San Francisco

Reconnaissance Fly, Equators and David Douglas, Luggage Store Gallery

Today we look back at Reconnaissance Fly’s performance last week at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco. We were the third act in a concert that also featured Equators and David Douglas.

We performed selections from our “spong cycle” Flower Futures, with each band member contributing pieces based on “spoetry”, or poetry from spam messages. The Luggage Store is quite acoustically active, which can make our highly-rhythmic and punctuated music challenging. But we did the best we can with the environment, and in fact a couple of our songs, the tango-like As Neat As Wax and funk-latin-combo sanse es crede nza, were the best we had played them to date. You can hear a recording of As Neat As Wax below:

Another challenge arose from the fact that I can had forgotten the small Chinese gong that is featured at the beginning of Small Chinese Gong. Fortunately, I was able to substitute a “small iPhone gong”, and the rest of the song unfolded smoothly after that somewhat amusing start.

Once again, we performed as a quartet, with myself on keyboard and electronics, Polly Moller on flute and vocals, Tim Walters on bass and electronics, and Larry the O on drums. When we next perform, we will be five – Chris Broderick will be joining us on saxophone and clarinets.

The show opened with a set by Equators, the experimental music project of Trevor Hacker, with Cody Hennesy. They performed with guitars and effects, and an instrument that resembled an “electric hurdy gurdy.” Things started off quietly enough, with ambient guitar chords centered around a suspended major harmony. After a short time there was a sudden switch to rather loud noisy material, and the remainder of the first piece moved back and forth between these ambient and noisy elements. One particular moment featured descending noise and a loud “analog burst” followed by a softer, pentatonic pattern. The next piece followed a similar pattern, starting with odd major-mode harmonies and eerie effects, with slide guitar and looping as the major elements – gradually, the sound moved towards more noise-based elements.

Equators was followed by David Douglas performing a solo set with drums and laptop-based processing using Max/MSP. He had a standard drum set as well as numerous additional percussion instruments and a small electronic drum pad. These were used as source material for a variety of signal and event processing elements on the laptop. There result was richly textured both rhythmically and timbrally. It started off with metallic sounds processed with stretching and harmonic effects, followed by drums with pitch and delay effects. A slow repeating rhythm emerged that served as the foundation for subsequent elements with bass drum, cymbals, and other percussion. I thought the effects Douglas chose with the bells were particularly effective. Some of the rhythms were more free form, which small runs and loud hits combining with delays to form fast rhythmic passages, and longer metric patterns were combined with delays and loops to form complex counterpoint rhythms. Throughout, Douglas demonstrated a strong skill in playing the acoustic and electronic elements off one another.

It was interesting to contrast our more idiomatic set with the two more “experimental” sets that preceded us, but I thought the overall program was effective. Experimental audiences shouldn’t be afraid of a tango or a funk rhythm after noise improvisation, and I like the energy and emotional balance as a listener. Overall, it was a good show, and look forward to our next outing.

Back Door! and Romanowski at Fabric8

Two concurrent shows at Fabric8 in the Mission District of San Francisco touched upon topics that frequently come up here at CatSynth, highways/transportation and modern geometric design. They also followed two artistic styles that I associate with contemporary urban art: cartoonish humor and street art, and geometric architectural elements.

In Back Door! at Fabric8, artist Andy Stattmiller “visually expounds on the subject that San Franciscans love to hate: the MUNI transportation system”. And it is true, we do have a rather strained relationship with transit system we depend on in the city – there have been numerous times I have opted to walk because I felt is was more reliable. On the other hand, MUNI is a place where the colorful residents of the city cross paths and sometimes get squished together, and where one can observe the contrasts among neighborhoods and streets.

[Andy Stattmiller. 14 Mission.  Image courtesy of Fabric8.]

Stattmiller’s canvases featured individual lines from the MUNI system, mostly busses, which he populated brightly colored cartoon-like figures that simultaneously seem like real denizens of the city and creatures from other planets. The larger heads on the bus drivers were particularly fun. The busses themselves and the surrounding space take on different character of the lines and the neighborhoods that the serve. There is even a triangular canvas representing one of many steep inclines.

[Andy Stattmiller. 67 Bernal Heights.  Image courtesy of Fabric8.]

This was very much an show for locals, who could identify, and identify with, the individual busses and metro lines featured. People did seem to enjoy finding the piece that featured the lines they often use, whether part of their daily routine, or a particularly memorable misadventure. I did find a couple that I have frequented.

In contrast to the chaos and humor of Back Door!, Romanowski’s pieces in the concurrent show Bees and Things and Flowers had a very serious and ordered quality, and was quite calming.

