On Friday, October 30 at 7:30pm, Tom's Place presents
NEWT POOL (Cheryl Leonard,
Wobbly)
Philip Perkins (solo electronics)
Newt Pool celebrates the astonishing aquatic voices of plants, invertebrates, and amphibians in a pond of water in Battery Townsley in Marin Headlands. Completed in 1940, the battery housed two 16-inch caliber guns, each capable of shooting a 2,100 pound projectile 25 miles out to sea. By the end of World War II these guns became obsolete, and they were removed and scrapped. A large concrete pit was left behind where one of the guns had been installed. Over time it filled with rain water and life recolonized this former gun mount. Today the pool is home to several species of freshwater aquatic plants, various invertebrates, a population of California newts, and the occasional frog and garter snake. The submerged soundscapes here are jaw-droppingly rich and varied: plants click, buzz, and glissando; invertebrates stridulate; and every so often a newt squeaks. Intertwining field recordings with sounds from natural-object instruments and electronic processing,
Cheryl E. Leonard and
Wobbly share this enthralling underwater world with listeners.
Cheryl E. Leonard is a composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder whose works investigate natural sites and ecosystems, and human relationships to them. She uses microphones and amplification to explore sonic intricacies, highlighting unique voices and soundscapes while addressing environmental issues. Her projects feature sculptural natural-object instruments and recordings from wild locales, and have been presented in the Americas, Europe, Japan, and Australasia. Grants awarded include the Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, American Music Center, American Composers Forum, and ASCAP. Her recordings are available on Other Minds, forms of minutiae, mappa, Gilgongo, and more. www.allwaysnorth.com
Wobbly is a sound artist known for his solo work as well as his collaborations with bands including Negativland. He has lectured on the secret histories of electronic music at Oxford, Stanford, Mills, UC Berkeley, and Peabody. His nine-hour survey of sampling and collage, Variations, is hosted online by the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art. https://www.detritus.net/
WobblyPhilip Perkins has been making musical sound works, mostly available as recordings, for 58 years. His collaborators have included musicians Scott Fraser, Tim Perkis and The Residents, and choreographers Alonzo King, Kara Wilkes and Meredith Webster. At this show he will be performing a new version of his piece "Best Guess", made with constructed, recorded, harvested and revised sounds, noise and music from a wide variety of sources in a continuous stream. https://philipperkins.bandcamp.com/
Tom's Place
3111 Deakin Street, Berkeley CA
Calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/0ots0lvkk7164af1t953opr5o4%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Directions: http://4-33.com/directions.html
Information: http://4-33.com/toms-place/index.html
Admission: donation. All proceeds go directly to the musicians.
(Bring Greenbacks! We have neither facilities nor the patience for processing checks, credit cards, venmo, paypal, zelle, foreign exchange, etc.)
No reserved seats.
Doors open at 7:00.