The individuals
performing in High Zero are drawn from among the most interesting
experimental musicians we can find, with an attempt made to create
a balance between Baltimore, North America, and Europe (so far).
Musicians are selected for the depth of their imagination, their
abilities in free improvisation, and their commitment to collaboration.
Most musicians have performed in the Red
Room performance outside of the festival.
HIGH ZERO
2003 Musicians:
From Afar
:
Paolo
Angelli (Sardinia) - modified Sardinian guitar, voice
Born in Sardinia, guitarist and composer Paolo Angelli (prepared
sardinian guitar, vocals) has long been a major figure on
the New Music scene in Bologna. Since the mid-90s he
has worked at rediscovering Sardinian musical heritage assisted
by Giovanni Scanu, one of the masters of the chitarra
sardae de canto in re an early music vocal form. Combining
traditional and new music improvised approaches, an original
and unlikely perspective, Paolo Angeli, over the years, has
developed his unique style allowing him to refine his own
prepared version of his favorite instrument within
the context of a solo and group performance. The Sardinian
guitar is the instrument that more than any other accompanies
monadic singing in northern Sardinia. Its spreading fame,
especially after the end of WWII, has been associated with
the "Gara di canto", a battle of song contended
among three or more song writers engaging in endless discussions
over models and forms pertaining to the popular songs from
the areas around Gallura and Logudoro (first and foremost
is the Song in Re*). This guitar is also called the "Giant"
because of its size. It is tuned from one-fourth or one-fifth
below standard, and is considered to be a cross between acoustic
bass and folk guitar.
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Ron
Anderson (NYC) - guitar, electronics
One of the most vital players in the underground of experimental
rock, Ron Anderson is an anarchic multi-instrumentalist
and intuitive music maker, who plays not only traditional
instruments like the electric guitar, but also will use
anything that can make a sound, including the recording
studio. He has 41 CDs or LPs to his credit the most recent
is a new CD by RONRUINS called Big Shoes on the Japanese
label Maguibutsu and THE INFUSIONS on the French label 33
Revpermi. with Camel Zekri and Olivier Paquotte. Up coming
releases: a recording with JASON WILLET on Baraka Foundation
and the first CD for PAK. A bunch of recordings are in the
vaults looking for the light of day, Jolie! a solo noise
recording, The Freezing Sessions, with French provoquer
JAC BERROCAL, and the final work of THE MOLECULES a 3 CD
set called Complete Self Indulgence. He has performed in
15 different countries with multiple tours of North America,
Europe, Japan. Ron was a co-founder of the notorious noise
rock group RAT AT RAT R in Philadelphia 1980- 81. 1990 began
his longest running project THE MOLECULES. These bad boys
of new music developed a controversial approach of free
rock and dada concepts, which left them equally loved and
hated in San Francisco. August of 1998 Ron moved to Geneva,
Switzerland. Started a recording project with members of
the French Band ULAN BATOR. Returning to the USA in August
1999, Ron moved back to New York City, where he currently
lives and stirs up trouble. The Charles Mingus of Rock.
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Ricardo
Arias (NYC) - balloons, flute
Ricardo Arias was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1965,
and has resided in New York since 1996. He studied composition
and electro-acoustic music with Chilean composer Gabriel
Brncic in Barcelona and is currently studying anthropology.
Most of Arias music is improvised and made in collaboration
with other musicians. For a long time he performed with
a shifting array of objects amplified by piezo transducers.
Since 1992 he has focused almost exclusively on THE BALLOON
KIT, a device made of a number of balloons attached to a
suitable structure and played with hands and a set of accessories
(various kinds of sponges, pieces of styrofoam, rubber bands,
etc.) producing an amazing array of highly controlled but
deeply unusual sounds.
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Edgar
Um Bucholtz (Pittsburgh) - trumpet, objects
Conceptualist, vandal, master of the obscure, Edgar Um Bucholtz
plays everything and nothing with equal verve. He is a former
member of "The Giant Flying Squirrel Crystallized Urine
Gatherers of Pakistan."
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Chris
Cooper (Vermont) - guitar, electronics
Intense guitarist all over the place on the floor working
with feedback, contact microphones, radio technology etc.
Currently residing in Vermont and a member of the great
trio Barn Owl; formerly a member of the legendary noise-mind-
disaster Caroliner. Cooper also has played with incredibly
dexterity with Bhob Rainey and Nicole Bindler, among many
others.
