Intimacy of Detail: The Music of Chiyoko Szlavnics

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 2 AT 9:00PM
TENRI CULTURAL INSTITUTE OF NEW YORK
43A WEST 13TH STREET NEW YORK, NY, 10011

On Wednesday, November 2, 2022, at Tenri Cultural Institute, Either/Or presents Intimacy of Detail, a special performance centered on the singular sound world of Canadian-born, Berlin-based composer Chiyoko Szlavnics. The program retrospectively focuses on Szlavnics’ work from the mid-Aughts forward. From the year 2000 onward, she “developed a compositional approach based on self-generated drawings. The drawings enabled her to conceive and realise a kind of music, which promotes the perception of certain psychoacoustic phenomena (beating and combination tones), through her sensitive setting of ratio-related pitch material in sustains and extended glissandi, and her careful orchestration.” The string quartet Gradients Of Detail (2005/6) is a prime example of this method of transliteration which the stellar string players of Either/Or will bring to life within the assiduously close listening space of Tenri. Paired with the larger ensemble work (a)long lines… (2004/rev. 2017) and Constellations I-III (2011) for piano & sine tones, EO’s local audience will gain meaningful access to Szlavnics' involving aural environments.

PROGRAM
Chiyoko Szlavnics, composer

(a)long lines: we'll draw our own lines (2004/rev. 2017)
flute, trombone, violin, violoncello, percussion, sine tones

Constellations I-III (2011)
piano and sine tones

Gradients Of Detail (2005/6)
string quartet

PERSONNEL
Richard Carrick - piano (EO Director); Jennifer Choi - violin; Pala Garcia - violin; Margaret Lancaster - flute; Hannah Levinson - viola; Alex Lough - electronics & sound; Chris McIntyre - trombone (curator); Chris Nappi - percussion; John Popham - cello   

GRADIENT OF DETAIL (2005) - DRAWINGS BY THE COMPOSER

Tipping Utopia Toward Kazuko Miyamoto
Japan Society
Saturday, July 16, 2pm and 5pm



This newly commissioned performance brings to life the works on view in Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line (exhibition now extended through July 24). Yoshiko Chuma, conceptual performing artist, dancer, choreographer and director of The School of Hard Knocks, combines movement and improvised music, erasing the boundaries between onstage and backstage, and between artistic practices. In 1979, Chuma performed among Miyamoto’s string constructions installed as part of the artist’s solo exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery (Yoshiko Chuma in Kazuko Miyamoto: A Girl on Trail Dinosaur). Now, Chuma reconnects with Miyamoto through this event, which runs throughout the entire gallery space. The performance also features three musicians: double bassist Robert Black, viola and violinist Jason Kao Hwang and trombonist Christopher McIntyre.

Concept and direction by Yoshiko Chuma, Artistic Director of The School of Hard Knocks.

"This season’s Sounds & Stories series draws to a close on June 28 with an account of Femenine, an improvisatory tour de force by the late Julius Eastman, who strove to be “Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, [and] a homosexual to the fullest,” and whose take on minimalism was “idiosyncratic and perhaps ahead of its time” (New York Times)."

Event page

VIOLIN
Conrad Harris

VIOLA
Dana Kelley

BASS
John Feeney

ALTO SAXOPHONE
Lino Gomez

BASSOON
William Hestand

PERCUSSION
Maya Gunji

PIANO
Margaret Kampmeier

SYNTHESIZER
Christopher McIntyre

Sunday, May 15 at 6pm ET
​
A live outdoor performance at Prospect Park's Concert Grove Pavilion featuring work by The School of Hard Knocks (Yoshiko Chuma + Chris McIntyre), Maria Bauman, Xan Burley + Alex Springer, Sofia Engelman + Em Papineau, and Dancewave Youth Company/Rena Butler.
​To attend from afar, tune in on Instagram Live.

​DIRECTIONS:
Prospect Park's Concert Grove Pavilion (Brooklyn, NY // Lenapehoking)

Yvonne Rainer, CJM, David Behrman

YVONNE RAINER’S "REMEMBERING AND DISMEMBERING TRIO A" WITH BRITTANY BAILEY / DAVID BEHRMAN’S "OPEN SPACE WITH BRASS" WITH ED BEAR & ENSEMBLE
Wed 06 Apr, 2022, 8pm
The Flamboyán Theater at The Clemente
IPR Event Page
 

L-to-R: Aliya Ultan, Alexandria Smith, Madison Greenstone, CJM
 

Wednesday, April 6th, ISSUE & The Clemente present an evening of pioneering work from choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer and composer David Behrman. Highlighting the artists’ work interpreted and presented by a new generation of artists, the evening features choreographer and performer Brittany Bailey performing Remembering and Dismembering Trio A (1966 - 2020), with excerpts from Peter Schjeldahl’s “77 Sunset Me.”

The program also features David Behrman’s Open Space with Brass, performed by Ed Bear and an ensemble under the direction of Chris McIntyre. The piece was originally commissioned for the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (performed with TILT Brass) at the Park Avenue Armory in December, 2011.

Remembering and Dismembering Trio A (1966 - 2020), with excerpts from Peter Schjeldahl’s “77 Sunset Me,” is choreographed by Yvonne Rainer and performed by Brittany Bailey. Rainer choreographed Trio A in 1966, and performed it for the camera in 1978. Written for a solo performer, it incorporates no music and features a seamless flow of everyday movements like toe tapping, walking, and kneeling. In an interview with Lyn Blumenthal, Rainer describes “[It] would be about a kind of pacing where a pose is never struck [...] There would be no dramatic changes, like leaps. There was a kind of folky step that had a rhythm to it, and I worked a long time to get the syncopation out of it.” Trio A positioned Rainer as a leader among the dancers, composers, and visual artists who were involved in the Judson Dance Theater (which she co-founded in 1962), an avant-garde collaborative that ushered in an era of contemporary dance through stripped-down choreography and casual and spontaneous performances.

David Behrman’s Open Space with Brass follows in the tradition of electroacoustic sound supported throughout the history of Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The piece also refers to the antiphonal music that Giovanni Gabrieli created for the Basilica di San Marco in Venice at the turn of the 17th Century. Gabrieli’s work made such specific use of the cathedral’s acoustics that groups of brass instruments situated in opposing choir lofts could be heard with clarity at distant points. Interactive music software, originally made for the site-specific 15-channel sound system that was in use at the Park Avenue Armory, linked the acoustic and electronic elements of Open Space: a 6-piece ensemble of trumpets and trombones filling the enormous Armory Drill Hall space with live and digitally processed sound. Behrman has recently reorganized elements of this software to be more accessible for other musicians to play. Ed Bear, who returns to ISSUE after an ambitious re-staging of John Cage's Variations VII in 2016, manipulates the software, while trombonist Chris McIntyre leads an ensemble of cello (Aliya Ultan), bass clarinet (Madison Greenstone), and trumpet (Alexandria Smith).

The evening will conclude with a Q&A with Yvonne Rainer & David Behrman moderated by Chris McIntyre. They will discuss the history, transition, and legacy of their work as well as the process of teaching, learning, and presenting the pieces.

Choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer trained with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham as a dancer, and was a co-founding member of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962. She sought to blur the lines between performers and non-performers, and incorporated gestures and pedestrian movements, as well as classical dance steps and theatricality into her choreography. Her body of work has spanned multiple disciplines and movements including dance, film, minimalism, conceptual art, and postmodernism. In 1972, Rainer transitioned to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer and dancer from 1960 to 1975. After making seven experimental feature-length films, she returned to dance in 2000 via a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation (“After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”). Her dances and films have been seen throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia in concert halls and museum retrospectives. Her publications include “Feelings Are Facts: a Life,” "Work: 1961-73," "The Films of Yvonne Rainer," "A Woman Who…: Essays, Interviews, Scripts,” “Moving and Being Moved,” and “Poetry.”

Brittany Bailey has trained with Merce Cunningham as well as whirled with the dervishes of the Mevlevi Order. Bailey has performed at MoMA with Yvonne Rainer in the exhibition, Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done (2018) and in Marina Abramović’s retrospective, The Artist is Present (2010). In 2011, Bailey was a member of the Michael Clark Company for performances at the Tate Modern. Bailey currently studies at Columbia University.

