About Wave Farm
Improvised and Otherwise: A Festival of Sound and Form
May 05, 2005 - May 07, 2005
BRIC Studio
7 Rockwell Place, 2nd floor | Brooklyn, NY
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Improvised and Otherwise: A Festival of Sound and Form is an annual event established to encourage and support the momentum of experimental composers and performers. In an effort to represent a diverse group of artists, Improvised and Otherwise strives to cross generational and geographic boundaries. The driving force behind this event is to foster a new opportunity for a broad range of media and performance aesthetics. The 2005 Festival will feature eighteen performing groups with a total of over fifty participants; artists will be joining the program from throughout the United States and Europe. A complete schedule of performers follows:
THURSDAY- MAY 5
7:00 HorseEyeless - Matt Bua, Fritz Welch, Paige Martin, Juliette Mapp (NYC) HorseEyeless will present Twice Uncanny a recreation of The Kipper Kids' Tea Ceremony redesigned as an exploration of telepathic invention as a strategy for protest or direct action. By stretching sonic and physical space, a measured portion of real time will be dissected continuously adding to the reduced volume and it's engorged other.
7:30 Mary Halvorson - guitar and Jessica Pavone viola (NYC) have been collaborating for several years to create a unique body of duo music. The pair combine lush melodies with textural improvisation and jagged rhythms to create concise, enigmatic musical episodes. Their collaboration utilizes a variety of timbres, achieved through amplification and electronic effects as well as acoustic presentation. Halvorson and Pavone, each of whom contribute original compositions to the project, have developed a constantly expanding repertoire comprised of over 50 pieces.
8:00 Choreographer Estelle Woodward and double-bassist John Hughes (NYC, Hamburg) join forces to premiere a new work that combines their distinctive approaches to composition. Hughes' exploration into the cavernous body of the double bass converges with Woodward's investigations into the synthesis of impulse and non-linear structure. Hughes is an active member of the jazz and improvisation community in Hamburg, performing regularly both in the United States and Europe. Woodward is a Brooklyn based dance artist whose work has recently been presented at Roulette, the Vision Collaborations Festival and Philadelphia's South Kensington Forum. The duo's appearance at Improvised and Otherwise marks their first performance together in New York City.
8:30 THUS (Baltimore) For the last twelve years, Neil Feather and John Berndt have worked together under the name THUS, developing an astonishing array of strange music--all played on an orchestra of instruments they have invented. Feather, who has been frequently compared to Harry Partch, is one of the most active artists in the area of experimental instrument design in the U.S. He is joined by intense multi-instrumentalist improviser John Berndt. Their chemistry, along with the mechanical imperatives of the instruments themselves, create an original idiom of music that is at once otherworldly, funny and sombre. Instruments: Guitaint, Melocipede, Nondo, Venetian Glass Nephew, Mini-Hodge.
9:30 Ubiquitous Gestures + Found Object Susan Osberg's Workwith Dancers Co. (NY), with text from John Cage's Lecture on Something. Susan Osberg dancer/choreographer, David Arner musician/composer with dancers: Adrienne Barr, Rachel Lane, Megan Sommerville and Alexis Steeves. As Artistic Director of Workwith Dancers Company, Osberg has worked experimentally and collaboratively with new music and visual artists since 1979. Currently, she teaches dance technique and improvisation at Bard College. Pianist/composer David Arner began his ongoing relations to dance in 1967. Over the years he has collaborated with choreographers Ze'eva Cohen, Aileen Passloff, Albert Reid and the late Jeanette Leentvaar, among others. Arner is also recognized as a pioneer and innovator in the re-vitalization of live silent film music.
10:00 Phantom Limb + Bison (NYC, Los Angeles) originates in the United States. On this tour, they are presenting the final composition from the song cycle, when standing by itself, BISON, means." This cycle has been described as fitting entirely within the grid of all social and cultural norms. "...there is nothing out of the ordinary about this music whatsoever, but..." The execution of this work is handled by Jaime Fennelly (psi) on electronics; guitarist, Chris Forsyth (psi); Shawn Hansen (New Scalthzkgazan) on EMS Synthi and radio feedback; and reed player Chris Heenan (Team Up). FRIDAY - MAY 6
7:00 Boxes (NYC) This collaboration between movement artist Margit Galanter and musician Briggan Krauss is an exploration in boxes. Krauss has been developing short sound objects, inspired from the boxes of Joseph Cornell. Here in this live improvisation, the two will develop material based on initial finite proposals, playing out, from the box. What occurs from a formal structure is a dynamic reflection on movement, stillness, silence and sound; its own kind of narrative of parts making whole.
