Reviewing

Oto Zono

Lorin Roser, Keiko Uenishi, Elliott Sharp, Janene Higgins, Devin Gray, Michael J Schumacher, DUO METRIX, HxH

Featuring The Indeterminate Ensemble, Nina Kuo, Kenji Kojima, Dave Seidel, Mohamed Kubbara

The literal meaning of Oto Zono in Japanese is “Sound Garden,” here it is translated into a performance concept cultivating diverse experimental music/sound. New York City is the most linguistically diverse city in the world, a vibrant garden and forest of aural culture.  Not to mention the strata of city noise we experience. This incredible multifarious aural experience leads to a rich and complex fusion of musical styles even in experimental music.  Alongside music from various cultural backgrounds, many genres flourish, such as contemporary classical, avant-garde jazz, and experimental rock. The city permits layers of music from different traditions and genres to come together to create new sounds.

“Oto Zono becomes a bridge to new musical expressions, welcoming listeners to a realm where sound grows wild.” Curated by Masa Hosojima.

LOCATION: HEART @ 442 Broadway

Date: Saturday November 30, 2024

Tickets for November 30, 2024 or $10 to $20  suggested donation at the door

6:00 PMDoors Open
7:00 PMLorin Roser and Friends
7:30Keiko Uenishi
8:00 PMElliott Sharp and Janene Higgins
8:30The Indeterminate Ensemble
9:00 PMDevin Gray

DATE: Sunday December 1, 2024

Tickets for December 1, 2024 or  $10 to $20  suggested donation at the door

6:00 PMDoors Open with sound by MJS
7:00 PMMichael J Schumacher
7:30 PMDUO METRIX (Tom Chiu & Dan Joseph)
8:00 PMDavid Seidel
8:30 PMHxH – Lester St. Louis + Chris Williams
9:00 PMMo-system ensemble

Video Program throughout the evening

Lorin Roser and Nina Kuo
Kenji Kojima
Michael J. Schumacher
Janene Higgins
Photos credits: left to right. Tom Chiu by Peter Gannushkin, Janene Higgins and Elliott Sharp by Cy Fore and Michael J. Shumacher by Michael Yu.

About the Artists

Dave Seidel is a New Englander, composing and performing electroacoustic music with an emphasis on long tones and microtonal sonorities. For Oto-Zono, he will perform his interpretation of Catherine Christer Hennix’s classic piece The Electric Harpsichord. Based on the existing documentation, he will use the same scale (Multani), tuned according to Alain Danielou’s “Ragas of Northern Indian Music”. Hennix performed the piece using a retuned electronic keyboard; he will be using Meng Qi’s Wingie2 resonator device with additional processing.

Devin Gray is not only a great solo percussionist but strives for quality and sincerity in his collaborative works, Gray’s exciting energy has compelled him towards many different musical directions. Trained at Curtis institute of Music and Manhattan school of music.  Devin currently lives, performs and composes in Brooklyn, NY and in Berlin, Germany. 

DUO METRIX (Tom Chiu and Dan Joseph) Synth-pop duo comprising Tom Chiu, Yale and Juilliard graduate, on violin/electronics and Dan Joseph, Cal Art and Mills college graduate, on synthesizer/electronics, specializing in recontexualizing riffs and hooks from a variety of genres, spanning the popular to the experimental. From Kraftwerk to Thelonious Monk, from Stereolab to Deee-Lite, Chiu & Joseph will create energetic mashups and weave extended jams that promise to be trippy and surprising fun. 

HxH (Lester St. Louis and Chris Williams) utilizes a mix of trumpet, cello and electronics to build worlds traversing through acoustic sound, grainy textures, expansive pools of sounds, breaks, cuts and beats. The approach is conceived as an expansiveness that holds a personal intimacy. HxH wants to bring the listeners in, tune them to the experience and take a long trip. HxH functions as a vehicle to bring together the mass of references and influences Chris and Lester share and create ways to crystalize those ideas in real, expanded time to an experience over minutes or hours.

