ASAC Presents Corridors, Delicate Sen, Benny Nelson, Jay Sullivan

asac april 25 flyer
Albany Sonic Arts Presents Corridors, Delicate Sen, Benny Nelson and Jay Sullivan.

Saturday April 25th at 8pm
at the Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany, NY

Corridors [Brooklyn]
sound + video by byron westbrook

Delicate Sen
Anne Guthrie / Billy Gomberg / Richard Kammerman [Troy and Brooklyn]
French Horn and electronics

delicate sen

Benny Nelson [Boston]
Jay Sullivan [Boston]
Analog synth, turntable and harmonium

New Music Co-op: Immersive and in the dark

Austin American-Statesman Arts Critic Jeanne Claire van Ryzin reviews the latest New Music Co-op concert, Sound in Time, featuring guest cellisst Charles Curtis performing music by Alvin Lucier. This article is another entry in the “Austin’s Other Live Music Scene” series remarked on here

Handmade Electronic Music – Updated

Nic Collins’s wonderful book, Handmade Electronic Music – The Art of Hardware Hacking is getting an update. Routledge is publishing a new edition with, according to Nic, “lots of new circuits and illustrations, more examples of artists’ designs, and a DVD with 87 1-minute video clips by hackers from all over the globe, as well as a series of step-by-step video tutorials.” I can’t wait to see it. After the jump are a number of events surrounding the release.

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Austin’s other live music scene

The Austin American-Statesman is running a month-long series on Austin’s other live music scene: classical music. The first installment mentions the usual establishment players (who, I should point out, do a better-than-usual job with adventurous programming than their national counterparts…).  Also mentioned are some of my much-missed colleagues who are busy

“pushing the boundaries of what classical music can be and how it can be presented in the 21st century. Austin has a tribe of adventurous musicians – composer-performers like Graham Reynolds, Peter Stopschinski, P. Kellach Waddle and Travis Weller; ensemble leaders such as Michelle Schumann and Aurélien Petillot and groups such as the Tosca String Quartet, Audio Inversions and the Invincible Czars – that lead the charge, taking their newly composed classical music to nightclubs, collaborating with filmmakers, dancers and theater companies and otherwise finding ways to challenge the status quo of classical music performance.”

I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Sommeil: A Concert for Sleep

Tanner Menard, Antenna Gallery and Experimedia Records present Sommeil: A Concert for Sleep in New Orleans on 4/11-4/12. Get details here.

Tanner sent out an open call for sound to be used during the concert. My work will appear alongside approx. 70 artists who submitted work. I’ll be interested to hear how this event comes off, especially having recently participated in the River of Drone.

Al Tharp on WFMU’s Beware of the Blog

Go find some delightful Al Tharp clawhammer banjo at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. I haven’t listened to Tharp enough to discern the secrets of his style, but I love the heavily accented thumb-picked slides in his version of Boatin Up Sandy. (At least, that what they sound like to me…)

Thanks to Eric Hardiman for bringing this to my clawhammer-crazed attention.

Big Ears 09

I just read about the Big Ears 09 fest in the NY Times. Sounds like a great series of events, made even better by its location. Having all the concerts in Knoxville TN makes such perfect sense to those of us who have played unconventional music in non-metropolitan centers for much of our lives. I’d love to see similar events in other “unlikely” places. (Happy to see the Shakin’ Ray Levis get some home crowd love, too…)

Max Neuhaus: Sound Art Pioneer

Just heard through the webvine that sound artist Max Neuhaus has died. Neuhaus was a pioneer of sound installation work and will definitely be missed.

I remember being pleased to hear that his quasi-official Times Square installation had finally been granted permanent status. It’s invisible, sometimes inaudible, but still the best reason to visit Times Square.

Read an obit from the Houston Chronicle.