February 12th, 2011, starting at 8PM at The Wild Project, NYC (195 East 3rd Street @ Avenue B)
The Cage program this year is perhaps the one I’m most proud of being able to put together. Megan and I have assembled what I hope will be a really fun night.
The concert will open with the lovely Vicky Chow performing Cage’s beautiful early piano pieces Dream and In A Landscape, and will close with William Lang and myself performing one of the last pieces Cage ever wrote, and a personal favorite, 1991′s stunningly minimal and sparse Two5.
In between will be a truly monumental musicircus performance of Cage’s exhaustive vocal/theatrical compendium; 1970′s Song Books as interpreted by the avant-garde vocal ensemble Ekmeles with Vicky Chow playing Music for Piano 4-19 and me reading from Indeterminacy.
The entire performance is being chance determined. The total duration of the performance was determined using the i-ching. Festival lighting designer Kryssy Wright is creating six “looks” for the lighting that will be chance-determined by audience members at the opening of the concert. I have used the i-ching to determine how many and which of the 90 stories from Indeterminacy will be read, and the positioning on stage of every single Solo for Voice has been chance-determined, and is not being revealed to the performers as a whole, only individually. Each performer will know where they need to go, but not what may, or may not, be going on around them. The members of Ekmeles have not discussed with each other which solos they are performing, and the ephemeral nature of these sorts of performances is extremely exciting.
When I put together a night of Cage’s music, something that was so inspirational to me early on, I try to read Cage’s instructions as carefully as possible, and follow them to their letter as closely as possible. Through the use of chance operations, and particularly this year, getting the audience involved in the determinations, we are able to really capture the anarchic, playful, but incredibly specific attitude that so typified Cage’s philosophy.
We are proud to announce the full schedule for the second annual Avant Music Festival, five nights of music from the evolving avant-garde, February 11th-19th at Wild Project in New York City. Curated by minimal composer and Avant Media artistic director, Randy Gibson and experimental vocalist Megan Schubert, the festival presents the works of Georges Aperghis, John Cage, Randy Gibson, Reiko Füting, and Nils Vigeland as interpreted by some of the most talented young musicians in New York. All performances will start at 8PM at Wild Project – 195 East 3rd Street.
The full list of performances is as follows:
Friday 2/11/2011 – The World Premiere of a new version of Randy Gibson’s Apparitions of The Four Pillars
Saturday 2/12/2011 – An evening of works by John Cage featuring Vicky Chow, Ekmeles, and William Lang
Thursday 2/17/2011 – Duets by Reiko Füting and Nils Vigeland
Friday 2/18/2011 – The New York Premiere of Georges Aperghis’ opera Sextuor: L’origine des Espèces
Saturday 2/19/2011 – Randy Gibson’s Apparitions of The Four Pillars
Advance tickets to individual concerts for $12, $8 for students, and multi-night festival passes are available starting today. There are no fees to buy online, and tickets at the door will be $15/$10, purchase advance tickets and save.
The second annual Avant Music Festival focuses on evolution as its guiding theme, from the evolution of a single work (the world premiere of a new version of Gibson’s Apparitions of The Four Pillars), evolution through an artist’s career on the John Cage night, to the literal exploration found in the New York premiere of Georges Aperghis’ opera Sextuor: L’origine des Espèces, based on Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” A roundpanel discussion moderated by Schubert between Gibson, Reiko Füting, and Nils Vigeland will take place at 5:30 PM on the evening of the 12th, in advance of the Cage performances. The discussion, free to the public, will discuss the concepts of artistic and personal evolution through composition. On the theme of this year’s festival, Randy Gibson says, “Standing on line for a packed concert downtown, Megan and I were talking about the festival, and where we wanted it to go. The idea of Evolution came to mind as it relates to all of the work we’re programming. It’s something I’m extremely interested in within my own work, and the theme of personal evolution is really strong throughout all the works and programs we’re presenting.” Click here for full details on this year’s lineup
Today we launch a Kickstarter campaign to release a limited edition CD of Aqua Madora from Randy Gibson‘s intense and passionate 2008 New York City performances.
The release is scheduled for February 2011, and you can help make it a reality. The performance was recorded live and has already been edited and mixed. The funds from the kickstarter campaign will go to making a truly beautiful CD package in collaboration with our longtime designer, Oscar Henriquez.
The edition will be limited to 100 copies, 30 of which will be further embellished with vellum and a wax seal, scented with roses (as all of the performances were) and signed. Combined with the exquisite recording by Mike Rugnetta and mastering by Terminator Smile, this will be a fantastic representation of the ritualistic experience of this piece.