Michael J Schumacher, Juilliard graduate, not only is an advocator of sound arts, having been a director of a gallery, Diapason, dedicated to sound art since 1997 to 2011, but he is an inventor of the Portable Multi-Channel Sound System is a unique musical instrument designed specifically for his spatialized compositions. It sets up in less than an hour and can be carried in a single suitcase, yet provides up to 12 fully discrete audio channels, complete with speakers, amplifiers and sound sources. Building on the pioneering work of composers such as Alvin Lucier and Maryanne Amacher, presentations explore the relationship between musical form and architectural space and how this relationship can inform listening. Combining installation and performance, algorithmic composition and improvisation, this goes beyond acoustics to the way people inhabit and use spaces, creating paradigms for listening and formal expectations. 

Keiko Uenishi is a sound art-i-vist, socio/environ composer, and a core member of SHARE.nyc since 2001.Uenishi is known for her works formed through experiments in restructuring and analyzing one’s relationship through aural memory/perceptions in sociological, cultural, and/or psychological contexts.

Elliott Sharp and Janene Higgins will present Suspension of Disbelief, a structure for improvisation using video and sound. In their work together, the images provide a visual counterpoint to the music. Foreground and background are continuously shifting as both sound and visuals emerge from fixed elements and then expand with improvised extrapolations. The projections may solidify the abstract but may also elevate that which is obvious to another level of meaning, never literal, never explaining, but creating an immediate visceral response. A graphic designer by profession, Janene Higgins uses original footage, hand-painted textures, and digital processing in her projection design which she may then manipulate live, using various software operations.

The Indeterminate Ensemble is an aleatoric curation of improvisers, instrumentalists & sound artists from an ever evolving New York-based collective specializing in free form large group improvisation. Sonically, pieces explore the emergence of form & interactions within the intersectionality of multi-faceted interplay between diversely contrasting musical genres & instrumentation; from computer music to electro-acoustic to tonal music – sound, time, timber, texture, instrumentation, personnel & ensemble size all are determined by chance. Longtime members include organelle-ist Trey Cregan, multi-instrumentalists Thom Miritello, Jonathon Grover, electroacoustic luthier Tim Pickerell, synthesists John Franco, Laura Feathers, guitarist Kevin Ramsay, sound-painter Sam Day Harmet, thereminist/projectionist Carlos Johns-Davila, shaman Theo Woodward, PYRON the arsonist, violist Sara Wentworth among many others. 

Lorin Roser and Friends, Lorin is an architect from Princeton and UCLA, is a composer of code driven mathematical constructs, simultaneous 3D objects and stochastic melodies with today’s fast computers allowing conductor like manipulation of the equations’ polynomials. As we shoot into the techno future with the haptic feedback of traditional instruments, add the chaos of a granular experiment in sound. Steel strings against the fingers, vibrating wood; all channeled through the digital interstices of AI control, a hybrid hum.  Improv tempered by years of interaction; an instinctual community of sound influenced by Bo Diddley and Duchamp. Cross cultural experiments with world and Asian instruments pollinated with electronics in diverse venues including UK Boiler Room.

Mohamed Kubbara is an Egyptian composer, music researcher, percussionist & bandleader based in New York city specializing in large ensemble improvisation with a focus on the intersectionality & simultaneity of diverse electronic, electro-acoustic & acoustic music practices, instrumentation, ensemble sizes & genres. Works incorporating maxmsp/laptop-guided improvisation aim to explore directly questions about indeterminacy, aleatoric processes, emotive potency, improvisational challenges & freedom.

Nina Kuo is a Chinese American multimedia artist, creator of surreal 3D animations with partner Lorin, shown in NYC Museums and international art fairs. renowned for her activism as well as her art. She traveled across Asia many times. This formative experience led her to a profound connection to nature that is Kuo’s driving force for Making. 

Kenji Kojima explores the link between seeing and hearing through computer art. He views binary data—simple on-off electrical states—as a fundamental, pure art material, capable of transforming into sensory experiences, though its artistic, rather than commercial, value is his focus.