7:30 The Vic Rawlings/Mike Bullock (Boston) duo combines classical string instruments and meta-musical electronics in ways that bring out the rawest parts of each. Vic Rawlings plays amplified cello and a rack of electronics he built out of exposed circuit boards and stripped speaker cones. Mike Bullock plays amplified basses and a tone generator originally made for scientists. The result is an unbelievably stark sound world utterly alienated from the glib fluidity usually associated with bowed strings. The rhythms are those of hands moving over a workbench or methodically slashing tires. Electro-acoustic? Electrocuted acoustics is more like it.
8:00 Triptych Myth (NYC) is a true musical collective consisting of Tom Abbs on double bass, Chad Taylor on drum set, and Cooper-Moore on piano. In describing the music that they create, Cooper-Moore states, We are three, no, not just three musicians improvising with one another, but three worlds, three oscillating galaxies colliding. The music results from that. When its working for me, there is the sense of Future Past, a Hubble image. The energy way of playing is the way for us. Fire and energy is the way, but it has to be with something different. What we do is not exotic. Most of us who do this music are a little insane, but we have been able to make this insanity work for us. Probably it was the same in the past. The difference now is having so many ways in which to communicate. The crazies are more in touch with one another and don't feel so alone. And with Triptych I never feel alone. - Cooper-Moore
9:00 NoNo Twins (NYC) New York based Korean cellist/improviser/composer Okkyung Lee aims to create her own voice by incorporating extended techniques, sounds and noise using her classical training as a springboard. Performing artist Heather Kravas work explores the continuum of intuition and reason through improvisation and set choreography. Together Kravas and Lee co-direct NoNo Twins, an improvisational duo.
9:30 Collision (NYC, Alabama) is a spontaneous interaction of sound, dance and theatrics by percussionist Michael Evans, dancer Susan Hefner and violinist LaDonna Smith. Michaels work with unusual sound sources, found objects and homemade instruments lends itself to theatricality; he and Susan have worked on developing a language overlapping musician/dancer roles. Susan has performed for 30 years with LaDonna, who has kept improvised music alive in the Southeastern United States, organizing the Birmingham International Improvisation Festival and co-editing the improvisor, the international journal of free improvisation. Their life-long experiences in improvisation come together for the first time as a trio in Collision.
10:00 Blue Collar Nate Wooley - trumpet, Steve Swell - trombone, Tatsuya Nakatani - percussion (NYC) Blue Collars goal with each improvisation is to subtly change the listening environment, to infuse silence with a specific meaning. Though the instrumentation and skill of the players leaves room for brash jazz oriented interjections, Blue Collar turns its attention to the smallest and subtlest of sonic details, creating music that takes its cue from speech, silence and the everyday sounds that are taken for granted. Given the history of the three improvisers, who have worked with everyone from Bhob Rainey to Cecil Taylor to Anthony Braxton to Joey Baron, each decision made by one member opens up a myriad of unknowns in the others, creating textures and densities that are difficult to reconcile with the instrumentation. SATURDAY - MAY 7
7:00 Variants Clyde Forth Visual Theatre (NY, MA, VA, WV) Lisa Abbatomarco, Melinda Buckwalter, Alex Cohen, Clyde Forth, Heather Hutton, Hélene Lesterlin, Iain Machell, Anne Mulvaney, Michelle Nagai, Alison Robinson, Jill Ann Schwartz, Grissell Suhy, Estelle Woodward. Variants winds its way across the visual into the kinetic (and back). It is a structured improvisation based on a score comprised of 15 original drawings by Clyde Forth. In the movement, the ensemble investigates this tension between chance interactions and dogmatic order as well as identification with groups or teams. Relationships are reinforced by the interaction of color in the costumes as various groupings emerge, and through video projection that integrates the drawings from the score into the performance itself. Gesture, simultaneity and sensitive juxtaposition of forms are also defining characteristics of the drawings and the movement.
