their music as “too stunning to lump into genres.” This tour celebrates the release of their third album\, …Of Late\, on Astral Spirits Records and features a new lineup consisting of Pavone on viola\, with Aimée Niemann on violin and Abby Swidler playing both violin and viola. \n\nThis is an “in person” event. All those attending must show proof of COVID 19 vaccination status (vaccination card or legible photo on your smartphone\, plus photo ID) and wear a mask during the entirety of the event. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Capacity will be limited – advanced tickets are strongly encouraged. \n\n\n  URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/j-pavone-string-ensemble/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Pavone.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220413T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220413T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20211101T163635Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220503T205928Z UID:10001128-1649876400-1649883600@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Trans-Pacific Partnership: Japanese Fluxus DESCRIPTION:Although founded in early 1960s New York\, the pioneering interdisciplinary art community Fluxus included participants from around the world\, notably several from Japan. Born out of the influence of John Cage and the Dada movement\, the loose group included composers\, conceptual artists\, filmmakers\, video artists\, sculptors\, and performance artists and resulted in new forms of visual and sound art. The names of the western members are in greater currency\, but the Japanese contingent\, most famously Japanese émigré Yoko Ono\, freely intermingled between the Tokyo avant-garde and the New York downtown art scene resulting in a number of arresting films. \nNever formally a Fluxus member\, Takahiko Iimura nevertheless collaborated with many Fluxus artists on both sides of the Pacific and shared roots in a Neo-Dada outlook. His first film Kuzu (Junk) features the trash strewn everywhere on Tokyo Bay to the music of Fluxus composer Takehisa Kosugi. Iro (Color) and Onan both feature collaborations with fellow Fluxus composer Yasunao Tone to explore abstract color and erotic desire respectively. And Ai (Love) breaks down sex and the body in extreme close up alongside the vocal experiments of Yoko Ono. Ono herself made numerous films\, most fruitfully as part of the Fluxfilm anthologies organized by Fluxus godfather George Maciunas. One\, the fourteenth film in the Fluxfilm series\, is an extreme slow motion record of a match striking in close up and a visualization of “Lighting Piece” from her classic book “Grapefruit”. Bottoms is perhaps Ono’s most famous film\, and is constructed solely out of the buttocks of artists and friends in her circle including Carolee Schneemann. The program will end with Cut Piece\, a documentation by Albert and David Maysles of Ono’s most influential performance in which she invited audience members to cut off articles of her clothing\, exploring issues of gender\, power and violence. \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\nPROGRAM \nKuzu (Junk) / Takahiko Iimura / 1962 / 12 min / 16mm\nIro (Colors) / Takahiko Iimura / 1962 / 10 min / 16mm\nOnan / Takahiko Iimura / 1963 / 8 min / 16mm\nAi (Love) / Takahiko Iimura / 1963 / 10 min / 16mm\nOne / Yoko Ono / 1966 / 4 min / digital\nBottoms / Yoko Ono & Anthony Cox / 1966 / 6 min / digital\nCut Piece / Albert & David Maysles / 1966 / 8 min / digital \n\nThis is an “in person” event. All those attending must show proof of COVID 19 vaccination status (vaccination card or legible photo on your smartphone\, plus photo ID) and wear a mask during the entirety of the event. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Capacity will be limited – advanced tickets are strongly encouraged. \n\nTakahiko Iimura “Kuzu” (low res excerpt) \n\n  URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/trans-pacific-partnership-japanese-fluxus/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/JapanFluxus.