About the Curator

Masa Hosojima, trained in music composition, is an artist exploring, composing, making objects, curating, and conducting interviews about visual and auditory culture and aesthetic practices. He has published a catalog of his curated exhibition, “Women On Making.” and translated books about Jewish refugees escaping to Japan during World War II.

“From The Viewpoint of “Making” 

4/7/21-4/30/21 at WhiteBox NYC

“Women On Making”

10/3/22-10/23/22 at WhiteBox LE

Interview Project since 2015

https://masadon.wixsite.com/interviewsbymasa

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/share/14rsKGBv2Y

https://www.facebook.com/masa.hosojima.9

Interviewed by On Kawara’s one million years foundation

About Michael J. Schumacher

About Harvestworks

Founded as a not-for-profit organization by artists in 1977, Harvestworks assist with commissions and residencies, production services, education and information programs, and the presentation and distribution of their work. Harvestworks was supported by New Music USA’s Organization Fund in 2024-25.

Devin Gray

Devin Gray is not only a great solo percussionist but strives for quality and sincerity in his collaborative works, Gray’s exciting energy has compelled him towards many different musical directions. Trained at Curtis institute of Music and Manhattan school of music. Devin currently lives, performs and composes in Brooklyn, NY and in Berlin, Germany.

DUO METRIX (Tom Chiu and Dan Joseph)

Synth-pop duo comprising Tom Chiu, Yale and Juilliard graduate, on violin/electronics and Dan Joseph, Cal Art and Mills college graduate, on synthesizer/electronics, specializing in recontexualizing riffs and hooks from a variety of genres, spanning the popular to the experimental. From Kraftwerk to Thelonious Monk, from Stereolab to Deee-Lite, Chiu & Joseph will create energetic mashups and weave extended jams that promise to be trippy and surprising fun.

HxH (Lester St. Louis and Chris Williams)

HxH utilizes a mix of trumpet, cello and electronics to build worlds traversing through acoustic sound, grainy textures, expansive pools of sounds, breaks, cuts and beats. The approach is conceived as an expansiveness that holds a personal intimacy. HxH wants to bring the listeners in, tune them to the experience and take a long trip. HxH functions as a vehicle to bring together the mass of references and influences Chris and Lester share and create ways to crystalize those ideas in real, expanded time to an experience over minutes or hours.

Elliott Sharp and Janene Higgins

Elliott Sharp and Janene Higgins will present Suspension of Disbelief, a structure for improvisation using video and sound. In their work together, the images provide a visual counterpoint to the music. Foreground and background are continuously shifting as both sound and visuals emerge from fixed elements and then expand with improvised extrapolations. The projections may solidify the abstract but may also elevate that which is obvious to another level of meaning, never literal, never explaining, but creating an immediate visceral response. A graphic designer by profession, Janene Higgins uses original footage, hand-painted textures, and digital processing in her projection design which she may then manipulate live, using various software operations.

The Indeterminate Ensemble

The Indeterminate Ensemble is an aleatoric curation of improvisers, instrumentalists & sound artists from an ever evolving New York-based collective specializing in free form large group improvisation. Sonically, pieces explore the emergence of form & interactions within the intersectionality of multi-faceted interplay between diversely contrasting musical genres & instrumentation; from computer music to electro-acoustic to tonal music – sound, time, timber, texture, instrumentation, personnel & ensemble size all are determined by chance. Longtime members include organelle-ist Trey Cregan, multi-instrumentalists Thom Miritello, Jonathon Grover, electroacoustic luthier Tim Pickerell, synthesists John Franco, Laura Feathers, guitarist Kevin Ramsay, sound-painter Sam Day Harmet, thereminist/projectionist Carlos Johns-Davila, shaman Theo Woodward, PYRON the arsonist, violist Sara Wentworth among many others.