7:30 Uttering no flower Kenta Nagai and Boaz Barkan (Copenhagen, NYC) continue their six-year collaboration with Uttering no flower, an unfolding of multiple sound and flesh narratives. Collaboration, that began during relentless performing on the streets of NYC through the changing seasons. In this encounter, Nagais Shamisen, a traditional Japanese string instrument inherited from a grandfathers pawnshop, abandoned there by a rowdy son of a local Geisha, and Barkans borrowed existential dance, converge.
8:00 Jeff Arnal - percussion + Dietrich Eichmann - piano (NYC, Berlin) A rare collaboration between a classical composer and a jazz/improv drummer, Arnal and Eichmann are counted amongst the most versatile personalities in contemporary avant-garde music. Their debut CD the temperature dropped again was published in 2004 on Leo Records and received international acclaim. In spite of the geographical distance, this duet has been quite busy since their first meeting in 2002. Major appearances include Goethe-Institute NYC, DeSingel Antwerp, Belgium, and a live broadcast concert at Radio Bremen, Germany. This exciting encounter brings into being a unique dimension of music with fresh sounds of existential beauty. Sometimes tense, sometimes dark and even disturbing, their music is always gripping.
9:00 Susan Sgorbati, Katie Martin with Jake Meginsky, John Truscinski (Bennington, NYC) Susan is currently on the dance faculty at Bennington College. Her most recent work is influenced by research into complex forms at MIT and The Neurosciences Institute where she was in residence the past two winters. Katie received her B.A. in Dance and Complexity Studies at Bennington College where she teaches dance and yoga. She has danced with Mark Dendy, Ann Carlson, Keith Thompson, Dana Reitz, Susan Rethorst, and Meg Wolfe, among others. Jake and John have been collaborating for over five years on sound design, composition and improvisational performance.
9:30 Beth Gill dance, Chris Peck sound (NYC) A moving blandscape of meat/plastic.
10:00 Ken Filiano + Collected Stories (NYC) Bassist Filiano, Tomas Ulrich - cello, Michael Attias - saxophones, Steve Swell - trombone and Jackson Krall - drums, all established creative forces in the improvised world, have played together in various combinations through the years. In this outing they join their unique voices to create a kaleidoscoping world of improvisations within and around Filiano's compositions.
Improvised and Otherwise: A Festival of Sound and Form is an annual event established to encourage and support the momentum of experimental composers and performers. In an effort to represent a diverse group of artists, Improvised and Otherwise strives to cross generational and geographic boundaries. The driving force behind this event is to foster a new opportunity for a broad range of media and performance aesthetics. The 2005 Festival will feature eighteen performing groups with a total of over fifty participants; artists will be joining the program from throughout the United States and Europe. A complete schedule of performers follows:
THURSDAY- MAY 5
7:00 HorseEyeless - Matt Bua, Fritz Welch, Paige Martin, Juliette Mapp (NYC) HorseEyeless will present Twice Uncanny a recreation of The Kipper Kids' Tea Ceremony redesigned as an exploration of telepathic invention as a strategy for protest or direct action. By stretching sonic and physical space, a measured portion of real time will be dissected continuously adding to the reduced volume and it's engorged other.
7:30 Mary Halvorson - guitar and Jessica Pavone viola (NYC) have been collaborating for several years to create a unique body of duo music. The pair combine lush melodies with textural improvisation and jagged rhythms to create concise, enigmatic musical episodes. Their collaboration utilizes a variety of timbres, achieved through amplification and electronic effects as well as acoustic presentation. Halvorson and Pavone, each of whom contribute original compositions to the project, have developed a constantly expanding repertoire comprised of over 50 pieces.
8:00 Choreographer Estelle Woodward and double-bassist John Hughes (NYC, Hamburg) join forces to premiere a new work that combines their distinctive approaches to composition. Hughes' exploration into the cavernous body of the double bass converges with Woodward's investigations into the synthesis of impulse and non-linear structure. Hughes is an active member of the jazz and improvisation community in Hamburg, performing regularly both in the United States and Europe. Woodward is a Brooklyn based dance artist whose work has recently been presented at Roulette, the Vision Collaborations Festival and Philadelphia's South Kensington Forum. The duo's appearance at Improvised and Otherwise marks their first performance together in New York City.
