Jason Kahn &
Kevin Corcoran (analog electronics & percussion, Switzerland/San Francisco):
Born 1960 in New York, Jason Kahn is a artist, musician and writer. He lives and works in Zürich. His work with electronics involves chaotic feedback systems and placing his body in the circuit flow. Grabbing open leads with the hands makes and breaks circuits, causing the synthesizer to overload or momentarily collapse. Various contact microphones, electromagnetic inductors and the synthesizer's own output via a mixing board are used to modulate the parameters of the synthesizer. This results in a very dynamic system, often difficult to control, but allowing great expressivity—much like any acoustic instrument, but electronic. Live radio captures during the concert and recordings made beforehand in the performance space and its environs provide further working material for each concert. In the end, these performances are essentially site-specific works, improvising with the space at hand, both in the sense of its physicality and the sounds found there. Every performance is different, not only because the music is improvised but also because the source material used pertains directly to each space being played in.
Kevin Corcoran works with percussion, field recordings and electronics with an open interest in sound as medium as it moves through contexts of music, art, communication and place. As a percussionist he is focused on techniques emphasizing textural sound, friction, sympathetic vibration, sustained tones and the use of found objects with a preference for freely arranging sounds in duration rather than marking time by rhythm. Whether working in sparse sound with a single drum and cymbal or frenetic contexts on the drum kit, improvisation is crucial to his practice as generative method and non-hierarchical exchange of ideas.
Danishta Rivero (voice & electronics):
Danishta Rivero is an improviser, performer, and sound artist based in Oakland, California. She explores the artifacts resulting from heavy processing of the voice and their relationship to its acoustic resonating presence. As a soloist, Rivero often performs as Caribay, conjuring the eponymous mountain spirit, whose laments cause avalanches.
She is a member of electro-acoustic duo Voicehandler with percussionist Jacob Felix Heule. She is also half of Las Sucias, a feminist tropical noise duo with Alexandra Buschman-Román.
Gabby Wen & Jorge Bachmann (electronics):
Born 1995 in Toisan, Canton, raised in Shenzhen, currently live in Oakland, CA, Gabby Wen is an electroacoustic music composer and improviser, working with synthesizers, electronics, guqin, field recordings, and miscellaneous instruments and objects to create captivating auditory experiences and narratives. Gabby works towards bringing aesthetics and musical traditions that are valuable but overlooked to the forefront of the improvised music scene. Their works include solo and collaborative live improvisation performances and fixed-media electroacoustic compositions, fueled by spontaneity and uncertainty, reflecting introspective experiences and their relationship to their upbringing, memories, desires, impulses, and surroundings. During improvisations, they pay close attention to the subtle changes in consciousness and perception as the textures of sound alters and unexpected ways communications occur. Gabby is also interested in new ways of parameter control in sound synthesis, especially a system that involves interdependent segments affecting each other. Their sound designs are inspired by manufacturing machinery, insects, neighborhoods, traffic, home appliances, storms, forests, and the ocean. Gabby is keen on traveling, discovering, and studying the profound use of improvisational elements in traditional music around the globe.
Jorge Bachmann is a sound artist and curator based in San Francisco, California.
Working across a wide range of explorations, Bachmann's work is eclectic, focused on musique concrète soundscapes and analog modular synth minimalism. Since the early 1980's he has been exploring the strange, unique and microscopic sounds of everyday life. Collecting field recordings and creating immersive soundscapes, his work blurs the boundaries between wilderness and man-made sounds. He has performed and exhibited in North and South America, Europe, Japan, and Taiwan.
Cost: $10 suggested donation