CatSynth

The final concert of this year’s Outsound Music Summit brought together various inventors of new musical instruments under the banner “Sonic Foundry Too!” Rather than each inventor simply presenting his or her work, they performed as pairs. The pairings were selected for musical congruity and brought together people who may have never performed together before. As such, this was truly “experimental music”, with the outcomes uncertain until they unfolded on stage.

As one would expect, the stage setup was quite impressive, with musical contraptions large and small.

This large “bucky ball” was one of the more intriguing from a visual and sculptural perspective. With the holes and vaccuum-cleaner hoses inside, it was not immediately clear what this was supposed to do as a musical instrument.

It turns out to be Terry Berlier’s Percussion Ball, and is played like a hand percussion instrument. The performer taps or slaps the various faces and the hoses provide resonance.

The first pairing featured inventions by Terry Berlier and Bart Hopkin. Berlier was not in attendance, so David Michalak was called upon to learn and perform his instruments, including the aforementioned Percussion Ball. The performance was among the musically strongest of the evening. Michalak appeared from the wings adorned with LEDs and proceeded to the percussion ball, which turns out to be a tuned drum. He began with a an expressive free rhythm exploring the different faces, which became more structured as Hopkin joined in with his own percussion.

[David Michalak on Percussion Ball. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

What ensued was a tight rhythmic drum duet, which reminded me a bit of Japanese drumming. Gradually, Hopkin’s drum sounds grew more electronic, but the strong rhythm persisted. Michalak then tossed a couple of the LEDs into the audience and transitioned to playing a gamelan-like instrument made of metal plates and which produced a bell-like sound. The strong rhythm faded into an ethereal mix of bell and chime sounds. There were several other interesting instruments and musical moments in the remainder of set. A keyboard instrument that looked a bit like a toy piano produced high bell and wind-chime sounds. Hopkin also had an impressive clarinet-like instrument with a ribbon for continuous pitch change.

[Bart Hopkin. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

The next set featured Bob Marsh performing with his new Sonic Suit #1 and Brenda Hutchinson with long tube and gestural controls. We had seen Marsh’s suit in action at the Touch the Gear Expo – it is covered in plastic water bottles, some of which contain sound-generating materials beyond the crunch of the bottles themselves. We have also seen Hutchinson perform with you long tubes before, including at the Outsound benefit dinner – in this case, it was actually a shorter version, about one-third the standard size.

[Brenda Huchinson and Bob Marsh (in Sonic Suit). Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

Hutchinson began with slurping sounds through the tube, accompanied by small rustling and crackling sounds as Marsh began to move slowly. With the addition of electronics, one could hear strong resonances from the tube. The effect was like pouring water, and it seems that the timbre from the bottles on the suit were matching it at times. Marsh increased his motion in the suit, set against a variety of environmental sounds from Hutchinson such as water, fire, air and animal sounds. Eventually he got up and started to dance, moving the arms of the suit in fan patterns, with noisier sounds from both performers.

The following set featured Tom Nunn and Stephen Baker, with David Michalak returning to make a trio. The music started with the sounds of scrapes and bells from multiple sources. some of which emanated from Nunn’s instrument in which the performer ran large cardboard tubes over a metal sheet suspended on top of purple balloons. (Did I mention that almost every night of the summit featured balloons?) Baker’s instrument with metal pegs on a tube was particularly melodious against the brass-like sounds from Nunn’s sheet-metal instrument. The various metal sound sources played off one another for interesting beating effects.

[Tom Numm, Stephen Baker and David Michalak. Photo by Michael Zelner.]

Baker had several other instruments in this theme, including a series of bowls and a long metal arc, both of which contributed to the overall tuned metal sound. By contrast, Michalak’s use of skatch box provided noisier and more percussive sounds that filled in the space in between the long tones. Listening to the longer tones with soft details like beating was quite meditative at moments, enhanced by the low lighting during the set.

Walter Funk and Sasha Leitman immediately distinguished themselves from the previous sets in their use of electronics as a central element. They set themselves up quite minimally on either end of the stage, with a lot of empty space in between. The space was the perfect visual for the beginning of the music, where a repeating metal sound soon revealed itself to be the sound of train. The train gradually morphed into the sound of a human voice. Set against this were subtle low-frequency tones, scraping metal and a steady low rumble. During the set, Walter Funk produced a lasagna pan (which he had mentioned during the pre-concert talk) – this is the first time I had seen a lasagna pan used as a musical instrument in a formal setting. It was used to produce rhythmic scrapes, rumbles and rolling sounds that reminded me of a standard snare drum. What at first sounded like a motor being used to excite the pan was later revealed to be water. Against this were more electronic sounds, something that suggested a granular synthesizer and another that sounded like a distortion pedal for a guitar. At one point, the music shifted to a series of power chords, and a rhythm with delays (i.e., where the echoes of the delay become part of the overall rhythm). The set concluded a series of loud machine noises.

The final set paired Sung Kim on a bowed cello-like instrument with Dan Ake playing a giant towering contraption of poles, wires and metal objects.

