The Marotta Hour: Electro Acoustic Trio
Thursday, May 21, 2009 - 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Stay downtown after work every third Thursday of the month and check out new sounds curated by local musician and international composer Larry Marotta.
This month Marotta mixes Boston-based musicians, Steve Norton (saxophone) and Vic Rawlings (circuitry), with Columbus percussion darling, Ryan Jewell. This performance will be an investigation of sound and performance gestalt.
The Marotta Hour is an electro-acoustic music series featuring unexpected sounds from free jazz to electronic to free-form improvisation. Come and hear some of the most cutting-edge musicians and composers from Columbus and beyond.
This series is part of our after-work programing offered Thursday evenings. Before the show stop by Tip Top Kitchen & Cocktails and ask for the Urban Artists' Special: It's very special indeed and its only $3.
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"Various scrapings, bangings and silences so deep and wide you could steer a submarine through them. Rawlings employs feedback circuitry and a lab assistant's attention to detail."
-Keith Moline, The Wire
"Vic Rawlings plays prepared cello and open circuit electronics in the form of an instrument self-made from exposed circuit boards and speaker cones. Its penetrating sinewave whines and gritty bleeps are inherently unstable... the sense of danger, the awareness that the music is poised permanently on the edge of disintegration and collapse... despite its refusal to make the slightest concession to the listener, the music draws you in and doesn’t let you go."
-Dan Warburton, The Wire
"Neither lowercase subtlety nor dense noise, but rather a complete avoidance of any common approach to improvisation... It's just a puzzle that might not have a solution... it's a rare and profound treat to be able to interact with sound and never be given answers about its meaning to eventually become disillusioned by. A minor miracle."
-Michael Anton Parker, Downtown Music Gallery
About Norton:
Boston-based saxophonist Steve Norton's recent work has taken a turn toward more sound-based concerns and investigations into performance gestalt. While the focus is on improvisation, his background in composition has proven irrepressible, coming to the fore in the shapes of the performances. For this Spring '09 tour, he will utilize reeds (saxophones, bass clarinet), taped sounds, game calls and small percussion.
Steve has been performing for over 30 years. He was a member of Debris, The Great Circle Saxophone Quartet and Either/Orchestra and has also performed and/or recorded with Gino Robair, Tom Plsek, Joe Morris, Laurence Cook, Herb Robertson, Steve Adams, Dave Gross, Bhob Rainey, Vic Rawlings, Matt Samolis, Gregory Damien Grinnell, Greg Kelley, Ken Vandermark, Andrea Parkins and Tim Berne. He has recorded for New World Records, Rastascan, Music & Arts, About Time. Tautology and
Accurate Records.
Abour Rawlings:
Vic Rawlings (exposed circuitry, speakers) is based in Boston. During this Spring '09 tour he will be performing with an electronic instrument he has developed from extant consumer-grade circuitry. Exposed circuit boards and loose conductive elements
produce, in effect, an analog synthesizer with a highly unstable interface. The sounds produced by the circuits are realized by two arrays (one large, one small) of exposed speaker elements, chosen for their unpredictable, idiosyncratic and organic acoustic qualities.
Vic has toured internationally and appeared at the following festivals: Victoriaville International Festival of Improvised Music (Victoriaville, Quebec), Vision Festival (NYC), Improvised and Otherwise Festival (NYC), Festival of New Trumpet Music (NYC), Boston Cyberarts Festival, Seattle Improvised Music Festival, No Idea Festival (Austin, TX), Fringe Festival (Charleston, SC), High Zero Festival of Improvised Music (Baltimore, MD), Autumn Uprising Festival (Boston, MA) and the Musique Action Festival in Nancy, France.
He has performed with a diverse group of major figures of improvised music including Ikue Mori, Eddie Prevost (AMM), Jaap Blonk, Daniel Carter (Other Dimensions in Music, Test), Donald Miller (Borbetomagus) and Andrea Neumann, among many others. He maintains several longtime collaborations, including Laurence Cook Disaster Unit (Laurence Cook, Greg Kelley, Jason Lescalleet), undr quartet (Greg Kelley, Liz Tonne, James Coleman), and The BSC (large ensemble led by Bhob Rainey), as well as duo and trio ensembles with Michael Bullock, Tim Feeney, Tatsuya Nakatani, Ricardo Arias and Mazen Kerbaj. He has interpreted scores by Stockhausen, Cage and Cardew, and has performed with Christian Wolff.
About Ryan Jewell:
Ryan Jewell studied percussion and electronic composition techniques at Capital University and has since studied drumset with Susie Ibarra and tabla with Dr. Lowell Lybarger. Ryan regularly works as a solo performer and collaborator in the arenas of very quiet improvised music and very loud harsh noise. In addition to being a perpetual traveler of the US, he has also toured extensively in Europe. He was invited to perform at such respected international festivals as the SOWIESO 1 festival in Paris, the Kraak Festival in Brussels, the International Noise Conference in Miami, SXSW in Austin and Les Sciences Bruitistes also in Paris. He has collaborated with such diverse artists as C. Spencer Yeh, Greg Kelley, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, Christine Sehnaoui, Bhob Rainey, Larry Marotta, Mike Shiflet, Tatsuya Nakatani, Reuben Radding, Hasan Abdur-Razzaq, Tom Abbs, David Boykin, Douglas Ewart (AACM), Jandek, Envenomist, Fossils, Wasteland Jazz Unit, Larry Marotta and many more.
