by Andrew Frisicano

Philip Glass isn't the only 20th-century composer with a big birthday this year. Avant-garde composer John Cage would've been 100, and there are numerous chances to see his work (even more than usual) because of it. The shows below cover quite a bit of ground--eg. 1940's "Living Room Music" on the same program as 1991's "Four3"--and the best place to experience the pieces is definitely in a group.

Avant Music Festival, happening February 10-18 at Wild Project (195 E 3rd St at Ave B), explores the work of Cage at several shows. There's an afternoon/evening program on Saturday, February 11th, which includes a 4pm performance by Bang on a Can's Vicky Chow of Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes" for prepared piano, followed by a longer evening set. Tickets are on sale.

New music quartet loadbang performs as part of that Avant Music show, and will also presents an Evening of John Cage on Thursday, March 8th at Greenwich House Music School.

Issue Project Room, which just moved into a new home, has some Cage-related shows coming up, such as Stephen Drury playing his "Etudes australes" on February 24 and "On Silence: Hommage to John Cage" which features 13 new pieces that are all 4 minutes, 33 seconds long.

So Percussion hosts "We Are All Going In Different Directions--A John Cage Celebration" at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall on March 26th. They'll be performing Cage's music, as well as that of Matmos and Cenk Ergün (who should be appearing) and Dan Deacon's "Bottles." Tickets are on sale.

It's the last stop in a Cage-dedicated tour, which also visits Boston, Toronto and Austin (info below). On March 27th, recordings from the tour will be released by Cantaloupe Records as Cage 100: The Bootleg Series, a limited-edition package with a blank 4'33" LP, a CD of "tracks chosen by chance operations" and a full archive of the shows online.

That show is part of Carnegie Hall's American Mavericks series, which also includes performances by Alarm Will Sound, William Basinski, JACK Quartet, San Francisco Symphony, WHY? and Danielson.

Also part of that is John Cage Unbound--A Living Archive, an online project through New York Public Library, which is going to collect performances and talks of Cage's work by musicians and students (and user-submitted videos). It's also going to have an archive of scores, photographs and other artifacts. Two videos from that--one of pianist Margaret Leng Tan showing you how to prepare a piano, and one with So Percussion crumpling paper (they love to do that)--are below.

Check out more videos, including 4' 33" performed by an orchestra, Andrew W.K. and a wall, below...

Continue reading "John Cage turns 100; lots of shows & other ways to celebrate"

When William Basinski opened his nightclub Arcadia in 1992, Williamsburg had more than a decade of history as an outerborough artists' colony. Arcadia and a handful of other entities such as The Lizard's Tail, Lalalandia, Test-Site gallery, Nerve Circle Studios, Mustard and Galapagos transformed the artists' colony into a full blown urban subculture. No neighborhood in Brooklyn compares to Williamsburg for the shrillness of her declaration of artistic autonomy in the closing years of the last century. This neighborhood is the heart of the Brooklyn Renaissance. And at the heart of Williamsburg, in the pivotal years, was Arcadia. Join us on November 2nd, as we pay tribute to William Basinski and create the distinctive environment and spirited performances of Arcadia at 110 Livingston Street, our future home.
- Issue Project Room

Those with at least $250 to spend can relive Arcadia at 110 Livingston Street tonight (11/2). William Basinski, Marina Abramovic, and Antony are among those performing.

Antony also just anounced a much bigger show happening this January.

by Andrew Frisicano

Many of the weekend's 9/11 memorials chose to mark the anniversary with music. The official commemoration at Ground Zero included performances by Paul Simon (who performed "The Sound of Silence"), James Taylor (who played "You Can Close Your Eyes"), the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Video of those tributes are below.

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Wordless Music Orchestra commemorated the anniversary with three pieces of music for string quartet--Ingram Marshall's "Fog Tropes II," Osvaldo Golijov's "Tenebrae" and Alfred Schnittke's "Collected Songs Where Every Verse Is Filled with Grief"--and the debut of an orchestrated version of William Basinski's "The Disintegration Loops dpl 1.1." The musicians played seated at the center of the Temple of Dendur (where St. Vincent recently performed) while the audience faced them and the looming sandstone structures.

The afternoon's second half was dedicated to Basinski's piece, which has served as a 9/11 elegy since its creation. That relationship will continue: before the start of the program, it was announced that the work would be a permanent fixture at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. The full room listened in reverential silence to Maxim Moston's live arrangement, which unfolded over a reflective 40 minutes. After the last note died out, conductor Ryan McAdams paused for a several-minutes-long moment of silence, before giving way to a round of applause, which both composer and arranger were in attendance to receive.

The entire concert is streaming (with some insightful commentary between pieces) and the live version of "The Disintegration Loops dpl 1.1" will be available as a limited-time download at NPR Music.

Videos are below...

Continue reading "Wordless Orchestra at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (and other 9/11 memorial shows that happened too)"

DOWNLOAD: Antony - Thank You For Your Love (MP3)

Antony and the Johnsons will release their five track EP 'Thank You For Your Love' on August 30th via Rough Trade. The title track is the lead single from the forthcoming album 'Swanlights', released on October 11th also by Rough Trade. The single is available to download for free from here now

Grab the title track above for free now. EP tracklist below...

Continue reading "new Antony EP & album & MP3 "

DOWNLOAD: William Basinski - Vivian & Ondine (excerpt) (MP3)

photos by Lori Baily, words by Andrew Frisicano

William Basinski @ 110 Livingston

Issue Project Room hosted reel-to-reel tape composer William Basinski at their new, currently being remodeled theater at 110 Livingston on June 11th. Basinski played two hypnotic sets in the former Elks Lodge, in what was only the second time they'd previewed the space.