[Sung Kim and Dan Ake. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

I had heard Kim perform on his well-crafted string instruments before – in some ways, they were the most “traditional” of the musical inventions in use during the evening in that they were not only shaped and constructed similar to standard string instruments, but were played using traditional techniques of the string family like bowing and plucking. I have also seen Ake’s large architecturally-inspired sound-generating devices as previous Touch The Gear nights. Both began the set with bowing. Ake was slower and more deliberate in bringing out the timbres of the large metal elements. Kim, by contrast, was fast and vigorous, evoking a dramatic cello solo. Ake also had metal claws that he used to tap parts of the tower and pluck wires, as will as a large wire wisk for additional effects. Kim also played his instrument more percussively at times. The timbres of the two instruments matched well and blended at times. The structure and narrative of the performance did not blend quite as strongly as some of the others, though there were great moments where the music grew to a crescendo, a section of a steady plondering rhythm with eighth-note bowing and strumming of odd-harmony chords, and a noisy section of screeching tones that resolved a major harmony.

This set concluded the evening, and the Summit as a whole. In a sense, it was a quiet way to end, without the dramatic musical finishes of previous evenings. But in the sense of each set being an experiment and the opportunity to see and hear something new, it was quite a successful conclusion.

The Outsound Music Summit continued last Friday with “The Art of Composition”, performances of new works by Krystyna Bobrowski, Gino Robair, Andrew Raffo Dewar and Kanoko Nishi. I had heard these four composers discuss their work at the panel session a few days earlier. Now it was time to hear their music.

There was an impressive array of equipment on the stage. Much of it was for Krys Bobrowski’s two pieces.

Balloons have definitely been a big theme of this year’s summit. (Tom Djll featured a balloon in the previous night’s concert, and Tom Nunn featured them in his instrument the following night) In this case, the balloon was used as a resonator in Bobrowski’s Lift, Loft and Lull. Gino Robair struck the “gong”, the large metal rectangle, and brought the balloon close to it. The combination of the balloon’s acoustics and the connected microphone produced a unique resonance effect (and a clever use of acoustic and electronic effects). Against this, Bobrowski played a wildly curved orange horn-like instrument made from kelp that brought to mind a shofar.

The second movement brought the duo together on a single instrument, a large metallic xylophone-like instrument where long tubes were resting on…balloons(!). At first, they played the instrument in a standard way, producing percussive melodies with mallets. But over time, they began to explore different sounds of the instrument, such as rubbing the tubes, and also producing a sound that suggested a motorized device. They also placed different preparations on the instrument to invoke different effects and articulations.

You can see an excerpt of the performance in this video:

Bobrowski and Robair also performed a piece featuring the composer’s glass glass instrument in a duet with wine glasses. I had last heard Bobrowski play gliss glass at the benefit dinner. It was interesting to hear the instrument contrasted with the wine glasses.

[Bobrowski and Robair. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

Robair played them traditionally, rubbing the rims to produce strong resonances, but also used tapping and splashing in the water as percussion. The gliss glass vessels, by contrast, can be drained and filled while they are played, resulting in pitch-bend effects that were put to strong use in the piece. There was lots of complex phrasing as well as eerie harmonies and unexpected sound effects. At times, the harmonies were more anxious and expectant, while at other moments they approached romantic tonality.

[Andrew Raffo Dewar’s Interactions Quartet. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

Andrew Raffo Dewar’s Interactions Quartet presented Dewar’s new piece Strata, which was inspired by a series of paintings by Argentine artist Eduardo Serón. You can see examples of Serón’s work in this video. His abstract paintings – which I, too, found musically inspiring – feature simple shapes and colors in tight compositions. These simple but powerful visual elements were reflected the clean acoustic notes and sounds of the music. It started out very sparsely, with individual disconnected notes on each instrument. Individual notes became short phrases, and eventually slightly longer lines that intertwined in an undulating counterpoint. The music was quite meditative, with the modal quality and contrapuntal texture, but also had a strong emotional undercurrent. One interesting moment featured the saxophone (Dewar), oboe (Kyle Bruckman) and marimba (Gino Robair) converging into a single pitch range and timbre. Eventually, the complex rhythms coalesced into a single triple meter with a strong driving rhythm anchored by John Shiurba’s percussive guitar and metric beating of ankle bells by Robair. Above the metric foundation one could hear playful descending lines. After staying together rhythmically for a while, the different lines and instruments went their own ways, with various shakers, harmonics on guitar and english horn, and an impressive passage of multiphonics by Dewar on soprano sax – all still remaining within a strong sense of counterpoint.