[Romanowski. Le Roy. Image courtesy of Fabric8.]

Although several of the pieces are assemblages of found objects, they give the appearance of abstract sculpture or even painting. Indeed, one can see similarities in the patterns of the found-object pieces and his Installation of stencil on paper.

[Romanowski. Installation (stencil on paper, framed). Image courtesy of Fabric8.]

 

Some of the more intricate pieces, such as Le Roy, remind me a bit of Lousie Nevelson’s sculptures. However, while the abstract geometric designs feel modern, the use of mostly wooden found objects gives them an older feel. And as such, they seem to get in touch with the older architecture in many parts of the city.

Bees and Things and Flowers closed yesterday (September 5). However, Back Door! remains open at Fabric8 until September 12.

Outsound Music Summit: Sonic Foundry Too!

The final concert of this year’s Outsound Music Summit brought together various inventors of new musical instruments under the banner “Sonic Foundry Too!” Rather than each inventor simply presenting his or her work, they performed as pairs. The pairings were selected for musical congruity and brought together people who may have never performed together before. As such, this was truly “experimental music”, with the outcomes uncertain until they unfolded on stage.

As one would expect, the stage setup was quite impressive, with musical contraptions large and small.

This large “bucky ball” was one of the more intriguing from a visual and sculptural perspective. With the holes and vaccuum-cleaner hoses inside, it was not immediately clear what this was supposed to do as a musical instrument.

It turns out to be Terry Berlier’s Percussion Ball, and is played like a hand percussion instrument. The performer taps or slaps the various faces and the hoses provide resonance.

The first pairing featured inventions by Terry Berlier and Bart Hopkin. Berlier was not in attendance, so David Michalak was called upon to learn and perform his instruments, including the aforementioned Percussion Ball. The performance was among the musically strongest of the evening. Michalak appeared from the wings adorned with LEDs and proceeded to the percussion ball, which turns out to be a tuned drum. He began with a an expressive free rhythm exploring the different faces, which became more structured as Hopkin joined in with his own percussion.


[David Michalak on Percussion Ball. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

What ensued was a tight rhythmic drum duet, which reminded me a bit of Japanese drumming. Gradually, Hopkin’s drum sounds grew more electronic, but the strong rhythm persisted. Michalak then tossed a couple of the LEDs into the audience and transitioned to playing a gamelan-like instrument made of metal plates and which produced a bell-like sound. The strong rhythm faded into an ethereal mix of bell and chime sounds. There were several other interesting instruments and musical moments in the remainder of set. A keyboard instrument that looked a bit like a toy piano produced high bell and wind-chime sounds. Hopkin also had an impressive clarinet-like instrument with a ribbon for continuous pitch change.


[Bart Hopkin. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

The next set featured Bob Marsh performing with his new Sonic Suit #1 and Brenda Hutchinson with long tube and gestural controls. We had seen Marsh’s suit in action at the Touch the Gear Expo – it is covered in plastic water bottles, some of which contain sound-generating materials beyond the crunch of the bottles themselves. We have also seen Hutchinson perform with you long tubes before, including at the Outsound benefit dinner – in this case, it was actually a shorter version, about one-third the standard size.


[Brenda Huchinson and Bob Marsh (in Sonic Suit). Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

Hutchinson began with slurping sounds through the tube, accompanied by small rustling and crackling sounds as Marsh began to move slowly. With the addition of electronics, one could hear strong resonances from the tube. The effect was like pouring water, and it seems that the timbre from the bottles on the suit were matching it at times. Marsh increased his motion in the suit, set against a variety of environmental sounds from Hutchinson such as water, fire, air and animal sounds. Eventually he got up and started to dance, moving the arms of the suit in fan patterns, with noisier sounds from both performers.

The following set featured Tom Nunn and Stephen Baker, with David Michalak returning to make a trio. The music started with the sounds of scrapes and bells from multiple sources. some of which emanated from Nunn’s instrument in which the performer ran large cardboard tubes over a metal sheet suspended on top of purple balloons. (Did I mention that almost every night of the summit featured balloons?) Baker’s instrument with metal pegs on a tube was particularly melodious against the brass-like sounds from Nunn’s sheet-metal instrument. The various metal sound sources played off one another for interesting beating effects.


[Tom Numm, Stephen Baker and David Michalak. Photo by Michael Zelner.]

Baker had several other instruments in this theme, including a series of bowls and a long metal arc, both of which contributed to the overall tuned metal sound. By contrast, Michalak’s use of skatch box provided noisier and more percussive sounds that filled in the space in between the long tones. Listening to the longer tones with soft details like beating was quite meditative at moments, enhanced by the low lighting during the set.

