2023 CATALYTIC SOUND FESTIVAL
Two days of improvised performance featuring some of DC's most forward-thinking musicians alongside stellar representatives of various East Coast communities.
Part of the month-long international Catalytic Sound Festival.
Saturday December 2 :: 6-10pm :: TICKETS
Alma Laprida & Brian Weitz
Eternities: Katie Porter & Bob Bellerue
Fred Lonberg-Holm & Toshi Makihara
Sylvie Courvoisier & Ned Rothenberg
Sunday December 3 :: 6-10pm :: TICKETS
Jamal Moore, Nik Francis, Warren Crudup III
Kohoutek
Lisa Cameron & Eli Wallace
Luke Stewart Ensemble
Catalytic Sound is a music based co-operative designed to help create economic sustainability for its artists through patron support.
Poster art by Kanchan Balsé.
Alma Laprida (born in San Miguel, Argentina) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose creative pursuits encompass composition, improvisation, performance, installation, and radiophonic pieces. Her artistic journey began with formal training in piano at the Julián Aguirre School of Music, followed by studies in Arts Management and Electronic Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero.
Armed with unconventional instruments and objects such as the trumpet marine, field recordings, synthesizers, megaphones and the lyre, her explorations traverse diverse realms in the pursuit of creating captivating sonic experiences. Her artistic endeavors have taken her across continents, as she has played, performed, and exhibited installations in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Italy, Mexico, and the United States. Alma has released three solo albums, collaborated on two other albums, and contributed to various compilations.
In her hometown of Buenos Aires, she founded and curated the concert series Ciclo Hertz. Additionally, she initiated the project «Estrépito y contemplación,» which fostered collaborations between visual and sound artists. She also served as the Curator-In-Chief at the Centro de Arte Sonoro, an institution under the purview of the Ministry of Culture in Argentina. Furthermore, she shared her expertise as an Assistant Professor in the BA in Electronic Arts program at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero.
In 2021, after a decade of creative work and life in Buenos Aires, Alma relocated to Maryland, USA.
Brian Weitz (aka Geologist) is a musician best known as a member of the experimental pop group Animal Collective. He provides electronic sound manipulations and samples for the band. Weitz grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore[2] and lives in Washington, DC. When asked about his personal musical influences, he says "I was always inspired by horror soundtracks, things that use unconventional sounds and textures as music. I'm interested in how abstract sounds can have the same impact on the listener as traditional musical sounds. In addition to Animal Collective, as well as performing various DJ sets, Geologist has released the track "Jailhouse" on Animal Collective's Keep Cassette, "Stretching Songs for Spring" on a digital split with Avey Tare entitled New Psycho Actives Vol. 1 and created the soundtrack for the Morphologic Studios short film Man O War. In April of 2018 he released the limited edition cassette Live in the Land of the Sky - his first proper solo release. He also hosts a monthly radio show on NTS Radio called The O'Brien System.
Eli Wallace is a pianist, improviser, and composer who resides in Brooklyn, NY, leading his own projects, and collaborating with other like-minded artists. His work as a pianist displays a proclivity to free improvisation, incorporating elaborate piano preparations that John Lewis (The Guardian) says is "...pushing the boundaries of the prepared piano." His compositions employ notational strategies to broaden how musicians produce sound and the ways in which they interact. Over the past decade, he appeared on dozens of albums and performed at venues such as The Stone, New York, NY, Roulette, Brooklyn, NY, and Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, IL.
Eternities is a collaboration between bass clarinetist Katie Porter and sound artist Bob Bellerue. Their work is inspired by deep presence, resonant feedback, melodic drone, and overtone magic, in the fluid realm between intention and indeterminacy. We use harmonic tones from wind instruments played within feedback systems to create deep spectral drone.
