Tuesday, March 4, 2014 @ 8:00 pm
“music that’s as spooky as it is scientific”—The New York Times
“a bizarre cross between Hendrix and La Monte Young”—The Village Voice
Tonight’s program has developed quite naturally out of the
contrasting, yet highly complementary, organizational methods and
performing forces employed by the composers, David First and Pat Spadine
to realize their ultimately very like-minded goals. This will be an
evening of immersive sonic cooperation and porous media interaction that
will utilize the full extent of Roulette’s technical capabilities as
well as the entirety of its physical space. Both groups will present
self-contained works from their unique repertoires as well as premiere a
collaboration by First and Spadine for their combined ensembles,
created especially for the occasion.
David First’s musical career is filled
with opposites and extremes. As a composer he is known for his dense,
mesmerizing drone structures which he performs sitting trance-like
without seeming to move a muscle. At other times, he can be found
playing guitar with his psychedelic punk band, Notekillers, where he is a
whirling blur of hyperactive energy. His ensemble, The Western Enisphere,
is comprised of specially selected players trained in the exploration
of First’s concepts of Gestural Improvisation — a hypno-acoustical mix
of microtonal drones, poly-rhythmic ratios, AM radio transmissions,
power animal invocations, and hallucinogenic visuals with the intention
of causing a molecular transduction inside all those in attendance.
davidfirst.com
davidfirst.com
The Ashcan Orchestra is simultaneously the audio/visual work of composer P. Spadine,
a large collection of toy, re-appropriated, and “real” instruments, and
a revolving performance ensemble based in Bushwick, NY. Since 2007 the
ensemble has been popping up in D.I.Y. style and art house venues
thoughout NYC and the eastern seaboard, employing everything from
children’s handbells, prepared tape recorders, stacks of discarded
televisions, homemade circuitry, colored lightbulbs, mirrors, to more
widely accepted noisemakers to create new music in forms more familiar
than the instrumentation would lead the listener to believe. This
process from humble and understandable beginnings to grander and more
complex ends, has been a vehicle to both celebrate and emulate the
physics that bind the known universe.
ashcanorchestra.blogspot.com
ashcanorchestra.blogspot.com