Kanoko Nishi presented her original graphic scores as interpreted Tony Dryer on contrabass and Italian guitarist and visual artist IOIOI. It would have been interesting to see Nishi’s graphical scores, but the darkened room and minimal setting left ample opportunity for imagination. We did get a taste of what we were in for as Tony Dryer was setting up and soundchecking his equipment, and we were treated to several ear splitting bursts of loud feedback. The performance itself, however, began quite subtly with Dryer bowing very quietly on the bass. Every so often, there would be a louder scraping sound on the bass before returning to minimal levels. Then, all at once, there was a loud hit followed by a long LOUD sustain and feedback. These deliberate and had a great tone, but it was still very loud. When it finally cut out, it was like shutting off a very loud engine – there was even the rumbling slowing to a series of clicks. This was followed by a loop of low-frequency bass notes at a modest volume, which settled into a bit of a groove with noisier sounds layered on top. Eventually, higher electrical noises and squeaks overtook the sounds of the bass. Dryer concluded by playing the stand of the bass (now resting horizontally) with what appeared to be an instrument string.

[IOIOI. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

The performance then transitioned seemlessly to IOIOI, who was also set up in front of the stage with minimal lighting. She began with long sustained notes in a tonality that sounded Middle Eastern, both in terms of the scale and the use of microtones and pitch bends. Things quickly grew louder, with high screeching tones and loud sustained tones that obscured the otherwise beautiful detailed guitar technique. As things quieted down a bit, I was able to focus more on the fine details, such as bends metallic resonances. IOIOI employed preparations in her guitar at times, such as chopsticks, that gave the instrument a more raspy, percussive sound. She also used bowing that yielded a vigorous passage of scratching tones. Overall, a virtuosic display.

[Ensemble Aguacalientes.  Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

Gino Robair returned for his third appearance of the evening, this time to present his Ensemble Aguacalientes, featuring Polly Moller on flutes and ocarinas, John Shiurba on guitar, Loren Mach on marimba, Jim Kassis on percussion and Scott Walton on bass. Aguacalientes is “a musical suite based on scenes captured by Jose Guadalupe Posada in his politically charged engravings of late19th -and early 20th-century life in Mexico”, many of which feature skulls and skeletons, or calaveras. In keeping with this source, the instrumentation of the ensemble reflects Mexican folk and popular music, including the ocarinas and percussion. The piece began with a very sparse texture, where short melodic lines on the flute headjoint were punctuated by percussion hits. Soon an array of other percussion, including a guiro, and the guitar and bass joined in, with numerous rhythmic lines set oddly against one another. The ocarina lines were longer and more traditionally melodic, but with the instrument’s distinctive sound. There were interesting timbral moments, such as a sinister interplay between harmonics on the bass and guitar, and a more gentle combination of string-bass and bass-flute harmonics. I did find myself listening to the polyrhythms that emerged at various points during the piece, and for the more idiomatic moments that channeled the Mexican subject matter.

Overall, it was a strong concert, and seemed well received by the large audience. I was also left thinking about the often boisterous debate in the Bay Area new-music community between composition and improvisation. Having heard the improvisation-centric and composition-centric nights of the summit back-to-back, I am struck by how much similarity there was – one could have interleaved pieces from both nights into a single concert and ended up with a result that was musically consistent.

The Outsound Music Summit continued on Thursday night with a concert titled “The Freedom of Sound”. It is a rather lofty title that can mean many things – in this case it describes ensembles that have explored and perfected musical improvisation through many years of playing together. The emphasis on experience and discipline is a reminder that “freedom” is a double-edge sword, in music, in politics or any area of life. During the artist Q&A before the concert, Tom Djll of Grosse Abfahrt lamented that bad improvised music can just be “mush” – and any of us who have been immersed in improvisation for an extended period have experienced the mush. But the examples of free musical expression on display this night were very articulate, structured, with musicality and narrative.

Tri-Cornered Tent Show opened the evening with an “operatic improvisational song cycle.” In the Q&A, composer Philip Everett talked about the influence of the Vietnam War and legacy leading up to the seeming perpetual war of today in his piece. The subject was hard to miss as guest vocalist Dina Emerson sang the lines “After war came the barking of dogs” and “After the war came another” among others, allusions to the unending series of wars we have found ourselves in over the past few decades. Behind Emerson’s singing, regular group members Philip Everett, Ray Schaeffer and Anthony Flores provided a foundation of static noise, explosive synthesizer and drum phases and free improvisation that moved between disparate rhythms and lines to a single unified tone. In listening to performance, I was reminded of the traditional oratorio, with the theatrical operatic vocal performance with the dramatics and emotion but without the staging and costumes.

[Tri-Cornered Tent Show, with Dina Emerson. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

There were particular moments that I liked, such as the emergence of a funky bass-driven riff with percussion and harmonic support that went on for some time, while some of the electronics remained asynchronous. And then there was the movement of the piece where Emerson’s voice was front and center channeling the sound of a Southern blues or spiritual singer with minimal instrumental sounds, mostly strings and delay effects, and later metallic resonances.

Next up was Positive Knowledge, the duo of Oluyemi Thomas and Ijeoma Thomas. opened with free improvisation with bass clarinet and voice. They were able to make their disparate instruments sound quite a like a times, and if I wasn’t watching the performance I could have mistaken them for a saxophone duo. The unity diverged a bit as Ijeoma Thomas moved from free vocals to poetry. In the gaps between lines of the text, the clarinet provided squeaks, growls and other noisy sounds.