Katie Porter is a clarinetist and curator specializing in experimental music. Passionate about creating musical communities, she co-founded the venue Listen/Space (Brooklyn) and curates the Listen/Space Commissions, responsible for 46 new works for mixed chamber group. She also co-directs the biennial VU Symposium for experimental, improvised and electronic music (Park City, Utah) and is working on a giant multi-year project of experimental works for solo clarinet at Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, a land artwork in remote northern Utah. She has performed solos or chamber music at Roulette (BK), Issue Project Room (BK), The Kitchen (NYC), The Stone (NYC), C4NM (San Francisco), Willow Place Auditorium (BK), Monkeytown (BK), the Indexical Series (Santa Cruz), Dogstar (LA), Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Fridman Gallery (NYC), American Mavericks Festival (NYC), Green Umbrella Series (LA), SOUND at the Schindler House (LA), Human Resources (LA), BLIM (Vancouver), NOVA (SLC), UMOCA, UMFA, Contemporary Art Center Cincinnati, Lincoln Center (NYC), The Ontologic-Hysteric Theater (NYC), the Liquid Music Series (St. Paul), Centre Acanthes (France), Scelciana (Italy), Moma PS1 (NYC), Ostrava Days (Czech Rep), KM28 (Berlin), St Petersburg Art Space (Berlin), Cornell University, Columbia University, Duke University, Kenyon College, the University of Utah, with ensembles such as Wild Up! (LA), Koan Quartet (LA), Southland Ensemble (LA), Studio Dan (Vienna), Daniel Goode’s Flexible Orchestra (NYC), LOLO (Love of Life Orchestra) (NYC) and premiered works by John Luther Adams, Jason Ajemian, Carolyn Chen, Laura Cetilia, André Cormier, Nomi Epstein, Jürg Frey, Jennie Gottschalk, Anne Guthrie, Brian Harnetty, John Hastings, Sarah Hennies, Yvette Janine Jackson, Dan Joseph, Travis Just, Mike Kelley, Michael Pisaro, Larry Polansky, Stephanie Richards, Morris Rosenzweig, Arthur Russell, Craig Shepard, Teodora Stepančić, Colin Tucker, James Tenney, Maayan Tsadka, and Christian Wolff, among many others. Her duo, Red Desert Ensemble, with composer/percussionist Devin Maxwell called “a finely poised musical partnership”- THE WIRE, “not superficial ambient music”- TEMPO and a “particularly fascinating soundscape”- NIEUWE NOTEN, can be heard on Phill Niblock’s XI label (NY), Edition Wandelweiser Records, The Essential Indexical, Infrequent Seams (NY) and were 2019/2020 Artists-in-Residence at Westminster College. Current collaborations include A Quartet or Two Duos with James Ilgenfritz, Teerapat Parnmongkol and Lucie Vítková in NYC, the duo Malosma with flutist Christine Tavolacci in LA and Phase to Phase with bass clarinetist Lucio Capece (Berlin) which was released in July 2022 on the Japanese label FTARRI.
Bob Bellerue is a sound artist, experimental musician, sound/video curator, and creative technician based in Ridgewood NY. Over the last 30+ years he has been involved in creating and presenting a wide range of sonic activities – experimental music, sound art, noise, junk metal percussion ensembles, soundtracks for dance/ theater/ video/ performance art, and sound / video installations. Bob’s electronic sound work is focused on resonant feedback systems, using amplified instruments, objects, recordings, and spaces, in combination with electronics and software written in the Supercollider audio synthesis programming language.
Bob's work has been presented by The Kitchen, Issue Project Room, MOMA/PS1, Pioneerworks, Experimental Intermedia, Cafe Oto, Fylkingen, EMS, High Zero Festival, the Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival, Centre de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona, LUFF Festival, Akouphene Festival, Sonic Circuits Festival, Living Arts of Tulsa's New Genre Festival, CEAIT Festival, Ende Tymes Festival, Denver Noise Festival, Olympia Experimental Music Festival, PDX Noise Festival, Cave12, Diapason Sound Gallery, Roulette, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Elastic Arts, Here Art Center, Radio Epsilonia (Paris), WFMU, WKCR, WNYU, KFJC, KXLU, East Village Radio, Oberlin College, NYU, the Art Institute of Chicago, Stanford University, The New School, UCSD, and UCLA.
Bob’s discography includes dozens of releases on Elevator Bath Records, iDeal Recordings, Banned Productions, Fabrica, P-Tapes, RRR Records, Love Earth Music, Prison Tatt Records, Los Discos Enfantasmes, Zelphabet, Peyote Tapes, No Rent Records, Important Records, and his own Anarchymoon Recordings and Sleepy Hollow Editions.
Bob has curated and produced events for the Che Cafe (1987-91), Naropa Institute (1992-95), Highways Performance Space (1999-2001), Beyond Baroque (2001-5), CalArts (2001-3), Il Corral (2005-7), Porhouse (2007-8), The Kitchen (2008-11), Issue Project Room (2011-present), Silent Barn (2011-18), Secret Project Robot (2012-19), Knockdown Center (2014-15), MOMA (2015-16), H0l0 (2016-present), and Pioneerworks (2017-present). His festival Ende Tymes was founded in 2011, and the 11th iteration is presently delayed due to the coronavirus.
Bob works as an audio engineer and technical director, working presently for Issue Project Room, and a handful of clients in the NYC area once the coast is clear.
