1995 High Tides
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE: THURSDAY-SUNDAY , MARCH 16 - 19
Thursday, March 16, 8 PM, Victoria Jordonova
Friday, March 17, 8 PM, Didjeridu Summit Featuring the Mills College Didjeridu Ensemble with special guest artists.
Saturday, March 18, 2 PM, Panel Discussion, Out of Its Element: the Use of Indigenous Instruments in Experimental Music
Saturday, March 18, 8 PM, Barbara Imhoff with Diana Trimble and Geoffrey Gordon performing from their most recent work Nobody Knew Time.
*Sunday, March 19, 7 PM, Ed Osborn Guitar Mechanical for prepared guitar, As Long As Blood Flows, for voice and electronics, and Standard Ploy, for dobro and electronics.
Tim Perkis - Sound Installation running all week using the Internet and
Tickets are $35 for the entire High Tides series or $8.00 per concert. Tickets are available through the Intersection Box Office (415-626- 3311). This is the third annual High Tides festival guest curated by composer/performer Joe Catalano. High Tides has been made possible by grants from the Bernard Osher Foundation and Meet the Composer/California. The Didjeridu Summit is sponsored by Clarion Music
Intersection For the Arts, 446 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 (415) 626-2787
Victoria Jordonova, Thursday, March 16, 8:00 PM
Didjeridu Summit featuring the Mills College Didjeridu Ensemble with guest artists Stephen Kent, Scot Gresham-Lancaster, Ed Tywoniak, Norman Rutherford, Tom Dill, Friday, March 17, 8:00 PM
Out of Its Element: the Use of Indigenous Instruments in Experimental Music, panel discussion, Saturday, March 18, 2:00 PM
Barbara Imhoff, harpist with Diana Trimble and Geoffrey Gordon, Saturday, March 18, 8:00 PM
Ed Osborn, Sunday, March 19, 7:00 PM
Tim Perkis - InterZone Transfer (Rome/Peru), a sound installation
*Thursday, March 16, 8 PM, Victoria Jordonova
Friday, March 17, 8 PM, Didjeridu Summit Featuring the Mills College Didjeridu Ensemble with special guest artists.
Saturday, March 18, 2 PM, Panel Discussion, Out of Its Element: the Use of Indigenous Instruments in Experimental Music
Saturday, March 18, 8 PM, Barbara Imhoff with Diana Trimble and Geoffrey Gordon performing from their most recent work Nobody Knew Time.
Sunday, March 19, 7 PM, Ed Osborn Guitar Mechanical for prepared guitar, As Long As Blood Flows, for voice and electronics, and Standard Ploy, for dobro and electronics.
Tim Perkis - Sound Installation running during the festival week
Victoria Jordanova
1. Two Preludes For Harp On a Sunday Afternoon By the Sea Shore
2. Once upon a Time...Dance
3. Dance To Sleep Harp and Tape
4. Mute Dance Clarinet, Harp and Tape
INTERMISSION
5. Broken Piano II Third movement of Requiem For Bosnia Harp and Tape
6. Variations For Harp Harp
7. Tattoo Harp
8. Improvisation I Bass Clarinet and Harp
Victoria Jordanova is a composer/harpist whose instrument is the concert harp. She is a native of the former Yugoslavia and has made the Bay Area her home for the past three years. She holds a degree in harp and piano from the Belgrade Conservatory, a B.A. from Michigan State University and held a Langely Fellowship to New York University where she received a M.A. in musicology. She has studied at the Moscow Conservatory and Paris Conservatory where she was on a fellowship from the French government. While in Paris she was also Artist-In-Residence at the Cite Internationale des Arts. Most recently she held a residency at Mills College in Oakland, CA. Her most recent musical collaboration has been with Rova Saxophone Quartet's Larry Oches. She recently recorded the CD Requiem for Bosnia on CRI's "Exchange: Music at the Crossroads" series. Victoria will present a recital of her most recent work for harp and electronic tape including Requiem for Bosnia and Variations for Harp.
