Sonic Frontiers Presents Holland Hopson and Justin Peake

I’m excited to perform next week as part of the Sonic Frontiers season. I plan to play a set of pieces for banjo and electronics drawing from the material on Post & Beam, adding a few new twists, and hopefully including one or two “sound bug” pieces from my Radicans project.

Also on the bill is Justin Peake, a New Orleans based percussionist/composer known for his work as Beautiful Bells. Justin is a Tuscaloosa native, so this will be a homecoming performance for him.

I think it’s going to be a great night!

Thursday March 7 2013 at 7:30pm
Bama Theatre Greensboro Room
600 Greensboro Ave.
Tuscaloosa AL
Admission is Free.

Justin Peake – Workshop at Badabum Atelier from Michelle Ettlin on Vimeo.

Thursday in the Red Room: Holland Hopson, Khristian Weeks, Weed Tree

I’m performing at Red Room in Baltimore on Thursday. Also on the bill are Khristian Weeks (creator of the video below)

and Weed Tree. The Jesse Stiles 3000 will make a special guest appearance.

Thursday, November 15, doors at 8:30pm
Holland Hopson
Khristian Weeks
Weed Tree
Red Room
Baltimore MD

ASAC Videos: Pump Organ and No Mule

Thanks to Eric Hardiman for shooting and posting videos from Saturday’s Albany Sonic Arts Collective show.

This is the premiere of a soon-to-be-titled work built around the idea of treating a fader box as a set of pump organ pedals, rather than simple position sensors. Using Cycling ’74’s Max I can control the organ sounds with a variety of gestures: “pumping” the faders makes the sounds louder, rhythmic motion creates harmonics, sudden and abrupt changes add distortion and bite. The samples that appear at 5:30 are from a 2010 recording session with choreographer Jill Sigman (previous story here).

(Start at 1:32 to skip the embarrassing banter and the hopeless yet obligatory banjo tuning…)

“No Mule” is another brand-new tune. The rhythmic chopping effect is a kind of slow-motion walk through a live sample of the banjo. I add a few more live samples beginning at about 4:00 and get into full-on Steve Reich mode by 6:00.

Science Fair Video

Cycling ’74 has posted a new video from the Science Fair they hosted as part of the recent Expo ’74 event in Brooklyn. I show off my extended banjo instrument (along with my unashamedly geeky enthusiasm). My segment runs from 2:16-3:13, but watch the whole thing and marvel at the wonderful, strange things people do with Max (and their own geeky enthusiasms). Other videos in the series can be found here.

And a big shout out to Eric Prust who built the fine fretless banjo (minus the electronics) in the video.

Atlantic Center for the Arts Concert Videos

Videos from this spring’s residency with David Behrman at the Atlantic Center for the Arts are now online. All the videos from the “Live Listening Party” concert we presented can be seen here, including beautiful work by David Bessler, Klara Schilliger and Valerian Maly, Laura Cetilia, Matt Sargent, David Behrman, Zachary Fairbrother (also performing Valerian Maly’s Electric Guitar II) and Nomi Epstein. To close the concert we all performed together as The New Smyrna Beach Weather Report All-Star Free Will Gospel Choir.

Below are the videos of my solo performances.

This version of “Blackjack David” served as the basis of the performance with Matthew Carefully heard here.

The audio recording of “Everyone Looks to the Sky” was previously posted here.

ASAC Presents Robert Millis and Parashi

Albany Sonic Arts Presents Robert Millis of the Climax Golden Twins and Parashi.

Friday October 8 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany NY
$5 suggested donation

Robert Millis of the Climax Golden Twins will perform solo, and will also present a brand new Sublime Frequencies film, called “This World is Unreal Like A Snake in a Rope.”

Parashi is the solo project of Mike Griffin–microphones, pedals, tapes, synthesizers, guitar, metal bowl, washboard, tin box, tin whistle, noise generator, and more.

Jill Sigman/thinkdance improvisation

This time last week I had the pleasure of working with choreographer Jill Sigman/thinkdance and videographer Peter Shapiro who were artists-in-residence at EMPAC. I recorded some sounds of the objects and materials Jill was working with and then improvised with the samples, my fretless banjo, and vocalist/composer Kristin Norderval (remotely via Skype). Peter has posted some raw footage from our sessions.

improv1 from ps on Vimeo.

improv2 from ps on Vimeo.

I look forward to seeing how this project continues to take shape.