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Michel
Doneda (France) - saxophones
One of the most interesting improvisors and reed players to
be heard in Baltimore in many years, Doneda is one of the
most focused and sonically extreme players in European free
music. He has been involved with music since he was 15 years
old in the Harmonie Municipale and through playing in several
dance bands; his first instrument was the alto saxophone.
In 1980, in Toulouse, he created the reeds trio 'Hic et Nunc'
with Steve Robbins and Didier Masmalet and, in collaboration
with Théâtre de l'Acte, began l'Institut de Recherches
et d'Echanges Artistiques (I.R.E.A.) comprising actors, poets,
and musicians all interested in the possibilities of improvisation.
At the same time, he played with the musicians of the collective
G.R.I.M. in Marseille as well as the 'Tour de France' organised
by Louis Sclavis. There, he met the singer Beñat Achiary
with whom he has continued his musical relationship to the
present day. Exchanges and meetings increased via the festival
of Chantenay-Villedieu and the nato label: meetings with Fred
Van Hove, Raymond Boni, Steve Beresford, Tony Hymas, Lol Coxhill,
Joêlle Léandre, Phil Wachsman, John Zorn and
Ravi Prasad, among others. He is currently involved in a wide
range of projects, including collaborations with Jack Wright,
Le Quan Nihn, and many others.
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Mike
Evans (NYC) – percussion, electronics
Michael Evans has been actively performing, recording and
composing for many years, living in NYC. As well as being
an accomplished drummer and percussionist, he works with
unusual sound sources including homemade instruments, found
objects and items not normally used musically. A self proclaimed
lover of many different styles of music, his latest obsession
is to research the history of one- man bands, and eventually
create one himself. With this as his inspiration, he has
spent a lot of time developing his virtuosity as a solo
percussionist.
He has been a member of God Is My Cop Pilot,
The French Mustards, and many other amazing groups.
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Gianni
Gebbia (Italy) – saxophones
Born to Palermo in 1961, Gebbia learns is an incredible self-taught
jazz musician, making appearances in numerous formations and
orchestras and attending jam sessions beside musicians who
came from America. In the early 80's, he had his first experiences
in the field of unexpected creative music and was influenced
by groups from the POP progressive, the "rock in opposition"
moment, and also of new folk (the Rakali - Shamàl).
In 1980 a year to New York passes where it directly has way
to be influenced from the experiences of radical contamination
called with the term "no wave" and with the scene
of the jazz creative of the loft. Since the 80s an intense
activity of solos in the field of the jazz contemporary and
in the field of European unexpected music to the head of several
formations begins subsequently.
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Katt
Hernandez (Boston) - violin
The delirious, drunken curves of Katt Hernandez's microtonal
fiddle playing were one of the best surprises of High Zero
2001. A student of Joe Maneri and one of the most inspired
of the new generation of Boston improvisors, she has a highly
lyrical sound and the ability to pour out what seems like
an endless stream of original musical ideas. Some of these
are captured on two CDs
released on the Recorded label from High Zero 2001. She
has been in the Boston area for the last five years, and has
played throughout the east coast, where she has worked with
a great number of musicians and dancers - known and not -
amongst some and not others. . . including Jonathan Vincent,
Joe Maneri, Zack Fuller, Allisa Cardone, Jeff Arnal, James
Coleman, and Dan DeChellis. She has also played music of the
late Ottoman Empire with the Eurasia Ensemble. In the last
year she has been particularly involved with the Zeitgeist
Gallery in Cambridge, in playing, programming, protesting,
and mayhem in general.
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Michael
Johnsen (Pittsburgh) - electronics, saw
Michael lives in Pittsburgh and thinks near or beyond the
edge of the routine organization of cognition - a true outsider.
His work with original electronics, acoustic instruments,
unusual film methods, language, and other media, reveals
a brilliant mind that confronts phenomena with relatively
little of the inherited world view but with a tremendous
clarity and poetry. The entrance to Michaels work
is a withdrawal from "meaning" and a focus on
aspects of perception and communication that are usually
excluded - the rich universe of thoughts we habitually ignore
but which are ultimately is as palpable as our delusions
of meaning.
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Vic
Rawlings (Boston) - cello, electronics, serangi
Vic Rawlings (prepared amplified cello, surface electronics)
is a central figure of the Boston improvised music community.