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20220323T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20220323T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20211213T161920Z LAST-MODIFIED:20220410T160530Z UID:10001140-1648062000-1648069200@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Sons of Jack Smith DESCRIPTION:When Jack Smith transitioned from his relatively brief career as a director headlong into experimental theater in the late 1960s\, he already had multiple scandals and groundbreaking films under his belt and had appeared in many more as a muse to Andy Warhol\, Ken Jacobs\, and Ron Rice. These films capture Smith in amber as he pioneered an intellectually serious approach to camp performance and a low-budget trash aesthetic. But within a few years of his exit\, trends in experimental film shifted away from Smith’s obsession with artifice and performance toward something much more austere and theoretical. \nBut Smith’s transgressive\, baroque influence runs far deeper than as a shooting star or as a forefather of cheapo “cult classic” cinema. And it continued to be felt even while some of his contemporaries became more staid and cerebral. This program traces Smith’s immediate progeny in experimental filmmaking who followed his enthusiasm for gender performance and costuming\, the tension between trash and classical beauty\, and pre-assimilationist gay life. \nBill Vehr\, whose films starring Smith have entirely vanished\, leaves us with Avocada\, a decadent subversion of Hollywood that Smith himself praised as “possessed of gilded glamour.” José Rodriguez-Soltero’s Jerovi is a self-consciously homoerotic low-budget portrait that becomes an onanistic reverie of the body reminiscent of Smith. Takahiko Iimura’s Face is another body-study\, this time focusing on three faces in ecstasy to highlight the artifice of performance on screen and the gendered costuming and makeup of the actors\, including one of Smith’s great discoveries\, Mario Montez. Steven Arnold\, one of Smith’s clearest inheritors in the hippie generation\, directed The Liberation of the Mannique Mechanique as a dream of surreal androgyny\, with impeccable costuming and production design. \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\nThis is an “in person” event. All those attending must show proof of COVID 19 vaccination status (vaccination card or legible photo on your smartphone\, plus photo ID) and wear a mask during the entirety of the event. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Capacity will be limited – advanced tickets are strongly encouraged. \nPROGRAM \nAvocada / Bill Vehr / 1966 / 37 min / 16mm\nJerovi / José Rodriguez-Soltero / 1965 / 12 min / 16mm\nFace / Takahiko Iimura / 1969 / 21 min / 16mm\nThe Liberation of the Mannique Mechanique / Steven Arnold / 1967 / 15 min / 16mm URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/sons-of-jack-smith/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Bowerbird-Main-Img-6.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20211208T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20211208T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20211101T152817Z LAST-MODIFIED:20211208T160952Z UID:10001126-1638990000-1638997200@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:Nam June Paik: Ridiculous Technology DESCRIPTION:This event is SOLD OUT. There will be no tickets available at the door. \nAfter moving from his native Seoul\, first to Germany to study music alongside the likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage\, and then to the United States\, Nam June Paik lived what seems like the romantic archetype of the post-war New York artist. He drifted easily between avant-garde music\, film\, and fine art and helped in turn to create two new disciplines: video art and video installation. By 1962 he was a member of Fluxus and would collaborate with a litany of bright lights from Cage and Charlotte Moorman to Shigeko Kubota and Jud Yalkut. \nRidiculous Technology collects some of Paik’s most important early works\, with special emphasis on his connection with the burgeoning experimental music scene. In Beatles Electroniques\, Paik distorts imagery of the Beatles using a video synthesizer alongside an electronic soundtrack by Kenneth Werner composed of Beatles loops. Video Tape Study No. 3 critiques Lyndon B. Johnson to a score by David Behrman. Electronic Fables is one of Paik’s more visually beautiful and minimal productions featuring the voices of Marcel Duchamp\, John Cage\, Allen Ginsberg\, and Moondog\, among others. Waiting for Commercials features found footage of international commercials originally used as part of a Charlotte Moorman performance. Global