For Immediate Release
Contact: Edward Schneider
612-806-7591 or [email protected]
Holidays for the Future
7-10pm Sunday, December 4th, at 16 Beaver Street (between Broad and Broadway)
4th Floor, New York, NY 10004
Holidays For the Future is a music series in Manhattan that features composers and improvisers, who are dedicated to exploring and experimenting with musical styles and forms. The series occurs on the first Sunday of every month and is curated by Edward Schneider. http://holidaysforthefuture.wordpress.com/
Performances are free to the public and complimentary drinks will be provided.
Special thanks goes to Thomas Hallaran and IB5K, who generously facilitate for the series to use the 16 Beaver Space.
The December performances in this series will explore contemporary improvisation through electronic sound, diverse instrumentation, and collaborative music-making. Galen Bremer, Mike Bullock, and Alex Chechile’s electro-acoustic compositions consider the relationship between memory and sound in their solo performances. Bremer will manipulate recordings from previous performances of Holidays for the Future to create a new work. Bullock will include video with his performance, and Chechile will create a work built through analogue modular synthesis and biofeedback systems, using the brain and nervous system. Pianist Constance Cooper will perform a duet with harpist Sugawara, who performs on a replica of an ancient Silk Road instrument. Lastly, Nathan Bontrager will lead a group of improvisers in an experiment inspired by the iconic conduction projects of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. This ensemble will include Edward Schneider and Wendy Ultan, and others. Audience members are also encouraged to bring their instruments and join the group for this last act.
Featuring Five Performances:
Act 1: composer/sound artist Galen Bremer
Act 2: composer/sound artist Alex Chechile
Act 3: pianist Constance Cooper and harpist Tomoko Sugawara
Act 4: composer/sound artist Mike Bullock
Act 5: composer/improviser Nathan Bontrager will conduct a group of improvisers:
including Edward Schneider, Constance Cooper, Wendy Ultan, and others
(Audience members are encouraged to bring their instruments and participate in Act 5)
Galen Bremer (Brooklyn) is a composer, producer, and performing artist whose creations span various genres from jazz to house and minimalist electronica. His experience took a leap into the world of dance when he became involved with Wula Drum, a percussion business based in Conakry, Guinea. While working with renowned drummers and dancers, Bremer began incorporating both the forms and musical traditions of West Africa, placing specific emphasis on the synchronization of rhythms within instruments and dance. His new projects engage performers and audience in percussion soundscapes, which follow a path of dynamic composition, minimalist in form, while funky in coloration and quality. http://soundcloud.com/galenbremer
Cellist Nathan Bontrager (New Haven) performs improvised music ranging from the avant-garde to world folk styles. While earning his M.M. at the University of Maryland, Bontrager began to focus more heavily on contemporary works and frequently played with local new music ensembles such as Mobtown Modern and the Great Noise Ensemble. In addition, he co-founded The Experimental Music Performance Organization (T.E.M.P.O.), an ensemble committed to premiering new works. Bontrager has been increasingly active in the experimental music scene in New Haven (Firehouse 12, the Uncertainty Music Series), New York (the Stone, Evolving Voice Series), and throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. In addition to Broadcloth, he can be found performing with the folk group Dr. Caterwaul’s Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps, Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra, the American Baroque Orchestra, and the New Haven Improvisers Collective.http://www.broadclothtrio.com/
Mike Bullock is a composer, improviser, multimedia artist, illustrator and writer living in Cambridge, MA, USA. His modes of work include electroacoustic composition, improvisation, drawing, and video. Bullock performs across the US and in Europe, collaborating with a huge range of artists including Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff, Steve Roden, Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley of nmperign, Mazen Kerbaj and Theodore Bikel. Bullock’s music has been released by numerous labels including Intransitive, Cassauna, Winds Measure, Sedimental, Grob, 1.8sec, al Maslakh, and Homophoni. He recently completed a PhD from the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. MikeBullock.com Shadowselves.net