Peter Josheff, Composer and clarinetist, performs and is performed throughout the Bay Area, northern California and across the country. He is co-founder of Earplay, a San Francisco-based new music ensemble now in its tenth critically-acclaimed season. As a member of Earplay he has premiered many new works, including several by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Wayne Peterson. Earplay's first CD will be released this year on Centaur Records. In addition to his performances with Earplay, Peter has appeared with Composers Inc., U.C. Davis Contemporary Music Players, ALEA II, New Music Theater, and Beth Custer's Clarinet Thing. He has also appeared at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Sacramento Festival of New Music, Noe Valley Ministry, New Langton Arts, The Marsh, Klezmermania, Yoshi's, and on the debut album by Pappa's Culture. His playing has inspired a number of composers to write works for him including, Eric Moe, Allen Shearer, Alexis Alrich, Andrew Frank and Mark Winges. Earplay's next concert will take place April 4 at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.
Tim Perkis InterZone Transfer (Rome/Peru) is one of a series of audio installations, which form a critique on the mythological and nostalgic use we make of recorded natural environments. In each installation a linear space is defined by the interpenetration of two recorded sound environments. All the InterZone Transfer environments are defined by two environmental recordings which form a dichotomy along one or more axes: wet/dry, urban/rural, tropical/arctic, human/nonhuman. In moving along the length of the installation, one moves from one space to the other: the manner of one's going however, is not as simple as fading or mixing from one to the other. Each environment explores a particular style of moving or "morphing" between the sounds, which defines an "Interzone" made up of elements of both environments. Sounds heard in the Interzone are computer processed combinations of the two source environmental recordings, and are always an abstracted electronic sound environment, in which there is no representation. The experience of listening to this non-representational complex sound built from the component environmental recordings transforms our ways of hearing the unprocessed recordings. Through embedding nature recordings in a thoroughly artificial context, we are able to hear them in a new way, freed of their function as representations of anything, and revealing more clearly their nature as a peculiar cultural artifact.
In this version (Rome/Peru), you are lead from a representation of where you are-- an urban, indoor, public space, perhaps full of concertgoers--through the electronic interzone, to the upper sound environment, a recording of the Peruvian rain forest. It's interesting, to my ears at least, that after being prepared by the experience of the frankly fake and noisy interzone, the rain forest recording is almost completely n on-functional as a representation of anything: it too is revealed clearly as the hissing and jangling of a cheap loudspeaker, and has been stripped of its mythological content.
The source recordings were made by Philip Perkins and used with his permission. The electronic interzone material was processed from the source recordings by computer programs of my own design.
--Tim Perkis 3.15.95
Tim Perkis has been working in the medium of live electronic and computer music for many years, performing an d recording extensively in North America and Europe. His work has largely been concerned with exploring the emergence of life-like properties in complex systems of interaction. He is the designer of the Hub, a device for enhancing communication between musicians, which the Village Voice has called "the beginning of an important movement." He has performed at such venues as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Apollohouse and The Royal Conservatory in the Netherlands, Fylkingen in Stockholm and the Academie der Kunste in Berlin.CD Recordings of his music are available on Artifact Recordings, San Francisco. In 1993 Perkis was composer-in- residence at Mills College in Oakland California, in 1994 was an artist-in-residence at Xerox PARC, and is currently designing a system to support the electronic arts at San Francisco International Airport for the San Francisco Art Commission.
February 25, 1995
Ed Osborn PO Box 9121 Oakland, CA 94613
Ed Osborn
Rules of Engagement (1989) Standard Ploy (1992-3) Faulty Tendencies (1993 -4) In Memoriam Elisha Blakeman & Tabatha Babbitt (1992) Krystyna Bobrowski, guest skier. State of Grace (1993) Guitar Mechanical (1989-92)
Rules of Engagement (1989)
This event occurs tonight under Class III rules. These regulations are in effect when the event takes place in a location where formal attire is not required and alcohol is not served. The rules are as follows:
1) Five draws per set, each at a progressively higher starting point. 2) One attempt is allowed per draw. 3) Control must be demonstrated at the beginning and end of each draw. 4) There must be at least one double-draw executed in the set no earlier than the third draw. 5) No manual contact is allowed at any point during a draw. 6) The option of executing one or more double vertical draws may be exercised starting in the fourth pass. 7) Good form and maintenance of sonic activity is required at all points. 8) Violation of any of these rules results in a forfeiture of the event. In the event of a forfeiture, any remaining portion of the set must be completed in accordance with the regulations.
