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HIGH ZERO, Sept 21st - 24th, Baltimore
INFORMATION ON THE MUSICIANS, IN DETAIL
to play mp3s we recommend Winamp (www.winamp.com)
or RealJukebox (www.real.com)
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Magali
Babin (Montreal):
objects and transducers
Francophone
sound artist Magali Babin of Montreal is an improvisor whose
work occurs through a very usual method--the massive amplification
of tiny resonnances in metal objects. She produces dense and
brooding soundscapes from a collection of small objects which
are each revealed to be small universes, full of unexpected
complexity. She is also know for her work in the 80's with the
all-women apocalyptic noise ensemble NITROGLYCERINE.
She is a primary collaborator of Montreal improvisors Eric Letourneau,
Alexandre St. Onge, and Sylvie Chernard.
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Listen
to audio files:
Magali
Babin |
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John
Berndt (Baltimore):
reeds, electronics, strings
The
founder of The Red Room, HIGH ZERO, and numerous other endeavors,
John Berndt has been passionately exploring strange sound since
his early teens. He considers himself a student of saxophonist
Jack Wright, Philosopher Henry Flynt, and instrument builder
Neil Feather. "My greatest interest lies in the investigation
of phenomena of the world and self (including emotions) without
attempting to use them as building blocks for a coherent reality
picture or as a source of reassurance. I am interested in music
because it is a bottomless, sensual medium of communication
(including with oneself), allowing for rich assertions not framed
by language. " - John Berndt, 1999
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Related
Links:
Henry Flynt
Philosophy |
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Listen
to audio files:
John
Berndt 1
John
Berndt 2
John
Berndt & Bob Marsh
John
Berndt & Jack Wright 1
John
Berndt & Jack Wright 2
John
Berndt & Jack Wright 3
John
Berndt & Jack Wright 4 |
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Tom
Boram (Baltimore):
Guitar, Piano, Taps
"There
was apparently some 'Don Corleone'-type activities in Tom's
family history. He now plays guitar, piano, and sitar. He will
tap dance for your cousins."
-Tom Boram
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Related
Links:
pithot
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Listen
to audio files:
Tom
Boram 1
Tom
Boram 2
Pithot
1
Pithot
2 |
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Dave
Champion (Philadelphia):
trombone
David
earned a Masters degree in Music Education from VanderCook College
in Chicago. He has studied privately with Jazz trombonist Roswell
Rudd. Mr. Champion performs jazz and new music in and around
Philadelphia. Present musical activities include pioneering
the Harmonic Trombone; a slide trombone which has been amplified,
harmonized and processed through the use of electronic delays
and effects. He creates soundscapes, ranging from truly Ambient
(minimal and nearly motionless) to Aggressive (dense and rhythmic
layers of sound). David lives with his family in Doylestown,
PA and teaches music in the Lower Moreland School District of
suburban Philadelphia.
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Vattel
Cherry (Baltimore):
acoustic bass
"I
heard a wise man once say that Love is need of Love today. Well,
if Music is Love & Love is Music (if you know what I mean) And
we know God is Love. Now what? What do you believe? What do
you know? What are you going to do? Is there anything good inside
of you?" - F. Vattel Cherry
"In
Cherry's hands the bass becomes an guiding beacon into the confident
and reverential awareness he has of his African American heritage."
-- Derek Taylor, One Final Note
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Related
Links:
www.maraschinomusic.com
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Listen
to audio files:
Trio
with Toshi Makihara and Paul Dunmal
John Dierker, Vattel Cherry, Toshi Makihara
Bigband
from High Zero '99
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James
Coleman (Boston):
theremin
James
Coleman is one of the most astounding living players of the
Theremin, a touch-less early electronic instrument invented
by Russian Emegree Leon Theremin originally intended for the
performance of Classical music. Known for his work with extremely
quiet sounds, James is one of the loudest voices and most consistent
organizers in the Boston improvised music scene. He is also
the moderator of "Lowercase Sound," an internet discussion
group dedicated to very quiet experimental music.
