Madalyn Merkey (solo) / Jack Callahan & Jeff Witscher (duo)
co-presented in partnership with Schlafly Tap Room
Saturday, February 18th, 2023 | 7pm Doors / 8pm Show
Schlafly Tap Room ( 2100 Locust St. 63103 / upstairs / map )
Madalyn Merkey – computer / compositions
Jeff Witscher and Jack Callahan – computer / compositions
Madalyn Merkey
Madalyn Merkey is a composer and performer of live computer music based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Merkey creates sound events with elemental sonic material—voice, sine waves, and pulses—to generate lush synthetic environments with the aid of acoustic readings from microphones and sensors. Her recent work observes the principles of acoustic instruments and material spaces to design real-time sound synthesis programs. Madalyn’s 2022 LP release on Mana Records, Puzzle Music, further explores the use of relative timekeeping as an organic filter for music to pass through. She has performed solo computer music compositions at Yale Union, Issue Project Room, and Block Cinema, and designed sound installations for Robert Irwin’s Central Garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
Jeff Witscher and Jack Callahan
American musicians Jeff Witscher and Jack Callahan are known for their far-ranging work under various monikers and deep individual histories within noise, computer music, and new music circles. Joining forces to helm new music and contemporary composition label FLEA, the duo has recently produced a series of beguiling and forward-thinking compositions including The Past, Present And Future Of Experimental Music (Uncut GRM), Stockhausen Syndrome, and ISSUES (What Happens on Earth Stays on Earth), as well as video works and curatorial projects. Their collaborative work often experiments with transparent composition systems and the limits of our current music technology, sharing sensibilities with radio art, A.A. meetings, group therapy sessions, formatlist and fluxus generative poetry experiments, and Q&A formats. They probe into the purpose and meaning of experimental music and showcase tensions inherent to the communication of ideas—exploring what music can be in a world where almost everything is reduced to signals and information. Together, their alliance charts a path for truly avant-garde music in the 21st century. (Nick James Scavo)
