Pittsburgh New Music Net

loadbang returns to Pittsburgh on October 27th.

Maybe it’s ’cause I’m a retired trombone player who wishes I could have played like Will Lang. Ever. Maybe it’s that and how the combination of trumpet, trombone, voice, and bass clarinet is such a refreshing sound for new music in a “Pierrot (or subset thereof) + percussion” world. Maybe it’s because Andy Kozar is a native of the Burgh. Maybe it’s because loadbang is just really, really good. Probably that.

loadbang is in Pittsburgh, this Thursday night at CMU. Here are the details of their show. Have I crossed the line into hype? Yes. Yes I have.

CMU’s Kresge Hall
Free

loadbang returns to Pittsburgh on October 27th.

Trumpeter and Pittsburgh native Andy Kozar returns with loadbang for a concert at CMU’s Kresge Theatre. The New York City-based new music ensemble (comprising trumpet, trombone, bass clarinet, and baritone voice) showcases the breadth and variety of their repertoire with a program of recent commissions and avant-garde classics.

Reiko Füting’s Land of Silence and Alexandre Lunsqui’s Guttural both exploit the air-based sound production employed by the ensemble as a whole, calling on the baritone to act as an instrument, and the instrumentalists to act as vocalists, blurring and blending the sounds. As a complement to these commissions, John Cage’s classic Living Room Music also calls on the players to speak and play household items as instruments. Paul Pinto’s Goodbye Dido is a kind of foggy remembrance of a small portion of the lament of Dido from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, stretching and exploring the spaces between the original notes. With How to breathe underwater, Chris Cerrone has written a kind of wordless ambient pop song for loadbang; Nick Didkovksy’s Firm, soapy hothead on the other hand is a wild and jittery computer-composed setting of faux aphorisms. To round out the program, loadbang splits into its component parts as an instrumental trio and vocal solo. Timothy McCormack’s Disfix explores the limits of notation and its link to the physical activity of loadbang’s instrumentalists; Aaron Cassidy’s I, purples, spat blood, laugh of beautiful lips pushes the voice similarly, battling with an ever-changing computer counterpart.

VIA is a huge multi-date, multi-venue festival of new media for sound and visual artists with workshops/installations. There’s so much stuff going on and so many different artists and presenters, I’m just going to send you here.

Of particular interest to composers might be this event featuring David Borden,

“the creative force behind the world’s first synthesizer ensemble, Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. (1969), and founder of Cornell’s Digital Music Department, will perform with emerging artists Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never, Ford & Lopatin), Laurel Halo, James Ferraro (Skaters), and Samuel Godin. This event marks the international live premier for the ensemble since recording FRKWYS Vol. 7 as part of the Brooklyn label RVNG Intl.’s FRKWYS series, which pairs contemporary artists with those who have preceded them in sound or approach.

“CMU Professor of Music & Computer Science, Roger Dannenberg, will provide an introduction followed by a short lecture from Borden, “The Moog Synthesizer Lecture: The Man I Knew and the Machine I Learned”, revealing inside stories on the development of the Moog Synthesizer and its creator, Bob Moog.”

It’s happening Thursday night, October 6 at CMU’s Kresge Theater.

H/T Marielle Saums

The Voltage Spooks

The last days of summer are slipping away, we’ve recovered from the annual new music gorge with PNME, and  the harvest moon is in the sky. All of which means there is tons of great new music coming our way. And it really starts tonight with a show at the The Shop in Bloomfield that features The Voltage Spooks, Michael Johnson and Matt Wellins, and Host Skull. Check out the full post on this show with lots of good content courtesy of Edgar Um. And as they say in Informercial Land, that’s not all!

The weekend is jampacked with Music on the Edge, IonSound Project CD release, and two new productions from Microscopic Opera. Gonna be good.

