Tag: chicago

pan y rosas release curtains: matthies (live at jefferson park, 3-3-18)by wilhelm matthies!

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wilhelm matthies is a musician who lives in the milwaukee (wisconsin, usa) area. he records in the studio, releasing solo, duet and group pieces, mostly in the realm of contemporary classical – either as free improvisation or using graphic compositions .

since 2012 wilhelm has been developing a line of string instruments he calls mosesa. his goal is to create an instrument that allows for maximum access to the string spectrum and allows various sounding boards to be attached.

curtains is a document of a performance at the jefferson park branch of the chicago public library that happened in march of 2018. wilhelm used a mosesa 9-CedarPlate and some gutiar effects pedals. strymon’s unset, BlueSky, flint deco and the fishman aura and amped through an orange bass amp, the crush 50 bxt.

get the album here!

library experimental – july 7, 2018

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Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Saturday, July 7 from 2-4pm.

Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!

The final show of the 2018 season features Christopher Riggs; and Will Soderberg / Enid Smith.

Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/

Christopher Riggs is a teacher who also plays experimental music on the electric guitar.

Using springs, magnets, pieces of metal, dowels, and violin bows, he makes his instrument sound like underwater pterodactyls, cellos from space, the inside of a trash compactor, alien insects, malfunctioning mp3 files, or washing machines filled with marbles. He achieves these unguitar-like sounds without the aid of processing or effects.

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Enid Smith earned her BFA in contemporary dance from the North Carolina School of the Arts. In New York City, she performed with Ivy Baldwin Dance, The Merce Cunningham Repertory Understudy Group, Anita Cheng Dance, and MAC Cosmetics among others. Since moving to the Chicago area in 2007, she has presented her own work under the name enidsmithdance, collaborated with The North Shore Choral Society and the artists of Articular Facet, and worked extensively with The Evanston Dance Ensemble and ede2. Most recently Enid has performed with Khecari and as a guest artist with Lucky Plush Productions. She currently teaches advanced modern at Dovetail Studios and Dance Center Evanston and maintains a massage therapy practice.

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Will Soderberg’s first recorder was a Kenner ‘Say It Play It’ which he received for Christmas in 1969. He likes to record sounds and videos and then change them using: ipads, computers, discarded electronics, found objects, abandoned ios apps & devices, obsolete software, etc. He attempts to manipulate and recombine sources to provoke new contexts by placing them in unfamiliar, often imaginary settings. He likes to perform with musicians & dancers of all ages.

library experimental – five lullabies by lykanthea!

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By turns gentle, frightening, and humorous, the lullaby becomes a subject of experimentation for Lykanthea’s Lakshmi Ramgopal. In a dreamy evening performance of traditional Tamil songs and her own original pieces, Five Lullabies by Lykanthea explores the genre as a conduit for handing down knowledge, and with it, childhood, loss, and sleep. She will be accompanied by cellist Lia Kohl.

Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Thursday, July 5 from 7-7.30pm.

The fifth installment of the 2018 season features is split into two performances. The first of which will be a special evening event featuring Lykanthea! The show will begin promptly at 7pm, so please arrive a little before then.

Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!

Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/

Artist info:

Lykanthea

Over the last four years, the work of Lykanthea’s Lakshmi Ramgopal has transformed from explorations of electro-ambient pop idioms into expansive performances and installations. Her debut EP Migration garnered praise from Noisey, Chicago Tribune, and Public Radio International’s The World for its alchemy of synths, catchy melodies, and Carnatic improvisatory techniques. The record led to a European tour, Leipzig’s Wave-Gotik Treffen, and an opening performance for the 50th anniversary celebrations of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, where she shared a bill with Billy Corgan, Lupe Fiasco, and Jamila Woods. Amid all this, while completing her PhD, she teamed up with Paula Matthusen to create Prex Gemina, a sound installation for the American Academy in Rome’s show Cinque Mostre.

Since the death of her grandmother and birth of her niece last year, Ramgopal has turned her attention to atavistic questions of motherhood and personal legacy. Her sound installation Maalai, which appears this summer the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, explores the histories of women in her family and the contemporary practice of Hinduism in domestic spaces using real and fabricated audiovisual records. With A Half-Light Chorus, which Experimental Sound Studio commissioned this year for its Florasonic series, she considers memory and kinship with an installation in Chicago’s Lincoln Park Conservatory featuring vocalists imitating the calls of birds from India and Sanskrit literature. This new body of work joins multidisciplinary ensemble shows that herald a shift in Ramgopal’s storytelling—one that eschews cold electronics and embraces the warmth of the sruti box, unprocessed vocals, and performance art and dance.

These journeys find a home in Ramgopal’s follow-up to Migration, which is due later this year. A study in the search for renewal after loss, hope mingles with despair in her new record. In Lykanthea lies the eternal possibility of transformation and rebirth.

http://lykanthea.com
http://twitter.com/lykanthea
http://instagram.com/lykanthea
http://facebook.com/lykanthea

library experimental – june 2018

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Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Saturday, June 9, from 2-4pm.

Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!

