avant-improv
7-9 pm
$10
Odd Instruments Night
Curated by saxophonist and lyricon player Jorrit Dijkstra, critically
acclaimed improvisers from the Boston and New York area play solo, duo
and ensemble improvisations on rare electronic and acoustic
instruments.
Jorrit Dijkstra – lyricon (http://www.jorritdijkstra.com)
James Coleman – theremin (http://www.zuihitsu.net)
Matt Samolis – steel cello (http://www.mattsamolis.com)
Katie Down – glass instruments, flute, voice
Onda:
Tim Feeney – various percussion
Ken Ueno – extended voice, electronics
(http://www.minimumsecurity.org/ken.html)
Hillary Zipper – amplified violin
(http://www.radiusensemble.org/cir.htm)
Dutch saxophonist and composer Jorrit Dijkstra has been an active
member of Amsterdam’s vivid jazz and improvisation scene since 1985,
before moving to Boston early 2002. The critical press compares his
clear, flexible sound and lyrical improvisation to Ornette Coleman,
Paul Desmond and John Zorn, showing the broad spectrum of his saxophone
style. Besides the alto saxophone he plays the Lyricon and uses
electronics to process his saxophone sounds live on stage. Jorrit
Dijkstra studied improvisation and composition with Misha Mengelberg,
Steve Coleman, Steve Lacy and Lee Hyla. He has performed extensively in
Europe and North America, and he has released five CDs of his own music
on the Songlines, BVHaast, and Trytone labels. He has worked with
Anthony Braxton, Gerry Hemingway, Marty Ehrlich, Herb Robertson, Jim
Black, Barre Phillips, Marc Ducret, John Butcher, Willem Breuker, and
Guus Janssen. In 1995 he received the prestigious Podium Prize from the
Dutch Jazz Foundation, and in 1998 a Fulbright grant to study and teach
at the New England Conservatory in Boston. In Amsterdam Jorrit is
currently co-leading the cool-jazz Quartet Sound-Lee!, and in Boston he
is active with Curt Newton, James Coleman, Charlie Kohlhase and Stephen
Drury. He has scored several documentary films, as well as music for
theatre and dance.
James Coleman is one of the most astounding living players of the
Theremin, a touch-less early electronic instrument invented by Russian
Emegree Leon Theremin originally intended for the performance of
Classical music. Known for his work with extremely quiet sounds, James
is one of the loudest voices and most consistent organizers in the
Boston improvised music scene. He is also the moderator of “Lowercase
Sound,” an internet discussion group dedicated to very quiet
experimental music.
Matt Samolis has been working in sonic and visual mediums since 1987.
He began studying flute, and later composition and tenor banjo. He has
worked with ensembles at New England Conservatory, Brandeis University,
Berklee, and Tufts, as well as Open Hand Theatre, Pilgrim Research
Collaborative, Mobius, Roy Hart Theatre, and numerous other projects.
Currently, his primary work is with Peter Warren, Vic Rawlings, and as
old time songster, Uncle Shoe.
Katie Down, composer, sound artist, and multi-instrumentalist has
created and performed numerous sound scores for theatre and dance
companies and international festivals as well as galleries, clubs,
pubs, streets, alleyways, and beaches throughout the U.S. and Eastern
and Western Europe. She is a collaborator at heart and works regularly
with theatre and film directors, choreographers, writers, painters,
dancers, and of course other musicians. Long sound walks are a hobby
that enable the collection of sounds that often find their way into her
recorded work. A classically trained flutist, she is also frequently
seen/heard playing many different instruments including ukulele, steel
cello, glass harmonica, Middle Eastern percussion, and a variety of
unusual and homemade instruments and found objects. She is resident
composer and designer for New York based companies Ripe Time and Tap
Fusion, and Boston’s Pilgrim Theatre Performance Research
Collaborative. Katie performs in many different genres including free
improvisation, Sephardic songs from the Balkans with her ensemble
Adelantre, music from the 20s and 30s with ukulele trio The Ukuladies,
and traditional Bulgarian songs with Yasna Voices. Residencies include
Music/Omi Arts Colony, chashama’s AREA grant, The Composer Librettist
Studio at New Dramatists. Katie has toured with chashama’s
international program where she has conducted theatre and voice
workshops at festivals including the Ohrid Summer Festival in
Macedonia, Trn Festival in Slovenia, and Hvar UpBeat Festival in
Croatia.
