A Power Stronger Than Itself:
A Celebration of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians

Co-curated by George Lewis & Chris McIntyre

October 9 and 11, 2008
The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street, New York NY 10011
www.thekitchen.org

October 9, 8 pm

Muhal Richard Abrams: Trio for Violin, Clarinet, and Cello (2004)

Henry Threadgill: He Didn’t Give Up/He Was Taken (1990), for voice, piano, alto saxophone, and violin, with text by Thulani Davis

Leroy Jenkins: Wonderlust (2000), for chamber ensemble

Roscoe Mitchell: White Tiger Disguise (2006), for voice and string quintet, with text by Daniel Moore

Muhal Richard Abrams and Amina Claudine Myers, duo piano

October 11, 5 pm

Panel Discussion: The Meaning and Legacy of the AACM

With Brent Hayes Edwards, George E. Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Amina Claudine Myers, Ted Panken, and Matana Roberts; Christopher McIntyre, moderator.

Following the discussion, Lewis will sign copies of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008)

October 11, 8 pm

Nicole Mitchell: Waterdance (2003), for flute, cello, and percussion

Wadada Leo Smith: Loving - Kindness (1997), for clarinet/bass clarinet, cello, piano, trombone/tuba

George Lewis: Hello Mary Lou (2007), for chamber ensemble and live electronics, with video by Kate Craig

Ritual and Rebellion (2008), a collaborative multi-movement program by Matana Roberts and Nicole Mitchell, with Craig Taborn and Chad Taylor

About the AACM

Since its founding on the virtually all-black South Side of Chicago in 1965, the African-American musicians' collective known as the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) has played an unusually prominent role in the development of American experimental music. The composite output of AACM members explores a wide range of methodologies, processes and media. AACM musicians have developed new ideas about timbre, sound, collectivity, extended technique and instrumentation, performance practice, intermedia, the relationship of improvisation to composition, form, scores, computer music technologies, invented acoustic instruments, installations and kinetic sculptures.

In a 1973 article, two early AACM members, trumpeter John Shenoy Jackson and co-founder and pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams, asserted that, "The AACM intends to show how the disadvantaged and the disenfranchised can come together and determine their own strategies for political and economic freedom, thereby determining their own destinies.” The AACM's goals of individual and collective self-production and promotion challenged racialized limitations on venues and infrastructure, serving as an example to other artists in rethinking the artist/business relationship.

The musical influence of the AACM has extended across borders of race, geography, genre, and musical practice and must be confronted in any nonracialized account of experimental music. To the extent that AACM musicians challenged racialized hierarchies of aesthetics, method, place, infrastructure and economics, the organization's work epitomizes the early questioning of borders by artists of color that is only beginning to be explored in serious scholarship on music.

The internationally prominent and ongoing example of the AACM expanded the range of thinkable and actualizable positions for a generation of experimental musicians, and challenged conventional understandings of American experimental music, obliging the recognition of a multicultural, multi-ethnic reality, with a variety of perspectives, histories, traditions and methods. These evenings of AACM music at the Kitchen, presented in conjunction with the emergence of George E. Lewis’s important new book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Contemporary Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) are intended to give listeners a notion of the diversity of musical thinking and cultural influence that has emerged from this groundbreaking artists’ collective.

For more on the AACM, see aacm-newyork.com and aacmchicago.org.
 

PROGRAM:

Either/Or
Richard Carrick - Towards Qualia [15 min]violin, cello, piano, saxophone, flute, cimbalom/percussion

Julius Eastman - Tripodinstrumentation TBD

Andrew Byrne - White Bone Country [15 min]piano, percussion

Newspeak: Missy Mazzoli - In Spite of All This

Voice, Violin, Cello, Clarinet, Synth, Electric Guitar, Drumset, Vibraphone

David T. Little - sweet light crude
Voice, Violin, Cello, Clarinet, Synth, Electric Guitar, Drumset, Vibraphone

Oscar Bettison - Breaking & Entering (with aggravated assault)
Violin, Cello, Clarinet, Synth, Electric Guitar, Drumset, Percussion [junk metal]

INTERMISSION

combined ensemble
Sean Griffin - 2008 MATA Commission premiere
2 vocalists, 3 percussionists, cello, Electric guitar, Synthesizer/Piano 

PROGRAM (1-hour each):Al Margolis - What Makes a Sound? (argument)

Stefan Moore - Three Steepings OR In::Out/Out::In

Michael Schumacher - Unintending

Amnon Wolman - Low Ground Clearance

Carl Stone - Kantipur

Program:Marina Rosenfeld - anti-Warhol movement (in 16 cues) OR cephissus landscape
Stephen Vitiello - Dolly Ascending OR Rush and LullabyMiguel Frasconi - Intensive Care

PROGRAMLisa Bielawa - Double Violin Concerto
NY PremiereColin Jacobsen, violin
Carla Kihlstedt, violin

Ken Ueno - On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific HypothesisNY Premiere
Ken Ueno, throat singer

Alejandro Rutty - The Conscious Sleepwalker LoopsNY Premiere

Derek Hurst - CladesWorld Premiere
Firebird Ensemble

Program:Doug Henderson - The Nature of the 102nd Thing (of 10,000)
Zeena Parkins/Doug Henderson - Polyphonic Projections

Co-producer:Diapason Gallery [http://www.diapasongallery.org/]

TILT SIXtet & Chris Jonas' the Sun Spits Cherries
Issue Project Room
Opening night of Horn Week, co-curated by Chris McIntyre

TILT SIXtet
Russ Johnson & Nate Wooley - trumpet
Curtis Hasselbring & Chris McIntyre - trombone
John Altieri & Joe Exley - tuba
John King - laptop
Chris Jonas - soprano sax & conduction

