Sunday Dec 11: 5 ACTS -- An evening of experimental music at The soundBarn

Jeffrey Young   photo: vitalphoto.com

The soundBarn presents:   5 ACTS -- An evening of experimental music.Sunday December 11   8PM      Suggested donation $8/ $5 student
 

The soundBarn in Valatie, NY is pleased to present an evening of experimental music featuring Valerie Kuehne, Paul Pinto, Jeffrey Young, Century Plants and soundBarn from New York City and the Capital Region.

"Electrically-charged virtuoso of all-purpose cello," Valerie Kuehne from New York City performs a musical collage for cello and voice of dark and comedic vignettes about shopping, food, and drugs.  http://dreamzoo.bandcamp.com.

Paul Pinto performs For Stefanos Tsigrimanis , an elegy scored for two turntables, voice, guitar and electronics  for Pinto’s friend and collaborator whose life was cut short after a bicycle accident in September 2010.   Paul Pinto is a composer, vocalist and founding artistic director of thingNY in New York City.    http://pfpinto.com/forstefanos

Jeffrey Young premiers a new set of alternatively energetic and deeply meditative work for violin, voice, and live electronics.   Young is a composer and violinist from Brooklyn, NY who specializes in experimental classical and rock music.    www.jeffrey-young.com

Century Plants are the Albany-based experimental guitar duo of Eric Hardiman and Ray Hare who have been described as “part raging metallic clang by way of the holy Shred, part meditative feedbacking in total Zen style.”   Century Plants are highly regarded in the international underground noise/psych/rock/drone scene and have released music on labels from all over the globe.  http://www.myspace.com/centuryplants

soundBarn has been mining the possibilities of extreme guitar for years.  Thomas Lail and Patrick Weklar ply prepared and altered guitars, overprocess signals and pile loops of sound to orchestrate an arching instrumental tale of creation and destruction.   www.soundbarn.blogspot.com

  

The soundBarn

330 Maple Lane

Valatie NY 12184

south drive

LOCATION ENSEMBLE on Nippertown!

Matt Weston, Ray Hare, Patrick Weklar & Holland Hopson

LIVE: Location Ensemble @ Saratoga Arts Center, 11/12/11


The performance by Location Ensemble at the Saratoga Arts Center last Saturday began and ended with gifts to the crowd. Before the show started, free sets of ear plugs were offered up to attendees to blunt the impact of the experimental sound troupe’s eight guitarists and one drummer.

And the show ended when ensemble members passed plastic cups filled with fizzling champagne around the audience – a bit of participatory theater that concluded their fascinating final piece, “Electric Guitar II” by Swiss experimental composer Valerian Maly.

“This last piece happens mostly on the floor. It’s quite a bit less loud than what you just heard, for the most part,” announced guitarist and ensemble member Holland Hopson before he knelt on the floor and placed a champagne flute on his guitar strings – a process repeated by each guitarist, one-by-one.

Champagne corks were then popped and the vibrating glasses filled atop a roomful of guitars, creating a dynamic, clanging hum before the experiment was over when ensemble members and the crowd drank up.

Thomas Lail & Tara Fracalossi

Before the effervescent finale, Location Ensemble – featuring, on this night, drummer Matt Weston and guitarists Tara Fracalossi, Howard Glassman, Eric Hardiman (who also played bass), Ray Hare, Hopson, Thomas Lail, Jason Martin and Patrick Weklar – performed three original pieces, accompanied by live video projections from Albany-based noise and video artist 1983 (Jason Cosco).

The group came together in 2010 as a way for local sonic experimenters to write pieces for a large ensemble.

During Eric Hardiman’s krautrock-influenced, minimalistic “Diversion #3,” a spiny fossil-like figure spiraled on the large video backdrop as Hardiman conducted the guitar army, indicating when they should rise up or mellow out as they played a single chord in multiple paired configurations.

Organic-looking images – from yellow flowers to blue-washed hairy roots – accompanied Hopson’s portrait of decay, “Six Chords Every Rock Guitarist Should Know,” as ensemble members played off each other, strumming chords and then waiting for their own sound to fade away before picking up again, creating multi-faceted layers of sound.

And “Untitled (All the Times She Loves Me),” written by soundBarn co-founder Thomas Lail, repurposed two alternate tunings used by Sonic Youth for their song, [“I Love Her All the Time.”] Half of the group played in one tuning and half in the other, recalling the dissonant, lonely and haunting mood that Sonic Youth evokes so well.