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Related
Links:
James
Coleman's Web Site
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John
Dierker (Baltimore):
reeds
John
Dierker is one of the most distinctive improvising voices in
Baltimore; a highly versatile musician who plays with equal
inspiration in the most extreme avant-garde music as in more
conventional jazz and rock bands. He can be heard on a large
number of disks issued by the Megaphone label, has played with
rock legend Jad Fair, and toured with avant-garde musicians
from NYC like Sean Meehan and Paul Hoskins.
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Listen
to audio files:
John
Dierker 1
John
Dierker 2
John Dierker, Vattel Cherry, Toshi Makihara
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Bob
Falesch (Chicago): keyboards
and computer
Chicago
based improviser and composer Bob Falesch has been striving
to make his computer-based performance instrument as responsive
as those instruments traditionally made from wood, reeds, skin,
or nylon. An abiding love of music from the classical and late-romatic
periods -- especially the sturm-und-drang of the 19th and early
20th century German musical literature -- combined with his
active use of atonal methods of the so-called Second Viennese
School, are important to his music making and are used to imbue
his work with passages of unabashed lyricism and dramatic outbursts,
that, as he says "Make me an anachronism in post-modern times."
Improvisation with his acoustic-playing colleagues is a way
to discover composite sounds and gestures that are new and unique
in their beauty and complexity, and which sometimes find their
way into his compositions. Completely non-programmatic and apolitical
in his outlook -- music-for-music's-sake -- Falesch's passionate
interest in developmental styles with alternations of good old-fashioned
tension and release and counterpoint contrasts his work from
the drone-based and minimalist styles prevalent in much other
computer-based work.
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Related
Links:
main
web site
http://www.turbulence.org/scott/
http://www.essl.at/bibliogr/cyberkomp-e.html http://www.emf.org/tudor/Electronics/
electronics.html http://24.112.41.38/audiojunction/cal.html
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Listen
to audio files:
Bob
Falesch
Bob
Falesch & Bob Marsh 1
Bob
Falesch & Bob Marsh 2
Bob
Falesch, Bob Marsh, Chris Heenan |
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Neil
Feather (Baltimore):
self-made instruments
In
a festival of strong individuals, Neil Feather stands out as
perhaps the most strikingly "of his own world." Having
built visionary original instruments for the past thirty years,
his music must be heard to be believed. Feather's sound relies
on obscure physical principles, aesthetic decisions, and extra-musical
references which are almost completely new to music. He is one
half of the duo THUS with John Berndt, and leader of the quintet
AEROTRAIN, which plays his original compositions on his orchestra
of self-created instruments.
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Related
Links: http://www.recorded.com/neilfeather/
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Listen
to audio files:
Neil
Feather 1
Quartet
from High Zero '99 |
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Carol
Genetti (Chicago):
voice
Carol
Genetti is one of the few vocal artists in the United States
today who is solely dedicated to free improvised and experimental
music. Mixing music idioms-such as jazz scat, Bulgarian folk
singing, and extended vocal techniquesÐGenetti's non-verbal
sound palette has a surprising depth and breadth. She has been
described by Achy Obejas of the Chicago Tribune as "...a vocalist
whose singing is, perhaps, an acquired taste in the same way
as steak tartar or sushi... once you hook into it, it's really
quite exquisite, almost otherworldly." Genetti has performed
throughout the US, Canada, and Europe and has performed with
Tatsu Aoki, Pauline Oliveros, Yuko Nexus Kitamura, Eric Leonardson,
Bob Marsh, Michael Zerang, Jack Wright, Saturo Wono, and George
Flynn.