Lorin Roser and Friends

Lorin Roser, an architect from Princeton and UCLA, is a composer of code driven mathematical constructs, simultaneous 3D objects and stochastic melodies with today’s fast computers allowing conductor like manipulation of the equations’ polynomials. As we shoot into the techno future with the haptic feedback of traditional instruments, add the chaos of a granular experiment in sound. Steel strings against the fingers, vibrating wood; all channeled through the digital interstices of AI control, a hybrid hum. Improv tempered by years of interaction; an instinctual community of sound influenced by Bo Diddley and Duchamp. Cross cultural experiments with world and Asian instruments pollinated with electronics in diverse venues including UK Boiler Room.

Mohamed Kubbara

Mohamed Kubbara is an Egyptian composer, music researcher, percussionist & bandleader based in New York city specializing in large ensemble improvisation with a focus on the intersectionality & simultaneity of diverse electronic, electro-acoustic & acoustic music practices, instrumentation, ensemble sizes & genres. Works incorporating maxmsp/laptop-guided improvisation aim to explore directly questions about indeterminacy, aleatoric processes, emotive potency, improvisational challenges & freedom.

Nina Kuo

Nina Kuo is a Chinese American multimedia artist, creator of surreal 3D animations with partner Lorin, shown in NYC Museums and international art fairs. renowned for her activism as well as her art. She traveled across Asia many times. This formative experience led her to a profound connection to nature that is Kuo’s driving force for Making.

Kenji Kojima

Kenji Kojima explores the link between seeing and hearing through computer art. He views binary data—simple on-off electrical states—as a fundamental, pure art material, capable of transforming into sensory experiences, though its artistic, rather than commercial, value is his focus.

Dave Seidel

Dave Seidel is an independent composer based in New Hampshire (US). As a guitarist, he was part of the Downtown NYC new music scene in the 1980s. Performed and recorded in ensembles led by composers Lois V Vierk, Scott Johnson, Guy Klucevsek, and Bill Obrecht. Co-led the band People Falling. Premiered the electric guitar version of Lois V Vierk’s 五 Guitars (Go Guitars) for five microtonally-tuned guitars, live and on Simoom (Experimental Intermedia CD, 1990), and recorded Vierk’s Red Shift on River Beneath the River (Tzadik CD, 2000). Appeared on Klucevsek’s Flying Vegetables of the Apocalypse (Experimental Intermedia CD, 1991). Performed in a wide variety of venues, ranging from night clubs (CBGB, Mudd Club) to downtown performance spaces (The Kitchen, Dia Art Foundation, Dance Theater Workshop) to concert halls (New York’s Alice Tully Hall, Minneapolis’ Walker Arts Center) and at several new music festivals (New Music America in Los Angeles, Bang On A Can in New York, and Styrian Autumn in Graz, Austria). Since 2004, he has been focused on the composition and performance of electronic music, usually with a microtonal and/or drone basis. Festival participation includes Electronic Music Midwest, SEAMUS, North Country Electronic Music Festival, XFest, and PVDLoopFest. Dave has released albums on Irritable Hedgehog (60 Hz) and XI Records (Involution). Much music can be found at https://mysterybear.bandcamp.com.

Tom Chiu

Riveting with his incredible technique and mastery of the instrument,” (JG Thirlwell) violinist Tom Chiu–noted for his broad contributions to contemporary music and sound art–has premiered over 200 works by influential musicians such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Virko Baley, David Chesky, David First, Fast Forward, Leroy Jenkins, Oliver Lake, Wadada Leo Smith, Alvin Lucier, Michael Schumacher, and Henry Threadgill. He has also shared the stage with such musical luminaries as Ornette Coleman, Jessye Norman, and Paul McCartney, among others. As a composer/improviser, Chiu has collaborated with artists working in a variety of disciplines, including choreographers Pam Tanowitz and Eun-Me Ahn, film/video artists Phill Niblock and Ken Jacobs, vocalists Jaap Blonk and Thomas Buckner, balloonist Judy Dunaway, visual artist Matthew Barney, and theater troupe Mabou Mines. Chiu is thrilled to collaborate once again with the OpenEnded Group on Blackletter, after prior projects with OEG commissioned by EMPAC, the Museum of the Moving Image, and the Gardner Museum.

As founder of the FLUX Quartet, Chiu has led an influential new-music ensemble which has become “legendary for its furiously committed, untiring performances.” 