Groove is perhaps Paik’s single-channel masterpiece\, a collage of original video\, his past work\, commercials\, dance\, popular music\, and contributions by Cage\, Stockhausen\, and Moorman. Taken together\, these works begin to scratch the surface of one of the most wide-ranging artists of the 20th Century. \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\nThis is an “in person” event. All those attending must show proof of COVID 19 vaccination status (vaccination card or legible photo on your smartphone\, plus photo ID) and wear a mask during the entirety of the event. There will be no exceptions to this policy. Capacity will be limited – advanced tickets are strongly encouraged. \n\nPROGRAM \nGlobal Groove​ / Nam June Paik & John Godfrey / 1973 / 29 min / Digital\nBeatles Electroniques / Nam June Paik & Jud Yalkut / 1969 / 3 min / Digital\nVideo Tape Study No. 3 / Nam June Paik & Jud Yalkut / 1967 / 4 min / Digital\nElectronic Fables / Nam June Paik & Jud Yalkut / 1965 / 10 min / Digital\nWaiting for Commercials / Nam June Paik & Jud Yalkut / 1966-1972 / 8 min / Digital \n\nNam June Paik – Global Groove (low res) \n\n  URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/nam-june-paik-ridiculous-technology/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Paik.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200520T190000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200520T210000 DTSTAMP:20260621T145035 CREATED:20200203T012048Z LAST-MODIFIED:20211101T162956Z UID:10001105-1590001200-1590008400@www.bowerbird.org SUMMARY:POSTPONED - Trans-Pacific Partnership: Japanese Fluxus DESCRIPTION:Although founded in early 1960s New York\, the pioneering interdisciplinary art community Fluxus included participants from around the world\, notably several from Japan. Born out of the influence of John Cage and the Dada movement\, the loose group included composers\, conceptual artists\, filmmakers\, video artists\, sculptors\, and performance artists and resulted in new forms of visual and sound art. The names of the western members are in greater currency\, but the Japanese contingent\, most famously Japanese émigré Yoko Ono\, freely intermingled between the Tokyo avant-garde and the New York downtown art scene resulting in a number of arresting films. \nNever formally a Fluxus member\, Takahiko Iimura nevertheless collaborated with many Fluxus artists on both sides of the Pacific and shared roots in a Neo-Dada outlook. His first film Kuzu (Junk) features the trash strewn everywhere on Tokyo Bay to the music of Fluxus composer Takehisa Kosugi. Iro (Color) and Onan both feature collaborations with fellow Fluxus composer Yasunao Tone to explore abstract color and erotic desire respectively. And Ai (Love) breaks down sex and the body in extreme close up alongside the vocal experiments of Yoko Ono. Ono herself made numerous films\, most fruitfully as part of the Fluxfilm anthologies organized by Fluxus godfather George Maciunas. One\, the fourteenth film in the Fluxfilm series\, is an extreme slow motion record of a match striking in close up and a visualization of “Lighting Piece” from her classic book “Grapefruit”. Bottoms is perhaps Ono’s most famous film\, and is constructed solely out of the buttocks of artists and friends in her circle including Carolee Schneemann. The program will end with Cut Piece\, a documentation by Albert and David Maysles of Ono’s most influential performance in which she invited audience members to cut off articles of her clothing\, exploring issues of gender\, power and violence. \nCo-presented with Nightletter. \n\nPROGRAM \nKuzu (Junk) / Takahiko Iimura / 1962 / 12 min / 16mm\nIro (Colors) / Takahiko Iimura / 1962 / 10 min / 16mm\nOnan / Takahiko Iimura / 1963 / 8 min / 16mm\nAi (Love) / Takahiko Iimura / 1963 / 10 min / 16mm\nOne / Yoko Ono / 1966 / 4 min / 16mm\nBottoms / Yoko Ono & Anthony Cox / 1966 / 6 min / 16mm\nCut Piece / Albert & David Maysles / 1966 / 8 min / 16mm \n\nTakahiko Iimura “Kuzu” (low res excerpt) \n\n  URL:https://www.bowerbird.org/event/postponed-trans-pacific-partnership-japanese-fluxus/ LOCATION:University Lutheran\, 3637 Chestnut Street\, Philadelphia\, PA\, 19104\, United States ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.bowerbird.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/JapanFluxus.jpg END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR