Tickets
Heinz Hall

A force to be reckoned with, famed percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie unleashes her notable musicality and virtuosity in Steven Stucky’s Spirit Voices, described by the composer as an “inspiration from the diversity of spirits and other supernatural forces from cultures around the world who manifest their presence through sound.” Glennie seamlessly moves across the stage while performing on an impressive array of percussion instruments.

Steven Stucky discusses his piece Spirit Voices from Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on Vimeo.

Martin Bisi plays Thunderbird on November 9th.

… and you’d be walking through the woods and the trees would begin to sing a song—well several songs at once really—but they were all related in a way that you couldn’t quite put your finger on? Sort of like Martin Bisi’s new song, “Suffer the Moon”?

“Suffer the Moon”

Those crazy trees! But that reminds me: Martin Bisi is playing a set at Thunderbird on Wednesday, November 9th at 9 p.m. It’s a 21 plus show with Velcro Shoes and Maurice Rickard and you can find out more about it here.

Thunderbird Cafe

Tickets, $5, 21+

also appearing

Velcro Shoes, Maurice Rickard, Raw Blow

A toast! To Martin Bisi!

Legendary perform and producer Martin Bisi returns to the Burgh for a concert at Thunderbird Cafe.  (Check out the PNMNet interview with Martin from 2010).

As a performer and record producer in New York City, Martin Bisi has been at a crossroads of indie/punk, avant garde, noire/cabaret rock, and electronic music since the early 80′s. He has realized albums by Sonic Youth, Swans, John Zorn, Africa Bambaataa, The Dresden Dolls, Herbie Hancock’s Rockit, Boredoms, Helmet, White Zombie, Cop Shoot Cop, Jon Spencer’s Boss Hog, Material/Bill Laswell, Foetus, Serena Maneesh and others. In the live performances he combinesheavier post-rock psychedelia with upbeat story-telling indie fare, and unique sound layering. 
 Bisi is readying a new release for 2012, titled Ex Nihilo - Latin for “out of nothing”. A darker tone dominates the new release, compared to ’08′s Sirens Of The Apocalypse and ’09′s Son Of A Gun EP -more an exploration of the psyche, with cathartic resolution. “Ex Nihilo” means “from, or out of nothing” -usually used in reference to creation by artists or God. The opening track “Suffer The Moon”, is a return to the ritualistic quality of his 1988 album Creole Mass. With this new recording, Bisi’s continues his history of sonic excess in the studio, which can be ambient and disorienting – as with the art-noise of Sonic Youth, or the industrial sensibilities of Swans and Foetus. 
 Bisi began his story in the downtown-meets-uptown scene of New York in the late 70′s, where hip hop from The Bronx coexisted with avant garde experimentalism, the punk/glam of CBGB’s, New Wave art-rock, and aggressive, nihilistic No Wave. In this world Bisi met Brian Eno who helped him start a recording studio in 1981, and he has since covered all these areas in his work.

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

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 Consortium presents two great avantgarde concerts on Penn Avenue!

Wed May 25 8 pm $7 all ages welcome
Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Avenue

From Phila/NYC, seen here previously a couple times as member of Peeesseye. on Family Vineyard Records.

improvisational duo
CHRIS FORSYTH & PARANOID CAT

http://www.thechrisforsyth.com/

http://www.myspace.com/cforsyth

with special guests Ben Opie & Matt Wellins

Guitarist Chris Forsyth is known for hypnotic compositions that assimilate minimalism and psychedelia with art rock, folk, and blues influences. He has performed all over Europe and the US, having toured with such like-minded artists as Träd Gräs och Stenar, Steve Gunn, Tetuzi Akiyama, Ignatz, and Es and is a founding member (with Jaime Fennelly and Fritz Welch) of junk folk expressionists Peeesseye, and a member of the elusive experimental group Phantom Limb & Bison. Other notable collaborators include Koen Holtkamp, Meg Baird, Nate Wooley, and choreographers Miguel Gutierrez and RoseAnne Spradlin. Paranoid Cat, Forsyth’s next solo LP, features contributions from members of Peeesseye, Mountains, D. Charles Speer & the Helix, and others, and will be released in March 2011 on Family Vineyard. Drummer Mike Pride, bassist Peter Kerlin, organist Don Bruno, and pianist Hans Chew, aka The Paranoid Cat Band, will be backing Forsyth up on a series of shows following the release. Other recent releases include a contribution to the new Imaginational Anthem 4: New Possibilities compilation LP/CD/DL on Tompkins Square, the Dirty Pool LP (Ultramarine) with organist Shawn Edward Hansen, and Peeesseye’s newest studio LP Pestilence & Joy (Evolving Ear). Forsyth is the caretaker of Evolving Ear and lives in the City of Philadelphia.

“It’s enough to signal Forsyth’s arrival as an erudite and farsighted guitar stylist, mapping a path that’s hip and scholarly in equal measure.” – Daniel Spicer, The Wire Magazine

“A destructible charm teetering on violence and elegance” – Eric Weddle, Signal to Noise Magazine

——–

Saturday May 28 8 pm all ages welcome $10 adv/$15 door
Modern Formations Gallery, 4919 Penn Avenue, Garfield
Advance tickets at Paul’s CDs, Caliban Books, Dave’s Music Mine, Exchange Sq Hill, Exchange Downtown,
and from the members of Berman/Bernabo/SoySos.