Dan Joseph

Dan Joseph is a free-lance composer, curator and writer based in New
York City. He began his career as a drummer in the vibrant punk scene of his native
Washington, DC. During the late 1980s, he was active in the experimental tape music
underground, producing ambient-industrial works for independent labels in the U.S.
and abroad. He spent the ‘90s in California where he studied at CalArts and Mills
College. His principal teachers include Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Curran and Mel
Powell. Equally influential were his studies with Terry Riley during several
workshops in California and Colorado. A New York resident since 2001, Dan’s work has
been presented at Merkin Concert Hall (NYC), Diapason Gallery for Sound (NYC),
Roulette (NYC), Issue Project Room (NYC) The Kitchen (NYC) Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts (CA), Human Resources (CA), Harrison House (CA) and other venues. He has
received commissions from several ensembles and performers, including Gamelan Son of
Lion, the sfSoundGroup, baritone Thomas Buckner, and clarinetist Matt Ingalls. Dan
has held residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural
Council and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center. As an artist who embraces the
musical multiplicity of our time, Dan works simultaneously in a variety of media and
contexts, including instrumental chamber music, free improvisation, and various
forms of electronica and sound art. Since the late 1990s, the hammer dulcimer has
been the primary vehicle for his music. As a performer he is active with his own
chamber ensemble, The Dan Joseph Ensemble, as well as in various improvisational
collaborations and as an occasional soloist. He has collaborated with a variety of
creative artists including Miya Masaoka, Pamela Z, Loren Dempster, JD Parran, India
Cooke, Andrea Williams, William Winant and Miguel Frasconi and John Ingle. As
curator and presenter, he has organized over 100 concerts as an independent producer
and as a member of organizations such as Harvestworks, Mutable Music (producers of
the acclaimed Interpretations series) and the San Francisco Electronic Music
Festival. He currently produces the monthly music and sound series Musical Ecologies
at The Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and is a co-producer of the Music
for Contemplation series in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His writings on various music
related topics have appeared in Musicworks Magazine (Toronto), The Brooklyn Rail,
NewMusicBox.org and other outlets.

Michael Schumacher

Michael J. Schumacher has worked with spatialized sound, computers and
electronics since the 1980s, creating multi-channel, generative “Room Pieces”
presented in galleries, museums, concert halls, public and private spaces. XI
Records has published a DVD set of five sound installations as computer
applications, playable on up to eight speakers, which may be installed on a computer
to create sound environments in the home. “Living Room Pieces” is another generative
installation designed for home listening; in 2021 Schumacher created an edition of
10 for Raspberry Pi. “The Portable Multi-channel Sound System” is an 8 or 12 channel
system that fits in a suitcase, with which he has toured Europe and the United
States. His interest in the intersections of musical form, architecture and social
spaces led to the founding, in 1996, of Diapason, a gallery devoted to the
presentation of multi-channel sound installations, long-duration performances and
intermedia artworks. In its 15 years of existence Diapason presented over 300
artists, at a time when sound art was emerging as a distinct practice in the United
States. Schumacher is the music director of the Liz Gerring Dance Company and
performs regularly with choreographer Sally Silvers. He studied music composition
with Stanley Applebaum, Bernhard Heiden, John Eaton and Vincent Persichetti and
piano with Seymour Bernstein, John Ogdon and Shigeo Neriki, and has degrees from
Indiana University and Juilliard. He also worked with La Monte Young and Milton
Babbitt. He has collaborated with choreographers, poets, architects, musicians and
filmmakers including Oren Ambarchi, Bruce Andrews, Tom Chiu, Charles Curtis, Ken
Jacobs, Victoria Meyers and Ursula Scherrer.

Keiko Uenishi

Keiko Uenishi is a sound art-i-vist, socio/environ composer, and a core
member of SHARE.nyc since 2001. Uenishi is known for her works formed through
experiments in restructuring and analyzing one’s relationship through aural
memory/perceptions in sociological, cultural, and/or psychological contexts.