His performances focus on the metamusical potential of unstable
sounds and silences. He is an instrument builder specializing
in modifications of existing instruments. In addition to
his extensive cello preparations, he has developed an electronic
instrument from existing analog circuitry, producing, in
effect, an analog synthesizer with a highly momentary interface.
He performs regularly with undr quartet, The BSC, and in
duo and trio ensembles with Greg Kelley, Sean Meehan, Bhob
Rainey, Jason Lescalleet, James Coleman, Michael Bullock,
Howard Stelzer, and Jason Talbot. Collaborators have included
Eddie Prevost (AMM), Donald Miller (Borbetomagus), Daniel
Carter (Other Dimensions in Music), Laurence Cook, Jaap
Blonk, Masashi Harada and Stephen Drury. His work has been
presented on the following record labels: Grob, Sedimental,
Emanem, Boxmedia, Chloe, and Sublingual. He has performed
as a soloist/ composer with Nicola Hawkins Dance Company
and has composed scores for films by Alla Kovgan and Jeff
Silva.
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Jack
Wright (Boulder) - reeds, piano
From Boulder Colo. and now moved to Pennsylvania, Jack Wright
is one of the more outrageous saxophonists and musical personalities
of the continent. Continuously on tour, or organizing the
next one, he has been called the Johnny Appleseed of free
improvisation. To others, he is the scorned perpetrator of
the "school of screech," even though at times he
is practically inaudible. He plays, or squeezes sound, out
of alto, tenor, and soprano saxes; he also plays piano, and
now pretends to play the unwieldy contralto clarinet. For
over twenty years he has been doing this kind of music exclusively,
and yet his audience can usually still be counted on a couple
of hands. Which is either a credit to his "refusal to
compromise" or an indication that he is a fool. After
all, he still considers himself as much a beginner as when
he started playing the saxophone, back in the dark ages of
the early fifties. He plays with everyone who asks, and currently
visits and explores sound with over sixty partners around
the country, and a few in Europe. He records, yes, but the
place where he learns what music can do is mainly in live
performance. For him, "free music" is a verb, not
a noun. |
Michael
Zerang (Chicago) - percussion
Michael Zerang is one of the countries most intense, amazing
improvising percussionists. He was born in Chicago, Illinois
on November 16, 1958 and is a first generation American of
Assyrian decent. His father was born in the Northwest Iranian
town of Urmia and his mother was born in Baghdad, Iraq. He
has been a professional musician, composer, and producer since
1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz,
contemporary composition, and international musical forms.
He has collaborated extensively with contemporary theater,
dance, and other multidisciplinary forms and has received
three Joseph Jefferson Awards for Original Music Composition
in Theater, in 1996, 1998, and 2000. He has over forty titles
in his discography and has toured nationally and internationally
since 1981 with and ever-widening pool of collaborators. He
was the artistic director of the Link's Hall Performance Series
from 1985-1989 where he produced over 300 concerts of jazz,
traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other
forms of forward thinking music. He continued to produce concerts
at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and since 2001, at his
own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago's Albany Park
neighborhood.
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From Baltimore:
John
Berndt (Baltimore) - reeds, live electronics, drums, inventions
John Berndt is a multi-instrumentalist and philosopher who
has lived in Baltimore much of his 35 years, and has toured
an traveled extensively in the US and Europe. In his musical
activity, radical experimentation, improvisation and the creation
of new idioms are central. His work launches from a deep appreciation
of the history of free jazz, electronic music, sound environments,
and other, more obscure sources. He is a tireless collaborator
and promiscuous social player, learning whatever he can from
a wide range of partners. His primary vehicles for this include
the Red Room collective and the High Zero Foundation, and
his groups John Berndt's Multiphonic Choir, THUS, and The
Volunteers Collective. www.johnberndt.org
[interview
MP3s: 1
2]
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Dan
Breen (Baltimore) - strings, electronics
What can one say about Dan Breen? This ultra-intense 26-year
old seemed to come out of nowhere, with incredible talents
for conventional and experimental music (on a wide range
of instruments, musical jokes, and absurdist "situations")
and in all the arts, a free-associating and hyper-creative
individual who is already impressive at what is probably
the beginning of his career. He is the bassist in the popular
experimental funk/jam band "The Financial Group,"
as well as being a member of "Heavy Things" with
Andy Hayleck and an improvisational partner of Jack Wright,
John Berndt, Catherine Pancake, and many others.
