Wednesday April 18th,    9pm                      $10 suggested donation

Please join us on Wednesday April 18th as legendary guitarist David Grubbs will be reading from his new book, Now that the Audience is Assembled and playing solo electric guitar.

Following his investigation into experimental music and sound recording in Records Ruin the Landscape, David Grubbs turns his attention to the live performance of improvised music with an altogether different form of writing. Now that the audience is assembled is a book-length prose poem that describes a fictional musical performance during which an unnamed musician improvises the construction of a series of invented instruments before an audience that is alternately contemplative, participatory, disputatious, and asleep. Over the course of this phantasmagorical all-night concert, repeated interruptions take the form of in-depth discussions and musical demonstrations. Both a work of literature and a study of music, Now that the audience is assembled explores the categories of improvised music, solo performance, text scores, instrument building, aesthetic deskilling and reskilling, and the odd fate of the composer in experimental music.

David Grubbs has released twelve solo albums and he has appeared on over 150 commercially released recordings. He was a founding member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait. He has performed with the Red Krayola, Will Oldham, Royal Trux, Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, and Mats Gustafsson, among others.

He is an Associate Professor in the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, CUNY, where he also teaches in the M.F.A. programs. He serves on the board of directors at ISSUE Project Room and is director of the Blue Chopsticks record label.

Supporting set by a fierce crew of local improvisers assembled for the occasion, including Layne Garrett, Jim Ryan, Sarah Schaffer, and Nate Scheible.