With Sounds of Slowing Down, Shanna Sordahl and Robert Lopez (the duo known as SO AR) spotlight the radical act of slowing down in a culture that demands efficiency and continual production. Centering a process-based approach, the project combines music improvisation with intentional movement and engagement with local environments. Alongside collaborators Kevin Robinson, Aaron Oppenheim, and Voicehandler (Danishta Rivero and Jacob Felix Heule), Lopez and Sordahl are implementing an immersive creative process in which they will traverse the Bay Area via bike, foot, and public transit, performing in intimate outdoor spaces. This show at The Lab shares this experiential framework with the audience, blending live performance with video and audio recordings from the collection of outdoor performances.

Emphasizing reflection and intentional interactions, the project activates possibilities for celebrating and sharing culture while exploringways of manifesting sustainable and equitable solutions to the constraints of capitalism.By incorporating concepts of slowing down into their artistic process, the artists seek to demonstrate the power this presents as a palpable alternative to oppressive, unhealthy, and widely accepted societal norms. Cycling and walking function not only as modes of transportation, but as catalysts for connection, reflection, and resilience – a form of tuning and transformation
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Jordan Glenn’s BEAK is a Bay Area based music ensemble of hand percussion, drum set, electric guitars, vibraphone, and bass that formed in 2014 as a vehicle to explore conducted improvisation and how it interacts with composed material. The music of BEAK ranges from through-composed pieces that draw on elements of Afro-beat, Indonesian Gamelan, experimental-classical music and funk, to freely improvised works using Glenn’s personal language of hand cues. For this concert Glenn’s ensemble is joining forces with instrument inventor, Sudhu Tewari. The result will be an evening of conducted improvisation, sonic exploration and new compositions for traditional and invented instruments.

Jordan Glenn is a drummer, percussionist, composer and improviser based in Oakland. He is best known for his work with the Fred Frith Trio, Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins, William Winant, Lisa Mezzacappa, Ben Goldberg and his trio Wiener Kids. He has performed with Rhys Chatham, Secret Chiefs 3, ROVA Sax Quartet and tUnE-yArDs. As a composer he has been commissioned to create scores for evening-length dance pieces by Sharp & Fine and Liss Fain Dance.

Sudhu Tewari has been described as a bricoleur, junkyard maven, and audio-gadgeteer. He invents and builds musical instruments, kinetic and sound sculptures, interactive installations, audio electronics, and wearable sound art. Tewari also composes electroacoustic works for concert halls and sound installations. Along with Fred Frith, Sudhu is one half of the home-made instrument improvising duo Normal, and has performed in this and other configurations in Europe, Japan, and the USA. His visual and interactive art has been exhibited in the US and Europe. Sudhu holds an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College, and a PhD in Cultural Musicology from UC Santa Cruz.

BEAK is:

Karl Evangelista- guitar
David James- guitar
Lisa Mezzacappa- bass
Mark Clifford- vibraphone/percussion
Robert Lopez- percussion
Jon Arkin- drums
Jordan Glenn- conductor/composer
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S3ljam

S3ljam is a 2-night performance and convening that formally presents a compilation of 6 scores collectively developed in workshops between December 4, 2022, to January 15, 2023, as part of Sunday Sessions X MAJLES, during Sholeh Asgary's residency at Berkeley Art Center. Sunday Sessions built upon, and at times, broke down, MAJLES, a program that situates the body as a site of knowledge, enacting movement and voice from and within the physical place they occupy to explore complex relationships to space, place, and one another. "Majles" is an Arabic and Persian term that translates to council. In this context, it refers to a creative contract as a form of decentralized governance. The weekly 3-hour Sunday Sessions sought to build collaborative and cross-cultural processes of score writing within a non-hierarchical framework. Each composition connects specific types of movement work (including strikes, protests, home, collectivity, and rest) to the collective build and physical space within which the score is developed and eventually performed through sound, movement, silence, text, and image.

For this special occasion at The Lab, S3ljam invites new and previous participants to formally and publicly perform these six collectively developed scores for the first time. In addition, there will be a limited edition gift. Ultimately, S3ljam proposes a creative sonic governance that is decentralized, asking how listening can reveal how we understand, relate, and world-build.

September 30:

Roco Cordova
Kevin CK Lo
Gabby Wen
Michael Mersereau
Donia Jarrar

October 1:

Dena Al-Adeeb
Jorge Bachmann
Adrian Montufar
Ven Voisey
Leila Abdul-Rauf
champoy

https://www.thelab.org/projects/2023/9/30/s3ljam-1
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S3ljam

S3ljam is a 2-night performance and convening that formally presents a compilation of 6 scores collectively developed in workshops between December 4, 2022, to January 15, 2023, as part of Sunday Sessions X MAJLES, during Sholeh Asgary's residency at Berkeley Art Center. Sunday Sessions built upon, and at times, broke down, MAJLES, a program that situates the body as a site of knowledge, enacting movement and voice from and within the physical place they occupy to explore complex relationships to space, place, and one another. "Majles" is an Arabic and Persian term that translates to council. In this context, it refers to a creative contract as a form of decentralized governance. The weekly 3-hour Sunday Sessions sought to build collaborative and cross-cultural processes of score writing within a non-hierarchical framework. Each composition connects specific types of movement work (including strikes, protests, home, collectivity, and rest) to the collective build and physical space within which the score is developed and eventually performed through sound, movement, silence, text, and image.

