52nd City

New/experimental music events in May

Compliments of Eric Hall:

Wednesday, May 10th at 7:30 p.m.: St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Percussion Festival at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the UMSL campus. $15-30.

In addition to the Symphony's percussion ensemble and Conductor David Robertson there are several featured guests including percussion master Colin Currie, The Juilliard School Percussion Ensemble, and myself. For my piece I was asked to do a solo interpretation of John Cage's First Construction (In Metal), which exists note-for-note in my re-creation, but then I process it with several real-time samplers so that patterns happen at various speeds and directions simultaneously according to the same palindrome patterns and fractal mathematics Cage used to compose the piece... live Cubism applied to sound. And, since it was scored for a six-piece percussion ensemble playing only metal, all of the samples I use are of metal (the Arch, that huge ugly red sculpture at Laumeier, sheet metal, gongs, singing bowls, glockenspiel, tingshaws, etc.); all of which are made even more "metal" by my using several guitar distortion pedals on several outputs. I can't wait to hear it in that huge room.

Thursdays, May 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th from 8-10 p.m.: Ancora il Più Estinto III at Dunaway Books on S. Grand. Free.

Ancora il Più Estinto, which translates from Italian to “staying as soft as possible”, is an annual series of performance/installations. Over the course of the four evenings dozens of artists will perform from various parts of the space, thereby creating a unique sound-art event where what each listener hears depends on when, where, and how often they move about. This way the experiences are not about seeing specific collections of performers and, as much as possible, the audiences’ role as spectator and the performers’ sense of ego are diminished allowing for sound itself to be the focus. As the theme is quiet musics and the grids of bookshelves create several isolated performance spaces, these events aspire to encourage attentive explorations of the sonic environment.

Friday, May 19th at 8 p.m.: Jason Zeh with Raglani, Worm Hands, and myself at Dunaway Books on S. Grand. $5.

Jason Zeh (who has also performed as N-Tron) is a magnetic tape artist/composer/improvisor from Bowling Green, Ohio. He uses an arsenal of portable tape players, most of which are modified in unusual ways, to perform what I feel to be some of the most beautiful and interesting live music I've heard in a long time. You can also hear what Raglani and Worm Hands do with their assorted electronics and whatnot. This is a show I've been looking forward to for some time.

Friday, May 26th at 8 p.m.: Art Union Humanscape with Andrew Hefner, Mike Pitts, and myself at Dunaway Books on S. Grand $5.

Art Union Humanscape is a project led by Chicago bassist Jason Roebke (Tigersmilk, Valentine Trio, Terminal 4) and dancer Ayako Kato. For this show they will be joined by guest bassist Darin Gray (Grand Ulena, On Fillmore). Check out their website at artunionhumanscape.net. Also performing is bassist Andrew Hefner and electro-acoustic artist Mike Pitts (who also performs as Tango Dance Instruction Book). I love these shows in the bookstore and this will be a great finale to the Dunaway Music Series.