Alex Chechile is a New York based artist and composer whose work explores the relationships between sound, physiology, psychoacoustics, and cognitive science. His pieces are built through analogue modular synthesis and biofeedback systems (brain/nervous system). These systems allow the implicit physiological and cognitive experience of performance to directly effect how the music is perceived. Alex has been supported by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Harvestworks, the American Embassy, the Experimental Television Center, Issue Project Room, the Malcolm S. Morse Foundation, and received the Ellis and Karin Chingos Fellowship. He has performed at venues including The Orpheum Theatre (Boston), Issue Project Room (Brooklyn), The Stone (NYC), Eyebeam (NYC), The Emily Harvey Foundation (NYC), and the Free103point9 Wave Farm (Acra, NY). His work has been presented at The New York Electronic Arts Festival on Governor's Island (NYC), SIGGRAPH (San Francisco), The New American Art Union (Portland, OR), Tbilisi 6 Festival (Tbilisi, Georgia), C02penhagen Fest (DK), PhonoFemme (Vienna, AU), and Linoleum Festival (Moscow, RU). Alex is one of the founding members of Pauline Oliveros’ Tintinnabulate ensemble, and collaborates with Mercury Rev. www.alexchechile.com
Pianist and composer Constance Cooper (New York) received first prize in the 2002 Gustav Mahler Competition (Austria). Her reflections about string instruments led to her invention of new hand-positions and notation for Coming From Us, commissioned by the American Composers Forum (Cadence Recordings). Her Divertimento for String Quartet is available on the Princeton CD label. Amoroso for orchestra was recorded by Harold Farberman in 2001. Her improvisatory pieces for organ, synthesizer, and bass Repaying Sin-Driven Senators by Not Thinking About Them were completed during a residency at ArtOMI. She has appeared as composer, pianist, and singer at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors and with the Princeton University Composers Ensemble, Continuum, and the American Microtonal Festival, and produced her own contemporary vocal recital series for 7 years. She received her PhD in composition from Princeton in 2003. http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/constance-cooper/id36603071
Saxophonist Edward Schneider (Brooklyn) is an improviser, composer, and educator currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Before his recent move to New York, Schneider lived in Minneapolis where he co-founded the quintet Process is the Goal and was founding member of the Minneapolis Free Music Society. Prior to this Schneider studied composition at the University of Illinois under the renowned experimental composer Herbert Brun. During this time the Kronos Quartet selected his composition for sight-reading. After earning a Masters in Ethnomusicology from Washington University, Schneider received a Subito grant from the American Composers Forum to produce the compact disc (Again) Against/Because. . . In 2009 his new electronic composition, the tree that was a bird, was performed as part of the Conny Purtill performance at the Blinky Palermo puppet theater at the Pompidou in Paris. Recently, Schneider was the subject of a documentary by the filmmaker Mark Nye. http://soundcloud.com/edward-schneider
Tomoko Sugawara (New York) enjoys playing a wide variety of harps, such as concert harps, lever harps, and the kugo (a replica of an angular harp invented about 2000 BC in Mesopotamia; two examples of the eighth century AD survive in a museum in Nara, Japan, and they provided the model). Her repertoire is also wide, from “world” to “classical,” from 800 AD to the present. A number of major grants have supported her quest to bring attention to the kugo, such as a touring grant from the Japan Foundation (2011-12), and a study grant from the Asian Cultural Council (2007), and the Asahi Beer Arts Foundation (2011). She has issued three CDs: “Spring” (2007) on the concert harp, “East Meets West” (1998), duo improvisations with a saxophone. Her kugo CD “Along the Silk Road” has garnered extraordinary reviews, e.g., T.J. Nelson’s review at WorldMusicCentral.com: “… astonishingly striking…simply stunning, a sophisticated elegance wrapped around a harp.”
Wendy Ultan (New York) is a violinist who frequently employs electronics to expand
the palate of the instrument. She has performed with William Parker, Bern Nix, Elliott Sharp, Evelyn Blakey, Dj Carnage, Valerie Naranjo, Alva Rogers, Charles
Burnham, Rufus Cappodocia, Jemeel Moondoc, Ahmadou Ngom, and many
others. Among those from whom she has received commissions are the Rockefeller Foundation, Minnesota
Composers Forum, Intermedia Arts, The National Gallery of Art, Canada, the Dia Foundation, the Mcknight Foundation.
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