David Behrman is a composer and artist active since the 1960s. Over the years he has made sound and multimedia installations for gallery spaces as well as musical compositions for performance in concerts. Most of his pieces feature exible structures and the use of technology in personal ways; compositions rely on interactive real-time relationships with imaginative performers. Together with Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma, Behrman founded the Sonic Arts Union in 1966. He had a long association with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as composer and performer, created music for several of the Company’s repertory pieces, and was a member of the Company’s Music Committee during its last years. Behrman has received grants from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, the D.A.A.D., the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Henry Cowell Foundation. He was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2016. Audio recordings of his works are on the XI, Lovely Music, Pogus, New World, WERGO, Black Truffle and Alga Marghen labels.

Ed Bear is an American interdisciplinary artist, musician, and engineer. Their work with robotics, sound, video, transmission, and collective improvisation recalibrates social relationships with material technology and waste. As an educator and designer committed to an equitable, open source world, they research material reuse as social practice. Bear has been awarded several competitive residences, fellowships and grants. They completed artist/technology residencies at Pioneer Works (2019), Harvest Works (2017), Signal Culture (2017), Until 11 (2016), Wave Farm (2015), LMCC Swing Space (2012), Free 103.9 AIRtime Fellow (2010) and received a Roulette Emerging Composer Commission (2008). They have shown work at various galleries and institutions internationally. Bear has toured extensively in North America and Europe as a performer and teacher, working with organizations including: The London School of Economics, IXDA, Museo Tamayo, The Mattress Factory, The Montreal Pop Festival, Moogfest, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Their music is available on Peira, Azul Discographica, Ever/Never, Roar Tapes, and several other record labels. In 2009 and 2010, Bear received NSF and other funds to study e-waste streams as educational resources, software defined radio, and novel energy harvesting, utilizing ionic polymer metal composites. As a research specialist at the Lighting Research Center (2012-2013), funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, they developed control solutions for emerging solid-state lighting systems. Until 2019, they worked with littleBits, Inc. developing gender-neutral, modular electronics for education. Bear recently founded Kin Circuits, a platform to elevate maintenance, care, repair, and reuse in the face of unsustainable consumption and alienating technologies.

Christopher McIntyre performs on trombone and electronics in various musical contexts within the protean NYC community. He also composes for various media and instrumental forces, experimenting with recorded and synthesized sound and using transformational structures to create a narrative of evolving sonic states. He is Director and Co-Founder of TILT Brass, programming curator for Either/Or Ensemble, independent curator for venues including ISSUE Project Room and The Kitchen, teacher at Mannes School of Music at The New School, and frequent performer in groups such as TILT, Either/Or, SEM and Talea Ensembles, among many others. cmcintyre.com

Praised by The New York Times for her “appealingly melancholic sound” and “entertaining array of distortion effects,” Alexandria Smith is a trumpeter, composer/multimedia artist, curator, and recording engineer studying at the University of California San Diego. Her current projects focus on the use of biofeedback as an interfacing tool for musicians, interactive media (audio and visual), and performance based research. Previous engagements include her week (curation) at the Stone, performances at the La Semana Internacional de Improvisación, trumpet and electronics Luminous Tubes Concert at the FONT Festival 2019, performing as a soloist in the Martha Graham Dance Company 90th Anniversary Concert, John Zorn's Improv Night at the Stone, and as an ensemble member of Lorin Maazel's Castleton Festival.

Aliya Ultan is a composer, improviser, cellist, and vocalist from Brooklyn, NY. Born into a family of artists and musicians, Ultan was immersed in a variety of creative mediums and environments from a young age. Ultan primarily performs as a singer-cellist, using both instruments to contort pitch centers and embrace a kind of noise based maximalism within the constraints of a purely acoustic set-up. This approach has led to the development of techniques such as particular ways of detuning the cello to expand its range, allowing it to cross instrumental bounds. In addition to her sound focused research, Ultan has created works for film that involve breaking, burying, and submerging cellos underwater.

Madison Greenstone is a clarinetist currently based between New York City and San Diego. She has performed as a featured artist of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik and the Lucerne Festival Academy. Notable performances have been as a soloist presented by ISSUE Project Room, as part of the Merce Cunningham Centennial Night of 100 Solos in Los Angeles, in recital at the Vigeland Mausoleum (Oslo) and at the Fondation Abbaye Royaumont. Madison is the clarinetist of TAK Ensemble, and a founding member of the [Switch~ Ensemble]. She can be heard on Wandelweiser Editions, Another Timbre, and on the TAK Editions Podcast. Madison develops collaborative works that explore brend-based awareness in Hermetic Art Party with Anthony Vine (guitar and objects) and Katy Gilmore (projections). She works closely on creative projects and large-scale low-clarinets works with Michelle Lou. Further ongoing collaborations are with Timothy McCormack, John McCowen, members of the Harvard Group for New Music, and DAD (T.J. Borden and Michael Matsuno). Madison is a doctoral candidate at UC San Diego, where she learns greatly from the mentorship of Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music. Madison performed at ISSUE Project Room in December 2018 in support of, and alongside, Mary Margaret O'Hara as well as Artist-In-Residence John McCowen in 2020.

