Rarebit

by Steve Barsotti and Eric Leonardson

Transparency CD0125

Performed and recorded with Steve Barsotti at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. From 1994 until 1999 we performed as a duo, and with other local and internationally known artists, including Dan Burke (Illusion of Safety), Carol Genetti, Fergus Kelly, Tatsu Aoki, Chris Heenan, Yuko Nexus6, Yasuhiro Otani, Satoru Wono, Claude Wiley, and many more.

Description:

Rarebit is the culmination of a four-year project in electroacoustic music by sound artists and instrument inventors Steve Barsotti and Eric Leonardson. Their self-built instruments produce remarkable sounds that belie their humble origin. Barsotti and Leonardson’s sense of musical form arises from their deep attention to the individual essences of sounds, rather than the conventional grid of harmony and meter. What results is abstract sound composition that possesses a communicative style. Rarebit will draw comparisons to the sound palettes and ethereal soundscapes of such intrepid purveyors of “left field” and exploratory music as Hal Rammel, Hugh Davies, and Bob Rutman. Nine tracks. Running time 72 minutes.

Rarebit can be purchased from Transparency for $15 ($12 plus $3 postage) to meridianavenue@yahoo.com via PayPal.

Listen to the first Chicago Phonographers’ performance at Brown Rice via WAV stream or download the MP3 file. Available now, thanks to Joshua Manchester on this web page www.joshuamanchester.com/ChiPhon.html

7:30 p.m., Sunday I perform with Auris (Christopher Preissing and Julia Miller) in the…

Guitar Faculty Recital of
Jazz, Folk, & Contemporary Guitar at
Music Institute of Chicago
Evanston Campus & Nichols Concert Hall
1490 Chicago Avenue
Evanston, IL 60201
(847) 905-1500
www.musicinstituteofchicago.org/
Admission: Free

Directions: MIC is located at the southwest corner of Grove St. and Chicago Ave., across from Raymond Park (Davis stop on the el and Metra). View Map

Chicago Phonography with Todd Carter, Chad Clark, Chris Hammes, Michael Hartmann, Eric Leonardson, Joshua Manchester, Robert Pleshar, Patrick Scott, Aaron Zarzutzki, and Philip von Zweck.

Brown Rice

4432 N Kedzie Ave
Chicago IL 60625
www.brownricemusic.org

9:00 p.m. (Doors open 30 minutes before show)
$6 suggested donation, $4 for students

Directions: Brown Rice is small storefront located a half block north of the Montrose-Kedzie intersection, a few blocks south of the Kedzie station on the CTA Brown Line. There is a small sign over the entrance that reads “Perfect”. View Map.

Background: Initiated by Chad Clark through the chi-improv Yahoo! Group, Chicago Phonography is a way to gather people interested in producing and broadcasting unprocessed field recordings (made in and around Chicago) as an ensemble in a context of live improvisation. This group has never performed together before and is inspired, in part, by the Seattle Phonographers’ Union.

Choice quote: “nature performs and we provide the secretarial services”—R. Murray Schafer

On Friday, May 2 SAIC’s Waveforms presented videos and performances by students from the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Gretchen Hasse from Gearwire came and interviewed many of the students in my Instrument Construction course, who opened the evening with an ensemble performance on their new instruments.

The video interviews are being completed now, and the first one up in the series is with Jenna Caravello, who worked all semester on her original acoustic instrument, the Celloharp. As you might guess from its name, this is a hybrid instrument. Jenna’s persistence and resilience in the face of so many kinds of challenges during its design and construction earns my respect and admiration.

The second video is an interview with Chris Burke who took Shawn Decker’s Programming For Sound course this spring. Chris dug deep into Max/MSP and Jitter software, and Ed Bennett’s ArtBus card, to come up with the Interactopus, a hardware interface for the real-time control of sound and video housed inside a warm, flexible fabric body.

Please visit this web page again and soon, as I announce more of Gretchen’s interviews with some of my outstanding student artists and their wonderful instruments.