The Shop
$8, all ages

The Voltage Spooks

An evening of (mostly) improvised electroacoustic and electronic sounds featuring

The Voltage Spooks

Keith Rowe is an English free improvisation tabletop guitarist and painter. Rowe is a founding member of both the hugely influential AMM in the mid-1960s (though in 2004 he quit that group for the second time) and M.I.M.E.O. Having trained as a visual artist, Rowe’s paintings have been featured on most of his own albums. After years of obscurity, Rowe has achieved a level of relative notoriety, and since the late 1990s has kept up a busy recording and touring schedule. He is seen as a godfather of EAI (electroacoustic improvisation), with many of his recent recordings having been released by Erstwhile
Records.

www.erstwhilerecords.com

Rick Reed (born 1957) has been creating audio compositions since the early 80′s. His works are intuitive studies of electricity, frequency fluctuations, and improvised “on the fly” solutions to symmetry problems in electronic sound. Since 2000, he has centered his live work on using a synthesizer processed with various effects devices to create complex macromal drones with a surface of aesthetic elegance and beauty. Reed, currently based in Austin, Texas, has performed throughout the United States and Europe. Recently, he appeared in 2009 at the UK’s prestigious Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in ensemble alongside Keith Rowe and former Austinite Bill Thompson. His music has been used by filmmaker Ken Jacobs in three of his experiential films, Spiral Nebula, Mountaineer Spinning, and Capitalism: Child Labor (which won the grand prize at 2006′s Curtas Vila de Conde film festival in Portugal, Spain). He also appeared live with Jacobs at Lincoln Center during the “Views From the Avant Garde” portion of 2007′s New York Film Festival. His audio works are available from the labels Elevator Bath, Ecstatic Peace, Pale Disc Japan, Bremsstrahlung Recordings and Beta Lactam Ring. A new double LP record will be released by Elevator Bath in early 2011, which should coincide with a short tour of the east coast.

www.elevatorbath.com
Michael Haleta (born 1978 in Princeton, NJ) is an intermedia artist living and working in Atlantic Highlands, NJ. He studied the cello from an early age up until the guitar, effects pedals and free form improvisation peaked his interests in the raw generation of sound. “Everything starts from a dot.”-Kandinsky. In terms of visuals, he graduated in 2001 with a BA in information design from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Recipient of Issue Project Room’s 2011 IPR’s Emerging Artist Grant and a 2009 American Music Center Live Music for Dance Grant for sound production in Yanira Castro’s Center of Sleep. Haleta has worked with numerous composers, artists and musicians, including: Paul Neidhardt, Stephan Moore, Shaun Flynn, 2673 (Kevin Winters), Jason Urick, Jeremy Sigler, Keith Rowe, Kasper Toeplitz, Scott Smallwood, Seth Cluett, Dan Deacon, Zbigniew Karkowski, Jeff Donaldson, Andrya Ambro and more. He has released audio for Alienation, Raw Special Effects (RSE), Carpark, Antiopic and Hoss records. Michael also runs a small edition label by the name of Raw Special Effects (RSE) which is scheduled to release much new and free material in 2011.

www.rawspecialeffects.com
www.backbreakerneckbrace.com
www.futuristictexturesfromthefuture.blogspot.com

Michael Johnsen and Matt Wellins

Drawing on the rich American tradition of experimentation and cobbling, Michael Johnsen has built up an integrated menagerie of devices specifically for live performance, whose idiosyncratic behaviors are revealed through their complex interactions. His work is characterized by a relative lack of ideas per se, and an intense focus on observation, the way a shepherd watches sheep. The extensive patching of large numbers of devices produces teeming chirps, sudden transients and charming failure modes; embracing the dirt in pure electronics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx36qq1oEKI

Matt Wellins works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work deals with creating live situations through the design and performance of analog electronic instruments, real-time video systems, and object-based theater. He is most proud of his on-going collaboration with Sarah Halpern, his recordings with Josh Tonies under the name Dutch Masters, and his electronic archive project with Michael Johnsen at http://www.ubu.com/emr.

Host Skull

Host Skull is the duo of David Bernabo and Will Dyar that also utilizes the skills of many others including Brandon Masterman (saxophones, voice) , Liz Adams (voice, double bass), Ben Montgomery (trumpet, percussion), Kerrith Livengood (flutes, piccolo), Jeff Berman (vibraphone, percussion), Herman “Soy Sos” Pearl (modular synthesizer), Jim Siders (trombone), Vince Camut (pedal steel), Josh Verbanets (voice), Christopher James (bass), and Darcy Trunzo (voice).

