MY DIARY: SECRET JOURNEY TO TIPPING UTOPIA
YOSHIKO CHUMA AND THE SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS

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 40 "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. 

Tortoise: TNT / Emily Wells with Metropolis Ensemble
SAT, JUN 22, 2019
6:30PM Gates / 7:30PM Show
FREE

The legendary experimental rock band TORTOISE will play its “weirdly beautiful and impossible to pin down” (Pitchfork) 1998 masterpiece TNT start to finish.

Tortoise, comprised of multi-instrumentalists Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Doug McCombs, John McEntire, and Jeff Parker, has spent nearly 25 years making music that defies description. While the Chicago-based instrumental quintet has nodded to dub, rock, jazz, electronica, and minimalism throughout its revered and influential six-album discography, the resulting sounds have always been distinctly, even stubbornly, their own. The band has always thrived on sudden bursts of inspiration. TNT, its third record and the first after Parker joined, has a more organic and groove-oriented sound than the earlier efforts—interestingly so, as it was also the product of a new approach in the studio for the band that embraced early digital recording technologies. Produced by McEntire, TNT was recorded and mixed over the course of a year from November 1996 to November 1997 using Pro Tools, the now ubiquitous digital editing system that among other things allows for easy editing and re-assembling of songs from diverse recorded parts. The outcome was a tour de force of a record that solidified Tortoise’s place as trailblazers of post-rock.

EMILY WELLS “works in the space between art-pop and neoclassical chamber music.” (New Sounds with John Schafer) The Brooklyn-based singer and multi-instrumentalist is here with the GRAMMY Award-nominated METROPOLIS ENSEMBLE, who appear on her ethereal new album This World Is Too _____ For You. 

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Secret Journey, Duo – Stop Calling Them Dangerous
Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks
Yoshiko Chuma: dance
Miriam Parker: dance
Jason Kao Hwang: violin
Devin Waldman: alto sax
Christopher McIntyre: trombone
Steve Swell: trombone
Dane Terry: piano
Dan Peeples: voice

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SYNCRETICS SERIES:
HPRIZM: PRESSURE WAVE / JOSH SINTON: KRASA
Fri 15 Mar, 2019, 8pm
($15 - 12) ALL-ACCESS
ISSUE Project Room
22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Friday, March 15th, ISSUE continues its Syncretics Series with acclaimed composer and performer Hprizm (Kyle Austin) performing PRESSURE WAVE, an evening length audio/visual piece. Saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and creative musician Josh Sinton also presents krasa, a series of investigations exploring the amplification and sound magnification of the contrabass clarinet.

Curated by Chris McIntyre, Syncretics Series is a programming platform that unites differentiated musical practices on each concert event. Comprised primarily of solo and duo performances by artists culled from a wide swath of the field, Syncretics presents a manifold range of work including virtuosic improvisations, immersive audio/visual environments, and keenly focused programs of recent and contemporary repertoire.

Recently staged in Philadelphia by Bowerbird, Hprizm’s PRESSURE WAVE uses the amplified resonance of urban spaces and the intersectional place between Sonic Activism, Musique Concrète, and Rap’s early roots to examine the dense environments and circumstances that birthed Hip Hop. Scored with generative programming and degenerative tape loops PRESSURE WAVE is the magnetic memory of era long past.

Hprizm adds:
“Nam June Paik, Steve Reich, and Public Enemy were all working with burgeoning tape-based technologies to make overtly political statements. Most of my remembrances of the Black Nationalists struggle are also informed by the tape medium. Building on the works of my chief influences helped me to re-contextualize the sounds and images of Black Nationalism and present them in a nuanced, non-linear form.”

Josh Sinton provides context for his work, krasa:
“krasa is the name I’ve applied to a series of investigations… of the creative potential of the electric amplifier... I decided right away that this work would be done with a contrabass clarinet, an instrument I rarely play and have limited facility on... I deliberately wanted to use an instrument that I was familiar with but not overly so… [to avoid] habits built from muscle memory and over-familiarity… I immediately discovered [that] I was able to put very, very small sounds under a kind of audio microscope… Small inhalations of breath, a key click, tiny perturbations in an expelled air stream, all these things could be magnified and therefore distorted… Inconsequential, “boring” sounds could be made the center of my imaginative focus. The detritus of my musical practice became the very stuff I used for extended, improvised performances.