World music-jazz duo on ObliqSound Records
ABLAYE Cissoko (on kora, from Senegal)
& VOELKER GOETZE (on trumpet, from Germany)

http://www.myspace.com/cissokogoetze

with special guests Dave Bernabo / Jeff Berman / Soy Sos (aka Herman Pearl)

This duo has a podcast on WYEP’s website which Rosemary Welsch hosted:

http://podcasts.wyep.org/WORLD113.MP3

The mutual admiration society that is Volker Goetze and Ablaye Cissoko owes itself to a serendipitous meeting that took place in 2001 at the African-European Jazz Orchestra rehearsals in Saint-Louis, Senegal, where they’d been invited to open for Senegalese legend Youssou N’Dour. Despite any cultural barriers that separated them, the German-born trumpeter and the Senegalese kora player and singer discovered they had much in common, both musically and personally. Their commonalities can be heard on Sira, which is an album that reaffirms the maxim that music is the universal language. The album released on October 2008 on ObliqSound. “He comes from the griot tradition. My grandfathers were highly respected spiritual leaders,” says Goetze. “I learn from him and he learns from me. Our music is very much created in the moment, but we understand each other on a much deeper level.”

It was their willingness to absorb new ideas that attracted them to each other. Although Cissoko is wellversed in the traditional music of West Africa, passed along from generation to generation, he has always been a seeker, keeping his ears open for new experiences. Despite his ties to West African traditional music, Cissoko is also a huge fan of jazz, and worked with pianist/composer Randy Weston and others prior to the project with Goetze. “My early influences,” he says, “come from Keith Jarrett, French saxophonist François Jeanneau, Asian and Senegalese music and, of course, Mandingue music, the music of my ancestors.”

His immersion in jazz, and Goetze’s fascination with African music, made them natural candidates for collaboration. “I was fortunate to have experienced some of the greatest innovators of jazz live in concert,” says Goetze, “like Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Wayne Shorter, the Gil Evans Big Band and Joe Henderson. They touched and moved me. That is what I am looking for in music, which is one reason I had to go to Africa. I also am a huge fan of Youssou N’Dour.”

Goetze, who has collaborated with some of the most important figures of the contemporary music scene, including Naná Vasconcelos, Craig Handy and Lenny Pickett, sees similarities between Cissoko’s griot tradition and that of jazz: “[Griot music] is not written; it changes with the epoch and the performance, which is similar to jazz and improvisation.”

“It is our differences that become real strength,” adds Cissoko, who has released two previous solo albums, 2000′s Diam and 2006′s Le Griot Rouge, prior to the duo album Sira. “I adapt myself to the context. I have in myself this ancient tradition of communication. It’s like the branches of a baobab tree, which can touch those of another tree. I’m one of these branches. Volker and I are two musicians of the same generation with different sensibilities, who become one indivisible entity by speaking with our instruments.”

avant-garde chamber music in a coffeehouse setting
TUPLE BASSOON DUO

http://www.myspace.com/tuplemusic

http://tuplemusic.org/

Tuple is two bassoons: Rachael Elliott and Lynn Hileman. Since 2006 they have performed new music in styles ranging from mystical to funk-inspired, absurdist to minimalist, and electronic to static. The duo has staged concerts and master classes at venues across the United States, including The Stone (NYC), A|V Space (Rochester), Catamount Arts Center (Vermont), [SCENE] MetroSpace (East Lansing), Eyedrum (Atlanta), Flood Fine Art Center (Asheville), University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Northwestern University, the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan, among others. Other appearances include recitals at the 2008 International Double Reed Society and College Music Society Conventions, as well as numerous outreach programs for high school and college students. Tuple has premiered new works by Australian composer Padma Newsome and American Max Grafe, as well as the first bassoon duo version of Marc Mellits’ “Black,” originally for two bass clarinets. New pieces underway for the 2011-2012 season include music by Tawnie Olson and Beth Wiemann.

Rachael Elliott is the bassoonist/improviser with Clogs, Heliand Trio, Tuple, and the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble. She has also been a guest player with indie artists such as The National, Sufjan Stevens, and My Brightest Diamond. She has performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and Australia, and has premiered a number of new works for bassoon. With Clogs, she has performed at the Sydney Festival, London Jazz Festival, Warhol Museum, Wexner Center for the Arts, Cincinnati’s MusicNOW Festival and Bang on a Can Marathon. Rachael teaches bassoon at the University of Vermont, Middlebury College and Kinhaven Music School.

Lynn Hileman is in demand throughout the US as a recitalist specializing in contemporary music, appearing most recently at the Washington State University Festival of Contemporary Art Music and the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival. She is Assistant Professor of Bassoon at West Virginia University, principal bassoonist of the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra and a member of the Laureate Quintet. Lynn is also co-founder and former president of A|V Space, a gallery and performance space in Rochester, NY specializing in interdisciplinary and multimedia works.