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05/19 Monday
7:00 PM Satellite with Courtney Brown & Kristy Foye
www.myspace.com/thoughtcollection002
Satellite is the name given to the various combinations of Liz
Meredith (viola), Travis Johns (bass) and Gudmundur Steinn
Gunnarsson (guitar). They play improvised music that focuses on the
interaction and amalgamation of electronics, prepared instruments
and extended techniques ranging from deconstructed audio loops at
the verge of silence to dense soundscapes that envelope the senses.
Though all are classically trained, each member has developed
musical vocabularies rooted far outside that of the conservatory
and are as diverse as the locales they hail from - Baltimore, Md.,
Oakland, Ca., and Reykjavik, Iceland, respectively. Formed in the
fall of 2005 at Mills College, Satellite has performed extensively
throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and are currently
finishing mixes on a new album recorded entirely in the wilderness
of New York?s Hudson River Valley.
Outside of Satellite, we have two more acts slated for the bill, each looking to play for approximately 30 minutes or so. The first addition will be Courtney Brown from Lebanon, NH, performing her one-person electronic cabaret act entitled "Every Night I Lose Control" Her bio is as follows:
Courtney Brown has long harbored aspirations of becoming an Edward Gorey heroine, but her attempts have thus far been foiled. In lieu of her unlikely but tragic demise, she makes strange dark music and fiddles with electronics. Her most recent work, Every Night I Lose Control, is an electronic post-modern cabaret act that explores the ideas of disintegration and failure. Every piece is designed so that she, as a performer, will fail. This show follows the trajectory of her attempts to regain balance and composure in the wreckage. Heavily influenced by tango, Weimar cabaret, and early goth rock, this work explores the danger of performance and ultimately exposes the vulnerabilities of its performer.
Sounds = myspace.com/courtneydbrown
Also on the bill will be a project by Boston-based cellist Kristy Foye
Individual Biographies:
Liz Meredith (b. 1981) is a violist, improviser, and composer
originally from Baltimore, Maryland. Her solo works are
improvisatory in nature, and frequently move towards the outer
limits of musical genres being influenced by rock, electronic, and
contemporary classical music.
Although classically trained, her initial collaborations were in
the realm of string-based rock music, as both a co-founder, and
later working with various bands such as Zigmat and Teletextile.
Liz collaborates regularly with guitarist Cooper Formant in the
band photovoltic, frequently performs with NYC-based group
Teletextile, and is also a member of Satellite: an Oakland-
Baltimore-Reyjavik trio, focusing on electro-acoustic improvised
music. In addition to playing the viola, she has composed concert
works for The Opabinia Quartet and Quartet San Francisco.
Liz received her undergraduate degree from the Berklee College of
Music in Viola Performance: jazz performance/improvisation and Film
Music, and recently completed her Master's degree in Music
Composition from Mills College. While at Mills, Liz studied
composition with Fred Frith, Annie Gosfield, Hilda Paredes, and
viola performance with Hank Dutt.
Gudmunder Steinn Gunnarsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1982.
Began music studies at the age of seven. In 2005 he graduated from
The Iceland Academy of Arts. There he studied composition with
Úlfar Haraldsson and Hilmar ór Arson as well as performance with
Hilmar Jensson. Currently Gudmundur studies in the M.A. program in
composition in Mills College, where he's studied with Alvin Curran,
Fred Frith and Annie Gosfield. He has attended masterclasses with
Tristan Murail, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Clarence Barlow.
His compositions have been performed at festivals such as U.N.M.
and has been performed by ensembles such as Quartet San Francisco
(US), The Zapolski Quartet (DK), Atón (IS) by members of ensembles
such as Poing (NO), Caput (IS).
Gudmundur Steinn was the musical director of an experimental
animated film named Hidebound, which won a special price for music
at the NUFF young filmmakers festival in Norway. He has also been
active as an improviser and has performed in that context with
musicians such as Steve Hubback, Fred Frith, Andrew D'Angelo, Ad
Peijnenburg, Hilmar Jensson and Skúli Sverrisson.
Travis Johns (b. 1983) writes and performs music that he describes
as an "abstraction of reality." Consisting of processed field
recordings, improvisations and amplified "small sounds," he
attempts to weave a tapestry of experiences, gestures and thoughts
into a singular, enveloping mass of sounds. Often labeled as noise
at first, a more concentrated listen will yield countless paths for
the ear to follow, leading to listening experiences that he hopes
will provide infinite possibilities for interpretation. His music
has been performed extensively throughout the United States and
abroad to a wide variety of audiences, ranging from galleries to
anarchist warehouses to international music festivals. An avid
performer and improviser on electric bass and electronics, he is a
member of the Oakland, Ca. quartet Pink Canoes (with Noah Phillips,
Aram Shelton and Zachary Watkins), Satellite (with Gudmundur Steinn
Gunnarsson and Liz Meredith) and and Vslykon, a collaborative duo
with sound artist Ayako Kataoka.
He holds a B.M. in Technology in Music and Related Arts from the
Oberlin Conservatory of Music, studies conducted with Tom Lopez and
Dr. Hye Kyung Lee and an M.F.A. from Mills College in Electronic
Music and Recording Media, studies conducted with Chris Brown,
Hilda Paredes and Les Stuck. He has participated in residencies at
such places as the Atlantic Center for the Arts, is a frequent
collaborator with Costa Rican visual artist Paulina Velazquez-Solis
and is a founding member of the Thinktank Collective, an
international arts collective focused on the interrelation of sound
and image.