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Related
Links:
website
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Listen
to audio files:
Carol
Genetti & Eric Leonardson 1
Carol
Genetti & Eric Leonardson 2
Carol
Genetti & Eric Leonardson 3 |
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Joe
Giardullo (Poughkeepsie): reeds,
electronics, and flute
Francis
Davis, writing in Downbeat Magazine, described Joe Giardullo's
music as "intensely democratic" and "very special". Perhaps
"anarchic" would also apply, in the sense that the musicians
who play Giardullo's music are expected to create the form and
structure of the music as they themselves require it. It's democracy
not as consensus, but as unity. Twenty two years after his "Gravity"
recordings, Giardullo continues to draw inspiration and direction
from complexity studies, especially the work of Stuart Kauffman
at the Santa Fe Institute. He regularly works and records with
multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee.
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Related
Links:
review
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Listen
to audio files:
Joe
McPhee & Joe Giardullo
Joe
McPhee & Joe Giardullo 2
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Lafayette
Gilchrist (Baltimore):
keyboards
Composer/improvisor
& keyboardist of solo fame and bandleader of The New Volcanoes,
Gilchrist is one of the most talented improvising musicians
in Baltimore. His fractured, cubist expressions in free improvised
music have a maze like quality and depth of resonnance with
the moment, and the breadth of his musicality crosses distinctions
of genre or traditional vs. experimental. Lafayette Gilchrist
has appeared with such notables as jazz vocalist Brenda Alford,
Thomas Whitt, Williams, Craig Alston, The New World Percussion
Ensemble, The Mother Earth Posey as well as various other bands
throughout the Washington/Baltimore area. Currently Lafayette
Gilchrist resides in Baltimore City.
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Related
Links:
new volcanoes web site |
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Paul
Hoskin (Seattle):
reeds
Paul
Hoskin plays clarinets and saxophones. Known mostly for his
work with the contrabass clarinet , music has taken him to both
coasts and Europe. The social aspects of improvisation (organizing,
informal playing) are the crux of the music's importance...not
simply as guides to sonic exploration, but also as hints for
alternative ways of organizing and working as humans. And that
the importance of sound is literally to rearrange perception
and the constructs on which it is founded.
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Related
Links:
UnFolkUs
Review |
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Listen
to audio files:
Paul
Hoskin 1
Paul
Hoskin 2 |
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Matt
Ingalls (San Francisco):
clarinet
Matt
Ingalls is a monsterously good clarinetist/composer/computer
music artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently
most active with improvised music in various solo, group,
and electronic settings. Matt holds a bachelor of music from
the university of Texas at Austin and a masters of arts from
Mills College.
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Related
Links:
Matt's
web site |
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Listen
to audio files:
Matt
Ingalls 1
Matt
Ingalls 2
Matt
Ingalls 3 |
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Michael
Johnsen (Pittsburgh):
saxophones, musical saws, and electronics
"Born
1968 to Rainer and Anna Johnsen, gradually taking on the qualities
of glacier." - MJ
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Listen
to audio files:
Michael
Johnsen & Greg Pierce
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Scott
Larson (Baltimore):
accordion, guitar, & electronics
Multiplicitous
Larson. A stalwart of large constructions, Scott Larson's
ABOMINATION instrument integrates a large number of guitars,
drums, and sound-processors into a jungle-gym of sonic mayhem.
He is also a fine guitarist who also plays accordion and violin.
He plays most often with The Dianna Frowley Three, Little
Grunt Pack, and in duo with John Dierker.
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Jerry
Lim (Baltimore):
guitar
Jerry
Lim is a thrid of Companion Trio, a thrid of Mass Particles,
a third of Your Father's Moustache, half of PitHot, half of
Urban Kitchen, and half of Taco Wagon.
Obcure on new levels, Lim has not yet been understood. His
guitar playing, which can be mistaken for jazz or avant-garde,
encodes a popular peptide necessary for the seventh secret
of radar, or something like that. In the end, it will be revealed
that he is a famous radio personality.
