C. Spencer Yeh / Andrew Lampert (Solo & Collaborative Sets)

Saturday, April 7th, 2018

The Luminary ( 2701 Cherokee St, St. Louis, MO 63118 ) 

C. Spencer Yeh – violin, voice, and electronics for quad-sound
Andrew Lampert – 8mm film, 16mm film, and digital video for site specific installation


C. Spencer Yeh is recognized for his interdisciplinary activities and collaborations as an artist, instrumentalist (on violin, voice, and electronics), as well as his music project Burning Star Core. Much of Yeh’s video work engages with avant-garde composition and performance, variously as studies in form and technique, or as documentation of other artists working within his musical, geographic or social spheres. Born in Taiwan, he currently works out of Brooklyn, NY. Yeh’s sound draws inspiration from the late drone music pioneer Tony Conrad, with whom he has collaborated, and his videos reflect a prevailing fascination with experimental film. He edits both media with equal precision, inviting the audience to bridge any possible gaps between these disciplines. He was a 2015 Artist-in-Residence at ISSUE Project Room, and now works as a programmer for Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn NY. His video works are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, and he is a contributing editor to BOMB magazine.

Andrew Lampert is at the forefront of a new generation of artists engaging with film, video and performance, revisiting and extending the dialogue around an expanded definition of cinema. Utilizing everything from 8mm film to digital projections, Lampert pursues the synergy between artist, art, and audience in a public space, especially as it pertains to cinema. He brings unscripted and chance elements into cinema’s veneer of control, and often works with found material. Originally from St. Louis, he currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been shown at the 2006 Whitney Biennial; The Getty Museum, and the British Film Institute. In addition to his work as an interdisciplinary artist, he was the Film Archivist at Anthology Film Archives in New York for over a decade, and in 2016 edited a book on Beatnik artist/avant-garde filmmaker, Harry Smith.

Presented in partnership with The Luminary

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The Thing

Thursday, March 22. 2018

Off Broadway
3509 Lemp Ave., 63118

Mats Gustaffson – saxophones
Ingebrit Håker Flaten – upright and electric basses
Paal Nilssen-Love – drums

Listen: https://thingjazz.bandcamp.com/


Swedish/Norwegian trio The Thing was formed to create a long awaited synthesis where garage rock and jazz styles could merge by means of this high energy vehicle. Though the group initially came together in 1999 as a tribute project dedicated to legendary composer/trumpeter Don Cherry, it quickly evolved and found its own identity, performing improvised music, informed by the urgency and simplicity of garage rock. If you line up a list of The Thing’s cover selections (songs by The Stooges, The Cramps, The Sonics, and PJ Harvey) beside their roster of collaborators (experimental-rock-luminaries like Jim O’Rourke, Joe McPhee, Peter Brötzmann, and Neneh Cherry) you can get an idea of where their sensibilities lie.

Boot! (2013) is The Thing’s sixth full-length album, and it is among the group’s finest efforts at pairing broad physicality with heady free jazz technique. The record opens with a high-volume reimagining of India, from John Coltrane’s 1963 album Impressions. Here, spiritual jazz is recast as raw and sludgy stoner rock, producing an album of genuine “fusion music” in the best sense of the word.

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Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Urb Arts
2600 N 14th St, 63106

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – modular synthesizer, electronics, voice, and video

Listen / Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW5LkUo5HbY&t=790s


Some artists find their voice and then spend their career perfecting it. There are others, however, who spend an entire lifetime in continual transition, as Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe has done. Beginning with his solo electronic work in the late-nineties, Lowe’s vernacular has continually evolved deeper into a world comprised of spontaneous electronic sound, droning modular synthesizer, and vocal improvisations.

Lowe was a vital part of the thriving Chicago underground for some thirteen years before eventually moving to his current home in Brooklyn, where he entered a new chapter of musical creativity. Enamored with the possibilities of electronics, he began exploring the pliable workings of modular synthesizers: “They’re interchangeable, and have the potential to be ever-transforming,” he enthuses. Upon listening to his recorded works, one encounters Lowe’s intuitive method of using analog modular systems to echo the organic nature of the human voice to produce subliminal, trance-like sounds.

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ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble)

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Pulitzer Arts Foundation
3716 Washington Blvd, 63108

Tickets available here

Claire Chase – flute
Tyshawn Sorey – drums, percussion, glockenspiel, compositions
Cory Smythe – piano & compositions

https://www.iceorg.org/


Three years ago, NMC drew a standing-room-only crowd to the Pulitzer, to see Claire Chase, who The New York Times described as “one of the most electrifying flute players on the planet.” She now returns to St. Louis with multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey and pianist Cory Smythe, core members of the arts collaborative she founded, ICE, which The New Yorker described as “America’s foremost new music ensemble.”

Chase is a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, and through ICE, has premiered more than 800 new music works around the world. Sorey, a composer, percussionist, trombonist, and pianist, has just released his sixth record, Verisimilitude, this August; The New York Times called it “his most captivating album yet,” praising the effortless way it obliterates the line between composition and improvisation. Smythe, who performed on the album, is known for his strong jazz improvisation skills, as well as his work in classical and new music. He can be heard on Hilary Hahn’s Grammy Award-winning In 27 Pieces and at the Mostly Mozart festival in Lincoln Center.

Concert Program 

Tyshawn Sorey: Bertha’s Lair for flute and percussion (2016)
Pauline Oliveros: The Witness (1989)
Tyshawn Sorey: Trio for Harold Budd (2012)
Pauline Oliveros: Earth Ears (1989)
Tyshawn Sorey: Bertha’s Lair 2 for flute, piano, and percussion (2016)

Presented in partnership with Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

Special support for this event has been made possible by the Phoebe Dent Weil Charitable Trust.

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Battle Trance

Saturday, Dec 2, 2017

+ SPECIAL POP-UP EVENT JUST ADDED (DETAILS BELOW)

The Luminary
2701 Cherokee St., 63118

Travis Laplante – saxophone
Patrick Breiner – saxophone
Matthew Nelson – saxophone
Jeremy Viner – saxophone


The all-tenor sax quartet, Battle Trance, specializes in the uncanny transformations of their instruments. Together they perform longform, meditative pieces with a strong emphasis on drone, circular breathing, and trancelike repetition, bringing to mind the works of 20th Century minimalist composers like Philip Glass or Steve Reich, but with an added primal energy and urgency reminiscent of Pharaoh Sanders or Joe McPhee.

Battle Trance has released two albums to date on the prolific indie-label, NNA Tapes: Palace of the Wind (2014) and Blade of Love (2016). Both albums have won praise for their genre-crossing compositions, drawing comparisons to the contemporary classical world, modal avant-garde jazz, and noise-based experimentalism. In live settings the quartet is capable of creating a hypnotic fury of notes, unifying both the harmonic and physical in sound.

Presented in partnership with The Luminary.

+ Saxquest, NMC, and Dead Wax Records present: Pop-up concert with Battle Trance 

Saturday, Dec 2md at Dead Wax Records. 1:30pm – 2:15pm. FREE (no rsvp needed)

info at Facebook event page: HERE

 

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