TILT Brass' SIXtet project reconvenes for opening night IPR's Horn Week with music from composer, guitarist and Cunningham Co. music co-director John King, TILT's own Chris McIntyre, and a new work by soprano sax phenom Chris Jonas.

www.tiltbrass.org


L to R: CJM, John King (back), Curtis Hasselbring, Nate Wooley (back),
John Altieri, Russ Johnson, Chris Jonas, Joe Exley

Friday, Jan 25, 2008
MATA Interval 1.2
Issue Project Room
232 3rd Street, 3rd floor, Brooklyn, NY 11215

INTERVAL 1.2 Friday, January 25, 2008, 8 pm, $10 featuring Ha-Yang Kim, Matt Welch, Lukas Ligeti and Marco Cappelli with performances by Odd Appetite and Flux Quartet Curated by Ha-Yang Kim as part of the MATA Interval Curatorial Associates Program

2007 MATA Benefit

..::Celebrating MATA's 10th Anniversary and honoring co-founder Philip Glass during his 70th Birthday year. An amazing musical gathering: Jenny Lin performing Julia Wolfe's toy piano juggernaut East Broadway, Lukas Ligeti offering a sample of his electronic hybrid instrument Marimba Lumina, Carla Kihlstedt singing and bowing Lisa Bielawa's powerful Kafka Songs, and Annie Gosfield playing her gorgeous sounds, and a lot more.

,:Program:.Julia Wolfe: East Broadway for toy piano and toy boombox
Jenny Lin - toy piano

Lukas Ligeti: Great Circle's Tune for electronic percussion
composer - percussion & electronics

Daniel Bernard Roumain: Hip-Hop Study and Etude in F Minor
composer - violin, Wynne Bennett - piano

Annie Gosfield: The Manufacture of Tangled Ivory, part II
composer - keyboard, sampler

Theo Bleckmann: anteroom (excerpt)
composer - voice and electronics

Gordon Beeferman: MATA Sonata
composer - piano

INT

Philip Glass: Knee Play No.5 from Einstein On The Beach
Patrick Stewart, Joan La Barbara, Grethe Holby - speakers;
Lisa Bielawa, Katie Geissinger - voice; Carla Kihlstedt - violin;
Eleonor Sandresky - keyboard

Derek Bermel: Thracian Sketches for solo clarinet
composer - clarinet

Carla Kihlstedt: The Squonk & Hold My Own
composer - violin/voice, Lisa Bielawa - voice

Nick Brooke: You Feel This from Tone Test
Genevieve Belleveau - voice

Eleonor Sandresky: Conversation 1
composer - piano, computer playback

Lisa Bielawa: Selections from Kafka Songs
Carla Kihlstedt - voice & violin

Phil Klin:e Near-Perfect Clarity & The Funeral of Jan Palach
Theo Bleckmann - voice, Kathy Supové - piano  

Innerlogics

8 pm
Joan La Barbara - in the shadow and act of the haunting place (full ensemble)
Iannis Xenakis - Keren (trombone solo)
Andrew Byrne - Dragnet (piano solo)

10 pm
Cornelius Dufallo - new work (full ensemble)
Peter Zummo - Instruments (trumpet, marimba, cello, trombone)
Michael Schumacher - new work (full ensemble)

PROGRAM* indicates first-performances
15th
8:00
Kevin Norton - Enduring Heart
Charles Waters - Concertimento #12*
Taylor Ho Bynum - preharmonic, postchordal, revamped*

10:00
Anthony Coleman - Set Into Motion
Curtis Hasselbring - Brass Piece*
Nate Wooley - There was this shadow, this double*

16th
8:00
Kevin Norton - Folk Medicine
Taylor Ho Bynum - preharmonic, postchordal, revamped*
Charles Waters - Concertimento #12*

10:00
Dave Ballou - Concerto for TILT
Nate Wooley - There was this shadow, this double*
Curtis Hasselbring - Brass Piece*

PERSONNEL
Russ Johnson, Shane Endsley, Sycil Mathai - trumpet
Joe Fiedler, Chris McIntyre, Jacob Garchik - trombone
John Clark, Ann Ellsworth - French horn
Ron Caswell - tuba
Kevin Norton - percussion
Greg Evans - conductor

Special Guest
Pandelis Karayorgis - solo piano on Water's Concertimento #12

COMPOSERS
Dave Ballou, Taylor Ho Bynum, Anthony Coleman, Curtis Hasselbring, Kevin Norton, Charles Waters, Nate Wooley

Ne(x)tworks Composers Series
[All first performances]

8 pm

Kenji Bunch - Sand Castle #2 (full ensemble)
Miguel Frasconi - Telling Time #2 (full ensemble)
Yves Dharamraj - Waiting for 950... (string quartet)

10 pm

Shelley Burgon - Four Days (full ensemble)
Ariana Kim - new work (full ensemble) 

Richard Marriott (trombone, compositions) Doug Lima (piano) Bella Marriott (vocals) David Teague (filmmaker) CJM (trombone) Members of Gamelan Dharma Swara

Joe Fiedler, Ben Gerstein, Curtis Hasselbring, Richard Marriott, Chris McInytre, Steve Swell, Peter Zummo (trombone)Formed to play McIntyre's music with choreographer Yoshiko Chuma, 7X7 has performed at the River To River and Fall For Dance Festivals and Issue Project Room. This set features McIntyre's stuplimity series pieces for multiple trombones and a full ensemble reading of Fredric Rzewski's Last Judgement (subtitled "for solo trombone or any number of echoing trombones not quite in unison")