[Positive Knowledge. Photo: PeterBKaars.com. ]

The instrumentation shifted throughout the performance, with recorder and whistle, expressive pentatonic humming, a walking gong, and poetry set against metallic percussion. The shifts in timbre and texture and movement between words and abstract sounds gave the sense of a story unfolding.

The final performance of the evening, featured Grosse Abfahrt. Regular ensemble members were joined by guest artist Kyle Bruckman. It began with a large balloon, which Tom Djll inflated and then placed over the mouthpiece of a trumpet. The resulting squeaky but steady sound served as a basis for the first part of the performance, and given the size of the balloon continued for quite a while. Kyle Bruckman on oboe matched the pitch of the balloon and trumpet quite closely, but with enough imprecision to leave interesting beating and timbral effects. The other performers entered into the mix, complementing the tone of the balloon and filling in the void when it finally expired. Tom Djll provided a number of creative noisy tones on the trumpet as well as other custom one instruments: a purple hose that could be played like a brass instrument but also spun around like a whirly. He also had a pair of long orange pipes that looked like didgeridoos and were played both trumpet-like and with air canister that is usually used for cleaning keyboards. Gino Robair continued percussion sounds such his signature oddly-shaped bowed cymbal and chaotic electronic sounds from the blippo box. Tim Perkis’ electronic sounds had a delightful liquidy quality that added a lot of fullness to the ensemble. John Shiurba’s guitar and effects pedals rounded things out with a harder sound closer to Djll’s trumpet than to the other electronics.

[Grosse Abfahrt, with giant yellow balloon. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

After all the performers joined in, the music gradually built into a thick noisy metallic texture – mostly a drone but with different shorter sounds in front. Then things shifted to softer, staccato sounds. I liked the empty space in which I could hear details like the distinctive timbre of the blippo box. There were other moments of soft, uniform tones among all the performers, register movement between high and low, wind noises and scratches, tiny sounds and loud drones. It was a powerful, energetic performance that went by rather quickly.

In total, it was a strong show, with three very different ensembles and styles that nonetheless fit together musically beyond simply the theme of free improvisation.

The concert portion of the Outsound Music Summit began on Wednesday with an evening entitled “Face Music.” The four solo performances all centered around voice, but more on unusual uses of the voice and the face for making musical sounds than on traditional singing. Within this context, each of the performances was quite different.

[Theresa Wong. Photo: PeterBKaars.com. (Click image to enlarge.)]

Theresa Wong opened the concert by stepping out in front of the stage with only a microphone. At first it seemed like she was just standing still, but gradually one could hear the very subtle vocal sounds she was making. These soon grew into loud clicks, slurps and other percussive voice sounds, which she played around with for some time. There was a section where she used a mixture of noises and slowly descending squeaks reminded me Xenkis’ 1950s electronic compositions. Her second piece, which featured voice and cello, was more lyrical, with rich high voiced sounds (closer to singing) against more inharmonic cello overtones.

[Joseph Rosenzweig. Photo: PeterBKaars.com. (Click image to enlarge.)]

Joseph Rosenzweig used his voice to drive various electronic processes. For the first part of the set, he mostly used breath sounds, which were processed with distortion and other effects that became quite loud and intense. There were also moments that were more subtle, with softer metallic sounds behind the voice. As his vocalizations grew more complex, some parts began to take on the sound of speech, and there were moments while watching him that it seemed he was actually “speaking” the amplified electronic sounds. Over time, the arrangement grew to include multiple layers with percussive effects on more traditionally voiced sounds that feed into buzzing short loops and long drones of FM-like bell sounds – at this point, the electronic parts began to separate from the vocal source and take on a life of their own, with subtle high sounds, and then a low rumble against high vocalizations.

[Aurora Josephson. Photo: PeterBKaars.com. (Click image to enlarge.)]

Aurora Josephson opened the second half the concert with candles, incantations when led into a performance of John Cage’s Experiences no. 2. The quiet, subdued performance focused more on traditional pitched singing. Experiences no. 2 is in a pentatonic scale and very lyrical, with a folk-song or spiritual quality. It was an oasis of calm, and a great contrast to the performances that preceded and followed.

[Bran...(pos). Photo by CatSynth.]

Bran…(pos) concluded the concert with an intense and theatrical set that probably most fit the term “face music”. He disappeared behind a screen onto which a colorful image of a butterfly was projected. From behind the screen, one could hear disembodied sounds of chewing, crunching, churning, squeaks, pops and other percussion that one can make with the face and mouth – at once they were everyday sounds, but also heightened through amplification and rhythmic placement. After a period of time, the otherwise still video started to glitch, with grainy video images briefly appearing on the screen. After a moment, I realized that this was in fact the face of the artist from behind the screen. Soon, the live video replaced the still images entirely. (From my vantage point, I could actually glimpse the “man behind the curtain” while watching the live video.) The sounds and visuals together gave the impression that he was “eating” the microphone. After a while, soft resonant bell-like sounds emerged in the background behind the face sounds, and gradually loops and rhythms began to emerge as well as the facial gestures in the video grew more frantic. There was a moment when the “face music” seemed to stop leaving only a drone of pure synthesizer sounds, after which Bran…(pos) returned with a more traditional voice sound. The background elements grew more industrial, with strong resonances the morphed into large bells. The set ended in a visual of melting red.

