I’m pleased to announce that I will be giving two workshops at Moogfest 2016. Audiovisual Scores for Electronic Music is on May 19 from 5 to 7pm and Sound Art and Sonification is on Friday from 2 to 4pm. The location for both workshops is 21c Museum Hotel, Gallery 6 111 N. Corcoran St, Durham, NC 27701. Details are on the Moogfest schedule site.
J. Anthony Allen is a fascinating artist with whom I have the honor being a colleague and collaborator. J was recently interviewed by Darwin Grosse for his podcast Art + Music + Technology. Give it a listen to learn more about J’s background, artistic direction, and projects at large.
In addition to the podcast J also will be releasing a remix album titled Conic Arias of which I played a part by remixing the track Time Givers from Aniscorcia. The album comes out April 5th, but you can hear it now on SoundCloud:
On June 13, 2015 I collaborated with a team of nine students and nine musicians on a project I directed for Northern Spark, an annual, all-night, art festival In Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. We titled the project, Instant Composer: Mad-libbed Music and the intent was to engage the audience into instantly writing musical compositions for an ensemble of improvising musicians.
I discussed the concept here in-depth and also announced the project last June. I had no idea what to expect, but was thrilled with the outcome. Around 115 crowdsourced scores were entered into a database via our mobile application. During the nine hour performance we interpreted nearly 70 of those pieces for the audience.
This video should give you a sense of what went on that night, but no media can fully represent an event like this. I can say that it wouldn’t have happened without the student collaborators, our collective of excellent musicians, the Northern Spark organizers, Art Institutes Minnesota, and the hundreds of people in our audience willing to engage in the process. Please see the video for the full project credits.
Recently I had the honor and pleasure of having a discussion with Darwin Grosse for his podcast Art + Music + Technology. If you’re not familiar with his interviews I suggest that you check out his program. Darwin’s straight forward conversations with a broad range of media artists seem to fill a void that no other programs do. It’s hard to single out any of the programs specifically because they are all entertaining (and educational), but some of my favorites (sorted alphabetically) include:
Brian Crabtree
Richard Devine
R. Luke DuBois
Mark Henrickson
Andrew Kilpatrick
Keith McMillen
Ali Momeni
Pauline Oliveros
Gregory Taylor
David Zicarelli
This Saturday, August 29, Carnage the Executioner presents B.Y.O.B. at the Dakota in Minneapolis. B.Y.O.B. stands for “Be Your Own Band”, and that title will make complete sense once you hear about the artists on this bill.
Carnage aka Terrell Woods can only be defined as a multi-instrumentalist even though he performs exclusively with his own voice. Carnage uses his vast vocal range to emulate bass, drums, synth lines, samples, percussion, turntablism, and more, layering and synchronizing the arrangements with nothing but an off-the-shelf loop pedal. On top off all that he stacks his extraordinary rhyming facilities.
Orlando based artist E-Turn is a mega-talent who often combines forces with DJ SPS and many other notable artists. E-Turn effortlessly generates an orchestra of music and vocals during her performances while drawing from her hiphop influences, Persian vocals, and Iranian poetry.
Ostracon is myself on synthesizers and Graham O’Brien on drums. The two of us perform evolving compositions that fuse rich analog electronics with dynamic live drumming. You’ve heard plenty about us here on audiocookbook.org, but at this show we will be presenting new tracks that we recently recorded for our next album.
What all of us on this very special bill have in common is a drive to make music that is bigger that we are. Hence, “Be Your Own Band”. Music starts at 11pm. Cover is $7 and ages 18 and up are admissible. Don’t miss it!