Dec.2 @ Robinwood Concert House
2564 Robinwood
$5 donation 9pm
Woody Sullender+Seamus Cater
Pendulum (Randall Hall+ Jonathon Kirk)
Seamus Cater and Woody Sullender
Woody Sullender is an artist currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Over the past decade, Sullender has emerged as a pre-eminent experimental banjo performer, playing with and against the cultural baggage of the instrument. While alluding to the "traditional" musics of his home states of Virginia and North Carolina, he explores a diverse plane of plucked string music from around the world as well as incorporating punk, noise, free jazz, etc..
With technical advising from STEIM, Sullender has been developing an electro-acoustic banjo. Various parameters of computer synthesis and processing algorithms are controlled by sensors on the instrument. The computer-based audio is output to a transducer within the banjo (basically turning the banjo itself into a speaker).
More recent work focuses on "erasing" existing known audio, by removing most of the frequencies from a recording via band-pass filters. This has manifested in a range of media from a lathe-cut record of an erased "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to an FM broadcast of erased radio stations.
Previously, he has worked with pioneering electronic composers such as Pauline Oliveros and Maryanne Amacher (incorporating his banjo recordings into Amacher's "TEO! A sonic sculpture" which won the Golden Nica prize at the 2005 Ars Electronica festival).
http://www.deadceo.com/unclewoody/
Seamus Cater is an English musician / composer / performer, living and working in the Netherlands. He studied music and performance at Dartington College of Arts and The University of Salford where he specialised in harmonica and composition.
Through jazz and more experimental forms of music his harmonica style has crystallised into a sonic exploration of an instrument with enormous limitations of expression and identity. He mostly retunes all instruments, often using just intonation, making music which is concerned with breath and the overtone series. A current important collaboration is with the avant garde NYC banjo player Woody Sullender.
In January 2009 he began making performances for narrating voice, song, piano and harmonica, etc. The first, 'for Alexis'2009, was a solo which dealt with the story of the 19th century French Canadian athlete Alexis the Trotter. These performances go under the moniker Anecdotal Music, a series Seamus started at DNK Amsterdam. Anecdotal Music performances are open in terms of form, expressing some kind of story or history using text and music. His second performance in this series, 'The Folk Music, the Whale and the Sea', loosely connected fiction and history of the 18th century whaling trade, using folk and improvised music structures in a trio with Viljam Nybacka and Fritz Welch.
As a songwriter, Seamus is continuing to write and perform a growing series of biographical songs of artists and athletes. He works solo and frequently with the Finnish musician Viljam Nybacka, inviting other performers from the improvised music world to add to the sonic tapestry of what are essentially simple pop songs. Much of this new music has a relationship to the British folk music revival of the 1950's, without in any way trying to recreate it; Seamus' father is an English folk singer active since the 1960's.
Seamus has produced numerous works for film, dance and theatre and is a programmer and organiser of the highly thought of concert series DNK Amsterdam.
CHECK OUT THIS VIDEO!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiZezLqcZSY
Randall Hall is a leading interpreter of contemporary music for saxophone. His performances of new music range from the contemplative to the ferocious, and feature his mastery of extended techniques, most notably his formidable slap tongue, cutting edgeelectronics and white-hot improvisations. Innova Recordings describes his music as "high-octane, supercharged sax". In addition to his solo concerts he regularly performs in the contemporary improvisation duoPendulum. Hall is also a distinguished interpreter of traditional concert music.
Internationally active as a performer and clinician, Hall has given concerts and solo performances throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He has given lectures and master-classes on aesthetic and technical issues of new music at institutions around the world, including Harvard University, Cornell University, the Eastman School of Music, New England Conservatory, the Luxembourg Conservatory and the World Saxophone Congress. Dedicated to the continued development of new music and saxophone repertoire, Randall Hall collaborates closely with composers and has premiered pieces by James R. Carlson, Kevin Ernste, Figure, Stephen Gorbos, Jing-Jing Luo, Colin J. P. Homiski, Jonathon Kirk, Christian Lauba, Nicolas Scherzinger, Mary Stiles, and Paul Swenson.
Randall Hall is the recipient of numerous honors including a Fulbright Grant, Frank Huntington Beebe Grant, Presser Music Award and the Premier prix in the Concour Région Ile-de-France. He studied saxophone with Claude Delangle, Jean-Yves Fourmeau, Jean-Michel Goury, Kenneth Radnofsky, and Ramon Ricker. Dr. Hall holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (DMA), the New England Conservatory (MM), the Conservatoire National de Région de Boulogne-Billancourt, France (Premier prix) and Warner Pacific College (BS). He is Assistant Professor of music at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, where he teaches saxophone, improvisation, music theory and liberal studies.
Jonathon Kirk is a chicago-based composer and teacher active in many areas of new music, improvisation, electronic music, multimedia, sound art, installation, and music theory. he is currently assistant professor of music composition and theory at north central college in naperville, illinois. his work has recently been shown or heard at the tate modern in london, the london international animation festival, the melbourne international animation festival, weisman museum of art in minneapolis, the los angeles short film festival, the courtisane festival in brussels, belgium, the boston cyberarts festival, visual music marathon, listening in the sound kitchen, icmc, nime, ZKM center for art and media in karlsruhe , germany, and spark festival. in late 2009 he was an artist-in-residence at the petrified forest national park in arizona.
his works have been performed by many international musicians and he continues to compose both acoustic and electronic works for a wide variety of ensembles and soloists, including the harvard collegium musicum, the millennium chamber players, and members of alarm will sound. in 2000 and 2001 he received a grant from the belgian government to be in residence at the logos foundation for experimental music in gent, belgium where he worked with godfried willem-raes and collaborated with thomas smetryns, brent wetters, joann cho, and heleen van haegenborgh.
he also works closely with composer and sound artist lee weisert on several sound projects and installations; most recently the argus project, an environmental sound installation involving underwater recording, laser modulation, and real-time processing of natural sounds with a multichannel outdoor speaker array. his research includes desert and natural soundscapes and otoacoustic emissions. he studied at the eastman school of music, augustana, brown university, and recieved his doctorate at northwestern university. he is a member of the duo pendulum with randall hall, the tomorrow music orchestra of chicago and the chicago-based post-rock ensemble, maurice. his works have been recorded on innova records, medusa records, and ears and eyes records.