The piece he played, Vivian & Ondine, was written, he explained, to coax his baby neice out of the womb. It's excerpted above and available on CD from Basinski's site. Joshua Light Show worked the visuals and bounced patterns around the ornate arches and ceiling. Clearly, the theater is an awesome space to hear vision-inducing loops, and will be a fun permanent home for Issue once they complete its renovation (which they're still in need of funds to finish) and move in permanently. More pictures from the night are below.

Issue has been putting on shows this summer in the courtyard of the Old American Can Factory (like Omar Souleyman for instance). The next of those is Bobb Trimble's Flying Spiders (in just his second NYC peformance), guitarist-led Loren Connors' Haunted House, Gary War and Samara Lubelski on July 11th. Tickets are still on sale.

They did an outdoor show in honor of Walt Whitman under the Brooklyn Bridge the other day, and on July 10th they'll go under the Queensboro Bridge for the first-annual Albert Ayler Festival, co-presented by jazz label ESP Live on Roosevelt Island's RiverWalk Commons. The show (and record fair) starts at 2pm and features The New Atlantis Sextet with Marshall Allen, William Hooker, Charles Gayle, Gunter Hampel, Giuseppi Logan and more. It's free, and the full schedule and poster is below...

Continue reading "Albert Ayler Festival coming to Roosevelt Island, William Basinski pics & other Issue Project Room news"

Dear friends,

We are excited to announce an update regarding William Basinski's concert tonight (Friday, June 11) @ 110 Livingston with light by Seth Kirby and Brock Monroe, members of The Joshua Light Show and Light & Sound Design (LSD).

We have received an overwhelming number of reservations, and to insure that all can participate, we have added a second show at 9pm (doors open at 8:30pm) and moved the first to 7pm (doors open at 6:30pm).

We anticipate reaching capacity for both shows. Please take a moment to Re-RSVP for either the 7pm or 9pm concert. There will be a short post-concert reception after the 9pm performance.

Best & looking forward!

ISSUE Project Room

The shows are part of the ongoing Darmstadt series at the venue this month.

by Andrew Frisicano

Grouper @ Terminal 5 in May 2009 (more by Natasha Ryan)

So we managed to sneak into Grouper's rare Brooklyn gig on Friday night and still aren't sure what we witnessed over the course of her main 60-minute set. (She also presented a new tape collage piece.) To be honest, the entire thing looked/sounded incredibly creepy, as if one of The Shining's redrum-happy twins suddenly learned how to sculpt dronescapes and acoustic something-or-others from an ancient keyboard and several effects pedals. It didn't help that the room was humid as hell--literally--with Issue Project Room's single, solitary fan getting switched off in the middle of the first 'song' because it was interfering with Liz Harris' signal. [self-titled]

Grouper's Friday, June 4th show at Issue Project Room was one of the events that opened the venue's Darmstadt series, which pairs new and old boundary-crossing music and art over the month of June.

Coming up, Matt Mottel (Issue's artist-in-residence) brings his jazz duo Talibam! to the venue for a free performance on Wednesday, June 9th. On Friday, June 11th, composer and tape artist William Basinski presents his piece "Vivian and Ondine" at a free show at 110 Livingston (Issue's new being-remodeled space).

Man Forever (Kid Millions from Oneida's new composition for multiple rock drummers) performs with composer/musicians Elliott Sharp, Zeena Parkins, Frank Vigroux and Hélène Breschand on June 25th. Tickets are on sale. Man Forever have a new record almost out, and the project will be touring this summer.

The self-titled debut - two monolithic, hypnotic improvisations for arrays of carefully tuned drums- is due out [June 22nd] in an edition of 300 LPs featuring hand-pulled screens on recycled record jackets from Jagjaguwar vinyl imprint St. Ives. The touring quintet of Kid Millions, YEAH YEAH YEAHS drummer Brian Chase, Oneida cohort and KNYFE HYTS drummer Shahin Motia, drummer Allison Busch of AWESOME COLOR, and SIGHTINGS bassist Richard Hoffman, will be augmented by local percussionists in each city.

(Oneida has a new record, Absolute II , due too.)

Man Forever plays tonight (June 8th) at the Tank with Dump (James McNew of Yo La Tengo), M&M and the New York debut of the Sloppy Heads (who have a new Kid Milions-produced 7", First Gasp, which you can download here as a ZIP). That show has tickets on sale.

Man Forever also headline a Monster Island show on Friday, June 11th.

The night after Man Forever at Issue - Zs, who just put out a new record, play Issue with sound/multimedia artist David Linton (on Saturday, June 26th).

Separate from Darmstadt is the venue's ISSUE Project Room's Sunday Concerts in the Courtyard series that'll be bringing a Sunday, June 27th lineup of Omar Souleyman (who plays Central Park the day before with Tinariwen) and CSC Funk Band (featured here) to the Old American Can Factory courtyard. Tickets are on sale. The other shows in that series are posted below.

On top of all that, Issue will be participating in the two-venue, 65th-birthday celebration for improv legend Anthony Braxton (father of Tyondai from Battles) happening on June 18 and 19th. It's at (Le) Poisson Rouge on the 18th and Issue on the 19th. Details, tickets links and video are below.

The full Issue/Darmstadt schedule, video from Zs' Gulf Coast benefit show at Shea Stadium on June 2nd, and more are posted below...

Continue reading "Darmstadt continues @ Issue Project Room, Man Forever, Zs, James McNew, Omar Souleyman & Anthony Braxton's birthday"