Live performances, in a room, together with an audience. What a concept!
October 5-7 dates with Blood Luxury, Rube Waddell, and Bryan Jacobs
I’m writing to let you know about a short Mid-Atlantic tour with old friends and new. Guitar/electronics ace Bryan Jacobs and I are playing improvised electronic music together, sharing a bill with NYC violin/percussion duo Blood Luxury and Potsdam/Philly guitar/modular synth duo Rube Waddell.
The dates:
Wednesday, October 5, 8 pm: 2640 Space, 2640 St. Paul St., Baltimore MD
Thursday, October 6, 7 pm: Rhizome DC, 6950 Maple St NW, Washington DC
Friday, October 7, 8 pm: Caplan Recital Hall (Terra Hall 17th floor), 211 S Broad St, Philadelphia PA
Bryan and I have found ways to merge our respective styles into a continuous river of sound, to mesmerizing effect. And I’m very much looking forward to hearing Erica, Dennis, Paul, and Jerod rip it up three nights in a row. It’ll be a noisy good time - please join us!
At the workbench
I mentioned last time that I was working on something new - so it’s time to reveal The Algorithm, an upcoming piece for Network for New Music.
The Algorithm continues in the line of structured improvisation pieces I made for Minor Vices, a Milwaukee-based ensemble of improvisers I led from 2012-2015. The goal of Minor Vices’ repertoire was to find a particular sweet-spot in between composition and improvisation: music with a clear authorial signature (something with a stronger, more repeatable identity than “let’s jam”), but also work in which the performers could focus on listening, communicating, and improvising (rather than a “heads-down” focus on reading and executing a score). Unconventional approaches to scoring, ensemble coordination, and music-making were par for the course: Minor Vices projects embraced haiku, flowcharts, decks of cards, hand signals, and computer-controlled lighting.
The wrinkle with The Algorithm is that it isn’t a score - instead, it’s a piece of software which generates scores. Which means that every rehearsal, every run-through, every performance can start from a unique combination of textual and graphical prompts. There’s a point here about how algorithms are now inextricably entwined in many aspects of our lives (hence the somewhat portentous title). But there’s also an opportunity for the software to invite (or perhaps provoke) new and imaginative responses from the musicians with each playing, and to envision new and more humane forms of collaboration with technology.
It’s also given me the chance to spend time teaching software to make sound-inspiring graphics - which is very much my idea of an interesting pursuit, not to mention fun. Here’s just one example:
Network for New Music will premiere The Algorithm on February 26, 2023, with a repeat performance on the 27th.
Continuing projects
The LV2MKRT podcast (made in collaboration with double bassist Scott Worthington) rolls on weekly, and while the episode titles only grow more ridiculous (this week’s edition is “Pastrification,” continuing our long-running obsession with carbohydrates), the music gets sharper and sharper. If you haven’t tuned in recently, now’s a great time for a listen.
And while J. Soliday and I have been enjoying a break since our late-July record release show, there’s a heap of neural goldberg available for your delectation (not to mention some newer recordings that may eventually crawl forward into the light of day).
Nonce
Cartoonist John Granzow offers advice for improving your mixes. Thanks as always for reading, and hope to see you October 5-7 -
yours,
Christopher
Christopher Burns
http://sfsound.org/~cburns