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Related
Links:
http://www.massparticles.com/
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Listen
to audio files:
Jerry
Lim & Tom Boram 1
Jerry
Lim & Tom Boram 2 |
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Toshi
Makihara (Philadelphia):
percussion
Toshi
Makihara is one of the major voices in Philadelphia's New
Music / Free Improvisation scene today. He studied percussion
with Sabu Toyozumi, a prominent percussionist / improviser
in Tokyo, and has worked with various new music ensembles
including Orchestra of Our Time and World Sound. Makihara
has also performed with many dance and theater companies in
the United States, Japan and Europe. In the realm of experimental
free improvised music, he has worked with variety of musicians
including LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, Tom Cora, Peter Brotzmann,
Peter Koward, John Zorn, Eugene Chadbourne, Jon Rose, William
Parker and Thurston Moore. Makihara's original improvisational
style combines his masterful percussion technic with vaudeville
humor, a zen-influenced use of silence and gesture, and a
dazzling range of discovered [invented] sound media [objects]
ranging from bicycle wheels to feather dusters to coiled slinkies,
all used in unexpectedly unique ways.
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Related
Links:
Toshi's
web site |
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Listen
to audio files:
John Dierker, Vattel Cherry, Toshi Makihara
trio
with Michael Johnsen and Dan Conrad |
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Bob
Marsh (SF):
voice, electronics, cello, piano
Now
a resident of the Bay Area in San Francisco, Bob Marsh performs
regularly on violin, cello, piano, vibraphone, flute, and
uses extended vocal techniques. He is a composer/improvisor
with an extrodinary range and humanity to his playing. Whatever
the medium of his music, it carriers a distinctive charge
of gibberish from the ID, a kind of subliminal fragmenting
of voices which recalls states of consciousness on the verge
of sleep. He is the founder of the Quintessentials, Opera
Viva with Carol Genetti, the Emergency String Quartet and
the Emergency Piano Quintet. He is also a long-time improvisation
partner of Jack Wright.
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Related
Links:
Bob
Marsh's web site |
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Listen
to audio files:
Bob
Marsh
Bob
Marsh & Bob Falesch 1
Bob
Marsh & Bob Falesch 2
Bob
Marsh & Bob Falesch 3
Bob
Marsh & John Berndt |
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Joe
McPhee (Poughkeepsie):
reeds, trumpet, pvc pipe
Joe
McPhee, composer, multi-instrumentalist and poet, has been
on a musical search through improvisation, conceptual studies
and composition, encompassing various aspects of acoustic
and electronic music, which has brought wide acclaim and recognition
worldwide.
His
PO Music series inspired by philosopher Dr. Edward de Bono's
work with lateral thinking uses positive provocatioon to move
from fixed ideas in order to discover new ones. PO is a language
indicator to show that the process of provocation is taking
place and that things might not be necessarily what they seem.
It is his hope that the name Joe McPhee will accomplish the
same result.
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Related
Links:
Joe
McPhee's web site |
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Listen
to audio files:
Joe
McPhee & David Prentice 1
Joe
McPhee & David Prentice 2
Joe
McPhee & David Prentice 3
Joe
McPhee & Joe Giardullo
Joe
McPhee & Joe Giardullo 2
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Sean
Meehan (New York):
percussion
Drummer
Sean G. Meehan was born in the Bronx and resides in Times
square New York City. His interest in improvisation and collaboration
has taken him around the world where he has performed solo
and with other artists ranging from traditional instrumentalists
to dance to avant-garde flower arrangers. Meehan maintains
collaborative relationships with musicians Tamio Shiraishi,
Ben Manley, Paul Hoskin and John Dierker, poet Edwin Torres
and choreographer Andrea Mills. Meehan's recordings include
a CD of drum solos(1991) a trio recorded in Japan with Mamoru
Fujieda(computer) and Michihiro Sato(shamisen)(1994) and a
7" record with poets Edwin Torres and Miguel Algarin(1998).
All of his recordings are available at www.anomalousrecords.com.
Other contributions to the material world include the construction
of performance objects which act as "compositional things".