Strange Tales
Works by Wang Lu, inti figgis-vizueta, and Alvin Lucier
December 11, 2021 at 7:30pm

FREE Admission

Join Talea for a free, immersive program featuring inti figgis-vizueta's Primavera crown, Alvin Lucier's Music for Cello & One or More Amplified Vases, and the world premiere of Wang Lu's November Airs.

Inspired loosely by the ancient Chinese mythological anthology, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Wang Lu's November Airs explores the process of passing on historical memory through musical, spatial, and visual forms while delving into themes of humanity, compassion, and healing in mythology and storytelling. November Airs features live video projections created especially for this performance by contemporary visual artist Polly Apfelbaum. Talea performs the world premiere of November Airs.

inti figgis-vizueta's Primavera crown is a vibrant ensemble work that, in the composer's words, explores the encounter of "the role of individual imagination and expressive possibility against the large canvas of chamber orchestra." Finally, Alvin Lucier's Music for Cello with One or More Amplified Vases presents a meditative and interactive duo between a single cello and its resonances via a series of amplified glass vases.

Wang Lu's November Airs was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation for the Talea Ensemble. This world premiere production of November Airs is supported in part by a generous grant from the Cafe Royal Foundation. This performance is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

PROGRAM:

Alvin Lucier: Music for Cello with One or More Amplified Vases (1993) Christopher Gross, cello

inti figgis-vizueta: Primavera crown (2020)

Wang Lu: November Airs (2021) *World Premiere

Polly Apfelbaum, video projection

Talea Ensemble

James Baker, conductor

Either/Or (EO) initiates its 2021-22 Season with a special concert at Tenri Cultural Institute in Manhattan. On Tuesday, November 23, the group is proud to present a portrait concert of extremely rare music by African-American composer, educator, and community organizer Talib Rasul Hakim (1940-88) (né Stephen A. Chambers). This event is the opening salvo of an extensive investigation by Either/Or and its Curator Chris McIntyre into the life and music of Mr. Hakim.

Press Release
EO Event Page

Performers
Narek Arutyunian - clarinet; Jennifer Choi - violin; Jonathan Finlayson - trumpet; Pala Garcia - violin; Margaret Lancaster - flute; Hannah Levinson - viola; Chris McIntyre - trombone; John Popham - cello; Adam Tendler - piano

Program
Talib Rasul Hakim Prelude (ca. 1966)
trombone & piano
TRH Four (1965)
clarinet, trumpet, trombone, piano
Tania León Alma (2007)
flute, piano
TRH Profiles (1964)
clarinet, trumpet, trombone, cello
TRH Sound-Gone (1967)
solo piano
TRH Currents (1967)
string quartet

Olga Neuwirth: Die Stadt ohne Juden (2017) *US premiere
With live film screening
Film by Hans Karl Breslauer (1924)

Talea Ensemble
James Baker, conductor

Marianne Gythfeldt, Clarinet
Erin Rogers, Saxophone
Sam Jones, Trumpet
Chris McIntyre, Trombone
Matthew Gold, Percussion
Oren Fader, E-guitar
Imri Talgam, Kybd/synth
Hannah Levinson, Viola
Chris Gross, Cello
David Adamcyk, Electronics

Talea performs the US premiere of Olga Neuwirth's film score "Die Stadt ohne Juden" (2017) with a live screening of the 1924 silent film

Eventbrite

The School of Hard Knocks

A Blind Eye Cast Unknowing
“the worst thing is that we cast a blind eye to catastrophes that aren’t even what we think they are”

Concept , design, direction by Yoshiko Chuma

Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Zürcher Gallery 33 Bleecker Street, NYC
Doors open at 8:00PM
Performance begins at 8:30 PM
Zürcher Event Page

Admission: $20 at the door
(All proceeds go to the artists.)

