Music for Perpetual Motion
Paul Dresher- Hurdy Grande
Larnie Fox- Installation of continuous self playing instruments and cranked performance
Sung Kim- Evolutions to the hurdy gurdy
Nov 14, 8pm
@ Turquoise Yantra Grotto
32 Turquoise Way SF
$10-15
Visual Exhibition: Contemporary Tuning Graphics
Join us for an evening of endless sounds with the legendary invented instrument composer/performer Paul Dresher. Your night begins wandering through the Grotto, encountering unique self playing instruments from Larnie Fox based on cranks (analog looping) and continuous bowing. Master woodworker and inventor Sung Kim will play solo on his evolutions of the hurdy gurdy as seen in the Window Gallery at the Center for New Music SF.
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Paul Dresher exemplifies the spirit of West Coast music both in the richness of his sound world as well as the inventiveness of his mind. In the tradition of Harry Partch, Conlon Nancarrow, Lou Harrison, and Bill Colvig, Paul has invented new instruments, both mechanical and electronic, each of which has expanded his musical thinking. To that he adds a background in North Indian and Balinese traditions, all of which results in music of exceptional individuality and beauty.. He's a maverick in the very best sense of the world. John Adams, Interview, 2004
Paul Dresher is an internationally active composer noted for his ability to integrate diverse musical influences into his own coherent and unique personal style. He pursues many forms of musical expression including experimental opera and music theater, chamber and orchestral composition, live instrumental electro-acoustic music performances, musical instrument invention, and scores for theater, dance, and film.
A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2006-07, he has received commissions from the Library of Congress, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony, California EAR Unit, Zeitgeist, San Francisco Ballet, Walker Arts Center, Meet the Composer, Seattle Chamber Players, Present Music, San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Music America, and the National Flute Association. He has performed or had his works performed throughout North America, Asia, and Europe at venues including New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Munich State Opera, London Sinfonietta, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, the Festival d’Automne in Paris, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, Arts Summit Indonesia ’95 and Festival Interlink in Japan. Dresher has also worked extensively with many choreographers including Margaret Jenkins, Brenda Way/ODC San Francisco, Nancy Karp, Wendy Rogers, and Allyson Green.
Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Dresher received his B.A. in Music from U.C. Berkeley and his M.A. in Composition from U.C. San Diego where he studied with Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and Bernard Rands. He also studied intonation and instrument building with Lou Harrision. sHe has had a longtime interest in the music of Asia and Africa, studying Ghanaian drumming with C.K. and Kobla Ladzekpo, Hindustani classical music with Nikhil Banerjee as well as Balinese and Javanese music. Recordings of his works are available on the Lovely Music, New World (with Ned Rothenberg), CRI, Music and Arts, 0.0. Discs, BMG/Catalyst, MinMax, Starkland, and New Albion labels.
Larnie Fox is a visual and sound artist known for paintings, monumental bamboo sculpture, sound art, sound installations and performances. His kinetic/sound sculpture and paintings have been shown in one-person shows at The Lab, The Richmond Art Center and The Randall Museum, and in numerous group shows and performances in the SF Bay Area and Salt Lake City, Utah. He was commissioned to create and burn a 20 ft. bamboo and muslin windmill at Burning Man 1997, and there he made and flew a bamboo airplane in 1998 with his wife Bodil. Other Collaborations with Bodil have included set design and construction for Theatre of Yugen's "Cycle Plays" at Theatre Artaud, a giant kinetic dragonfly for the DuPage Museum near Chicago, and "Time Sensitive Materials" at Cricket Engine in Oakland, CA. He directs the Crank Ensemble, a fourteen-member group that performs on hand-cranked instruments built by Larnie.
Larnie Fox is a working artist, and arts consultant. He formerly was Executive Director of Arts Benicia and Director of the Children's Fine Art Program for the City of Palo Alto at the Palo Alto Art Center. He has taught drawing, art appreciation and color design at Weber State College, Ogden, Utah, and drawing at the Community University in Bozeman, Montana. He is a founding member of 23five, a Bay Area non-profit that promotes sound art. He holds an M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the University of Utah, and a BA in Painting and Drawing from Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, and lives, works and collaborates with his wife Bodil in Benicia.
Sung Kim is an improviser, sculptor, and instrument builder born in Seoul, Korea and raised in Washington, DC. In 1989, Kim studied ceramic sculpture at the Corcoran School of Art. It was at Corcoran that Kim started building his own variations of the guitar.
Kim received his B.F.A. in sculpture from the school of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. It was in Chicago where Kim began to deviate from the guitar to explore other techniques, tonalities, and sympathetic resonance. It was also in Chicago where Kim started his collaborations with musicians to explore his instruments in an improvisational context.
Kim facilitates his musical and sculptural endeavors by owning and operating an architectural woodworking design/build studio in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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The Turquoise Yantra Grotto is a house concert series for avant improvisers and invented instrumentalists with a focus on ethno-modernism and extended techniques. We hold a monthly event which is part concert, part art opening and part social club, near glen canyon in San Francisco. The current exhibition displays classic tuning diagrams from contemporary masters of microtonality, spanning Harrison and Partch to Chalmers and Erlich.
Cost: 10-15