You can see a video of Bran…(pos) below:

The overall trajectory of the concert was good, as was the contrast, ranging from Theresa Wong’s nearly silent and unaccompanied opening to Bran…(pos)’s frenetic and gear-intensive end.

The Outsound Music Summit continues through Saturday evening with additional concerts. Look for more reviews here, or follow @catsynth for live tweets.

With a little over a week to go before the Outsound Music Summit, we look back at our benefit dinner and performance.

The benefit took place at the Numi Tea Garden in Oakland, a beautiful space that blends into the industrial architecture of its surroundings. You can see this photo which I posted on a recent Wordless Wednesday. An interesting bit of trivia for music-tech geeks that I learned is that the space now occupied by Numi used to be home of Zeta Music Systems, the makers of the Zeta electronic violin.

The dinner, by chef Miles Ake was itself a piece of performance and conceptual art. It was based on the ingredients of a classic Gazpacho recipe, listed in mirroring order at the beginning and end of the menu. The description and the presentation of the food itself unfolded like a multi-movement musical composition. From Ake’s statement:

The root of the word Gazpacho is derived from a Mozarab word caspa, meaning “residue” or “fragments,” which refers to the small pieces of bread and vegetables in a Gazpacho soup. throughout the meal the gazpacho as an entity wil go through a series of fractured movements. This fracturing is not a means to disconnect, but rather as a process of extraction, distillation and isolation of distinct parts. The structure of the menu is an anagrammatical game or a rewinding (moving backwards in time to replay a track) while simultaneously moving forward without redundancy in form/texture/taste using to compositional terms (verse, refrain, notes, scale, etc….) to build a lexicon of culinary elements.

The dinner opened with an interpretation of the soup itself, which set the tone and direction:

The panzanella and ricotta/pepper dishes were perhaps my favorites palette-wise and reflect the colors from the base ingredients:

The “bloody margaret” with gin and olive gelée served in an old-fashioned glass and the raw fluke were the most unique. The desert was an experience as well, with “three textures of olive oil”, including a very creamy foam-like texture that I have never had before.

The music for the evening featured a performance by Vorticella, a quartet of Krys Bobrowski, Erin Espeland, Brenda Hutchinson and Karen Stackpole. Their improvised performances feature a wide variety of instruments, ranging from standard cello and horn, to Karen Stackpole’s array of gongs and blocks, to unique custom instruments like Bobrowski’s gliss glass:

[Click image to enlarge.]

Vorticella derive their name from the single-cell creatures. The bell-shape features prominently in the instruments, such as the gliss glass, horn, and other wind instruments. The themes of a single-cell organism functioning as a compact unit, but then breaking off new copies at any given time, permeate the direction and texture of the group’s improvised performances.

I have heard Vorticella before at the Garden of Memory events and the Flower Moon Concert in 2009. This was however an exceptional performance. Although the instrumentation is diverse and music improvised, it had a very coherent texture and direction and was well crafted. Like the single-cell organism, they seemed to function as one, with music that could have come from a master synthesizer soloist or from countless hours of careful sound design in a studio, but it was all unfolding organically in front of us. The wind and metal elements set the overall timbral environment in which the details unfold. Think of wind blowing through giant metal pipes, and then tapping on the side of the pipe or bowing it – these could be seen as basic ingredients, in a way similar to Ake’s use of the gazpacho ingredients to produce the entire meal. I found myself alternating between the rich overall timbre of the ensemble and focusing on individual details, whether Bobrowski’s visual presentation on the gliss glass, Stackpole’s constant shifting among different pieces of percussion, or Espeland’s playing the cello with two bows simultaneously. There was a good mix of long drone-like sounds and punctuated percussive elements – appropriate space was left for the latter.

So with the benefit dinner behind us, we are on to the actual summit, which begins next Sunday July 17 with the annual “Touch the Gear” night and continues with concerts the following week. You can find out more info, including tickets and passes to the concerts here. Those on Facebook are also encouraged to visit Outsound Presents’ page which features more photographs of the dinner and music.

The 2011 Outsound New Music Summit is about a month away! For those not familiar with this event, it is a weeklong series of new and adventurous music that has been happening every summer in San Francisco for the last ten years. “Every year the Outsound New Music Summit showcases some of the most innovative and pioneering new music that is happening in California and beyond.” You can read my reports from last year as a reviewer and as a participating artist.