H/T  Edgar Um

Kelly-Strayhorn Theater
Reserve Tickets Online or call 800.838.3006 and then pay what you can at the door!

From Gustav Mahler to Radiohead to Katie Perry…the Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra (E.L.C.O.) mixes up the sounds of the summer on the KST stage for a special night of music, video, friends and fun!

DJ/VJ Casey Hallas joins the wildly diverse performers of E.L.C.O.  to  create Remix, a unique audiovisual performance combining turntables and flutes, classical and rock, with  electronics and innovation. Fusing classical training and modern technology, E.L.C.O. transcends genres and pushes music to the edge.

Ever wondered what a thru-notated work by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE would be like?  Probably not.  Well, don’t worry about that, come anyway! The night will begin w/ “Volunteers Collective Revisited”.
The Volunteers Collective was (& might still be) an open context for improvisation that started in BalTimOre in 1989 & that became a context for exploring CircumSubstantial Playing in Pittsburgh & beyond from 1997-1998.
Experience footage from this long-term project w/ both old & new sounds!
Also Roger Dannenberg will perform using Patterns, an original visual  programming language for live coding — generating  music using software that is written on-the-fly. And, finally, the thru-notated skeleton of some Volunteers Collective CircumSubstantial Playing ”Reductionism (#6)” + “Interpretive Duncing” + “Artifacts” by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE & featuring the considerable skills & sensitivities of Ben Opie, Roger Dannenberg, Ben Harris, Kenny Haney, Kerrith Livengood and tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE.  8:00 at Garfield Artworks.

The Altar Bar
Tickets: $10 in advance, $12 at the door
Doors at 6:30

Suavity’s Showcase II, curated by Suavity’s Mouthpiece, pulls together an eclectic mix of Pittsburgh-based musicians, ranging from the stark juxtapositions of Suavity itself to the the singer-songwriter stylings of The Feel Good Revolution. Here’s the full line-up:

The Feel-Good Revolution — a new songwriting duo that hearken back to the essential creative partnerships of Leiber/Stoller, Pomus/Shuman, Lennon/McCartney while introducing daring new dynamic techniques into their crafting of archetypal acoustic melodies

M. Bellaire — a meticulous electronic texture composer who paints brutal soundscapes along a desolate backdrop of pre-creation chaos

Suavity’s Mouthpiece — the event’s yearly curator, a three-piece outfit concerned with re-formatting song structure, rhythm, and dynamics

Luxe — dance music unlike ever before; a liberated expression of humanity channeled through sonorous vocals and daring new pop melodies.

h/t Justin Trafford

Host Skull, the duo of David Bernabo and Will Dyar, released a new composition on Chicago’s Contraphonic label. The piece, titled “Fourth River”, juxtaposes arrhythmic electronics with lush sections of classical guitar, vibraphone, and percussion. To flesh out the lineup, this instance of Host Skull also includes vibraphonist Jeff Berman, modular synth-ist Herman “Soy Sos” Pearl, and a trio of Ben Harris/Kerrith Livengood/Brandon Masterman. The composition comes as an MP3 along with an essay on Pittsburgh by Contraphonic label owner Ben Schulman and photography by CMU’s Alternative Photo Process class, led by professor Elizabeth Raymer Griffin.

The package can be purchased through Contraphonic here for the very reasonable price of $3.99.

Host Skull’s first official show will this Friday, April 29th at The Frame on Carnegie Mellon’s campus at Forbes and Margaret Morrison. Host Skull will be represented by David Bernabo and Jeff Berman.

Pittsburgh’s Fourth River is the sometimes mythologized, sometimes forgotten river that flows below the surface. More accurately, it is an aquifer that is given the name Wisconsin Glacial Flow. The visible manifestations of the river can be seen in the fountain at Point State Park and in some of the downtown drinking water. When the Fourth River is mentioned, grand notions of a flowing subterranean river come to mind. This is in direct contrast to what is actually is: sand, gravel, and a bit of water running through it.

Watch a video preview of the piece here.

A quick reminder that the Garfield Artworks experimental music series wraps up tonight with percussionist and poet William Hooker headlining a show that also features Matta Gawa, Michael Johnsen, and Abram Taber. You can see Manny’s full post below. Check it out.