Photo credit: Stephen Malagodi
Obsessed with making noises since infancy, ‘cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm is a musician / free improviser currently living in Kingston NY. His wide array of musical interests have resulted in studies of music in a variety of situations from the Juilliard School to the gutter. A former student of Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, Morton Feldman, Noah Creshevsky and Ardyth Alton his primary projects include Stirrup, Jakal, Ballister, The Lightbox Orchestra, Survival Unit III and many other more intermittently appearing constellations.
Past projects of note include the Peter Brotzmann Chicago 10tet, Vandermark 5, Anthony Coleman’s Selfhaters, Terminal 4 and the Valentine Trio.
He has contributed cello sounds to numerous recording projects including those of Califone, Freakwater, God-is-my-co-pilot, Simon Joyner, Smog, Super Chunk, US Maple, Wilco, Protomartyr, Ryley Walker and many others.
Recent collaborators include Jessica Ackerley, Farida Amadou, Michael Bisio, Ben Bennett, Jaimie Branch, Peter Brotzmann, Simon Camatta, John Edwards, Sandy Ewen, Helena Espvall, Frode Gjerstad, Kirk Knuffke, Mat Maneri, Joe McPhee, Miguel Mira, Abdul Moimeme, Paal Nilssen-Love, Dave Rempis and Ben Vida to name a few.
Jamal R. Moore is a native of Baltimore Maryland whom is a multi--- instrumentalist, composer/performer and educator.
His background include California Institute of The Arts (M.F.A. 2012), Berklee College of Music (B.M 2005), Eubie Blake Jazz Orchestra (2000) under the direction of Christopher Calloway Brooks and historical acclaimed Frederick Douglass Sr. High whom notable alumni Thurgood Marshall, Cab Calloway, and Ethel Ennis graduated from.
Some notable luminaries Jamal has worked and recorded with are Wadada Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, Nicole Mitchell, Archie Shepp, David Ornette Cherry, Tomeka Reid, Dr. Bill Cole, DJ Lou Gorbea, George Duke, Sheila E, David Murray, JD Parran, Ras Moshe, Hprizm, (Antipop Consortium) Tatsua Nakatani, Hamid Drake and the late Yahyah Abdul Majid (Sun Ra Arkestra).
He is an affiliate of The Pan African Peoples Arkestra of the late Horace Tapscott, Black Praxis of David Boykin, and member of Konjur Collective.
Jamal currently leads his own groups, Akebulan Arkestra, Napata Strings, Black Elements Quartet, Organix Trio, and Mojuba Duo.
“As musicians we are healers of humanity and have a responsibility to cleanse dis---ease through positive tones, frequencies and vibrations. Music is the nucleus and universal language of the oversoul, mind, body and spirit.”
Since 2003, Philadelphia-based improv ensemble Kohoutek has constructed a dynamic, stylistic range of abstract sound, consisting of textural drone, atmospheric rock, harsh noise freakouts, clattering percussion, guitar heroics and alien electronics, all congealing to form a multihued psychedelic extravaganza. Inspired by such varied musical entities as Can, Amon Duul 2, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Dead C, Sun City Girls, Hawkwind, This Heat, Sun Ra, Art Ensemble of Chicago and King Crimson, they inhabit a world of murky terrain where drone, musique concrete and noise coalesce with cosmic folk, where doom and sludge metal merge with fiery jazzoid polyrhythms. All Kohoutek performances are rituals channeling untapped energy transmogrified through pure expression and response to the immediate environment.
Lisa Cameron (aka Venison Whirled) is from Austin, Tx. Using amplified/acoustic percussion and strings, she locates resonant frequencies in space to create oscillating overtones, which are then employed as sound sources for live improvisation.
She has improvised live with Jandek, Mani Neumier, Eugene Chadbourne, Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten, Mike Watt, Jaap Blonk, Faust, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Claire Rousay, Alex Cunningham, Damon Smith, Jessica Ackerley, Eli Wallace, Sandy Ewen, Raquel Bell,Tom Carter, Nathan Bowles, Fritz Welch, Sandy Ewen, Thor Harris, Jonathan Horne, and others.
In 2013, for the New Media Art and Sound Summit,in Austin, Texas, she composed and directed "Canopy Of Sound", involving 12 suspended cymbal players in an outdoor dynamic context. This led her to form Ommmg, an ongoing acoustic percussion group with ritualistic overtones.