Standard Ploy (1992-93) is a sound performance piece which finds its life in the fissures that occur between the origins of a sound, the meaning it carries, and the effects upon that meaning it brought about by its transmission through an electronic medium. During the course of the piece, the sounds of a performer gradually become temporally disassociated from the physical actions undertaken to produce them. This perceptual disjuncture is partially offset by a slowly emerging clarity of some musical elements and by the overall lushness of the timbre employed. Standard Ploy is intended as a commentary on the process of electronic audio information transfer and the extreme mediating influence that advanced technologies have upon musical performance.
Faulty Tendencies (1993-4) is a mediated improvisation and a tightrope walk for electric ski, Faulty Tendencies acquired its title through the repeated failure of the soft ware, the instrument, and/or the performer during the course of its development.
In Memoriam Elisha Blakeman & Tabatha Babbitt (1992) Krystyna Bobrowski, guest skier. Elisha D'Alembert Blakeman and Tabatha Babbitt were members of the Shaker communities in New Lebanon, New York, and Harvard Massachusetts, respectively. Blakeman invented, among other things, a single-stringed tabletop instrument called the "piano violin," which he patented in 1871. He used the instrument to proselytize and draw people i n to the Shaker community. However, he ran into resistance in this activity from the elders in his community, who discouraged him from continuing. After much deliberation, Blakeman opted for life in the wide world with his instrument over the prospect of life in the peaceful community of New Lebanon without it. Babbitt, an equally creative soul, made her contribution to the industrial revolution with the invention of the circular saw in 1810.
State of Grace (1993) Tape piece for Disklavier (computer-driven player piano) Some thoroughbred cars are described as being at rest only when fully at speed. This notion of an entity achieving maximum consonance only when exhibiting some sort of extreme capacity is the principle notion that guides the development of this piece. State of Grace explores some of the limits of the Disklavier in order to articulate a few of these states. All sounds heard in the piece are produced by the Disklavier, even the droney stuff in the middle. State of Grace was produced at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Canada during the summer of 1993 with the generous assistance of Paul Herspiegel, Stephanie Rogers, Antonio Oliart, Ted Sambell, and Yamaha Canada Ltd.
Guitar Mechanical (1989-92). A piece in which pickups are picked up.
Those pieces heard tonight which bear the unhealthy touch of a computer utilize software that was written in FORMULA, a FORTH-based music language developed by Ron Kuivila and Dave Anderson.
Ed Osborn, Composer/performer/installation sound artist has had performances and gallery installations in the Bay Area, nationally and internationally in Europe. Ed's cutting edge work most often blurs the lines between composer, performer and visual artist. His most recent installation was premiered in Steim in the Netherlands and the Falkirk Cultural Center in San Raphael, CA this past summer (1994). This summer (1994), Ed completed a two month tour of Europe performing his work in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Belgium. Ed will be presenting new work for electronics and custom built instruments.
Didjeridu Summit
Mill College Didjeridu Ensemble
1. Watering Hole 2. Abut 3. Smoke & Fire 4. The Sloop That Ran Aground at High Tide 5. Men Versus Women 6. Sirius 7. Four a.m. 8. Pot Piece
Intermission
Tom Djll Tube Harmonics #5: Street Scraps
Scot Gresham-Lancaster Didjeri Don't
Ed Tywoniak
Toyoji Tomita
Ron Heglin
Tom Djll
Stephen Kent
Norman Rutherford
Bios
The Mills College Didjeridu Ensemble, founded in 1989, explores non-traditional applications of this ancient instrument. The ensemble, comprising composers, performers concentrates on improvisation to develop a vocabulary upon which a new tradition could be created. The actual "instrument" itself became less important as it became clear that the physical techniques (e.g. circular breathing, vowel sounds, voice interactions, etc.) could successfully be applied to any tube: cylindrical or conical, straight or curved, of any solid material; cardboard, wood, PVC or ABS plastics. Joe Doyle is a painter. He received an MA in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University in 1971. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. He is currently teaching Art History and Computer Graphics at VISTA College, in Berkeley. He is a co-founder of the MCDdE. Ron Heglin is a trombonist and vocalist doing compositional and improvised music. He has studied at the Center For World Music, Ali Akbar Khan College, and Indian Vocal Music with Pandit Pran Nath. Mr. Heglin has performed in ensemble and solo through out Europe and the United States. Marianne Tomita McDonald received a B.A. and did graduate work in Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in Ancient Egyptian Languages. She has played the didjeridu with the MCDdE for several years and is a harper in the Scottish tradition. Judy Munsen has composed and produced music for movies, television soundtracks, commercials, musical theater, concerts, and multimedia. Projects she has worked on have won an academy award, a Peabody, numerous film festival awards, Emmy's, and Clio's. Toyoji Tomita studied trombone at the Juilliard School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music, and studied the didjeridu with Stuart Dempster. In 1976 he won the First Prize in the Gaudeaumus International competition for Interpreters of Modern Music in Rotterdam, Holland. Living in Paris, France for the next three years, he toured Europe extensively both as a soloist and as a member of the Ensemble Musique Vivante, Diego Masson director. He received an M.F.A. in electronic composition from Mills College in 1986. He is a co-founder of the MCDdE.
