Electronic, radicalized New Rebetika (Ρεμπέτικα Νέα) with Viv Corringham's West Coast "Life Is Clearer Seen Through Smoke" Tour + CCRMA composers & instrument inventors Eoin Callery & Romain Michon
◉ Set 1: CCRMA composers & instrument inventors Eoin Callery & Romain Michon
Two daring composer-performers and instrument makers from CCRMA, Stanford's Mecca of computer music, present a program of their recent works and sonic adventures.
— Romain Michon's research focuses on physical modeling of musical instruments, new lutherie, digital fabrication, FAUST, and the use of mobile platforms as musical instruments. As a musician, Romain plays saxophone and piano, he is also a tenor opera singer; above all, he likes to rock on his mutant child, the Blade Axe (https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~rmichon/bladeaxe) and others of his invented musical instruments like the Férraillophone, Noise Toaster, or Chanforgnophone, while singing what will be known in the future as Klingon Opera. His music has been performed in Europe, America & Asia.
Romain holds bachelor's & Master’s degrees in musicology + computer science from Saint-Étienne University (France) & NUIM (Ireland) where he studied with Laurent Pottier, Yann Orlarey & Victor Lazzarini. He also graduated from Saint-Étienne & Lyon Conservatoire in sax performance, singing, choir conducting & electroacoustic music. Romain has been doing consulting work as a software, DSP & mechanical engineer for several institutions and companies such as for GRAME (France) on the FAUST project (http://faust.grame.fr), IRCAM (France), CIEREC (France), Renault (USA/France), MoForte (USA), etc.
— Eoin Callery is an Irish artist who among other things creates electro-acoustic chamber music, interactive sound and video performances/situations/installations, and builds instruments using found materials. He has also written and collaborated in the production of sound and music for theater and radio. His pieces have been recently performed by Ensemble Dal Niente, the JACK Quartet, and Séverine Ballon, among others.
He is also CCRMA's resident impresario, who has built a remarkable series of computer music and electro-acoustic concerts since taking over the CCRMA concert series, in which he sometimes also performs, processing the hell out of a plucked guitar string against a background of Irish bodhrán percussion motifs or tapping the contours of a home-brew junk-yard percussion instrument. Eoin holds a BMUS from University College Cork, MA from Wesleyan, and is currently at Stanford CCRMA.
◉ Set 2: Viv Corringham's "Life Is Clearer Seen Through Smoke" tour — Electronic, radicalized, multimedia New Rebetika (Ρεμπέτικα Νέα) — w Viv Corringham (vocals | electronics),
Nancy Beckman (shakuhachi),
Tom Bickley (EWI wind synth | contrabass recorder), Nan Busse (dance | didgeridoo), Anna Geyer (film & light abstractions), Joe Lasqo (laptop | piano | synth | objects)
Viv Corringham, British vocalist and electronics artist, currently based in New York and local touring band, in the Life Is Clearer See Through Smoke tour.
The program is multimedia, electrified, radicalized New Rebetika (Ρεμπέτικα Νέα). Often called the Greek Blues, rebetika's best known songs date from the first half of the 20th-C, and come from an urban subculture on the fringes of society, despised and persecuted: Greek refugees forced out of Asia Minor who had poured into the cities in the 1920s. Their songs talk of exile, poverty, drugs, love and jail.
An idea of the extended, unconventional possibilities of this repertoire can be got from Viv's New Rebetika album with UK avant lap-steel guitarist and electronic musician Mike Cooper, called Rembetronika (https://archive.org/details/MikeCooper.VivCorringham.rembetronika)
Now Viv and crew will take it farther…
Line-up:
Viv Corringham: voice, electronics, field recordings
Nancy Beckman: shakuhachi
Tom Bickley: contra-bass recorder & EWI wind synth
Nan Busse: dance & didgeridoo
Anna Geyer: film & light abstractions
Joe Lasqo: laptop, synth/piano, objects, field recordings
— Viv Corringham (voice, electronics, field recordings) has worked internationally since the early 80s, creating music performances, audio installations & soundwalks, using as her tools a gorgeous voice, a wide-open imagination, field recordings, and live electronics.
She’s interested in exploring people’s special relationship with familiar places and how that links to an interior landscape of personal history, memory and association.