Featuring
Kyle Dacuyan (monologue)
Wendy Perron (Dance )
Miriam Parker (dance)
Jason Kao Hwang (violin)
Yoshiko Chuma (dance)
Christopher McIntyre (trombone)
Mizuho Kappa (Dance )
Ryuji Yamaguchi (dance)
Devin Brahja Waldman (Saxophone)
Andrew Kim (documentation/video)
Mickey Ono (documentation/ video)

Yoshiko Chuma (conceptual artist, choreographer/artistic director of The School of Hard Knocks) has been a firebrand in the post-modern dance scene of New York City since the 1980s, has been consistently producing thought-provoking work that is neither dance nor theater nor film nor any other pre-determined category. She is an artist on her own journey, a path that has taken her to over 70 “out of the way” countries and collected over 2000 artists, thinkers and collaborators of every genre since establishing her company in New York City in 1980. The School of Hard Knocks was founded as a company of diverse backgrounds. Its purpose is to create, perform, encourage and sponsor experimental and multi-disciplinary and multi-media work. The School of Hard Knocks is an ongoing phenomenon—its shape as diverse as the situations the company performs in—from street performances to formal theatre/dance concerts to large scale spectacles. Company activities include an annual New York season, ongoing development and rehearsal of new works, and performances/residencies and collaborations with local artists on tour throughout the United States, East and Central Europe, Asia, Middle East, and South America. Over the course of the company's history, more than 2,000 people have performed under Chuma's direction. Notable international performers have been involved in the School of Hard Knocks over its 40 year history. 

Heather Littier (monologue), Wendy Perron (Dance ), Ursula Eagly (dance), Jason Kao Hwang (violin), Yoshiko Chuma (dance, director) , Christopher McIntyre (trombone)

Event Page on GFT site

RESCHEDULED FOR MAY 9 (due to weather)


Facebook Event
Merche Blasco
Weston Olencki

KINETIC MIRRORS
by Yoshiko Chuma Elizabeth Kresch
at
HACO NYC
31 Grand St Brooklyn, NY 11249

Elizabeth Kresch Portraits caught from Yoshiko Chuma's School of Hard Knocks & live action

Eventbrite Page

Sun 2/9
Gallery Open 11am-4:30pm
Doors Open with admission 4:30pm

3D Live Show 5:30pm & 6:15pm
Dancers: Ursula Eagly, Ryuji Yamaguchi
Musician: Christopher McIntyre

Conductor: Yoshiko Chuma
Painter: Elizabeth Kresch
Videographer: Andrew Kim
Director of Haco Gallery: Yoko Suetsugu

Admission for 3D Live Show
$20 at door
$18 advance

Audience max 20 per show
Directions: J,M TO MARCY AVE. Q59 TO KENT AVE/1ST ST

Details TBA

Limited Resources on FB

Sounding Serra
Music in Conversation with Reverse Curve

Saturday, December 14, 2019, 8pm
Gagosian, West 21st Street, New York
Event Page

To attend the free event, RSVP to nyperformancegagosian [dot] com. Space is limited.

Join Gagosian for a concert featuring new music inspired by Richard Serra’s Reverse Curve (2005/19) and other works that engage with questions of weight, timbre, volume, and form. Some of the compositions will test the acoustical properties of the sculpture within the room, while others will produce sound masses in the shadow of the sculpture, creating dialogues between sound and space. The range of musical strategies will illustrate a historical path from the 1970s through the present day. Musicians Lea Bertucci, Miguel Frasconi, Joan La Barbara, Chris McIntyre, Chris Nappi, and Danny Tunick are all major players in the world of experimental music and collaborate in addition to their solo projects. As well as their own compositions they will perform a 1973 piece by Michael Byron.

McIntyre program note:
Reverses (2019) is a musical response to the Serra piece installed at Gagosian’s 21st Street gallery and the acoustic characteristics of the large, resonant space in which they coexist. Employing the diffusion created by brass and percussion in an extremely reverberant room, Reverses attempts to establish an analogous sonic experience to that of the torqued Cor-Ten steel sculpture and its bisection of the space. It does this by locating a duo of trombone and percussion (playing snare drum) on opposing sides of the sculpture where they exchange material back and forth in an accretional and elided formal system, a sort of simplified prolation canon that acknowledges the lingering resonances of each iterated sound. Many thanks to percussionist and event curator Danny Tunick for his efforts.