Tom Djll was born in 1957 and has been improvising in one way or another since age six. Currently he is finishing an MFA and is an assistant at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College in Oakland. His CD of improvised duos, MUTOOTATOR, was released in 1993. He can also be heard on Chris Brown's new release, LAVA. TUBE HARMONICS #5: STREET SCRAPS TUBE HARMONICS is the title of a series of pieces I have been realizing for about a year. Each one explores a unique aspect of vibrating columns of air. STREET SCRAPS tells a tale of a big orange tube saved from the dung-heap, whistling its angel songs to the bright sunset of the 1990s.
Scot Gresham-Lancaster Scot Gresham-Lancaster (born 1954) has been active in electronic and computer music for the last 21 years as a composer, performer, and instrument designer. He is a member of the interactive computer music ensemble, the Hub. This group specializes in using microcomputer music systems that interact with each other in new and experimental ways. He is in the electro-acoustical ensemble Room. This group combines virtuosity with the use of advanced techniques in digital audio processing to create a palette of new and unheard sounds that transcends easy classification. The Raskin/Gresham-Lancaster Duo Project involves the interaction of live performers with interactive computer software programs to create atmospheres of immediacy previously unattainable. He is working on the sonification of digital elevation models Terrain Broadcast with Bill Thibault. He is technical advisor for Plieades Project. This project is an attempt to build and do research in SETI using a 140 meter Galilaen feed radio telescope, that will also be a large scale musical instrument. He is currently a lecturer in Computer Music at California State University, Hayward. Scot Gresham-Lancaster's current work involves the interaction of various alternative controllers with complex mathematical formulas in the area of chaos and related iterative functions (i.e. strange attractors). He is also doing extensive research into the use of electronic instruments to realize a new understanding of the ancient knowledge of just intonation.
Dijeree Don't (1988) This piece is inspired by the tragic phenomenon of alcoholism and death that plagues the Aboriginal people's of Australia as they surrender their culture and gain only despair. It is an attempt to transcend technology in the midst of technology. A quest for the shamanistic in a post-modern world.
Stephen Kent is a composer and multi-instrumentalist currently living in the Bay Area. His principle instrument is the digeridoo of which he is a world-renowned contemporary exponent. Raised in Uganda and Britain he moved to Australia in 1981 as musical director of Australia's Circus Oz. It was there that he made a strong connection with aboriginal people and the spirit of the land. He has played in numerous festivals worldwide and is a founder member of the groups Lights in a Fat City and Trance Mission. His first solo CD Landing was recently released on City of Tribes Records.
Norman Rutherford
A native of San Francisco, Edward Tywoniak is a writer, educator, composer, and performer. He has been a member of the Communications Department faculty of Saint Mary's College since 1979 as well as director of the campus radio station, KSMC-FM. As a musician, composer, and multimedia artist, Ed has composed, performed, and recorded a variety of music for stage, film, radio, video, dance, and multimedia including over 50 theatrical productions for live theater. He is also the Technical Editor and a regular contributor to BAM magazine and has had articles appear in Electronic Musician, Guitar Player, Mondo 2000, EQ, and other periodicals. Other duties include memberships on the San Francisco Art Institute Artists Committee and the Industry Advisory Board of the Cogsell College Music Technology Program. Ed holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Saint Mary's College (1975) and a Masters Degree in Electronic Music and Recording Media from the Center For Contemporary Music at Mills College (1983).