The second annual festival will take place from February 11-19 and features the meditative immersive Apparitions of The Four Pillars by Randy Gibson, a night of music by John Cage, a musical dialog between Reiko Füting and Nils Vigeland, and the New York Premiere of Georges Aperghis’ opera Sextuor: L’origine des Espèces.
This special one-night-only event on October 12th will raise money for the 2011 Avant Music Festival and help support the work of the amazing composers and performers who are a part of the festival.
Our goal is to raise $1,000 to be able to have a piano for the festival, a central instrument to the work of John Cage and of Füting and Vigeland.
In addition to free beer, wine, and food, the evening will also play host to a preview of some of the exciting performances in store for the 2011 Festival including a World Premiere performance of Randy Gibson’s The Third Pillar with its Lowest Primes and Memories of The Second Pillar from Apparitions of The Four Pillars and an excerpt of Georges Aperghis’ Sextuor.
We are very pleased to return to Wild Project for the 2011 Avant Music Festival.
This year, curators Randy Gibson and Megan Schubert are focusing on Evolution as a guiding theme. The evolution of contemporary music, evolution in the literal sense, how we learn from our mentors, and how a work evolves once it’s in the hands of the performers.
This week (July 24th through August 1st) in Seoul, Korea, as part of the 9th Korea Experimental Arts Festival a special video-dance version of Shiver by Randy Gibson, Oscar Henriquez, and Laine Rettmer, will be screened as part of the 2010 KEAF International Short Film Festival.
The festival, curated by Jung Hee Choi, features the work of luminaries of the avant-garde such as La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, Henry Flynt, Ken Jacobs, Phill Niblock and Katherine Liberovskay, along side the works of emerging artists. The short films will be screened daily in two outdoor theaters, from 1PM to 9PM at the Myoung Wol Gwan near Hongik University in Seoul.
More information about the festival can be found at the KoPAS site (all information is in Korean)
Voices + Sine Waves is a collection of short works by Randy Gibson written over the last 10 years. These works represent the most primal and basic of materials; voices ethereal and guttural; sine waves pure and distorted. Most of these pieces have been scores for short films or dances, but exist on their own as recordings of a single performance.
Exclusive to this CD release, and not available for download, is the raga influenced The Third Pillar with its Lowest Primes and Memories of The Second Pillar from Apparitions of The Four Pillars III-iii-2010 20:02:56″ – 20:20:17″ (Brooklyn). Following the world premiere of Apparitions of The Four Pillars, The Third Pillar immediately struck us all as the most melodic and raga-like of the Pillars, and thus the most readily suitable for a short-form recording. The third take of the evening recording session, The Third Pillar…, is a single improvised performance by Randy Gibson on toy organ, William Lang on trombone, and Drew Blumberg on violin.
There will not be a second printing of this CD, and The Third Pillar will only be available on this recording. Don’t miss the opportunity to own this remarkable collection of works.
This weekend, March 26th and 27th at 8:30 PM, we will be presenting Mémoire-en-Ciel at Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles. In 2007 we presented the west-coast premiere of Aqua Madora here, and it’s a great pleasure to be back.
On the program are Undress Me Not by Ana Baer-Carrillo, Pat Stone, and Caren McCaleb; Mujeres de Juárez by Randy Gibson and Ana Baer-Carrillo, and to close the night: the world premiere of Mémoire-en-Ciel by Dani Beauchamp and Randy Gibson.
We are pleased to announce the full lineup of works by John Cage being performed on February 20th during the Avant Music Festival. It should be a truly amazing evening of performances.
One4 for Solo Drummer will be performed by percussionist and experimental composer Jude Traxler to open the concert.
In a slight break with tradition, Randy Gibson has developed a version of One9 for specially tuned Toy Organ that mimics the sound of the original Shō – he will be joined by Jude Traxler on conch shells to perform Two3
Closing the concert will be a monumental performance of Songbooks with solos from the Concert for Piano and Orchestra performed by members of loadbang with Megan Schubert and presented with videos of Solo for Voice 19 by Randy Gibson and Ana Baer-Carrillo originally created for John Cage at 95 as well as i-Ching based video lighting created by Oscar Henriquez.
We hope you’ll be able to join us for this and all the wonderful events taking place at Wild Project as part of the Avant Music Festival
Avant Music Festival : Music of John Cage takes place at 8PM on Saturday February 20th at Wild Project, 195 East 3rd Street.