8:30 THUS (Baltimore) For the last twelve years, Neil Feather and John Berndt have worked together under the name THUS, developing an astonishing array of strange music--all played on an orchestra of instruments they have invented. Feather, who has been frequently compared to Harry Partch, is one of the most active artists in the area of experimental instrument design in the U.S. He is joined by intense multi-instrumentalist improviser John Berndt. Their chemistry, along with the mechanical imperatives of the instruments themselves, create an original idiom of music that is at once otherworldly, funny and sombre. Instruments: Guitaint, Melocipede, Nondo, Venetian Glass Nephew, Mini-Hodge.
9:30 Ubiquitous Gestures + Found Object Susan Osberg's Workwith Dancers Co. (NY), with text from John Cage's Lecture on Something. Susan Osberg dancer/choreographer, David Arner musician/composer with dancers: Adrienne Barr, Rachel Lane, Megan Sommerville and Alexis Steeves. As Artistic Director of Workwith Dancers Company, Osberg has worked experimentally and collaboratively with new music and visual artists since 1979. Currently, she teaches dance technique and improvisation at Bard College. Pianist/composer David Arner began his ongoing relations to dance in 1967. Over the years he has collaborated with choreographers Ze'eva Cohen, Aileen Passloff, Albert Reid and the late Jeanette Leentvaar, among others. Arner is also recognized as a pioneer and innovator in the re-vitalization of live silent film music.
10:00 Phantom Limb + Bison (NYC, Los Angeles) originates in the United States. On this tour, they are presenting the final composition from the song cycle, when standing by itself, BISON, means." This cycle has been described as fitting entirely within the grid of all social and cultural norms. "...there is nothing out of the ordinary about this music whatsoever, but..." The execution of this work is handled by Jaime Fennelly (psi) on electronics; guitarist, Chris Forsyth (psi); Shawn Hansen (New Scalthzkgazan) on EMS Synthi and radio feedback; and reed player Chris Heenan (Team Up). FRIDAY - MAY 6
7:00 Boxes (NYC) This collaboration between movement artist Margit Galanter and musician Briggan Krauss is an exploration in boxes. Krauss has been developing short sound objects, inspired from the boxes of Joseph Cornell. Here in this live improvisation, the two will develop material based on initial finite proposals, playing out, from the box. What occurs from a formal structure is a dynamic reflection on movement, stillness, silence and sound; its own kind of narrative of parts making whole.
7:30 The Vic Rawlings/Mike Bullock (Boston) duo combines classical string instruments and meta-musical electronics in ways that bring out the rawest parts of each. Vic Rawlings plays amplified cello and a rack of electronics he built out of exposed circuit boards and stripped speaker cones. Mike Bullock plays amplified basses and a tone generator originally made for scientists. The result is an unbelievably stark sound world utterly alienated from the glib fluidity usually associated with bowed strings. The rhythms are those of hands moving over a workbench or methodically slashing tires. Electro-acoustic? Electrocuted acoustics is more like it.
8:00 Triptych Myth (NYC) is a true musical collective consisting of Tom Abbs on double bass, Chad Taylor on drum set, and Cooper-Moore on piano. In describing the music that they create, Cooper-Moore states, We are three, no, not just three musicians improvising with one another, but three worlds, three oscillating galaxies colliding. The music results from that. When its working for me, there is the sense of Future Past, a Hubble image. The energy way of playing is the way for us. Fire and energy is the way, but it has to be with something different. What we do is not exotic. Most of us who do this music are a little insane, but we have been able to make this insanity work for us. Probably it was the same in the past. The difference now is having so many ways in which to communicate. The crazies are more in touch with one another and don't feel so alone. And with Triptych I never feel alone. - Cooper-Moore
9:00 NoNo Twins (NYC) New York based Korean cellist/improviser/composer Okkyung Lee aims to create her own voice by incorporating extended techniques, sounds and noise using her classical training as a springboard. Performing artist Heather Kravas work explores the continuum of intuition and reason through improvisation and set choreography. Together Kravas and Lee co-direct NoNo Twins, an improvisational duo.
