Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/16/2019
8:00 PM - 9:30 PM
Location
The Lab
Category(ies)
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BUY TICKETS $15 Guests / Free for The Lab SF members | Note: Please dress warmly – The Lab does not have heat.
- 7:30PM Doors
- 8PM Performance
A night of Morton Feldman’s piano work Triadic Memories (1981) transformed by Tania Chen – piano, Wobbly and Thomas Dimuzio – electronics.
Morton Feldman began exploring extended duration composition in earnest with his composition for solo piano “Triadic Memories”, the unlikely intersection of Satie & Webern; the melodies and intervals normally associated with atonality are revealed as unexpectedly beautiful when given appropriate space and time to unfold. For this unique performance at The Lab, devoted interpreter of the New York School of 20th century composition Tania Chen will perform this cornerstone of Feldman’s work with two electronic musicians: live sampling specialist Thomas Dimuzio, and amateur cyberneticist Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly). This pair will train their microphones on Chen’s piano to augment and underline Feldman’s composition with contemporary layers of sonic detail, performed with instruments that themselves listen. Expect a performance respectful to the original score, yet a completely spontaneous arrangement: whatever will happen on this night, will be happen here for the first time.
Chen, Dimuzio and Leidecker have performed together as a trio at Stanford’s CCRMA, and Chen and Leidecker have recently released their duo recording of “Triadic Memories”, a document of a live performance on Negativland’s “Over the Edge” radio program, which broadcasts from KPFA FM Berkeley. This night at The Lab will be the premiere of the work as performed by the trio.
- BUY MUSIC: Morton Feldman: Triadic Memories
Tania Chen is an adventurous free improviser, performing solo and collaboratively on the piano, digital and vintage electronics, and found objects. She has performed and recorded the works of John Cage: Indeterminacy, Electronic Music for Piano, Music.of Changes I-IV, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown: Folio, Cornelius Cardew: Piano Sonatas 1, 2 and 3, piano works by Michael Parsons, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Eric Satie and Alexander Scriabin. Additionally, Tania creates her own sound compositions whose material include piano, voice, and electronics, drawing her inspiration from the New York, British and European schools of 20th century experimental composition. Her pieces Strands, Themes for a Story and Icons of Elegance have been performed by herself and instrumental soloists and ensembles in London, USA and Asia. She has recorded and performed regularly with Stewart Lee, Steve Beresford, Henry Kaiser, William Winant, Wadada Leo Smith, Thurston Moore, David Toop, Jon Raskin, Jon Leidecker and with Bryan Day and Ben Salomon in the band Bad Jazz. In the electronics band Tender Buttons she improvises with the electronic and acoustic musicians Gino Robair and Tom Djll.
Jon Leidecker has been producing music under the name Wobbly since 1990, improvising with recordings to produce music which inherently resists the act of being captured. Recent performances deploy a battery of mobile devices driven by their built-in microphones, reacting instantly with error-prone variations on the notes and sounds they believe they are hearing: a tightly-knit orchestra with inhuman reflexes, resulting in structures which the human performer influences more than controls. Your phone is the instrument, and your phone is always listening. Wobbly’s live and studio collaborations include work with Negativland, Dieter Moebius & Tim Story, Tania Chen, Matmos, People Like Us, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Carl Stone, John Oswald, Thomas Dimuzio, The Freddy McGuire Show and Sagan. In 2015 he inherited Negativland’s long-running Over The Edge radio collage program, which continues to be broadcast twice a month on Berkeley’s KPFA FM.
Thomas Dimuzio is a musician, composer, improviser, sound designer, mastering engineer, label proprietor, and music technologist residing in San Francisco, California. Inspired as much by John Cage as Led Zeppelin, Dimuzio’s music is like a sonic excursion that transports the listener into other worldly aural realms. “His work has a narrative, filmic tug that will draw you into its dark corners, ears alert… brilliant and rarely less than entertaining” (Peter Marsh, BBC). His recordings have been released internationally by ReR Megacorp, Asphodel, RRRecords, No Fun Productions, Sonoris, Drone Records, Record Label Records, Odd Size, Seeland, and other independent labels. Among his collaborators are Chris Cutler, Dan Burke, Joseph Hammer, Alan Courtis, Nick Didkovsky, Due Process, Voice of Eye, Fred Frith, David Lee Myers, Alaric, ISIS, 5uu’s, Matmos, Wobbly and Negativland. Recent performances include AngelicA Festival Internazionale di Musica, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, CCRMA at Stanford, Gray Area Buchla Festival, and Ende Tymes Festival of Experimental Art and Liberation. and the hosting of KPFA’s monthly radio program Frequency Modulation Radio.