Walter Funk and Sasha Leitman immediately distinguished themselves from the previous sets in their use of electronics as a central element. They set themselves up quite minimally on either end of the stage, with a lot of empty space in between. The space was the perfect visual for the beginning of the music, where a repeating metal sound soon revealed itself to be the sound of train. The train gradually morphed into the sound of a human voice. Set against this were subtle low-frequency tones, scraping metal and a steady low rumble. During the set, Walter Funk produced a lasagna pan (which he had mentioned during the pre-concert talk) – this is the first time I had seen a lasagna pan used as a musical instrument in a formal setting. It was used to produce rhythmic scrapes, rumbles and rolling sounds that reminded me of a standard snare drum. What at first sounded like a motor being used to excite the pan was later revealed to be water. Against this were more electronic sounds, something that suggested a granular synthesizer and another that sounded like a distortion pedal for a guitar. At one point, the music shifted to a series of power chords, and a rhythm with delays (i.e., where the echoes of the delay become part of the overall rhythm). The set concluded a series of loud machine noises.

The final set paired Sung Kim on a bowed cello-like instrument with Dan Ake playing a giant towering contraption of poles, wires and metal objects.


[Sung Kim and Dan Ake. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

I had heard Kim perform on his well-crafted string instruments before – in some ways, they were the most “traditional” of the musical inventions in use during the evening in that they were not only shaped and constructed similar to standard string instruments, but were played using traditional techniques of the string family like bowing and plucking. I have also seen Ake’s large architecturally-inspired sound-generating devices as previous Touch The Gear nights. Both began the set with bowing. Ake was slower and more deliberate in bringing out the timbres of the large metal elements. Kim, by contrast, was fast and vigorous, evoking a dramatic cello solo. Ake also had metal claws that he used to tap parts of the tower and pluck wires, as will as a large wire wisk for additional effects. Kim also played his instrument more percussively at times. The timbres of the two instruments matched well and blended at times. The structure and narrative of the performance did not blend quite as strongly as some of the others, though there were great moments where the music grew to a crescendo, a section of a steady plondering rhythm with eighth-note bowing and strumming of odd-harmony chords, and a noisy section of screeching tones that resolved a major harmony.

This set concluded the evening, and the Summit as a whole. In a sense, it was a quiet way to end, without the dramatic musical finishes of previous evenings. But in the sense of each set being an experiment and the opportunity to see and hear something new, it was quite a successful conclusion.

Outsound Music Summit: The Art of Composition

The Outsound Music Summit continued last Friday with “The Art of Composition”, performances of new works by Krystyna Bobrowski, Gino Robair, Andrew Raffo Dewar and Kanoko Nishi. I had heard these four composers discuss their work at the panel session a few days earlier. Now it was time to hear their music.

There was an impressive array of equipment on the stage. Much of it was for Krys Bobrowski’s two pieces.

Balloons have definitely been a big theme of this year’s summit. (Tom Djll featured a balloon in the previous night’s concert, and Tom Nunn featured them in his instrument the following night) In this case, the balloon was used as a resonator in Bobrowski’s Lift, Loft and Lull. Gino Robair struck the “gong”, the large metal rectangle, and brought the balloon close to it. The combination of the balloon’s acoustics and the connected microphone produced a unique resonance effect (and a clever use of acoustic and electronic effects). Against this, Bobrowski played a wildly curved orange horn-like instrument made from kelp that brought to mind a shofar.

The second movement brought the duo together on a single instrument, a large metallic xylophone-like instrument where long tubes were resting on…balloons(!). At first, they played the instrument in a standard way, producing percussive melodies with mallets. But over time, they began to explore different sounds of the instrument, such as rubbing the tubes, and also producing a sound that suggested a motorized device. They also placed different preparations on the instrument to invoke different effects and articulations.

You can see an excerpt of the performance in this video:

Bobrowski and Robair also performed a piece featuring the composer’s glass glass instrument in a duet with wine glasses. I had last heard Bobrowski play gliss glass at the benefit dinner. It was interesting to hear the instrument contrasted with the wine glasses.

[Bobrowski and Robair. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

Robair played them traditionally, rubbing the rims to produce strong resonances, but also used tapping and splashing in the water as percussion. The gliss glass vessels, by contrast, can be drained and filled while they are played, resulting in pitch-bend effects that were put to strong use in the piece. There was lots of complex phrasing as well as eerie harmonies and unexpected sound effects. At times, the harmonies were more anxious and expectant, while at other moments they approached romantic tonality.