I’ve used this Rube Goldberg of a biofeedback system (to quote Evan Parker) as a springboard for extended improvisations… I alternate between barren, Beckett-esque soundscapes and walls of sound that seem to be conjuring some kind of Jungian archetypes from our collective unconscious. In fact, all I am doing is examining the sounds that spontaneously occur. It is very much like Isaac Newton’s boy on the beach diverting himself with the vast quantity of pebbles he finds before him.”

Because of the “draconian conditions” Sinton places on the process (i.e. a purposefully unfamiliar amplifier, limited mic-ing, etc.), he characterizes the krasa material as:
“…a methodical and deliberate act of boxing myself into a tight corner and seeing what spontaneous creative solutions occur when asked to perform."

Hprizm (Kyle Austin) is a American composer/performer hailed as an innovator by the likes of TIME, NY TIMES and Rolling Stones. His pioneering synthesis of Hip Hop, Avant Jazz and Electronic Composition often draws comparison to Afrofuturist visionary Sun Ra. As the founder of the seminal collective [Antipop Consortium] he has shared the stages and spaces with the like of Public Enemy, Radiohead, Ornette Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell and many more. His pieces have been presented in the Met, The Whitney, Lincoln Center, The Philadelphia Museum Of Modern Art, The African American Museum, Venice Biennale, Sharjah UAE, The Walker Museum, The Penn ICA, & Theatre Du Chatelet.

Josh Sinton is a creative artist, composer and musical performer. Based in Brooklyn since 2004, he has collaborated with some of the brightest lights of the current NYC creative music scene including Nate Wooley, Ingrid Laubrock, Anthony Braxton, Jon Irabagon, Mary Halvorson and Tom Rainey to name just a few. He has worked as a composer, sound designer and actor in Chicago with Steppenwolf Theater, Bailiwick Theater and the choreographer Julia Mayer and traveled throughout the world performing in small villages in Western India as well as on large stages in Amsterdam, Rio de Janeiro and Milan. His current research has led him to investigate the creative potential of the baritone saxophone as well as contemplating the various cul de sacs of improvised music here in New York City. He has led the bands Ideal Bread, musicianer and holus-Bolus and currently leads his Predicate Trio as well performing regularly with the trio What Happens in a Year and clarinetist and composer Guillermo Gregorio. His most recent projects are the albums “making bones…,” the essay “Four Hypotheses” for SoundAmerican.org and the solo document, “krasa.” You can find out more about Sinton and his work at joshsinton.com

Either/Or presents Pop-Up Concerts: Music of Richard Carrick. Performed by Margaret Lancaster (flutes), Jennifer Choi (violin), Vasko Dukovski (clarinets), Christopher McIntyre (trombone), and Richard Carrick (piano.) Includes several compositions by Carrick and a composite work by Anthony Braxton.

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TILT Brass returns to the annual FONT Festival to present an all-trumpet program featuring Julius Eastman’s recently realized work Trumpet from 1970 and Lois V. Vierk’s rarely heard sextet Cirrus (1987), along with compositions by Jon Gibson and TILT Director Chris McIntyre, and Eastman’s Joy Boy (1974). The performance takes place at Mannes School of Music at The New School. Brass students from the school will participate in a workshop with members of TILT and will join the group in performing Joy Boy and Gibson’s Multiples (1972.)

TILT Brass Trumpets performing Julius Eastman's Trumpet (1970) at The Kitchen[/caption]

TILT Brass Trumpets:
Jaimie Branch
Chris Bubolz
Wayne du Maine
Jonathan Finlayson
Gareth Flowers
Sam Jones
Tim Leopold
Hugo Moreno
Chris McIntyre, conductor & musical director

PROGRAM
Julius Eastman - Joy Boy (1974)
Chris McIntyre - Presencing Piece No.1 (Mannes Siting) (2014/18)
Julius Eastman - Trumpet (1970)
Lois V. Vierk - Cirrus (1987)
Jon Gibson - Multiples (1972)

Ron Hammond's 1970 image of Eastman and the first page of the original score for Trumpet

