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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PLASTICENE 13th ANNUAL PHYSICAL THEATER INTENSIVE: JUNE 13—18, 2009

When:

• Saturday 6/13 1-5 pm
• Sunday 6/14 1-5 pm
• Monday 6/15 6:15-10:00 pm
• Tuesday 6/16 6:15-10:00 pm
• Wednesday 6/17 6:15-10:00 pm
• Thursday 6/18 6:15-10:00 pm

Where: UIC Studio Theater, 1044 W. Harrison Street, Chicago

Fee: $195 early registration (before 5/26) $225 thereafter. Send a check and contact info to Plasticene, 1849 N. Damen Avenue #1, Chicago IL 60647

What: 24 hours of physical theater training, improvisation, and creation for anyone who wants to move, innovate, develop, and play…

Plasticene offers one of the best and most challenging workshops of the summer! Plasticene’s Intensive is a great way to get physical with one of Chicago’s most critically-acclaimed experimental theater companies. This exciting and  challenging workshop emphasizes acting and theater founded in the body,  space, and objects. Plasticene’s work has gained city-wide recognition as one of the most innovative opportunities to gain heightened awareness of themselves and the use of space and the body in theater.

The Intensive is a perfect introduction to the tools and process used to develop Plasticene performances. The process is a mixture of diverse techniques and experiments  from many traditions including yoga, corporal mime, Boal, Grotowski, Zaporah, object work, and contact improvisation. This session builds links from physical control to spatial awareness to contact improvisation to object encounters and culminates in group creation.  Each day includes a warm-up, technique and improvisation. Live, improvised music accompanies three classes.

No previous training is necessary—degree of difficulty can be determined by each participant.  Various company members teach throughout.  You may register if you have to miss one session, but no more than one.

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)

This 8-minute video excerpt has just posted today, from last Saturday’s performance I played in with John Berndt (from Baltimore – electronics), Asimina Chremos (movement), Jim Baker (viola), and Carol Genetti (voice) at Silverspace, in Wicker Park.

On Friday, December 5 Jérôme Joy played “Sobralasolas! Episode 1” on Free Radio SAIC. This 80-minute radio-opera was created in collaboration with Dinahbird, Caroline Bouissou, Björn Eriksson, Kaffe Matthews, and Gregory Whitehead. Afterward, I joined Jérôme for a wonderful 30-minute performance on my Springboard. Jérôme played lapotop. This programs ran for two hours. Listen here on the Free Radio SAIC archives: http://freeradiosaic.org/radio/archives/125/

“Sobralasolas! Episode 1” is to be released soon as a CD on Avatar.

The Chicago Phonography broadcast on Philip von Zweck’s Something Else radio program, performed live on August 3rd, 2008, has just been posted in it’s entirety on archive.org. Listen to it here:

Chicago Phonography is a loose collective of artists interested in promoting creative activity in listening by producing and broadcasting unprocessed field recordings as an ensemble in a context of live improvisation. Motivated by the maxim “nature performs and we provide the secretarial services” (R. Murray Schafer The Tuning of the World). This is a four-hour continuous performance by Chicago Phonography broadcasted live from WLUW 88.7 Independent Community Radio studios for the experimental music program Something Else hosted by Philip Von Zweck.

Performing on this evening were Todd Carter, Chad Clark, Chris Hammes, Eric Leonardson, Joshua Manchester, Patrick Scott, and Aaron Zarzutzki.

I have six performances scheduled for October and November, with more being planned. Three happen in the Third Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival (CCAF3), presented in various locations from October 1—12. Look further down for my other three post-CCAF shows held at Enemy, Myopic, and Elastic. Please check the CCAF3 Schedule page and this web page in case of last-minute schedule changes. (more…)

At 2:30 on Sunday afternoon, September 28, I will give a short performance on Monica Herrera’s Strings, her sculptural sound installation at the Hyde Park Arts Center (HPAC):
http://www.hydeparkart.org/exhibitions/2008/07/strings_by_monica_hererra.php

2:00-5:00 p.m., admission FREE, Asian food provided.

Monica Herrera is a recent graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA 2008). My performance is one of many in the Chicago Artists Month Opening Celebration at HPAC.

Over the weekend there will be a mix of exhibitions and free performances to kick off Chicago Artists Month, including a concert by the Black Monks of Mississippi, portrait drawings by Dale Washington, Butoh dance by Nicole LeGette, and free outdoor concerts by Fred Anderson, Corey Wilkes and Kahil El’Zabar as part of the 2nd Annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival.

Concluding a busy month of performances, Los Cuatros Demonios opens for Terry Dame’s Electric Junkyard Gamelan, a band from New York who perform original music on invented instruments.

7:00 p.m., Sunday, August 24 at ELASTIC Arts Foundation

Los Cuatros Demonios is Tomeka Reid (cello), Carol Genetti (voice), Guillermo Gregorio (clarinet), Eric Leonardson (springboard), and Dan Godston (trumpet, percussion)

Related links:

http://www.elasticrevolution.com/

http://www.myspace.com/electricjunkyardgamelan

http://www.myspace.com/cellomama

http://www.carolgenetti.net

http://www.myspace.com/dangodstonmusic

http://www.myspace.com/ericleonardson

Eric Glick Rieman, from Berkeley with his prepared Rhodes piano, will be performing with me this Friday, 8:00 p.m. at the AV-aerie, 2000 W. Fulton Street, Chicago, IL 60612, (312) 850-4030. $8 suggested donation.

This show is a double bill with The Young Equestrians from Brooklyn.

(If you know you can attend, please send me a message. Thanks to the
grief that the City of Chicago has given the folks at the AV-Aerie about
a license, they must promise this is a private party.)