9:30 Collision (NYC, Alabama) is a spontaneous interaction of sound, dance and theatrics by percussionist Michael Evans, dancer Susan Hefner and violinist LaDonna Smith. Michaels work with unusual sound sources, found objects and homemade instruments lends itself to theatricality; he and Susan have worked on developing a language overlapping musician/dancer roles. Susan has performed for 30 years with LaDonna, who has kept improvised music alive in the Southeastern United States, organizing the Birmingham International Improvisation Festival and co-editing the improvisor, the international journal of free improvisation. Their life-long experiences in improvisation come together for the first time as a trio in Collision.
10:00 Blue Collar Nate Wooley - trumpet, Steve Swell - trombone, Tatsuya Nakatani - percussion (NYC) Blue Collars goal with each improvisation is to subtly change the listening environment, to infuse silence with a specific meaning. Though the instrumentation and skill of the players leaves room for brash jazz oriented interjections, Blue Collar turns its attention to the smallest and subtlest of sonic details, creating music that takes its cue from speech, silence and the everyday sounds that are taken for granted. Given the history of the three improvisers, who have worked with everyone from Bhob Rainey to Cecil Taylor to Anthony Braxton to Joey Baron, each decision made by one member opens up a myriad of unknowns in the others, creating textures and densities that are difficult to reconcile with the instrumentation. SATURDAY - MAY 7
7:00 Variants Clyde Forth Visual Theatre (NY, MA, VA, WV) Lisa Abbatomarco, Melinda Buckwalter, Alex Cohen, Clyde Forth, Heather Hutton, Hélene Lesterlin, Iain Machell, Anne Mulvaney, Michelle Nagai, Alison Robinson, Jill Ann Schwartz, Grissell Suhy, Estelle Woodward. Variants winds its way across the visual into the kinetic (and back). It is a structured improvisation based on a score comprised of 15 original drawings by Clyde Forth. In the movement, the ensemble investigates this tension between chance interactions and dogmatic order as well as identification with groups or teams. Relationships are reinforced by the interaction of color in the costumes as various groupings emerge, and through video projection that integrates the drawings from the score into the performance itself. Gesture, simultaneity and sensitive juxtaposition of forms are also defining characteristics of the drawings and the movement.
7:30 Uttering no flower Kenta Nagai and Boaz Barkan (Copenhagen, NYC) continue their six-year collaboration with Uttering no flower, an unfolding of multiple sound and flesh narratives. Collaboration, that began during relentless performing on the streets of NYC through the changing seasons. In this encounter, Nagais Shamisen, a traditional Japanese string instrument inherited from a grandfathers pawnshop, abandoned there by a rowdy son of a local Geisha, and Barkans borrowed existential dance, converge.
8:00 Jeff Arnal - percussion + Dietrich Eichmann - piano (NYC, Berlin) A rare collaboration between a classical composer and a jazz/improv drummer, Arnal and Eichmann are counted amongst the most versatile personalities in contemporary avant-garde music. Their debut CD the temperature dropped again was published in 2004 on Leo Records and received international acclaim. In spite of the geographical distance, this duet has been quite busy since their first meeting in 2002. Major appearances include Goethe-Institute NYC, DeSingel Antwerp, Belgium, and a live broadcast concert at Radio Bremen, Germany. This exciting encounter brings into being a unique dimension of music with fresh sounds of existential beauty. Sometimes tense, sometimes dark and even disturbing, their music is always gripping.
9:00 Susan Sgorbati, Katie Martin with Jake Meginsky, John Truscinski (Bennington, NYC) Susan is currently on the dance faculty at Bennington College. Her most recent work is influenced by research into complex forms at MIT and The Neurosciences Institute where she was in residence the past two winters. Katie received her B.A. in Dance and Complexity Studies at Bennington College where she teaches dance and yoga. She has danced with Mark Dendy, Ann Carlson, Keith Thompson, Dana Reitz, Susan Rethorst, and Meg Wolfe, among others. Jake and John have been collaborating for over five years on sound design, composition and improvisational performance.
9:30 Beth Gill dance, Chris Peck sound (NYC) A moving blandscape of meat/plastic.
10:00 Ken Filiano + Collected Stories (NYC) Bassist Filiano, Tomas Ulrich - cello, Michael Attias - saxophones, Steve Swell - trombone and Jackson Krall - drums, all established creative forces in the improvised world, have played together in various combinations through the years. In this outing they join their unique voices to create a kaleidoscoping world of improvisations within and around Filiano's compositions.