The fourth installment of the 2018 season features Lindsey French / Willy Smart; Sarah J. Ritch; and Morgan Krauss!

Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/

artist info:

Lindsey French / Willy Smart

Lindsey french is an artist whose work engages in gestures of sensual and mediated communication with landscapes and the nonhuman. Her projects materialize as texts written in collaboration with trees, scent transmissions, and performative lectures. She currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Departments of Art and Technology Studies and Contemporary Practices.

Stemming from Anna Tsing’s idea of contamination as collaboration, Willy Smart and Lindsey french offer a space for listening to the landscape. Field recordings of contaminated landscapes, live local environmental input, and human error suggest modes for rereading and hearing Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

Sarah Ritch

Along with classical training in cello and piano, Sarah Ritch has also played guitar and bass in several punk and metal bands prior to her academic music studies. Ms. Ritch holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Studio Arts from SAIC’s Sound department, and a Master’s Degree in Computer Science. Sarah studied cello performance at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with Moonlight Tran and Dr. Andrew Smith, and with Barbara Haffner at the Chicago College of Performing Arts.

Sarah Ritch’s work ranges from improvisational noise to tonal notated music to musical studies on algorithmic expression. She has been the composer-in-residence for Chicago classical ensembles the Millennium Chamber Players and the Anaphora Ensemble. Ms. Ritch is an advocate for education in the arts and technology, having taught Music Theory, Composition, and Cello at the Southport Performing Arts Conservatory, and serving as Director of Technology and Professor of The History and Science of Sound
for the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts at UIC.

Morgan Krauss

Morgan Krauss (b. 1985) is a composer currently living in Chicago. She received her Bachelor of Music in Composition at Columbia College Chicago in the winter of 2012. She is now continuing her studies in Music Composition as a Doctoral student at Northwestern University.

Krauss’ ambitions in her works are to produce tactile explorations based on ones physical awareness and elements of allurement. Her music is focused on the latent instability of seemingly fixed gestures where the interaction between the performer and the score creates yet a third entity, often guided by improvisation and the clashing of emotional opposites.

library experimental – may 2018

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library experimental is an ongoing series focusing on chicago’s experimental musicians. it is happening at the chicago public library in jefferson park on saturday, may 12, from 2-4pm.

early! free! kid friendly! if the kids are patient!

the third installment of the 2018 season features noise bias and last king of poland!

jefferson park library is located at 5363 w lawrence. convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/

artist info:​

Noise Bias:

Noise Bias is an all-female contemporary ensemble exclusively showcasing the work of women composers. Existing as a collective, the women of Noise Bias share the common goal of creating and sustaining an environment where women are in positions of creative power and musical decision-making. Their goal is to curate new music performances that directly confront and challenge the gender disparity within the Chicago new music scene.

https://www.noisebias.org/

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Last King of Poland:

Last King of Poland (Tomasz Ryszard Jurczak) is a polish noise artist from Chicago who has for the last years traveled the world, touring Japan and the United States extensively. he has released ten cassettes on different labels, the newest being an improvisational collaboration with Japanese noise artist go, out on 1980 records.

His whole creation in itself is an identity crisis, between two different worlds. Back and forth between American brashness and Polish chivalry which he brings out with loops and samples of waves and everyday life. His performance is unique. muted, he would look like a vivid story teller, passionately explaining his travels through outer space with sadness in his heart.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/lastkingofpoland

pan y rosas release upheaval 100 by arvo zylo!

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arvo zylo has been making experimental music that wavers around, but is undeniably anchored in, the vein of industrial noise, since the year 2000. he works under his own name as well as under the collaborative umbrella moniker “blood rhythms.”

zylo began with no previous knowledge of experimental music, using a primitive sequencer with destroyed presets and intentional malfunctions as a primary source of compositional inspiration. his work has evolved to fetishize extreme layering, repetition, raw material action, feedback, human/animal/onomatopoeia sounds, and naturally abrasive elements without the use of effects pedals.

upheaval is a process piece that zylo has worked on over the course of years. it was initially created as a drone built with samples of divas holding sustained notes. zylo continued to return to and rework that source material. he has now created 100 versions of this piece. version 100 was aired during “drone week” on sound art radio in the uk several times. this final version of upheaval is now released on pyr.

get the album here!

pan y rosas release live at the whistler by SiP!

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jimmy lacy brings a decade of wild synthesizer to his latest and most personal project to date, SiP. when the music is good the synths and rhythm beats clear space to think about life and the decisions that find you here. this is not music for dancing, but may it embolden positive steps!

live at the whistler is a document of a performance at the whistler in chicago on october 27, 2017. lope. rise and fall. mellow. repetition. hiss. zones.

get the album here

pan y rosas release drank viva bloom ii by dave gabriel!

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dave gabriel is a person who is associated with ombrelli sciolti and imelda marcos. he resides in chicago.

drank viva bloom ii, dave gabriel’s second release for the pan y rosas discos label, is grindcore-length faux-avantesque music for the short attention span embracing millenial era. longer than an episode of aqua teen, shorter than an episode of seinfeld.

get the album here!