PRESS for Trumpet
NY Times Review of 2/3/18 performance

McIntyre NY Times interview

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Singularity Music Series (Kingston, NY)
Álvaro Domene, Artistic Director

· Christopher McIntyre: solo trombone
· Nick Millevoi (guitar) and Ron Stabinsky (organ) duo

 

 

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"On Saturday, May 5th, ISSUE Project Room continues its recently inaugurated Syncretics Series with solo performances by renowned Irish pianist Isabelle O’Connell and legendary drum-set master Pheeroan akLaff. Curated by Chris McIntyre, Syncretics Series presents artists at the highest level of their craft performing music ranging from virtuosic improvisations to keenly focused programs of recent and contemporary repertoire.

The May 5th concert represents this stylistic sweep by pairing two esteemed musicians from varied points on the musical spectrum. O’Connell is a stalwart of the contemporary concert music scene having premiered numerous works throughout her career, most notably championing Irish colleagues in performances around the world. Her program at ISSUE features several works by Irish composers (Donnacha Dennehy, Karen Power, Joan Tower) as well as selections from iconic American composer Frederic Rzewski who turns 80 in April.

akLaff is one of the premiere percussion artists in creative music. The list of his collaborators since the mid 1970’s charts the history of the field. It includes such luminaries as Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Davis, Amina Claudine Myers, Sonny Sharrock, Henry Threadgill, and Cecil Taylor. His performance on May 5th is a rare occasion to experience his work as a soloist on the drum-set. Entitled Amen Sparks Soul Knowing Eternal Being, the audience is engaged to be part of the sound making while akLaff coaxes his drums and cymbals, drawing out their orchestral and rhythmic possibilities. By channelling the “ethos of being a medium for music while refraining from any attempt to extract praise,” akLaff imbues his work with ancient belief systems that address creativity as received rather than generated. ISSUE’s 22 Boerum space provides the reverberative space best suited to such an intimate approach."

PROGRAM:
Pheeroan akLaff - solo percussion

Amen Sparks Soul Knowing Eternal Being (part of The Amen Project)

Isabelle O’Connell - solo piano

Donnacha Dennehy - Reservoir (2007)
Karen Power - loaded silence (2015)
Joan Tower - Ivory and Ebony (2009)
Frederic Rzewski - Miles 5,6, and 7 from The Road (1995-2003)

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> Trombone with honoree Yoshiko Chuma's School of Hard Knocks
 

Stockhausen’s KLANG
Analog Arts & Liz Huston

Sat., April 7 - 10am to Midnight
Sun., April 8 - 10am to Midnight

FringeArts
140 N. Columbus Boulevard Philadelphia, PA

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"I'll be reprising my March 2016 performance of KLANG in NYC at The Met Museum, this time at FringeArts Theater in Philadelphia. I'll join world renowned trumpeter Marco Blaauw of MusikFabrik for the trombone/trumpet section of Glanz." cjm 

Personnel:
Ensemble MusikFabrik Peter Veale, Heidi Mockert, Marco Blaauw, Christine Chapman, Melvyn Poore, Axel Porath Additional Musicians Stuart Gerber, Christopher Oldfather, Joe Drew, Dolph Kamper, Taka Kigawa, Lilac 94, Emma Resmini, Evan Ocheret, Geoffrey Deemer, Aaron Stewart, Sharon Harms, Rachel Segal, Joe Dvorak, Jeffrey Gavett, Robert Osborne, Mallory Tittle, Eric Coyne, Veronica Jurkiewicz, Dominic Panunto, Sean Bailey, Audrey Miller, Kristina Mulholland, Steven Williamson, Margaret Lancaster Talks by Members of Musikfabrik, Thomas Patteson, Paul Miller, Esther Morgan-Ellis, Chris McIntyre Lighting by Thomas Dunn Sound Projection by Joe Drew, Dolph Kamper, Paul Jeukendrup Audience Experience orchestrated by Adrienne Mackey Print Design by Alda Leung & Jura Pintar

 

My stellar colleague Lea Bertucci and I will play her piece Our Collective Cynicism is a Product of Failed Revolution for trombone and tapes at JACK in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

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Again supporting my good friends Nick Hallett and Zach Layton by joining an always killer band of local music heads to release the power of Riley's ageless work. It's also a great hang so come out!

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