Lisa has turned her attention recently to making instruments and then learning how to play them. In January of 2018 she performed solo with homemade sound sources at the Blanton Museum of Art. In 2018 she was commissioned by Cloud Tree Gallery in Austin, to create an installation which became a joint effort with artist Brian Johnson. Entitled "Thee Mortal Coil", the sound sculpture consisted of a 20 foot tall spiral tube that incorporated ball bearings with timed bursts of pneumatic pressure, amplified by contact microphones routed through a mixer.
In 2023 she received the 2023 Austin Chronicle Award for “best drummer and percussionist.”
She also plays drums with various rock bands: ST37, Suspirians, percussion with Future Blondes, and Three Day Stubble, and played guitar in The Devil Bat and Devil Bat's Daughter.
Luke Stewart is a musician, performer, improviser-composer, organizer, and writer-researcher whose work represents a deep reverence for the history and tradition of Creative Music: a tradition which encompasses the diverse styles of expression within the body of Black Music in the United States, Africa, and throughout the world. Stewart’s regular ensembles include Irreversible Entanglements, SILT Trio, Exposure Quintet, and the experimental rock duo Blacks’ Myths; he also performs regularly in numerous collaborations.
In his Works for Upright Bass and Amplifier and Works for Upright Bass and Amplifier Vol 1 and Vol 2 (Astral Spirits, 2018, 2021, 2022), Stewart explores real-time harmonic and melodic possibilities, as well as the intersection of the acoustic and the electronic—the relationship between wood and electricity. He uses the resonant qualities of the bass and one or more amplifiers to create reverberations from the plucking of strings, his bow, and moving the instrument itself back and forth in space.
Over the years, Stewart has performed at Arts for Art’s Vision Festival, New York, NY; Winter Jazzfest, New York, NY; The Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C; Rhizome DC, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Big Ears Festival, Knoxville, TN; the BIMHUIS, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Roskilde Festival, Roskilde, Denmark, among many other venues and festivals in the United States and abroad. As a scholar, Stewart has also performed and lectured at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; Medgar Evers College, Brooklyn, NY; George Mason University, Fairfax, VA; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; University of Montana, Missoula, MT; New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM; and the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
Stewart has had residencies at Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn, NY; The Hermitage Artist Retreat, Englewood, FL; and Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY. He received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant (2022) to support his work with KO Arts in New Orleans. Stewart was noted in DownBeat as one of twenty-five performers to “shape jazz for decades” (2020).
He holds a B.A. from American University and an M.A. from The New School, where he is also an adjunct professor in the College of Performing Arts. Stewart is a co-founder and artistic director of CapitalBop, a Washington, D.C.-based jazz nonprofit.
photo credit: David Agasi
Composer/Performer Ned Rothenberg has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 40 years on 5 continents. He performs primarily on alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and the shakuhachi - an endblown Japanese bamboo flute. His solo work utilizes an expanded palette of sonic language, creating a kind of personal idiom all its own. In an ensemble setting, he leads a new quartet Crossings 4, with Sylvie Courvoisier, Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara, as well as his longstanding trio Sync, with Jerome Harris, guitars and Samir Chatterjee, tabla, and collaborates around the world with fellow improvisors like Evan Parker and Kazuhisa Uchihashi. Notable recordings include Lockdown, with Courvoisier and Julian Sartorius on Clean Feed, his Quintet for Clarinet and Stirngs with the Mivos Quartet, The World of Odd Harmonics, Ryu Nashi (new music for shakuhachi), and Inner Diaspora, all on John Zorn's Tzadik label, as well as Live at Roulette with Evan Parker, The Fell Clutch, and Are You Be on Rothenberg’s Animul label.
Nik Francis is an improvising musician based in the D.C. area. His music focuses on the drum kit, often incorporating electronics and small acoustic instruments.
Pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a native of Switzerland, has earned just renown for balancing two distinct worlds: the deep, richly detailed chamber music of her European roots and the grooving, hook-laden sounds of the downtown jazz scene in New York City, her home for more than two decades.
Few artists feel truly at ease in both concert halls and jazz clubs, playing improvised or composed music. But Courvoisier – “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise,” according to The New York Times – is as compelling when performing Stravinsky’s iconic Rite of Spring in league with flamenco dancer-choreographer Israel Galván and pianist Cory Smythe as she is when improvising with her own widely acclaimed jazz trio, featuring bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen.
Then there are her ear-opening collaborations with such avant-jazz luminaries as John Zorn, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, Ikue Mori, Ellery Eskelin, Susie Ibarra, Fred Frith, Andrew Cyrille, Mark Feldman, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley and Mary Halvorson.
