Sunday April 3
Doors at 730, Performances start at 8
$10 suggested donation
Join us for an evening of experimental performance across the spectrum. Music, poetry, performance art, and the intersections of all of the above.
AUDREY CHEN (voice/cello) and FLANDREW FLEISENBERG (percussion) SPRING DUO TOUR
Fleisenberg is a player of objects. Drums only fall peripherally into his spectrum, while he is mostly fascinated in coaxing out the inherent material characters of "mundane things". These wide manipulations of external implements draw an aural architecture around Chen's internally driven sonic language. Her own deeply personal yet unconventional uses of the voice and cello, in combination with Fleisenberg's material conjuring, creates a wordless discourse inside of a constantly breathing tactile space. Bios follow below....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfJ4wFhjxeU
Poet BUCK DOWNS is the author of Tachycardia (Edge Books, 2015), Ladies Love Outlaws (Edge Books, 2006), and Marijuana Soft Drink (Edge Books, 1999), among others. He is a board member of the District of Columbia Arts Center and lives in Washington, D.C. ".... And then I get to sound like a dopey old hippie by closing with a quote from the original fink himself, Timothy Leary: 'The message is very simple: think for yourself, and question authority.' Almost nobody including me can live up to that standard every day; but that is where the shit is at, as we say down home."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-M_W6T7p-A
KHRISTIAN WEEKS and PETER REDGRAVE, of Baltimore, are developing a set of provocations that build fluid theatrical events out of sparse components.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCYt2UTTJi0
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AUDREY CHEN is a Chinese-American musician who was born into a family of material scientists, doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. Parting ways with the family convention, she turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at 11. After years of classical and conservatory training in both instruments, with a resulting specialization in early and new music, she parted ways again in 2003 to begin new negotiations with sound in order to discover a more individually honest aesthetic. Now, using the cello, voice and occasional analog electronics, Chen’s work delves deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is extremely personal and visceral. Her playing explores the combination and layering of the homemade analog synthesizer, preparations and traditional and extended techniques in both the voice and cello. She works to join these elements into a singular ecstatic personal language. Over the past decade, her predominant focus has been her solo work with the cello, voice and electronics, but she has more recently begun to shift back towards the exploration of the voice as a primary instrument.
Recent projects, aside from performing solo, include her voice only duo with London based artist, Phil Minton, a duo with NYC abstract turntablist, Maria Chavez and a collaborative project with German conceptual artist, John Bock. Her most recent album releases (2013) include, a quartet LP with Nate Wooley, C. Spencer Yeh and Todd Carter on Monotype (Warsaw), and a duo record with Phil Minton on Subrosa (Brussels).
Chen has performed across Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan, Brazil, Canada and the USA.
David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet has described her work as "fascinating and gripping" and "possessing something extremely vital and vivid...."
http://www.audreychen.com/
FLANDREW FLEISENBERG plays percussion on an ever changing assortment of ephemera and modified drum parts coaxing texture and tone both familiar and bizarre. Attentive to room resonance, ambience and collaborator, Fleisenberg playfully utilizes gravity, friction, acoustics and presence to explore space, time, and relationships. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) with a focus in conceptual art, he is musically self-taught and has developed a cadre of idiosyncratic techniques that are all his own. Flandrew has been involved in the free improvisation community since 2001 performing solo, in ad-hoc improv groupings, and in set projects in venues small and large across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. A resident of Philadelphia, Flandrew is active as the co-curator of the HOT Series, and the Director of the Impermanent Society.
Favored implement:
Cannon ball, 10' ball chain, catering platter, doors, loose cymbals, sticky sticks, soup pans, coasters, pipe fittings, glass window, steel spring, floors, walls, air, sand, paper, rope, ping pong balls, a couple glasses of wine, some luck, and good fortune.
Recent collaborations:
Trio Bajadelphia with Ivan Trujillo (Trumpet) and Ivan Montes (Guitar) from Baja MX, Duo with Dancer Loren Groenendaal (PHL), Duo with Vocal and Cello Improviser Audrey Chen (Berlin).
"Marcel Duchamp: funny phony. Flandrew Fleisenberg: Einstein of drums."
- Gordon Marshall, poet laureate of the Boston improv scene
http://lifeoffleisenberg.blogspot.com/
http://www.impermanentsociety.com/