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Filed under: Andrew Lafkas, Audrey Chen, events, Gill Arno (mpld), Ian Fraser, Jesse Kudler, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Luca Marini, Michael Vincent Waller, Nenad Markovic, Nick Zeig-Owens, Patrick Crossland, Rie Watanabe, sessions, Tim Albro, Tucker Dulin
I know….. we are experiencing delays with the blog updates. And yet, after quite a busy spring, our HOT studio summertime has definitely started – and will continue stepping up with more sessions and events in the months of July and August.
So this will be a loaded post. There are recordings and many images from the last event of May the 24, plus an extra recording from a recent studio session that happened on the 10 of June. The latter inaugurates a new blog category dedicated to the “closed doors sessions”. More information on this below.
Let’s start with the event of May the 24 – Ian Fraser, Jesse Kudler and Tim Albro were in town, giving us a great opportunity to have their trio to play here before Tim’s relocation to Rhode Island. Second set had Kyle Bobby Dunn and Michael Vincent Waller playing guitar over the video of Nick Zeig-Owens (not projected, but presented instead as a boxed picture in an old tv set). For a third set I joined (as mpld) Audrey Chen and percussionist Luca Marini who were just back from having toured Europe together in the previous weeks.
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Tim Albro, Ian Fraser, Jesse Kudler. [26 min. 13 sec]
Excerpt from Kyle Bobby Dunn’s and Michael Vincent Waller’s duo set. [9 min. 54 sec.]
Audrey Chen, Luca Marini, mpld. [28 min. 47 sec.]
Download zipped files: ogg [208.6MB]; 320 kbps mp3 [142.4MB].
Recorded at Fotofono by Jesse Kudler on May 24, 2010.
Many thanks to Jesse for recording and mastering help.
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Set 1: L to R Jesse Kudler, Ian Fraser, Tim Albro.
Set 2: Kyle Bobby Dunn.
Set 2: Michael Vincent Waller
Set 2: Nick Zeig-Owens
Set 3: Audrey Chen (foreground), Luca Marini’s shadow, mpld slide.
Above are a few photos of the 3 sets (by Theres Wegmann and myself). Also, to document the party before the concert I had asked our daughter Vera to ‘unobtrusively’ handle the camera duties for us – so here is an exclusive album of her fine portraiture. Thanks Vera! (now, I just hope to find out how the ‘album’ button works…)
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As announced above, in the second part of this posting we introduce to the blog a new category: sessions is an area of the archive set to collect the recordings from the less formally convened meetings. Since much of the action at Fotofono happens besides the concert series, there is a growing accumulation of recordings stacking up. They document the evolving dynamics of an active community of artists and sometimes offer unexpected surprises, like interesting first-time meetings and assorted chance encounters that usually happen spontaneously and go unannounced.
I have been thinking for a while about pulling out of storage this material, and this looks like the right time to set up a new blog category dedicated to these ‘regular’ sessions..
I am not even going to fret about choosing what to post here first, as the latest recording matches pretty well all the requirements. Here goes the background story: Tucker Dulin’s old friend Patrick Crossland was visiting for a few concerts in town with Swiss-based Ensemble Laboratorium. Tucker summoned Andrew Lafkas and myself for an improvised session with three of Laboratorium’s members: trombonist Crossland, trumpet player Nenad Markovic and percussionist Rie Watanabe.
It turned out to be a great match. As no photos were shot to document the meeting, the picture above shows the setup that I was using during this take – radio feedback over the piano soundboard.
Session participants:
Andrew Lafkas – double bass
Nenad Markovic – trumpet
Patrick Crossland – trombone
Rie Watanabe – percussion
Tucker Dulin – trombone
Gill Arno – radio transmitter/receivers, piano soundboard
Improvised session with all the above [35 min. 33 sec.].
Download zipped files: ogg [125.3MB]; 320 kbps mp3 [77.9MB].
Recorded by Gill Arno at Fotofono, June 10 2010.
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Filed under: Aki Onda, Andrew Lafkas, Bryan Eubanks, Corridors (Byron Westbrook), events, Gill Arno (mpld), Margarida Garcia, Tucker Dulin
Next week Bryan and Eleanor Eubanks will be packing up and relocating to Florida. Looks like a great pretext to throw a Fotofono party and get to play together again. So — Theres bakes some pita bread, ice tea and wine flow, and after the dinner party the studio gets filled up almost over capacity with a small crowd of friends, for the most part artists themselves. The first set has Bryan with Andrew Lafkas, Tucker Dulin and myself (as mpld).
Second set is the first time as a duo for Aki Onda and Margarida Garcia. Margarida plays her electric double bass while Aki instead of the compact cassette table has a minimal setup with one tube amp, a Line Six and a hand-held radio.
Byron Westbrook ends it all with a gorgeous Corridors set. Using multiple speakers and video projections he builds up a multidimensional space in which the perception of time becomes supple, and the audience is transfixed.
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set 1 – Tucker Dulin (trombone), Bryan Eubanks (electronics), Andrew Lafkas (double bass), mpld (light and processed sound from slide projectors).
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set 2 – Margarida Garcia (double bass), Aki Onda (electronics).
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set 3 – Corridors (Byron Westbrook – electronics, sound and video projection)
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Download zipped files of all three pieces: ogg; 320 kbps mp3.
The three images above are from the mpld projection.
Special thanks to Byron Westbrook for bringing down his recording equipment and documenting the concert.