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Audrey
Chen - cello, voice
Classically trained cellist and vocalist Audrey Chen has
suddenly become a major fixture of Baltimore's vital experiemtnal
music scene, contributing tremendously to a wide range of
concerts and collaborations. A firey player with a wide
range of sounds and approaches, she is a frequent musical
partner of Catherine Pancake, Paul Neidhardt, Chris Pumprhey
and John Berndt.
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Vattel
Cherry (Baltimore) - bass, miscellaneous instruments
At the heart of the free jazz revival of Baltimore beats Vattel
Cherry, passionate and disciplined bassist. Awhirlwind of
improvisational integrity, he is the founder of the new Harmonic
Baltimore Festival which began this year at Morgan State
University, and has a personal list of collaborations and
recordings with an all-star list of jazz musicians (including
Charles Gayle, Jackie Blake, Paul Murphy, Joel Flutterman,
Brother Ah, and many many others). Cherry's music - which
is integral with his religious faith - expresses a passionate
conviction of jazz as an experimental medium for experiences
of the sacred, as well as for emotional and political transformation.
His music has an openness and intensity which is extremely
unusual, to say the least. [MP3
Sound]
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John Eaton - alto saxophone,
voice
Anarcho-utopian, singer, wild free saxophonist and writer,
Jon Eaton has returned to Baltimore after a five year stint
in Detroit, bringing back one of the early members of Baltimore's
free improvising circle. His music is often intensely expressive
and emotional, and his self-taught approach has an intensity
and integrity that is unusual, even in improvised music.
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Neil
Feather (Baltimore) - invented instruments
One of the most original musical minds on the East Coast
or elsewhere, Sound Mechanic Neil Feather has spent over
twenty years building an extremely INTEGRAL orchestra of
eccentric and refined instruments, and conceiving an original
idiom of music to be played on them. His solo concerts,
longtime duo with John Berndt ("THUS") and the
quintet Aerotrain (with Berndt, Catherine Pancake, Andy
Hayleck and Eric Franklin) all show different sides of one
of the stranger musical minds of the century. No foreigner
to improvised music (he is also an ardent social player),
Feather's true brilliance comes out when his music is purified
and allowed to assert its own freestanding, weightless,
and troublingly bizarre logic.
http://www.neilfeather.org
[MP3 Sound]
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Michael
Gayle - piano
Brilliant improvising Monk-esque pianist whose music contains
the secrets of the classical and jazz tradition, as well
a freedom and imagination rarely heard on the instrument.
Michael's approach blends spirituality and intelect through
an intense warmth and application to the instrument. He
is a frequent collaborator of Jackie Blake in the band Kahana,
and is a teacher as well as composer and improvisor. He
is the son of the well-know free tenor saxophonist, Charles
Gayle.
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Lafayette
Gilchrist - piano
Keyboardist/Composer Lafayette Gilchrist has been playing
his own unique brand of Jazz inspired, Hip hop tinged, Funk
soaked music for more then ten years now and has never failed
to move audiences with his inspired live performances. Born
and raised in Washington D.C., this young self-taught musician
has released under his own label 2 hotly regarded CDs "The
Art Is Life" and "Asphalt Revolt" and now
haunts the clubs of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and
Washington D.C.. Recently, Lafayette has been blessed for
his creative efforts by having been discovered and taken
in by Grammy Award Winning Saxophonist/Composer/ Band Leader
David Murray who has has long been on the cutting edge of
creative music and has his roots firmly planted in the rich
and fertile soil of over 20 years of struggle. Lafayette
has also had the privilege of performing with such notables
of creative jazz music as Trombonist Craig Harris and Oliver
Lake- alto Saxophonist, composer, and founding member of
the World Saxophone Quartet.
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Chiara
Giovando - violin, voice, electronics
Chiara Giovando, AKA Power Animal and Fatty McFatty, is
an amazing improvisor and composer on a variety of instruments,
ranging from complex electronics to violin to apocalyptic
noise to amazing singing and beyond. She has graced Baltimore
for the last year and has been a collaborator of Carly Ptak,
Twig Harper, John Berndt, and many others, and was one of
the highlights of the Sound/Shift marathon in 2002. She
brings an intensity and natural spiritual intensity to her
music and seems to drift above technical limitations, while
dwelling on the brink of collapse. Chiara Giovando has toured
the United States twice performing in bands, and has cu ,
composed and designed sound installations internationally.