In music as in life, Courvoisier crosses borders with a creative spirit and a free mind; her music-making is as playful as it is intense, as steeped in tradition as it is questing and intrepid. JazzTimes has said: “Courvoisier keeps you on the edge of your seat because it feels like the piano cannot contain her. Her careening solos seem to overwhelm and overflow the keyboard and keep spilling.”
Her most recent albums include SEARCHING FOR THE DISAPPEARED HOUR (Pyroclastic, 2021) a duo with Mary Halvorson ; TIME GONE OUT ( Intakt, 2019), a duo with Mark Feldman; the Sylvie Courvoisier Trio with Drew Gress & Kenny Wollesen: FREE HOOPS (Intakt, 2020) and D'AGALA (Intakt, 2018); LOCKDOWN (Clean Feed, 2021), a Trio with Ned Rothenberg and Julian Sartorius.
She currently teaches at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music.
Toshi Makihara studied drums, percussion and improvisation with Sabu Toyozumi, a prominent percussionist in Tokyo. Since 1980's Makihara has provided original music to Arden Theater Company, Diversions Dance Company (Wales), Pennsylvania Ballet, ZeroMoving Dance Company and Leah Stein Dance Company, and has worked with musicians including Steve Beresford, Peter Brotzmann, John Butcher, Nels Cline, Eugene Chadbourne, Tom Cora, Amy Denio, Thurston Moore and John Zorn.
A D.C. native, Trae Crudup came up in the gospel tradition, and he has the powerful wrists and relentless intensity to show it — but years of gigs on D.C.’s jazz scene have given him the sensitivity to dial into whatever style he’s playing in. You might have heard him as the locomotion behind saxophonist James Brandon Lewis’s internationally acclaimed trio, or as the heartbeat of avant collective Heroes Are Gang Leaders, or as one-half of D.C.’s new progressive fusion duo Blacks’ Myths (whom you can find at the No. 2 spot on CapitalBop’s Best D.C. Jazz Albums of 2018 list).
The Catalytic Sound cooperative is proud to announce the fourth edition of its international music festival. It will be held in Amsterdam, Asheville, Chicago, New York City, Nijmegen, and Washington D.C., during the first two weekends of December 2023.
Organized by the collective of 30 musicians based in Europe and the United States, it will present more than 70 artists, including those from the co-op and other major figures from the creative music scene.
CATALYTIC SOUND FESTIVAL 2023 WEBSITE: https://festival.catalyticsound.com/
Catalytic Sound is a collective of thirty musicians working toward developing economic sustainability for themselves through cooperative means. The project began in 2012 as a small online record store featuring the catalogs of Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love, and Peter Brötzmann. While Catalytic Sound is still an online record store, it is also a membership program and has grown, along with the roster of artists in the collective, to encompass a much larger range of projects than we could have ever anticipated. These include:
*The Soundstream: the first online music streaming service created independently by musicians.
*Artist Album Series: monthly exclusive digital releases from musicians in the collective.
*The Quarterly: a journal featuring writing and visual artwork created by musicians in the collective.
*The Option Talks podcast: a co-production between Catalytic and Experimental Sound Studio that has featured a new discussion with leading figures in contemporary music and art since May of 2021.
*The Artist Profile Series: a bimonthly program that highlights the ideas and activity of musicians in the collective through interview questions and concert video.
*The Festival: an international series of concert events curated by Catalytic artists.
Our mandate in starting and maintaining these programs at Catalytic has been simple: Create sustainable economic materials and strategies to help musicians continue their artistic work and to help inform the public about their creative activity. These financial projects have been funded through Catalytic Sound membership subscriptions and the online record store. We believe in a profit-sharing model, one that equitably distributes money generated by subscription fees and album sales to co-op artists. If you appreciate the music and musicians you listen to, in addition to buying their recordings, one of the best ways that you can support their ongoing artistic process is to become a Catalytic Sound member. A Full Membership ($20 a month), Soundstream Plus ($10 a month), or Soundstream Basic ($5 a month) helps maintain the projects listed above, helps us generate new economic systems, and contributes to a quarterly paycheck for each of the 30 musicians involved: Ab Baars, Jaap Blonk, Chris Corsano, Sylvie Courvoisier, Tim Daisy, Tashi Dorji, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Mats Gustafsson, Ben Hall, Elisabeth Harnik, Ig Henneman, Terrie Hessels, Bonnie Jones, Christof Kurzmann, Damon Locks, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Brandon Lopez, Paul Lytton, Joe McPhee, Andy Moor, Ikue Mori, Joe Morris, Paul Nilssen-Love, Zeena Parkins, Tomeka Reid, Dave Rempis, claire rousay, Luke Stewart, Ken Vandermark, Nate Wooley.