Filed under: Bryan Eubanks, Chris Cogburn, Daniel Neumann, events, Lucre trio, Vic Rawlings
Lucre (L to R: Eubanks, Cogburn, Rawlings)
The last event here was the kickstart of an East Coast tour by Chris Cogburn, Bryan Eubanks and Vic Rawlings. The three have been friends and collaborators for some time now, however the two improvisations that they recorded last week document their first time together as a trio. As Bryan wrote, “Building on lengthly playing relationships as duos and in larger groups, we’ll be discovering common ground and developing our music throughout [the tour] through improvisations”.
See the tour page for the trio here.
The evening was opened by Daniel Neumann who presented his piece titled “The Sound of 500 Speer 9 mm. Luger Shells & O Between Fans plus Modular Extensions”, a concert for stereo speakers, room microphone, computer and tape or other extensions.
In Daniel’s own words: “In the electroacoustic live concert The Sound of 500 Speer 9 mm. Luger Shells & O Between Fans two initial sounds are played back. The playback is recorded with a room microphone on to a multitrack sampling tool. From there it repeatedly processes through different modules, one being the room itself, which functions as a filter and is used as an instrument. Other Modular Extensions are carefully added as simultaneous external processes, which influence the narrative. As the two initial sounds are both very aggressive, but in opposite ways, the process of the concert is the struggle between those two sounds about which one gets established in the room. Daniel Neumann leads this struggle between The Sound of 500 Speer 9 mm. Luger Shells Dropped from a Height of 119 Inches at 550 West 21st Street New York, NY, 10011, on April 8th, 2009, 10:37 p.m. – an installation by Ben Turner and a recording of Zilvinas Kempinas’ sculpture O Between Fans.”
Daniel Neumann
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1. Daniel Neumann
2. Chris Cogburn, Bryan Eubanks and Vic Rawlings (a.k.a. Lucre);
3. Chris Cogburn, Bryan Eubanks and Vic Rawlings (a.k.a. Lucre)
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Download zipped files of all three pieces: ogg; 320 kbps mp3.
Ok – here it is, at last. This video needed to be posted a long time ago, but my ineptitude with web video delivery made it impossible to have it any sooner. Now sit back and take your time to enjoy it in full…. will need a 31 minutes stretch, and a good headphone set, as it has a binaural sound recording, and it is full of sub bass-heavy stuff. And sorry for the silly title of this post… it may be that a ray of spring sun just fried a few of my residual neurons (btw, no Wikipedia needed: ΓΕΝΗΘΗΤΩ ΦΩΣ = genetheto fos = “let there be light”).
Shimpei Takeda/Bruce Tovsky, from the performance of last December 17, 2009
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Also, I am happy to announce that the next event at Fotofono will be in the old ‘open doors’ style! Organized by Bryan Eubanks, this concert will kick off the Lucre trio’s tour. Just come early because space is limited, and doors will be closed the moment we reach full capacity.
Saturday March 13th, 2010
studio door opens at 9:00
first set at 9:30
Lucre
A new, yet familiar, trio grouping of Vic Rawlings (amplified cello, electronics, from Boston, MA.), Chris Cogburn (percussion, Austin, TX.), and Bryan Eubanks (electronics, Brooklyn, NY).
Daniel Neumann
“The Sound of 500 Speer 9 mm. Luger Shells & O Between Fans plus Modular Extensions”.
“blind monks examining an elephant” by itcho hanabusa. (found here)
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here finally is the second part, documenting the event of last january 30.
barry chabala and michael pisaro in this recording perform pisaro’s composition rapport abstrait at the winds measure event that ben owen organized to celebrate their new release, black, white, red, green, blue (voyelles) (wm 17).
the dynamic of the evening moved through a long arc, introduced by alessandro bosetti’s dramatic sound and poetry-based compositions (see pt. 1 of the event in the previous post); as the evening progressed the music got very quiet, and the subtle sounds of the space and the audience became more pronounced, becoming a part of the musical experience. my recording equipment, perhaps sensing the delicacy of the situation and strained to its limit, decided to shut off before the performance was finished.
luckily, i thought, other recorders were at work… but as we later listened through the various recordings, we quickly realized that none of them could possibly bring back the specificity of the moment and the subtle feelings that we had individually experienced.
in a way, each recording had an element of truth that was missing to the others, or perhaps a unique atmosphere approaching to varying degrees each one’s own idealized recollection of the event. at the end, the more one tried to bring back an absolute essence of truth, the more such documenting wish ended up in frustration.
how to bring back through a recording the complex experiences that we all went through in that small room? how to give an account of each individual perspective? the sounds themselves, their physical presence, the time passing by and how we later situated ourselves in that rich and yet subtle continuum.. there was something that no recorder could capture, a failure to remembering.
i have found myself fascinated and excited by the different perspectives surrounding the event. they seem to converge, and yet never completely overlap. ultimately, an old question seem to linger – are the documents that we produce a reflection of a generative moment, or are they new entities that will unfold in their own right and say things that escape our initial intentions? how much control do we have over the way we appear to the external world? to me, that doubt in itself means a world of possibilities.
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barry chabala and michael pisaro, as recorded by gill arno
a zip archive contains the three recordings that were made respectively by james connell, ben owen and myself in ogg vorbis format. be advised, it is a 350.1 MB download.
january 30, 2010 – to celebrate the release of michael pisaro’s composition “black, white, red, green, blue (voyelles)” (wm 17), ben owen has assembled an interestingly contrasting lineup. the event featured pisaro himself, performing together with barry chabala, and alessandro bosetti, who presented a new piece titled “campanas”.
the choice – or chance? – of this gathering suggests a range of philosophical implications which i can only assume and vaguely hint at, presenting here only the first part of the concert – the second part will follow in a soon to come installment. enjoy…..
alessandro bosetti
download zipped files: ogg; 320 kbps mp3.
fotofono 