Howard Glassman, Eric Hardiman, Matt Weston, Ray Hare, Patrick Weklar & Holland Hopson

Review and photographs by Kirsten Ferguson

http://www.nippertown.com/2011/11/18/live-location-ensemble-saratoga-arts-center-111211/#more-62961



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Nippertown!: Be Here Now: Location Ensemble @ Saratoga Arts

Be Here Now: Location Ensemble @ Saratoga Arts Center, 11/12/11
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
There’s a new band in town, and you can bet your last peso that Location Ensemble is not like any other band on the Nippertown scene. And that’s because, well, there’s no other combo around that features a bassist, a drummer and seven – count ‘em, 7 – guitarists.

It all began last year when the experimental duo soundBarn joined forces with members of the Albany Sonic Arts Collective to perform Rhys Chatham’s legendary 1977 piece, “Guitar Trio,” a swirling mass of minimalism-meets-punk rock.

They decided to make the collaboration a semi-permanent performing unit, and the underground super-group was christened Location Ensemble.

On Saturday evening Location Ensemble will be unleashing their unholy sound once again with a concert at the Saratoga Arts Center in Saratoga, featuring new works by ensemble members Eric Hardiman, Holland Hopson and Thomas Lail, as well as an expanded score of Valerian Maly’s “Electric Guitar II.” The performance will be accompanied by live projections created by digital/video artist 1983.

For Saturday’s performance, the members of Location Ensemble will include guitarists Tara Fracalossi, Howard Glassman, Ray Hare, Holland Hopson, Thomas Lail, Jason Martin and Patrick Weklar, as well as bassist-guitarist Eric Hardiman and drummer Matt Weston.

The performance by Location Ensemble will take place at 8pm on Saturday (November 12) at the Saratoga Arts Center in Saratoga Springs. Admission is $8; students $5.

http://www.nippertown.com/category/be-here-now/

Location Ensemble! Saturday Nov 12, Saratoga Arts

Join us for this special event - a rare performance by LOCATION ENSEMBLE! If you're not sure what that means,  think "ecstatic and hypnotic massed guitar orchestra" and you'll be close.

LOCATION ENSEMBLE performs, with video projection by 1983.
Saturday, November 12, at 8pm
The Arts Center, 320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY
$8 / $5 for students and members of the Albany Sonic Arts Collective

Location Ensemble, a supergroup sprung from the Capital Region's underground music scene and comprised of seven guitarists, bass player and drummer, will perform a program of original compositions and a new classic of experimental sound art at The Arts Center in Saratoga Springs on Saturday, November 12. The musical program will be accompanied by the projections created live by digital/video artist 1983.

In 2010 sonic experimenters soundBarn and Albany Sonic Arts Collective joined forces to perform at Saratoga Springs' Arts Center and two other venues Rhys Chatham's fabled Guitar Trio (1977), a swirling mass of sound where minimalism met punk rock and changed the state of music by ushering in the art-noise-rock scene of the early 1980's. With the last chords still ringing, soundBarn and Albany Sonic Arts members decided to make the group a semi-permanent performing unit and christened the project 'LOCATION ENSEMBLE'.

LOCATION ENSEMBLE has recently expanded its repertoire, serving as the core of two performances of John Cages's Imaginary Landscapes IV, scored for twelve AM radios.

On November 12, LOCATION ENSEMBLE sets aside their radios to pick up their guitars, bass and drums once again. This time the ensemble will perform new works by members Eric Hardiman, Holland Hopson and Thomas Lail with an expanded score of Valerian Maly's Electric Guitar II.

Valerian Maly (Born Switzerland 1959) is a composer, performer and music director of experimental theater. His projects include collaborations with John Cage, David Tudor and Alvin Lucier. Influenced by the Fluxus-artists, Maly’s Electric Guitar II (1994) employs electric guitar & champagne as a form of trauma therapy; a response to the musical education of a Swiss conservatory. Maly lives and works in Bern, Switzerland.

For this show, LOCATION ENSEMBLE will include:

Tara Fracalossi - guitar
Ray Hare - guitar
Howard Glassman - guitar
Holland Hopson - guitar
Thomas Lail - guitar
Jason Martin - guitar
Patrick Weklar- guitar
Eric Hardiman - bass & guitar
Matt Weston - drums

Video projections to accompany this concert will be provided by 1983 (Jason Cosco), an Albany based noise and video artist, co-founder of the Upstate Artist Guild, and a member of the Albany Sonic Arts Collective.