Difficult Listening Institute

This program represents a tic on the long timeline of the reductive approach to pure tone, and electro acoustic expressionism in music. We’ll explore some contemporary applications and concepts in music in the form of three short pieces followed by a very long one, where you’ll have the chance to spend the night in the Salvage Vanguard Theater Gallery as a participant in an intermedia “Sleep Concert.”

The pieces brought together for this evening of performance have common threads that will be easily recognized through listening, yet account for a wide degree of variance in goals and outcome.  Interlaced throughout these pieces is an invitation for differing degrees of audience interaction.  The performances offer an exploration of the possibilities of what La Monte Young referred to as the “sustained tone branch of minimalist music” what is often, more prosaically, referred to as drone music.

The drone is a common accompaniment in many liturgical, indigenous and folk music traditions. It was sometime around 1960 the drone itself was taken up as a subject of exploration in avant-garde and popular music. Successive generations of musicians have managed to find ever inventive ways to approach a single pure tone, or a cluster of similar interacting tones. We find an old and, as yet, unresolved conversation waiting. This conversation is scattered back over some distance in history, yet remains a fertile ground for exploration. The basic principles of the approach taken to these musical performances can be applied to the expression of any media or discipline, and result in nearly endless paths for adventurous creativity.

In this night's program, the audience is invited to use listening as a creative tool to explore new interactions with music.

Lustigovi

is a project of sound sculptures pieced together with springs, metals, wood, and unanticipated materials. Based on adaptations of various mechanisms, the individual parts take on dynamic qualities with their inherent abnormalities and curiosities shaping the characteristics of their minimal sound.

The sculptures are amplified with piezoelectric microphones picking up vibrations in the materials themselves. Initially sparse and isolated, varying iterations of the sounds become increasingly layered and indeterminate, with recursive processes generating new textures.

Total duration is 20 minutes.

 

Nick Hennies' "Psalms"

was inspired by two pieces: a vibraphone solo composed in 2001 as a memorial for Herbert Brün wherein random changes in resonance occur via consistency in striking location, and Alvin Lucier's "Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra"  wherein changes in timbre and resonance occur via variation in striking location, dampening, and rate of attack. With the three "Psalms" these playing methods are applied to snare drum and woodblock, and also explored the vibraphone in much greater detail.

The "Psalms" are compositions that emerged from repeat performances where structure, duration, and form were slowly determined over time rather than the usual method of composing first and performing after. The "Psalms" along with "Silver Streetcar" and the untitled vibraphone piece from 2001 have now been recorded and will eventually be released as an album. "Psalms" will be performed as a single, continuous listening experience.

Total duration roughly 40 minutes.


Andrew Weather’s "Untitled No. 3 (2010)"

is a structured piece about collective ensemble improvisation. The large group of musicians is given little material to play from, but each musician is given the work of finding their own place in the sound of the collective. This piece represents an attempt to explore and update the concept of drone music, moving onward from the work of artists such as Terry Riley and LaMonte Young. The piece uses musical cells, similar to the concept in Terry Riley’s “In C,” in which tones are looped by the performers. Unlike the Terry Riley piece, Untitled No. 3 (2010) is written with separate sets of loops, according to the range of each instrument, rather than the musicians all playing from the same set of cells.

Because the instrumentation is not specified in the score, the timbre created by the ensemble varies from performance to performance. The players move through held, or "still" tones and subtle repeated patterns that expand and contract. The resulting sound is a drone where textures gradually shift and change, as pitches and patterns move throughout the ensemble.

The musicians will move through the cells together, creating a dense
drone. The length of the cells will fluctuate, creating minute pulses found within the drone. Since the piece is written for flexible instrumentation, Andrew will select
performers from the Austin area. The piece calls for 13-20 players including the composer.

Total duration is 10-15 minutes.

 

The audience lies down to sleep for Tanner Menard’s "Sommeil," a concert for sleep.

Under the guidance and permission of Sleep Concert originator Robert Rich, Tanner Menard has taken his own approach to the concept.  This unique concert is performed for nine uninterrupted hours.

The performance is a live remix of “sleep music” submitted by more than 100 artists from all over the world. Speakers are installed in the space to create a directionless immersion in an amorphous mix of field recordings and tones. The listening interaction is intended in a state of heightened awareness, somewhere between waking consciousness and deep sleep wherein the listener still makes an active decision to listen to the music rather than involuntarily reacting to it.

To quote one sleep concert attendee, “It was like a rave, but without the loud music and drugs” which is a funny way to point out that that the piece seems to have a distinct effect. Each listener experiences the concert differently, but all agree that it has an impact. Bring the things you need to sleep on, in, and with. We will be camping out on the SVT gallery floor.

Total duration 9 hours.


BIOS:

Sean O’Neill is a sound artist working with found materials, field recordings, and environmental/urban sound components.  He studied Electroacoustics and Intermedia at Concordia University in Montreal, with particular interest in using aspects of both analog and digital technologies in regards to genetic processes, emergent systems, structured and open improvisation.

Currently focusing on performative mechanisms, O'Neill often incorporates live electronics and responsive mixed media. His work tends to explore ideas of spatialization and the reanimation of sound with objects. He has collaborated with live musicians and visual artists alike, drawing on a wide range of influences including minimalism, acousmatic, microsound, and noise.  O'Neill has had performances and presented installations at various venues and festivals including Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art, 404 Electronic Arts Festival, Ice Hotel Sweden, and La Nau Digital Media Festival in Valencia.

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Nick Hennies is a percussionist and composer based in Austin, TX whose work is primarily concerned with redefining and repurposing the role of common percussion instruments through repetition, meditation, and immersion.  He received his M.A. from University of California-San Diego and then relocated to Austin where he performs with The Weird Weeds, the Austin New Music Co-op and as a soloist.  For this performance he will be performing music from the forthcoming album Psalms (compositions by Hennies and well-known American composer Alvin Lucier) as well as a new work entitled “Objects”, dedicated to Tara Donovan and composed especially for this occasion. Much like Donovan’s recontextualization of mass produced materials, Hennies’ music creates a kind of jamais vu wherein seemingly familiar sounds become strange and new.

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Andrew Weathers is a composer of experimental music. He is currently based in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he studies music composition at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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Tanner Menard was born on September 20th, 1978, the same month that Brian Eno published his essay titled “Ambient Music”. At the age of 11, Menard composed his first works for piano. For nearly 20 years he has composed and curated experimental sound works and installations both for electronic media and orchestral ensembles. In 2002, his world was permanently altered by his experience working with Naut Humon, the well known curator and then label owner of Recombinant Media Labs in San Francisco. There Menard discovered the aesthetic world of ambient, experimental, and minimal electronica.

Tanner Menard’s music is released on Install Records, Archaic Horizon Net Label, Friendly Virus Net Label, Kafua Records and will soon be released on Experimedia. His orchestral music has been published by Loose Filter Music. Menard’s music has also appeared on the radio, on tv, in plays, at art galleries, and in major concert halls across the world. In 2005 Menard served as an artist in residence at Arizona State University where he collaborated with Jeph Jerman, Gary Hill, and Daniel Bernard Romain for his installation, “Envyronie”. Menard is rapidly becoming known for his work as an internet artist and publisher combining blogging, music creation, conceptual art, installation, remix and international collaboration.

Venue

Venue:

Salvage Vanguard Theater