This year we are hosting a benefit dinner on Monday, June 27 at the Numi Tea Garden in Oakland, with music by Vorticella, and dinner by chef Miles Ake. I invite readers in the Bay Area to support new music and consider attending this event. You can find info and tickets at http://www.outsound.org/summit/11/outsound_benefit.html. In the meantime, here is an excerpt from our chef statement that reads like a statement one would see at an art exhibit or concert program notes:

The a list of ingredients when put together form a classic Gazpacho. This will function as a prompt or an armature that dishes can be built upon. The root of the word Gazpacho is derived from a Mozarab word caspa, meaning “residue” or “fragments,” which refers to the small pieces of bread and vegetables in a Gazpacho soup. throughout the meal the gazpacho as an entity wil go through a series of fractured movements. This fracturing is not a means to disconnect, but rather as a process of extraction, distillation and isolation of distinct parts. The structure of the menu is an anagrammatical game or a rewinding (moving backwards in time to replay a track) while simultaneously moving forward without redundancy in form/texture/taste using to compositional terms (verse, refrain, notes, scale, etc….) to build a lexicon of culinary elements.

I quite like the visuals, architectural elements and references to language and pattern matching.

Of course, beyond the benefit dinner, we want people to attend the performances in July and support this artists!

Today we at CatSynth conclude our series from the recent Outsound Music Summit with my own report from the MultiVox program that featured Reconnaissance Fly, the Cornelius Cardew Choir, and Amy X Neuburg. We did feature a guest review by Joe McMahon last week, which covers the same show from an outside perspective. My own perspective is anything but outside, given that I was in two of the three groups performing at night.

This was a professional show, with formal load-ins, sound checks, and staging. Reconnaissance Fly features a full rhythm section, so we had a lot of equipment to set up:

[click image to enlarge]

On the left is Tim Walters’ bass and Macbook running SuperCollider. In the middle is Moe! Staiano’s drum set, and on the right is my own keyboard+electronics setup featuring the Nord Stage, the trusty Korg Kaoss Pad, and the little stuffed cat for good luck. Here is another perspective with more detail:

[click image to enlarge]

The Evolver was actually for the Cardew Choir, but I set up everything at once. One can also see Moe!’s toys and other support percussion instruments.

Onto the show itself. Here is the full band on stage, with myself, Polly Moller (flute/vocals), Tim Walters (bass), Moe! Staiano as our special guest “concussionist”.

[Photo by Michael Zelner.  Click image to enlarge.]

We performed a full nine-piece set from Flower Futures, our “spong cycle” featuring music set to spam poetry. The set now has an eclectic mix of styles, from experimental avant-garde to prog rock, along with latin and jazz influences. We as always with Small Chinese Gong and ended with An Empty Rectangle – we always like playing that last one, but it’s even better with Moe!’s drums! I particularly enjoyed playing the medley of Electric Rock Like a Cat and Sanse is Credenza – the end of the first piece, with free-improvisation on flute set against B-diminished chords, elides into an early 1970s jazz fusion jam on the same chord (think “Chameleon” from Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters album). This is a relatively high-energy and somewhat challenging piece, and while it was fun to play, it also felt good to then return to the relative calmness of Oh Goldfinch Cage, which featured samples of “human calls” for training birds to speak, with phrases like “Hello, how are you?” and “pretty bird”, processed with ring modulation and turntable effects.

[Photo by Bill Wolter.  Click image to enlarge.]

Overall, it was a great performance with a lot of energy. It’s easy to lose sight of that in the midst of playing, where one focuses on mistakes and challenges – personally, I forgot to check that patches for the Nord were all queued up at the start of the performance, and the heat from the lighting and large crowd added unexpected challenges. But it was received well by the audience (a full house), and it seemed like they were asking us for an encore!

The Cornelius Cardew Choir was a stark contrast to Reconnaissance Fly in terms of form and energy. Our first piece, Joe Zitt’s “That Alphabet Thing” was a cappella with a freeform structure. Basically, it unfolds by each singer intoning the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, starting with A and gradually working his or her way to Z. Everyone moves at a separate pace but mindful of others not to get too far ahead or behind, and there were a lot of fun moments of interplay among different choir members, such as back-and-forth with “Hi!” for H-I or “why?” for Y.

[Photo by Michael Zelner.  Click image to enlarge.]

We wear white lab coats.

This was followed by “El Morro” by choir director and co-founder Tom Bickley. The piece was inspired by a trip to the El Morro monument in New Mexico and featured the text from inscriptions on a rock spanning carved messages from two centuries of Spanish, Mexican and American passers by, soldiers as well as other travelers. Each of us had a set of inscriptions to recite on a single pitch per inscription, set against an electronic background of rocks, birds of prey and highly processed vocal incantations. This was a rather complex piece conceptually, though not difficult to perform. Because we were so involved in the performance and the conceptual nature, it is hard to know how it was received in the audience.

The set concluded with a performance of Polly Moller’s Genesis. We had seen a previous performance of Genesis at the Quickening Moon Concert. The previous performance was entirely instrumental. This time, the parts of the spatial and higher dimensions were voice. I performed part of “universal time”, using the sequencer on the Evolver as the time-keeper and performed various modulations of the tempo and timbre. Polly played the role of the “new universe” with a flute solo featuring multiphonics and other techniques. Tom Bickley conducted the piece by walking around the stage and carrying chimes.