For this special occasion at The Lab, S3ljam invites new and previous participants to formally and publicly perform these six collectively developed scores for the first time. In addition, there will be a limited edition gift. Ultimately, S3ljam proposes a creative sonic governance that is decentralized, asking how listening can reveal how we understand, relate, and world-build.

https://www.thelab.org/projects/2023/9/30/s3ljam-1

September 30:

Roco Cordova
Kevin CK Lo
Gabby Wen
Michael Mersereau
Donia Jarrar

October 1:

Dena Al-Adeeb
Jorge Bachmann
Adrian Montufar
Ven Voisey
Leila Abdul-Rauf
champoy
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Mesh Manifold is a live sound-sculpture composition by the duo MSHR, consisting of a multitude of devices in a complex and unruly feedback system of sound and light. Developed over the course of a summer residency in Santa Cruz, California, Mesh Manifold extends MSHR’s past work, introducing a fresh population of autonomous sculptural “entities,” cohabiting across simulated and substantial substrates.

The resonating bodies contain custom-built electrical circuits with sensors and amplifiers that emit and respond to signals rippling throughout the system. The entities converse through these physical connections as well as engaging with an invisible software canopy inscribed across the terrain through various programming languages. As elements of the system themselves, MSHR move throughout the sculptural array, adjusting the waveform micro-climates while modulating their own decisions in response to the unpredictable audiovisual results of their active presence. The entities and agents together form a babbling biome for electrical current, cultivating a life-like chorus from inert components.

Mesh Manifold was commissioned by Indexical and The Lab, with in-kind support from the Arts Council of Santa Cruz County and Idea Fab Labs, Santa Cruz.
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loscil (Scott Morgan) and Lawrence English present a live AV edition of their collaborative album Colours of Air (kranky, 2023). Drawing from the rich palette of pipe organ sounds sourced for the album, the duo process, rearrange, remix and supplement with live, adaptive visuals bringing new perspectives to their recorded work.

United by a shared interest in the provocative promise of harmony and pulse, and the unyielding aspiration of brutalist architectural forms, loscil (Scott Morgan) and Lawrence English’s Colours Of Air for kranky is their first joint offering. Drawing the entirety of the album's sound materials from a century old pipe organ, the recordings draw on a methodology that is equal parts devolution and iteration. Working to extract the full breath of the organ, and through doing so honour the intensely rich sources that the instrument produces, Morgan and English’s approaches transform the instrument’s pipes and mechanics. This reframing of the instrument reveals a refracted perspective that celebrates the dynamic and timbral capacities of the organ. The results are undulating, saturated and porous, creating a sense of the pieces open ever outward, inviting audiences to become consumed within an ever exhaling breath of sound.
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The three-day festival gathers a broad cross-section of composers associated with the legendary and now defunct Mills College Music Department for a series of performances driven by questions around legacy, institutional memory, and creative regeneration. The festival is named after famed musician “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s Seven Years of Crazy Love, a compilation featuring musicians from the Mills College community released in the late seventies.

Participating artists have been directed towards recordings from the 7000+ item audio archive at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills, and invited to create new works inspired by their finds and/or create new realizations of these historic compositions.

With the loss of institutional support at Mills comes an opportunity to disentangle the values and aesthetics of individual artists from those of the institution. New space opens to reimagine what creative community looks like and how it is organized, and this festival aims to take a step in that direction. One lesson we have learned from our participation in the Mills music community is the value of experimentation for its own sake. At the very least, we aim to honor this essential tradition.

The festival is curated and organized by Sally Decker, Brendan Glasson, Briana Marela, Michelle Moeller, Matt Robidoux, and Mitch Stahlmann in collaboration with Laetitia Sonami, who realized a version of this project in her final seminar at Mills.

Thursday, Nov. 9:

House Band: Sally Decker, Brendan Glasson, Briana Marela, Michelle Moeller, Matt Robidoux, Mitch Stahlmann

Junior Mint Prince: Lula Asplund, Naomi Harrison-Clay

Cheryl E. Leonard

John Bischoff and James Fei

Friday, Nov. 10:

Chari Glogovac-Smith

Brenda Hutchinson and Krys Bobrowski

Beast Nest

Laetitia Sonami and Paul DeMarinis

Saturday, Nov. 11:

1pm Workshop with Danishta Rivero (free admission and participation)

KREation (Kevin Robinson and collaborators)

Matt Ingalls

Ana Roxanne

Blectum from Blectum
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Laurel Halo is a composer, producer, musician and DJ based in Los Angeles. Drawing inspiration from a range of musical traditions, her output is singular yet stylistically diverse, with releases traversing ambient, leftfield club, experimental pop and film score. Since 2012 she has released a number of critically-acclaimed albums including Quarantine (2012, Hyperdub), In Situ (2015, Honest Jon's), Raw Silk Uncut Wood (2018, Latency), and Possessed: OST (2020, Vinyl Factory). She has performed in venues, festivals, clubs and institutions across the world, including the Southbank Centre, Sydney Opera House, The Kitchen, Kölner Philharmonie, CTM/Transmediale, Sónar, and Montreux Jazz Festival. She has collaborated with musicians, artists and fashion designers including Moritz von Oswald, Metahaven, Kevin Beasley, Julia Holter, Hanne Lippard, Eckhaus Latta, Martine Syms, John Cale, and the London Contemporary Orchestra. In September 2023 she will release her latest album, Atlas, as the debut release on her new record label, Awe.

Joel St. Julien is a Haitian-American composer and sound artist based in San Francisco. Joel has written music for documentaries, short / feature films, podcasts, and dance. He is a firm believer in experimentation/fusion with acoustic and electronic elements in sound oscillating through escapism and the mysticism of the present tense. Joel has shared music at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Stanford University’s CCRMA, Gray Area, CounterPulse Festival, Land and Sea Gallery, and Spectrum NYC. His music has also been featured and reviewed in Resident Advisor, The Wire, Disquiet, KQED, Foxy Digitalis, a closer listen, Dublab, and many more. Joel’s most recent album, Masking, was released on Dragon’s Eye Recordings.
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