Included in this are his pieces; Gift III which musically
activates a sink full of dirty dishes, Gift IV for woodblock,
and Audio, a boxed set of four cassettes which are played
in the mind.
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Listen
to audio files:
Quartet
from High Zero '99
Solo
(requires real player) |
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Ian
Nagoski (Philadelphia):
live electronics
Electronic
musician and reluctant writer and organizer, Nagoski typically
performs his mind-numbing catastrophes in collaboration with
videomaker and Halana magazine publisher Chris Rice and Pelt
guitarist Jack Rose. His CD Warm Coursing Blood has been described
as both "the aural equivalent of watching paint dry" (Alternative
Press) and "higher-mind electronics, brutal and unsophisticated
on one hand, beautiful and truly elevating on the other. Listening
to this is like examining fractal images through a microscope
- you'll lose your sense of self," (Bruce Russell, Dead C.)
Both reactions refer to the contemplative and slow-moving
qualities of his timbrally dense sound-masses, with both writers
reacting differently to the issues of attention and time-sense
present in Nagoski's music. Neither quote particularly evokes
his love of sensuously appealing soundfields or his enthusiasm
for the trans-rationality of human vibrational pattern-making,
which play an equally important part in his aesthetic.
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Related
Links:
http://www.simpletone.com/ian_nagoski.htm
http://www.virtulink.com/immp/studio5/9911.HTM
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Listen
to audio files:
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John
Oswald (Toronto):
saxophone
An
individual with highly developed interests in a variety of
directions, Torontonian John Oswalds activites have included
incredible free saxophone improvisations, famous cases of
plagaristic plunderphonic recomposition of popular music,
digital "musique concrete" works of startling originality
and quality, activities as a recordist, in the dark, and other
interrogations of the worlds of perception and meaning. And,
he does it all with considerable panasche. "For the moment,
John Oswald is a solo movement, the most exciting school of
one in music" -- Milo Miles, Village Voice
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Related
Links:
Overview
& Bio
Profile
of Composition Activies
Interview
on Plagiarism |
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Listen
to audio files:
John
Oswald 1
John
Oswald 2
John
Oswald 3 |
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Catherine
Pancake (Baltimore):
drums, dry ice, objects
The ineffible M. Pancake is one of a new breed of improvising
musicians for whom the avant-garde serves as a practical technical
base and inspiration; as a drummer, she is influenced equally
by Sean Meehan, Bob Wagner and Michael Zerang (and possibly
even Gene Krupa.) She is a self-taught percussionist seeking
to approach musical possibilities of the sublime, extreme
type; and also a prolific filmmaker and a central organizer
of the baltimore scene. She is a member of Neil Feather's
Aerotrain, and the Coltrane tribute group "Music in The
Key of Zero", with saxophonist John Berndt.
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Greg
Pierce (Pittsburgh):
drums, banjo, musical saw, reeds
"The Imperialists have moved Heaven and Earth to lull
youth into inactivity."
- Vietnamese gnome
"Song
trend vs. amok trend to a bed out of leaves cross cut uttering
saw tones to let the sawdust out of somebody. A finger on
the table to something into someone's head, their hope's reduced
to high-muck-a-muck." - GP
Explosive
and daring improvisor, natural musician, bluegrass guitarist,
student of the primal saxophonist Todd Whitman, and one third
of the visionary Orgone Cinema film collective with Alysa
Dix and Michael Johnsen. Note that the pevious had no subject.