Ken Ueno is a composer who actively involves himself in a wide range of
activities in order to evangelize for modern music. Informed by his
experience as an electric guitarist and overtone singer, his music
fuses the culture of Japanese underground electronic music with an
awareness of European modernism. In an effort to feature inherent
qualities of sound such as beatings, overtones, and artifacts of
production noise, Ken’s music is often amplified and uses electronics.
The dramatic discourse of his music is based on the juxtaposition of
extremes: visceral energy versus contemplative repose, hyperactivity
versus stillness. As a vocalist, he has developed a technique for
singing multiphonics and overtones.
Ensembles and performers who have played Ken’s music include the Bang
on a Can All-Stars, Frances-Marie Uitti, the Pro Arte Chamber
Orchestra, Dogs of Desire, the American Composers Orchestra (Whitaker
Reading Session), the New York New Music Ensemble, and the Hilliard
Ensemble. Ken has received awards and grants from the Fromm Music
Foundation, the Aaron Copland House, Meet the Composer (3), the
Belgian-American Education Foundation, Sonic Circuits X, First Prize in
the 25th “Luigi Russolo” competition, and Harvard University. He
received composition commissions from the Radius Ensemble, the Boston
Modern Orchestra Project (a concerto for sho and orchestra), the Rosa
Ensemble (Holland), the Relâche Ensemble (Philadelphia, in cooperation
with WHYY Radio and the Rosenbach Museum), and a piece for the Prism
Quartet’s 20th anniversary.
Tim Feeney seeks to explore and examine the timbral possibilites
inherent in everyday found and built objects. He treats his percussion
set-up as a friction instrument, using bows, scrapers, and rosined
drumheads as implements and sympathetic resonators to capture and
amplify frequencies that go unheard when an object is struck with a
mallet. He supplements this “natural” console with a virtual instrument
activated from a laptop, which synthesizes and alters the spectral
characteristics of sounds from pure sine tones to speaker pops and
white noise.
Tim works with such Boston artists as thereminist James Coleman,
cellist/cracked electronics artist Vic Rawlings, and the
electro-acoustic improvising trio ONDA. Tim is a regular collaborator
with composer and violist Padma Newsome’s group Clogs, who have
appeared at New York venues Tonic and the Makor Center, and appears on
the group’s Stick Music CD, released on Brassland Records in August
2004. As an interpreter, Tim has appeared at venues such as the
Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival with
the So Percussion Group, and his work has been heard on WNYC radio’s
“New Sounds.” With violist Wendy Richman, he gave the American premiere
of Luciano Berio’s theater work Naturale with the International
Contemporary Ensemble. A member of Boston’s Callithumpian Consort, he
has performed with pianist Stephen Drury at the New York venue Tonic,
as part of its John Zorn 50th Birthday Month series, as well as on the
new music series at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Germany. A co-founder of
the duo Non Zero, with saxophonist Brian Sacawa,
Hillary Zipper is a composer and violinist whose acoustic and
electroacoustic compositions reflect her fascination with sound. The
delicately complex landscape of Hillary’s original works is influenced
by her experience with extended violin techniques, and she continues to
explore the unusual sonic possibilities of every instrument for which
she composes. Her music has been performed internationally, in such
venues as Miller Theater in New York; the American Conservatory in
Fontainebleau, France; Padua, Italy; Jordan Hall in Boston; as well as
at Harvard, Stanford, and Brandeis Universities. Performers that have
commissioned Hillary and played her music include Odd Appetite, the
AUROS Group for New Music, InterEnsemble, Dinosaur Annex, saxophonist
Brian Sacawa, and the Claremont Trio, winners of the 2001 Young Concert
Artists International Auditions. This season’s projects include
performances by Non-Zero, Duo X, and Radius Ensemble, as well as a duo
with cellist Joshua Gordon. Hillary has attended June in Buffalo, the
Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, the summer course at the American
Conservatory in Fontainebleau, and the Wellesley Composers Conference,
where she was a fellow in 2003. This year she was featured in Dinosaur
Annex’s ‘Salute to Young Composers’ and was selected to be the 2004-05
Composer-in-Residence with Radius Ensemble.