I perform in the GBO: Homelistening series with Carol Genetti (voice), Friday, June 19 at…

Carol and I have been performing together since 1997. Our first CD, Animus was released in 1998, and is perhaps unique for its use of voice and Springboard, an invented instrument that employs coil springs, rubber bands, bowed wood in order to produce a surprising range of timbres and microtones.

About Carol Genetti:

Carol Genetti is a vocalist, composer and installation artist. Her work is focused on the interplay between the voice as an expressive musical instrument and its extension into the sound-making realm. She has studied a variety of techniques including Western singing, Hindustani classical voice and Bulgarian folk music. Through these studies and her own explorations, she has developed a personal yet universal palette that is an abstraction of “extended” voice sounds - breaths, overtones, and disconnected textual bits, squeaks, growls, non-verbal tones - sounds that evoke unconscious emotions and human physicality.
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I have been invited to speak about the World Listening Project at the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology (CASE)’s 4th International Soundscape Retreat & Symposium: Negotiating Space/Place In the Changing Soundscape. It happens on Gabriola Island, British Columbia from June 12-14. Hildegard Westerkamp, Barry Truax, Charlie Fox, and Eric Powell are also speaking. I will also play my work in the soundscape concert to be held on Saturday, June 13.

For full details please visit www.acousticecology.ca.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 - 6:30pm
SAIC Ballroom, 112 S. Michigan Avenue
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

I perform with Global Warming featuring Elbio Barilari (guitar), Guillermo Gregorio(clarinet), Jeb Bishop (trombone), and Eric Hochberg (double bass), to celebrate the Poetry Center’s 36th Annual Reading Series.

Distinguished authors Stuart Dybek and Yusef Komunyakaa will read their work along with emerging artists Rachel Webster and the winners of the Poetry Center’s Hands on Stanzas Student Inaugural Poem Contest.

For more information about tickets and the contest visit http://poetrycenter.org

2—5 PM, SUNDAY May 3, 2009
NEW MUSIC at the legendary GREEN MILL

curated by Julia Miller

This afternoon I perform (on springboard) in Julia Miller’s microtonal composition for many notes or many players.

Green Mill Jazz Club
4802 N. Broadway Ave.
Chicago, IL 60640

773-878-5552

www.greenmilljazz.com

Admission: $5

Julia wrote (4/29/09):

I’m really happy to announce that we now have a blog!!!

www.newmusicgm.blogspot.com (more…)

The World Listening Project and Locus Sonus are collaborating to populate the Locustream Map at http://nujus.net/~locusonus/site/streams/map/

You are invited to particpate. How-to info is provided here:  http://locusonus.org/w/index.php?page=Locustream+Participation

Two events using the Locustream are underway in Hong Kong, from April 26th to May 3rd, and then in Paris, from May 14th to 20th.

More info about…

…World Listening Project: http://www.worldlisteningproject.org

…Locus Sonus:  http://locusonus.org/

My stream is Locustream @ chicago_westside.ogg

Even if you don’t care to open a web-mic, you can still visit and listen to the open web-mic streams.

10 a.m.–6 p.m. Monday, April 20

Listening to Our Planet is a daylong event that celebrates the Earth and its natural beauty and resources. This multi-disciplinary event is a part of Columbia College’s Critical Encounters Earth Week 2009 program, organized under the theme of “Human / Nature”.

Listening to Our Planet will showcase art works by individuals and community groups, including the World Listening Project and the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology. Participating departments and programs include the Columbia College English Department and New Millennium Studies program. Raquel Castro’s film, Soundwalkers will be screened, and I will be having a conversation with world renowned author of Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World, and nature sound recordist Bernie Krause.

Listening to Our Planet is free and open to the public.

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Plasticene performs The Gist presented as part of Collaboraction’s 9th Annual SKETCHBOOK Festival, April 16 - May 10

The Building Stage

412 N Carpenter

Chicago, IL

Link for showtimes.

Directed by Mark Comiskey
Created and performed by
Laura Fisher, Michael Macias,
& Brian Shaw
Sound by Eric Leonardson

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8:00 p.m., Saturday March 28

I perform at Enemy with Daniel Fishkin, daxophone player extraordinaire. The Green Pasture Happiness will open: Aaron Zarzutzki (no-output turntable), Daniel Fandiño (electronics), and Brian Labycz (electronics).

Daniel Fishkin has built and played daxophones of all shapes and sizes since 2004. Daxophone: a flat piece of wood, anchored at one end, and played with a bow.  This German idiophone, invented in 1987 by Hans Reichel, sounds anywhere between a violin or baby.  Live looping can elevate this monophonic instrument into a badger’s choir, or perhaps evoke the mating rituals of the musk-elk.  Daniel’s current interests include improvisation, transformation, Goethe’s Faust, and narrative song-form.

I will perform on Springboard, which has its own crude form of daxophone built into it, along with a variety of coil springs and other readily available materials that have been noted for their remarkable sounds.

Dan’s MySpace profile: www.myspace.com/dandelionfiction

Hans Reichel’s website: www.daxo.de

The Green Pasture Happiness… “is predatory, smarmy, and slaphappy. those who get hypnotized by its dialectic approach to the history of music do not hear what it is really saying. they sincerely believe that the cure for evil is more evil. their violent, tendentious campaigns of malice and malignity are to improvisation what the blitzkrieg was to international diplomacy, by which I mean that they like forcing one to fall into the trap of thinking that all musical literature that opposes diabolism was forged by resentful, unambitious bludgers.”

7:30 p.m., Monday March 30

I perform at Myopic Books with Aaron Zarzutski (objects) and Guillermo Gregorio (reeds)

Plasticene performs in the Objects in Motion Festival, a three week festival of puppetry, toy-theater, and object-based performance opening Saturday, March 14, 2009, at The Building Stage: www.buildingstage.com.

We’ve taken some explorations and put them into a 17-minute low-tech chamber-piece called Light Cycle (featured in Program A) , performed by Mark Comiskey, Brian Shaw, and Laura Fisher, directed by Dexter Bullard, with me providing sound.

Our appearance is shared on Program A with B-LO, Joe Mazza, Sid Yiddish, and Renata Sheppard, plus a weekly featured artist. Currently, we are scheduled to perform on these dates/times:

Saturday, March 14 at 8:00
Thursday, March 19 at 8:00
Saturday, March 21 at 8:00
Thursday, March 26 at 8:00
Saturday, March 28 at 8:00
Thursday, April 2 at 8:00
Saturday, April 4 at 7:00

Visit www.buildingstage.com for tickets, schedule, and information.

Next month there will be another sketch-style piece directed by Mark Comiskey involving video/live interaction appearing at Collaboraction’s 9th Annual Sketchbook Festival: collaboraction.org

Map

I composed music for the world premiere production of Darren Callahan’s The White Airplane, directed by Susan Padveen and performed by the Polarity Ensemble Theatre.The White Airplane will run February 13 - March 22, 2009 at Polarity’s new space in the Josephinum Academy, 1500 N. Bell, Chicago.

Call 1-800-838-3006 for tickets. Join us for opening night, Monday February 16th!

Here is a download link to one song I composed (the link will expire in 14 days).

My compostion includes music created with Anna Friz (melodica, accordion, electronics) in Chicago, June 2008.

Read The White Airplane Reviews

Watch the trailer:
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