Her ongoing project Shadow-Walks has been presented in gallery shows from New York to Istanbul to Hong Kong. Not limited to roaming physical space, Viv’s travels extend to virtual space, including the notable Avatar Orchestra Metaverse project, meeting regularly with Pauline Oliveros and other happy mutants to play audio-visual instruments in Second Life.
Viv’s training and awards include an MA in Sonic Art with Distinction from Middlesex University & a BA in Theatre Design from Nottingham Trent University. She’s a certified teacher of Deep Listening, having studied with Pauline Oliveros. Viv is a 2012 and 2006 McKnight Composer Fellow; other grants and awards have come from Jerome Meet the Composer, the English & Irish Arts Councils, Jazz Services, Millennium Funding, London Arts Board, Chisenhale Awards, and others.
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Nancy Beckman (shakuhachi) creates performance pieces, plays and teaches the shakuhachi, and performs with the Cornelius Cardew Choir. Her education includes an undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University, a master’s in Interarts from SFSU and ordination to teach shakuhachi from Myōan-ji (明暗寺, the famous “Temple of Light & Darkness” of shakuhachi history) in Kyoto.
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Tom Bickley (Paetzold contrabass recorder | EWI wind synth | objects) composes electro-acoustic music, plays and teaches recorder, performs with Three Trapped Tigers (with recorder player David Barnett), co-founded and directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir, is a curator emeritus of the Meridian Gallery music series, and is on the Library Faculty (music, philosophy and political science) at CSU East Bay. His education includes degrees in music, theology, and library and information science and the Certificate in Deep Listening.
— Nan Busse (dance | didgeridoo) has been creating dance-based art works since receiving her MFA from UC-Irvine. Collaborating with choreographer Christopher Beck she made pieces performed at Centerspace (Project Artaud) & New College; and with her partner, poet Tobey Kaplan, participated in the Link inter-disciplinary performance series, as well as working and studying with Yvonne Caldwell, Evelyn Thomas, Roger Dillahunty, Georgia Ortega, John Tanner, and the great Cassie Terman. She has toured in Việt Nam and the US with Nguyễn Dance Company.
Originally trained as a musician (piano), Nan’s increasing engagement with the didgeridoo, as both an instrument and dance partner, has led to some wonderful collaborations where she executes her part at all points on the spectrum between sound and movement.
— Anna Geyer (film & light abstractions) is both an award winning experimental filmmaker and a writer. Her films have screened in many festivals both domestically and internationally.
Cameraless, non-representational work has been the emphasis of her recent efforts, although she frequently describes her work as, “experimental with a narrative bent”. Her stunning multi-projector physical film abstractions have often been featured in duos with electronic musician David Molina.
“Unlike traditional two projector (change-over) screenings, my projector lamps and lenses are not matched. Each projector lamp has a different brightness on purpose… Here I load a reel of abstract, hand painted cameraless work. It can move at variable speeds forward or reverse, or even remain still… At times I employ a fourth projector. I do so in order to allow a frame to get stuck in the gate and burn.”
— Joe Lasqo (laptop | piano | synth | objects)
Pianist / laptopist Joe Lasqo studied classical music in India; computer/electronic music at MIT, Columbia, Berkeley/CNMAT; has been a long-time performing modern & avant jazz musician; & has lived, played and listened in several Asian and European countries (now in San Francisco). He's keen on the application of artificial intelligence techniques to improvisation and the meeting of traditional Asian musics with the 21st century. His recent album, Turquoise Sessions, is available on Edgetone Records; with new releases planned in 2015.
Joe had a weekly residency for 3½ years+ in the piano series at Viracocha, and has appeared recently with Bruce Ackley and Steve Adams of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Aaron Bennett's Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra, Phillip Greenlief's Orchesperry, his own Renga-kai (連歌会), Mukaiji-kai (霧海箎会), and Fushigi Kenkyūkai (不思議研究会) ensembles, synthesist Thomas Dimuzio, clarinetist/vocalist Beth Custer, pianist Thollem McDonas, percussionist Suki O'Kane, sound artists Joe Snape (UK) & Lucie Vítková (Czech Rep.), technodivas / electronic musicians Pamela Z & Viv Corringham (NYC/London) and many others.
AU QUOTIDIEN, a new album with German-Swedish saxist/flautist Biggi Vinkeloe, master drummer Donald Robinson, and cello madman Teddy Rankin-Parker is in production for release in early 2016.