Saturday May 26th 8PM $10
Jason Kahn is a musician, artist and writer. He was born 1960 in New York and grew up in Los Angeles. He re-located to Europe in 1990 and is currently based in Zürich.
As an electronic musician, vocalist, drummer and guitarist Kahn collaborates regularly with many musicians, both in improvised settings and in the context of graphical scores which he composes for specific groups.
Kahn has exhibited his installations in museums, galleries, art spaces and public sites internationally. These works focus on the idea of space: the conceptual and physical juncture points, its production and dissolution, and our relation to it as a political, social and environmental medium.
Kahn's other activities include sound pieces for radio, film, dance and theater. He has also designed numerous CD, LP and cassette covers. As a writer, his work has appeared in books, magazines and as liner notes to many audio publications.
Performing regularly around the world, Kahn has given concerts throughout Europe, North and South America, Australia, China, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey and South Africa.
In 2011 Kahn started the Editions imprint to publish his own recordings and writings. Tonight's performance will be an improvised set for voice and slide resonator guitar:
http://jasonkahn.net/
If, Bwana was born on New Year's Eve 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition. A recent review of Margolis's work says: "Let it be declared that Al Margolis/If, Bwana is some sort of evil genius working with raw materials which are never adapted to a genre or a context, because they create one in that very moment. Those sources are radically altered up to an utterly unrecognizable state, anarchic manifestations moving in compact determination." (Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes).
Al Margolis has been an activist in the 1980s American cassette underground through his cassette label Sound of Pig Music; was co-founder of experimental music label Pogus Productions, which he continues to run. Active under the name If, Bwana since 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition.
http://www.ifbwana.com
Travis Johns currently resides in Ithaca, NY, where his sonic output presently consists of dense walls of improvised electronic sound, mostly produced by way of laptop computer and analog electronic instruments of his own design. Active in the San Francisco Bay Area experimental music scene for several years, Johns moved to Costa Rica in 2011 where he collaborated extensively with visual artist Paulina Velazquez-Solis on Raro, an immersive sound and sculpture installation that represented Costa Rica in the 2013 Biennial of the Central American Isthmus (BAVIC). Since returning to the states, first to Baltimore and later to Ithaca, he's continued to apply his trade as a composer, educator and sound artist under the nom de plume of VauxFlores, crafting unique electronic instruments for workshop, performance and installation. He holds a B.M. In Technology in Music and Related Arts from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, studies conducted with Tom Lopez, as well as an MFA from Mills College in Electronic Music and Recording Media, studies conducted with Chris Brown, Les Stuck and Hilda Paredes. He has participated in residencies at such places as the Atlantic Center for the Arts and RPI’s Create @ iEar, and has had work featured by el Museo Centroamericano de Arte Video (MUCEVI), the Electronic Music Foundation, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), the Bienarte 8 Costa Rican Biennial, el Museo Nacional de Costa Rica, MAC Panama, The California Academy of Sciences, Alianza Francesa de Guatemala, The Lab (San Francisco), Battery Townsley (Marin County, Ca) and Rhizome DC.