Dedicated to Daphne Oram On a celluloid film print, even sound is made of light. Running alongside the picture is the optical soundtrack, an image in itself. A beam of light penetrates it, exciting a photoelectric cell with its sound determined by the pattern of black and white. Ever since sound first joined film, artists…
Bowerbird is pleased to present New York-based composer, saxophonist, and flutist Anna Webber's Simple Trio. Webber, called “one of the most exciting new arrivals on the New York avant-garde jazz scene” by Peter Margasak in the Chicago Reader, has been working with her Simple Trio since 2013. They have released two albums on Skirl Records:…
Introduced by Gregory Zinman, editor, “We Are in Open Circuits: Writings by Nam June Paik” After 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…
Bowerbird is pleased to presented the duo of Peter Evans (trumpets) & Levy Lorenzo (percussion/electronics). Evans and Lorenzo began performing duo as part of the International Contemporary Ensemble's OpenICE commissioning series in early 2016. Their music is an otherworldly blur of dense rhythmic frameworks, elaborate notated pieces, open improvisation and weird drones. Lorenzo's complex of…
This event was originally scheduled for Feb 26 but has been rescheduled for March 11. Rightfully renowned as a composer, vocalist, choreographer, and stage director, Meredith Monk’s underseen films present their own inventive reflections on the cataclysms of history. Quarry began as a live multimedia opera in 1976 featuring a black and white short film…
This superb New York chamber trio deftly applies the instrumentation of the classic jazz piano trio to dazzling new contemporary writing. Pianist Karl Larson, percussionist Matthew Evans, and bassist Pat Swoboda achieved an early apotheosis in 2018 with American Dream, a concert-length commission from the Brooklyn composer Scott Wollschleger, which according to Bandcamp Daily, “toggles…
A new chamber formation brings together Josh Modney, Mariel Roberts, and Eric Wubbels, three of the leading musicians of the New York new music scene, whose playing draws on over a decade of experience playing together in the Wet Ink Ensemble and Mivos Quartet. Their debut program features if and only if , a new…
Continuing an already ten year commitment to exploring the music of Morton Feldman, Bowerbird is pleased to present his landmark work Trio (for piano, violin, and cello), performed by NYC based ensemble Longleash. Originally premiered in 1980, Trio is one of Feldman's earliest extended duration works (predated by only his String Quartet No. 1). And…
Bowerbird is excited to present Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble performing Mystical Paths, a program of music with spiritual focuses as diverse as Sufism, silence, cooking, and humor. Taylor Brook’s Motorman Sextet anchors the program, as an expressive setting of the most nostalgic episodes from David Ohle’s cult novel Motorman. Forrest Pierce’s Tighten to Nothing explores the composer’s…
Bowerbird presents acclaimed ensembles Variant 6, Warp Trio, and the Kevin Sun Quartet in Philadelphia composer Kevin Laskey's new evening-length work Almanac. Crossing many stylistic borders, the work explores an almanac’s dual nature as information compendium and prophetic text. Dark sibylline prophecies emerge from catalogic texts about colors and food and flowers. And despite its…
Bowerbird is pleased to present the Philadelphia premiere of the Boston-based experimental music ensemble Ordinary Affects and a new evening length work by Magnus Granberg, a Swedish composer closely associated with the Wandelweiser movement. Of Granberg's recent How Vain Are All Our Frail Delights?, journalist Ben Harper notes, " combines individual sounds and small fragments…
Bowerbird, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania Department of Music, is pleased to present Amy Williams performing Sonatas and Interludes, John Cage's groundbreaking cycle for prepared piano. The work was composed in 1946–48, shortly after Cage's introduction to Indian philosophy and the teachings of art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, both of which became major…
Bowerbird is honored to present a two evening retrospective of pioneering composer Johanna Beyer. The first evening features her percussion music and the second evening features her chamber music. Although Beyer's music was overlooked during her lifetime and for decades after her death, it was some of the most experimental and prophetic work created during…
Bowerbird is pleased to present color as time, an ensemble led by Philadelphia composer / performer Joshua Stamper that inhabits the blur between classical, jazz, folk, and experimental textures. Playing at the edges of the composed and the improvised, the music is inspired by Elliott Carter's and Olivier Messiaen's time-stretching compositional techniques, immersed in a…
The music of the Canadian composer Claude Vivier (1948-1983) combines diverse influences–from the the cerebral constructions of the European avant-garde to exoticist borrowings from East Asia– into a haunting and inimitable artistic voice. Vivier's intense and colorful music mirrors his life as an eccentric and bon vivant who met a tragic death at the age…
WEATHER UPDATE: CONCERT IS HAPPENING AS PLANNED. Bowerbird is pleased to present the the extraordinary vocal ensemble Ekmeles performing Madrigals and Animals, a program celebrating the ongoing history of madrigals - the complex multi-part songs born during the Renaissance period known for their creative text setting (including imitating animals calls). Karola Obermüller’s mass:distance:time relates directly to this…
... The music of Gavin Bryars falls under no category. It is mongrel, full of sensuality and wit and is deeply moving. He allows you to witness new wonders in the sounds around you by approaching them from a completely new angle. With a third ear maybe... Michael Ondaatj Arcana performs Gavin Bryars medieval inspired…
Praised by The Washington Post for “captivating” performances that draw from its notable “meld of intellect, technique and emotions,” the Aizuri Quartet was awarded the Grand Prize at the 2018 M Prize Chamber Arts Competition, along with top prizes at the 2017 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan, and the 2015 Wigmore Hall International…