[Photo by Michael Zelner.  Click image to enlarge.]

This was a very meditative performance, with the chimes, the flute multiphonics, the ever changing electronic rhythm and timbre, and the vocalists singing their respective dimension numbers in different languages.

The final set of the evening featured Amy X Neuburg. As always, her “avant cabaret” set was very polished and spoke well to both her technical expertise with her instruments and her versatility as a performer. She employs several styles of singing, often in a single piece, moving from classical to cabaret/jazz to experimental vocalizations. Her synchronization with looping electronics is very tight, seemlessly adding and subtracting samples and recordings within the rhythms and phrasings of the song.

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There were pieces familiar from past performances, such as “Life Stepped In” where she deftly mixes looping technology and theatrical vocals. She also did a few improvisational pieces, the first of which featured the Blippo Box. This is an instrument with chaotic oscillators that never quite sounds the same twice, but she always manages to control it quite well – in this performance she made it sound like a voice, to which she responded with her own voice. She also performed an improvisation with a Skatch Box which she made at the “build your own Skatch Box” presentation earlier in the week (and which I unfortunately missed). It’s hard to make a skatch box sound like a voice, but she could make her voice sound like the growls and scrapes that it produced.

[Photo by Michael Zelner.  Click image to enlarge.]

She ended her set with a tribute to Kim Flint, who was very active in the looping and electronic-music communities, and the founder of Loopers Delight, and who passed away after a tragic accident in Berkeley in June. He was someone I knew as well from both music and social events. Amy’s tribute was a performance of the first piece she ever created using the Echoplex, which he co-invented.

We resume our reports from the 2010 Outsound Music Summit after a brief break. In this article I review the last night of the festival, titled “SoundScapes” and featured musicians whose music focuses on noise and sound textures. While this is often from electronic sound sources such as effects pedals or DIY synthesizers, many were from acoustic sources such as metal objects or conventional instruments like piano.

The evening was framed by the theatrical announcements of the artists by guest emcee Cy Thoth, a regular DJ on KFJC 89.7 FM.

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The concert began with Phog Masheeen, a trio featuring Mark Soden, Jr, Dr. Francene Laplan and William Almas. They presented a single large-scale work for electronic and acoustic sound plus video called “Anthroscopic Tourism.” I was not quite sure how the medical term “anthroscopic” related to the sounds and images in the piece, which focused on the interplay of Kaplan’s pots and pans set against electronic sounds and loops and Soden’s electronically enhanced performance on trumpet and a large pipe from a Yamaha motorcycle. Soden had demonstrated some of the techniques he was using with the trumpet during the Touch the Gear event. But he added to the the performance techniques Soden used with his instruments rubbing dry ice against them. As most readers know, dry ice is extremely cold (and difficult to handle); and this it can have a strong effect on the shape and behavior of metal tubes. At one point, he smashed a block of dry ice before picking up pieces to use. He also had a blowtorch. The music often involved loops (sample based or otherwise) against which Kaplan played rhythms and timbres on the pots and pans – this was offset by the more freeform sections with Soden’s trumpet and pipe. Almas’ visuals included a variety of urban and industrial scenes, text, and footage of old musicians, which were mixed with live video of Soden’s performance.

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Next up was Headboggle (aka Derek Gedalecia). The tone was set from the beginning both in terms of sound and slapstick comedy by his stepping on bubble wrap that happened to be placed behind the table with his electronics, and then slipping on the way to the grand piano. Actually, the comedic timing of his various slips, slides, tripping over his own feet and double-takes was expertly done, as in an old silent film or Vaudeville act. There was a bit of a scare for several of us in the audience when it appeared he had broken the bench of the piano, but I was assured this was all part of the act, this particular bench was found broken, and that no pianos were actually harmed in the making of this performance. Musically, he combined chaotic oscillators from Ciat Lombarde synthesizer – a reminder to finally put together my Ciat Lombarde kit – with classical and ragtime piano phrases, loops and deep bass sounds from a Micromoog. The piano and electronics are of course quite contrasting, but every so often the sounds and phrases (and physical humor) converged quite well.

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Headboggle was followed by Kadet Kuhne, who presented video and live-music piece Fight or Flight, described by our emcee Cy Thoth as “space madness.” In fact, it was a very polished live electronic performance, very dark and ambient (although interestingly Kadet Kuhne talked in the pre-concert Q&A session about her desire to perform “lighter” ambient music). It began with low frequency sounds and a rumbling buzz, and included doors opening and closing and various sounds of machinery, with electric hums, blips and glitches. It was quite captivating and easy to get lost in. At one point, arpeggios and then beats emerged from the combination of noise percussion and more harmonic sounds, which got progressively louder as the piece built up to a climax and then faded to nothingness. The music was set against a video that focused entirely on a cloth-encased figure suspended in mid-air. It wasn’t clear at first whether this was a cloth figure or an actual person, though as the video progressed it became clear that it was the latter. The frequent shot and angle changes gave the video a glitchy quality which matched many of the electronic sounds in the music.