[Andrew Raffo Dewar’s Interactions Quartet. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

Andrew Raffo Dewar’s Interactions Quartet presented Dewar’s new piece Strata, which was inspired by a series of paintings by Argentine artist Eduardo Serón. You can see examples of Serón’s work in this video. His abstract paintings – which I, too, found musically inspiring – feature simple shapes and colors in tight compositions. These simple but powerful visual elements were reflected the clean acoustic notes and sounds of the music. It started out very sparsely, with individual disconnected notes on each instrument. Individual notes became short phrases, and eventually slightly longer lines that intertwined in an undulating counterpoint. The music was quite meditative, with the modal quality and contrapuntal texture, but also had a strong emotional undercurrent. One interesting moment featured the saxophone (Dewar), oboe (Kyle Bruckman) and marimba (Gino Robair) converging into a single pitch range and timbre. Eventually, the complex rhythms coalesced into a single triple meter with a strong driving rhythm anchored by John Shiurba’s percussive guitar and metric beating of ankle bells by Robair. Above the metric foundation one could hear playful descending lines. After staying together rhythmically for a while, the different lines and instruments went their own ways, with various shakers, harmonics on guitar and english horn, and an impressive passage of multiphonics by Dewar on soprano sax – all still remaining within a strong sense of counterpoint.

Kanoko Nishi presented her original graphic scores as interpreted Tony Dryer on contrabass and Italian guitarist and visual artist IOIOI. It would have been interesting to see Nishi’s graphical scores, but the darkened room and minimal setting left ample opportunity for imagination. We did get a taste of what we were in for as Tony Dryer was setting up and soundchecking his equipment, and we were treated to several ear splitting bursts of loud feedback. The performance itself, however, began quite subtly with Dryer bowing very quietly on the bass. Every so often, there would be a louder scraping sound on the bass before returning to minimal levels. Then, all at once, there was a loud hit followed by a long LOUD sustain and feedback. These deliberate and had a great tone, but it was still very loud. When it finally cut out, it was like shutting off a very loud engine – there was even the rumbling slowing to a series of clicks. This was followed by a loop of low-frequency bass notes at a modest volume, which settled into a bit of a groove with noisier sounds layered on top. Eventually, higher electrical noises and squeaks overtook the sounds of the bass. Dryer concluded by playing the stand of the bass (now resting horizontally) with what appeared to be an instrument string.

[IOIOI. Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

The performance then transitioned seemlessly to IOIOI, who was also set up in front of the stage with minimal lighting. She began with long sustained notes in a tonality that sounded Middle Eastern, both in terms of the scale and the use of microtones and pitch bends. Things quickly grew louder, with high screeching tones and loud sustained tones that obscured the otherwise beautiful detailed guitar technique. As things quieted down a bit, I was able to focus more on the fine details, such as bends metallic resonances. IOIOI employed preparations in her guitar at times, such as chopsticks, that gave the instrument a more raspy, percussive sound. She also used bowing that yielded a vigorous passage of scratching tones. Overall, a virtuosic display.

[Ensemble Aguacalientes.  Photo: PeterBKaars.com.]

Gino Robair returned for his third appearance of the evening, this time to present his Ensemble Aguacalientes, featuring Polly Moller on flutes and ocarinas, John Shiurba on guitar, Loren Mach on marimba, Jim Kassis on percussion and Scott Walton on bass. Aguacalientes is “a musical suite based on scenes captured by Jose Guadalupe Posada in his politically charged engravings of late19th -and early 20th-century life in Mexico”, many of which feature skulls and skeletons, or calaveras. In keeping with this source, the instrumentation of the ensemble reflects Mexican folk and popular music, including the ocarinas and percussion. The piece began with a very sparse texture, where short melodic lines on the flute headjoint were punctuated by percussion hits. Soon an array of other percussion, including a guiro, and the guitar and bass joined in, with numerous rhythmic lines set oddly against one another. The ocarina lines were longer and more traditionally melodic, but with the instrument’s distinctive sound. There were interesting timbral moments, such as a sinister interplay between harmonics on the bass and guitar, and a more gentle combination of string-bass and bass-flute harmonics. I did find myself listening to the polyrhythms that emerged at various points during the piece, and for the more idiomatic moments that channeled the Mexican subject matter.

Overall, it was a strong concert, and seemed well received by the large audience. I was also left thinking about the often boisterous debate in the Bay Area new-music community between composition and improvisation. Having heard the improvisation-centric and composition-centric nights of the summit back-to-back, I am struck by how much similarity there was – one could have interleaved pieces from both nights into a single concert and ended up with a result that was musically consistent.