Fuzzy Bunny:
Chris BrownScot Gresham-Lancaster
Tim Perkis+
Tania Chen w/
Tim PerkisThurs Aug 5, 8pm
Turquoise Yantra Grotto
32 Turquoise Way, SF
$10-15
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BIOS:
Chris Brown, composer, pianist, and electronic musician, creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. Collaboration and improvisation are consistent themes in his work, along with the invention and performance of new electronic instruments and software. He is a founding member of The HUB, the pioneering network music ensemble, and has composed many interactive works for the percussionist William Winant (Iconicities, New World Records.) His trio with Winant and saxophonist Frank Gratkowski were featured on the 2009 Donaueschingen Musiktage. His most recent music explores microtonal tunings, including 6Primes, for piano in 13-limit just intonation, Arcade for string quartet, and Ragamala Chiaroscuro, for wind trio. Recordings are available on New World, Tzadik, Pogus, Intakt, Rastascan, Ecstatic Peace, Red Toucan, SIRR, Leo, and Artifact labels. He is currently a Professor of Music at Mills College and Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM). http://cbmuse.com
Scot Gresham-Lancaster (Oakland, CA) a composer, performer, and instrument designer, has been active in electronic and acoustic music for over twenty years.
He is currently a lecturer in Computer Music, Electronic Technician and Recording Engineer at the Music Department at California State University, Hayward. He is on hiatus from his lecturing position at Ex'pressions Center for New Media.
He has toured and recorded as a soloist and with the electro-acoustical ensembles the HUB and Room, Alvin Curran, ROVA saxophone quartet, The Club Foot Orchestra , and the Dutch ambient group NYX.He has performed the music of Alvin Curran, John Zorn, and John Cage, under their direction, and worked as a technical assistant to Lou Harrison, Iannis Xenakis, David Tudor, and Pauline Oliveros among many others.
Tim Perkis has been working in the medium of live electronic and computer sound for many years, performing, exhibiting installation works and recording in North America,Europe and Japan. His work has largely been concerned with exploring the emergence of life-like properties in complex systems of interaction.
He has taught at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and the California College of the Arts (CCA); has been composer-in-residence at Mills College in Oakland California, artist-in-residence at Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center, and designed musical tools and toys at Paul Allen's legendary thinktank, Interval Research. In 2013 he was a resident fellow at the Mediterranean Institute of Advanced Research (IMéRA) of the University of Aix-Marseille in France.
His checkered career as a researcher and engineer has brought him a variety of interesting projects: creating data sonification displays for research physicists and biologists in France; designing museum displays for science and music museums in San Francisco, Toronto and Seattle; creating artificial-intelligence based auction tools for business; working on mobile phone based support systems for the blind; consulting on multimedia art presentation networks for the SF Art Commission and SF Airport; writing software embedded in toys and other consumer products; and creating new tools for sound and video production, research and analysis. He is also producer and director of a feature-length documentary on musicians and sound artists in the San Francisco Bay area called NOISY PEOPLE (2007).
Tania Chen is a pianist, experimental musician, free improviser and sound artist, working with pianos, keyboards, found objects, toys and vintage and lo-fi electronics.
She studied piano with John Tilbury during her Masters degree in Performance studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
She has performed the music of John Cage, Earle Brown, Schoenberg, Webern, Satie, Scriabin, Andrew Poppy, Michael Parsons and Chris Newman in the UK, Europe, USA and Japan. She is equally known for her passion for free improvisation, performing alongside and collaborating with musicians that include Steve Beresford, John Edwards, Lol Coxhill, Alan Tomlinson, Roger Turner, John Butcher, Rhodri Davies and Terry Day.
Earlier this year, Tania has been touring John Cage’s Indeterminacy with Steve Beresford and the comedian, writer and performer Stewart Lee. Most recently, she has been nominated for the Royal Philharmonic Society RPS Award.
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Now in our 6th season, 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 and part social club, part concert and part art opening, near Twin Peaks in San Francisco. The Turquoise Yantra Grotto is home to many unique invented instruments including the Zen Industrial Gamelan (or grand metalliphone), the Gamelan Piano, and several sonic paintings, as well as instruments by Bart Hopkin, Tom Nunn, David Samas, Dan Gottwald, Peter Whitehead, Bryan Day, Larnie Fox, Susan Rawcliffe and many others. The 4 pianos in the house are each uniquely tuned for a variety of repertoire showcased in our solo piano series.
Cost: $10-15