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The final set featured Chen Santa Maria, the duo of Steve Santa Maria and George Chen. Both members of the group played electric guitar and a variety of electronic effects. The set began with a guitar drone set against high squeaking humming sounds. These sounds were soon joined by full guitar chords with heavy distortion and undulating raspy sounds from synthesizers or effects units. There were bursts of noise distortion and high shrieking. This was definitely a loud set. But there were still details to listen to (with appropriate ear protection). The harmonic patterns of the distorted guitars created rhythms, which was set against a more formal triplet rhythm from the electronic sound sources. This rhythmic pattern essentially continued for the remainder of the set, with periods of driving guitar, bursts of noise and more high shrieking tones which then decayed into a low rumbling noise. As the set drew to a close, the sounds became more “digital” with lots of blips and choppy sounds, but then this was replaced by a loud square wave. The square wave started out at a moderate pitch, but got lower and lower until it became a series of audibly distinct pulses, and then came to an abrupt stop.

Although this was the last performance of the festival, I will be presenting one more article, where I return to the MultiVox night which included my own performance with Reconnaissance Fly and the Cornelius Cardew Choir…

[While I work on the reviews for the Friday and Saturday shows at the Outsound Music Summit, we have a guest review from Joe McMahon, ambient music/soundscapes - pemungkah.com. Given that I was a performer in two groups on Friday, his review provides an interesting outside perspective.]

Friday at Outsound: Reconnaissance Fly, Cornelius Cardew Choir, Amy X Neuburg

An interesting evening of word (and other vocalization) related music. Reconnaissance Fly led off with their songs based on “spam poetry” – the sometimes strangely numinous texts randomly generated to try to evade spam filters. RF can, and does, play in a massive variety of styles, from samba and tango through pop, prog rock, and jazz, all the way to full-on avante-garde improv. These wildly disparate styles and surreal text are combined in pop song structures into catchily mind-bending conceptual smoothies. It appeared that the audience was ready for an encore, but time was short. The piece which included what seemed to be samples from a “teach your bird to talk” record and Polly Moller’s exceptional flute multiphonics and extended techniques was particularly fascinating, and Moe!’s drumming lent serious propulsion and quirky humor as well.

The Cornelius Cardew Choir did three pieces: the first was based on the alphabet and reminded me a bit of “In C”, as the choir started at “A”, both reciting the letters and making their sounds, the individual members determining the speed at which they moved through the alphabet. Charming and fun. The second piece was based on rock inscriptions; very dense and almost surflike; I had a little trouble spotting a structure in this one, but that’s probably more the result of a long day on my part. The last piece added electronics and flute; a very evocative, ritualistic piece – fascinating textures and quite wonderful.

Last on the bill was Amy X Neuburg, who wowed the crowd as always, performing, among others, several pieces from her _Residue_ album; her performances of these have evolved interestingly. In addition, she improvised a new piece on the spot using her Blippo Box and her just-built Scatchbox, and a tribute to Kim Flint the late founder of the Looper’s Delight mailing list.

A very enjoyable evening; looking forward to hearing more from all the performers.

This week has all been about the Outsound Summit, either attending programs or rehearsals, including two rehearsals for Reconnaissance Fly and one for the Cornelius Cardew Choir.

For Reconnaissance Fly, We now have our full Flower Futures set:

1. Small Chinese Gong
2. One Should Never
3. Neat As Wax
4. Emir Scamp Budge
5. Seemed to be Divided in Twain
6. Electric Rock Like a Cat
7. Sanse is Credenza
8. Oh! Goldfinch cage
9. An Empty Rectangle

There is actually a tenth movement, but we had to leave it out of this performance for timing reasons. One of the pieces, “Electric Rock Like a Cat”, was first premiered on KFJC last weekend. And three others are brand new that we only read and rehearsed in the past week. This included a final rehearsal last night. Sadly, it means I was not able to attend last night’s performance, but the extra rehearsal time paid off and I think we are going to play a great set tonight!

Technologically, things are relatively simple compared to the solo shows like the Quickening Moon Concert. I will primarily be using a Nord Stage keyboard for classic Fender Rhodes and organ models and acoustic piano, with support from the Korg Kaoss pad on several pieces and a loop/sample playback application on the iPhone. Tim Walters will be using SuperCollider for signal processing alongside bass guitar. Moe! Staiano will probably have toy instruments along with his drum set. We don’t have any live processing of Polly Moller’s flute or vocals in this particular set. I like the way our music has evolved to require less feats of technology and more musicianship.

For the Cardew Choir, I will be performing the role of “Universal Time” in Polly Moller’s Genesis using a combination of “space like” and “drum like” patches on the DSI Evolver. Other than that, the set is all vocals.

For those in the Bay Area who would like to attend, the show is 8PM at the Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street in San Francisco. You can get full schedule and ticking info here.