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the long and short of it string festival at the issue project room new york 6-7 March 2010. curated by david watson and jon rose |
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A mini festival of strings in all sizes, shapes and uses. It's been 10 years since violinist, improviser, composer and instrument builder maverick Jon Rose was in New York. With 4 decades of doing everything imaginable on, with, and about violins, he will be bringing his most known and extensive project to town - The Great fences. To most people, the 3,500 mile Dingo Fence that sprawls across Australia is just that - a fence. But to Jon Rose it is the world's longest string instrument and he's played most sections of it. In 2009 The Kronos String Quartet commissioned Rose for their very own fence piece based on the standard 5-wire outback fence - Music from 4 Fences. Rose has also played fences in cold war Germany, Finland, France, the Mexico/USA border fence, and even the Israel/Palestine separation fence. Apart from the subtleties of barbed wire, there will be a celebration of many string types and lengths - from ukulele, to harp, to tenor violin, to cello, to double bass, to electric guitar, to koto - with some of the finest players around New York. All this packed into two days at The Issue Project Room 6-7 March 2010. Zeena Parkins / jon rose Duo - electric harp and violin: Multi-instrumentalist, composer, improvisor, well-known as a pioneer of the electric harp she describes her harp as a "sound machine of limitless capacity". Zeena's unique vision is one that seeks to both meld and highlight opposites. She has broken musical boundaries to create a highly personal and stunning body of work. Or, to quote the WDC, "Music that makes you hike up your britches and howl like a coyote". She may also be the noisiest harpist this side of the pearly gates. Ne(x)tworks String Quartet: Cornelius Dufallo and Christopher Otto, violins; Kenji Bunch, viola; Yves Dharamraj, cello; This quartet specializes in the hard listening on hard seats brand of new music, and for this outing they will be playing excerpts from the classic, monumental and staggeringly beautiful Morton Feldman String Quartet no. 2 Roger Kleier - guitar: Roger is a composer, guitarist, and improviser whose compositional work involves the development of a broader vocabulary for the electric guitar through the use of extended techniques and digital sound manipulation. His three solo CDs are KlangenBang, released on the Rift label, Deep Night, Deep Autumn released by the Starkland label, and The Night Has Many Hours on the Innova label. He has formed a quartet called El Pocho Loco dedicated to guitar instrumentals that features keyboardist Annie Gosfield, bassist Trevor Dunn, and drummer Ches Smith. Jon Rose - The Issue Project Fence: more on fence projects here. Hans Tamnen - Endangered Guitar: Hans creates music that has been described as an alien world of bizarre textures and a journey through the land of unending sonic operations. He discovers hidden sound properties through means of his modified ENDANGERED GUITAR, interactive software programming, stereo and multichannel sound systems, and by working with the room itself. Signal To Noise called his works "a killer tour de force of post-everything guitar damage", All Music Guide recommended him: "clearly one of the best experimental guitarists to come forward during the 1990s." Kenta Nagai - solo shamisen: Nagai began his NYC career as a fretless guitarist playing on the streets, in subway stations and at clubs. His most recent compositional work Long, Long, Long is an ensemble piece for traditional Asian instruments. It was presented at Roulette, in NYC, in October 2006. Nagai's fretless guitar playing is featured on Eugene Chadborne's album Guitar Festival Summer 1999 with Sonic Youth members Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo and Jim O'Rourke plus Joe Morris, Lauren Mazzacane Connors, David Watson and others. Nagai has appeared in numerous concerts at venues including Sculpture Center in Long Island City and Carnegie Hall. Gowanus Bass Quartet: Featuring the remarkable Reuben Radding, Garth Stevenson, Sean Conly, and Stephan Crump. Their sounds, like their instruments, resemble a cluster of trees bending to the light. Through the practice of jazz, the double bass was the first string instrument to be liberated from its classical fetters, then it was freed from its jazz function, and here are four of them exploring the full range of the instrument - what could be more sublime? Miya Masaoka Trio: Miya Masaoka (koto), Alex Waterman (cello), Jon Rose (violins). Miya resides in New York City and is a classically trained musician, composer and new media artist. Pioneering the koto in contexts of improvisation, computer processing, new music and sound installations, she has expanded the koto to include lasers (Laser Koto), and has expanded the traditional costume while playing the koto - the kimono - to include responsive and wearable technology with thousands of hand-embroidered LEDs. She creates works that hover the boundary of music, sound, movement and light and that both investigate and reveal these fluid relationships. Alex, on the other hand, is a cellist, composer, and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been shown internationally in museums, galleries and cinemas. He won the Tiger Award for Best Short Film at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2008 and took part in the Whitney Biennial that year. He continues to perform with his two ensembles: Plus Minus in London, and Either/Or in New York. He is finishing work on a book on Robert Ashley, designing a garden, and writing a new screenplay about H.L. Mencken and the early 20th century circles of journalists and publishers in America. Hotel Axe: an electric guitar group composition by David Watson with Roger Kleier, Byron Westbrook, Kenta Nagai, Grey Gersten and others. David Watson is originally from New Zealand, but since 1987 he has lived and worked in New York City. An internationally respected guitarist and improviser, Watson's more recent work uses the highland bagpipes. His work on the pipes subverts any conventional expectation, drawing on traditional sources, electronica and experimental improv 'to blow the bagpipes into the 21st century.' In New Zealand, Watson pioneered a scene for experimental and improvised music, co-founding the recording collective Braille with the Primitive Art Group in 1982 and releasing nine recordings. Watson established himself in the NYC Downtown scene as a dynamic performer and innovative composer. Regularly working across several genres, he has performed and recorded with Elliot Sharp, Jon Rose, Otomo Yoshihide, Tony Buck, Cyro Baptista, Chris Mann, Shelly Hirsch, John Zorn, Thurston Moore, DJ Olive, Eugene Chadbourne, Christan Marclay, Mark Stewart, Ikue Mori and Kato Hideki among others, as well as with his own ensembles, Endgame and Glacial (with Lee Renaldo and Gunter Muller). In addition to having appeared at virtually every venue for experimental music in New York including Roulette, The Knitting Factory, The Kitchen, PS1, PS122, The Stone, Tonic, Merkin Hall and Alice Tully Hall, Watson has performed at many international festivals including the Taclos Festival, Switzerland, LMC Festival, London, Exiles Festival, Berlin, MIMI Festival, France and Het Apollohuis in Holland. He is the recipient of many commissions and awards from Bang on a Can, Meet the Composer, Harvestworks, the Mary Cary Flager Trust, Mishkahoff Trust, Arts International USA, VPRO Radio, Holland, VPKR radio, Norway and Kunstradio, Austria. Watson has contributed to the recorded work of many internationally recognized improvisers including appearances on John Zorn's Cobra (Tzadik), Ikue Mori's Hex Kitchen (Tzadik) and B-Side (Tzadik), The Dave Soldier /Komar And Melamid Project The World's Most Unwanted Music and Chris Mann's The Use(Lovely Music) which he also produced. |
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