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Listen
to audio files:
Greg
Pierce & Michael Johnsen
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Julie
Pomerleau (Chicago): violin
"Julie Pomerleau is a Chicago artist and personality
player. What I mean by that is that I am not especially schooled
in or tied down to any one style. My alter ego, Monica Boubou,
the glamorous French film star and violinist for Bobby Conn,
has traveled all over the world entertaining crowds of all
sizes with our unpopular brand of pop music. I am also an
arranger and occasional composer. My most complicated work
was an "easy-listening" treatment for 20-piece orchestra of
some of the themes from the Flying Luttenbachers' "Gods of
Chaos" album that turned out to be anything but easy. 7 years
ago, I became very interested in Klezmer and am still adding
to my repertoire. I can be available to play weddings and
bar/bat mitzvahs! Over the years, I have logged many Myopic
Mondays, improvising at one time or another with seemingly
everyone in Chicago's improvised music scene. One of the more
satisfying line-ups has been the Phenomenal String Quartet,
made up of Fred Lonberg-Holm, Bob Marsh, myself, and a rotating
cast of Chicago string players. Currently, I am working on
my solo project, a series of 30-second string quartets."
- Julie Pomerleau
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Listen
to audio files:
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Evan
Rapport (Baltimore):
reeds, etc.
The virtuosic Rapport plays human-a-tone, nose recorder, piccolo,
shofar, slide whistle, jew's harp, squeaky crab toy, as well
as a range of lesser known wind instruments such as alto,
soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet, and flute (often at
the same time). Although as an improviser and composer he
is primarily concerned with cognitive dissonance and "transcendence
through cold sores," he has also boldly defied convention
by infiltrating world-famous big bands, pit orchestras, and
rock groups. He is a member of the enigmatic Companion Trio,
and Krill, and he performs in many other solo and collaborative
contexts. He is a central organizer of improvised music in
Baltimore, and a founder of the Mass Particles recording label.
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Related
Links:
http://www.massparticles.com/
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Listen
to audio files:
trio
from High Zero '99
Companion
Trio Tour Recordings |
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Jon
Rose (Amsterdam): violin
and electronics
Born in engl;and in 1951, Jon Rose is that rarest of things:
An international, cybernetic, classical-jazz-noise crossbred,
historically falsifying to the point of self-negation, dashingly
handsome, modified violin building, virtuosic, always on the
least fashionable side of experimental music, drag a self-playing
violin across the outback of Australia kinda, nude people
playing badmitton Percy Grainger re-enacting, radio-play recording,
high speed violin competition, violin hating, violin extending
violin, dark violin sense of humour violin, east Berlin violin
kind of violin violin violin violin violin violin violin,
violin.
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Related
Links:
http://www.euronet.nl/users/
jrviolin/index.html |
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Listen
to audio files:
Jon
Rose 1
Jon
Rose 2
Jon
Rose 3 |
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Bob
Wagner (Baltimore): drums
Percussionist Bob is a pure natural, an enigma, a question
mark. His drumming is deeply perplexing and seems to do injustice
to musical parsimony while hitting it with a little plastic
dog.
He has been called "The Han Bennik of Hampden" because of
his extreme use of dry humor in his music, like the Dutch
guy. He can be heard on numerous records with his groups Companion
Trio, The Can Openers, and The Recordings.
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Related
Links:
http://www.massparticles.com/
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Listen
to audio files:
Companion
Trio Tour Recordings
|
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Jack
Wright (Boulder):
saxophones, contra-alto clarinet, piano
"Jack wright is a highly overrated musician from Boulder,
who in fact cannot stand on his head while playing, nor make
a single sound come from his navel. He is old and out of date.
His extremely comprehensible lounge act has attracted the
ho-hum of critics, which is exactly what he desires. Having
failed to master his saxophones and piano after decades of
trying, he has now added the lugubrious contra-alto clarinet
to the trunk of his ever-traveling car. Despite all this he
plays with anyone who is willing, which includes most n. american
improvisors, who find him amusing, if pitiable."--Jack
Wright
Considered
by many in this festival to be one of the finest saxophonists
and improvisors EVER to walk the earth. A living legend and
the inspiration for the festival.
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Listen
to audio files:
Jack
Wright 1
Jack
Wright 2
Jack
Wright & John Berndt 1
Jack
Wright & John Berndt 2
Jack
Wright & John Berndt 3
Jack
Wright & John Berndt 4 |
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