She has also performed her solo music in Germany, Italy,
Taiwan and Mexico. She has three self released albums and
appears on several compilation releases. She has also created
sound installations in Taipei, Taiwan at Tsu Wei Studios,
in Santa Fe, New Mexico at Plan B and at the San Francisco
Art Institute.
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Andy
Hayleck (Baltimore) - electronics, inventions,
gong
Electro-acoustic composer and instrumentalist Andy Hayleck
is a quiet storm of the Baltimore experimental music scene,
a virtuoso of sound whose range of highly developed projects
and approaches is dizzying - spanning everything from jazz
and ska guitar to musique concrete and the invention of
new instruments and electro-acoustic systems. Hayleck "enjoy[s]
collaborating with animate and inanimate objects."
In the animate realm, he has worked with free improvisors,
drum'n'bass djs, pop and ska groups, experimental musical
instrument builders and artists. In the inanimate realm
he has worked with vibrating metal systems of one, two and
three dimensions, air, water, and electricity.He currently
plays in the ensemble Aerotrain (a group that performs compositions
on instruments built by Neil Feather) and Heavy Things,
as well as solo (primarily with his own,
highly original amplified gong/wire and live electronics).
Gongs:[1] [2]
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Twig
Harper – dead electronics
1/2 of Nautical Almanac, non-utopian anarchist, thinker,
free will addict, explosive noisemaker and humorist of pure
abstractions, scapegoat--there is a void wherever Twig Harper
is not pulling Don Martin faces and chewing live electric
trigger cables from the heart of an 80's drum machine. With
his partner Carly Ptak he runs the invisible shine known
as TARANTULA HILL where miracles are made from bits and
pieces of discarded childhood's woven together with amplified
silly string. Undaunted by technology, musical rules, or
regularized personalities, Harper's approach solders anything
to anything and gets wet with artificial thunder. He means
it all or none of it and in the end there is endless learning
to be had at his expense.
http://www.heresee.com/
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Wes
Mattheau – percussion
Formerly of The Deviled Eggs, Baltimore's foremost BIRTH
METAL band, Wes Mattheau is a percussionist who has played
in multiple formats and increasingly works with other improvisors,
including a stint at last year's Harmonic Baltimore Festival.
"Wes Mattheu was born in a two-room shack in Hereford,
Maryland to poor sharecroppers. Showing a strength in music,
his parents toiled in the fields for long hours to allow
for Wess practice time. Their sacrifice paid off.
Wes recently returned from a tour of Hong Kong, studying
Asian microrhythms and performing with the Hong Kong Puppet
Theater, where he was a visiting fellow. He has long held
fast to the tenets of Buddhism. Behind his percussive work,
there is a strict philosophical and emotive sense that shows
a subtle understanding of the world around him. Wes also
serves the common man as a bartender at John Steven Ltd.
in Fells Point."
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Paul
Neidhardt – percussion
Attacking drum heads, cymbals and wood with all manner of
sticks, Neidhardt is an amazing young improvisor whose music
can range from thundering polyrhythms to subtle textual
assaults from second to second, recalling the best of European
free music drummers. With a background in rock, jazz, and
20th century music, he is a frequent collaborator of Audrey
Chen, Chris Pumphrey, and many other musicians and rapidly
becoming and important voice in Baltimore's musical landscape.
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Catherine
Pancake (Baltimore) - percussion, inventions
What is most amazing about Baltimore's Catherine Pancake
is the range of her work, which includes sophisticated experiments
with film and sound that are so varied from piece to piece
as to seem to be made by different people--yet all of an
extremely high (even provocative) quality. Her sensibility
ranges from superb political documentary work in video,
dark black humor in 16mm film, ecstatic and lyrical formal
abstraction in sound and light, and highly propulsive musical
work as (essentially) a free improvising jazz drummer. She
seems to have few, if any, creative limits.
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Chris
Pumphrey - electric piano, saxophone
Frequent composer and performer in The Financial Group,
Pumphrey is a contemporary composer and a performer equally
strong as saxophonist and pianist--often playing Fender
Rhodes with extended techniques. His music has a dramatic
quality and frequently uses repetition, surprise, and intense
dynamics to make its point. He is a graduate of UMBC and
a frequent participant in concerts of freely improvised
music.
The
High Zero Festival also expects some unusual interventions
this year from the international entity Candidate
Genes.
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