Sunday, Apr 10th, 2011 - Jen Shyu, Carver Audain & Meg Rorison, Audrey Chen, Jenny Graf, MV Carbon, Tetsuo Rebirth @Pyramid Atlantic
Jen Shyu
Born in Illinois from Taiwanese and East Timorese parents, Jen Shyu, a soloist and
bandleader now based in NYC, has established herself as a pioneering and original
voice in the improvisational, avant-garde jazz and creative music worlds. Shyu has
sung a featured role in Anthony Braxton’s pending recording of his opera Trillium
E, and has a duo project called Synastry with bassist Mark Dresser, and has also
worked with such innovators as Dave Burrell, Pheeroan Aklaff, Ben Monder, Mat
Maneri, and currently records and tours with saxophonist/composer Steve
Coleman and Five Elements, singing on his latest albums Harvesting Semblances and
Affinities (Pi Recordings 2010) and Lucidarium and Weaving Symbolics (Label Bleu
2005 & 2006). Aside from being a MacDowell Colony National Endowment for
the Arts Fellow in 2008-2009, she has been awarded fellowships from the Asian
Cultural Council and the Bronx Council on the Arts, as well as premiered full-
length chamber works for voice, ensemble, and dance in collaboration with
choreographer Satoshi Haga at Roulette Space in 2008 (Cry of the Nomad) & Jazz
Gallery in 2009 (Raging Waters, Red Sands), both supported by the Jerome
Foundation. She has performed solo and with her band at such places as Lincoln
Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, John Zorn’s Stone, and many venues
throughout the US, Asia and Europe.
jenshyu.com,
Audrey Chen
AUDREY CHEN is a Chinese-American musician who was born into a family of
material scientists, doctors and engineers, outside of Chicago in 1976. Parting
ways with the family convention, she turned to the cello at age 8 and voice at
11. After years of classical and conservatory training in both instruments, with a
resulting specialization in early and new music, she parted ways again in 2003 to
begin new negotiations with sound in order to discover a more individually honest
aesthetic.
Now, using the cello, voice and analog electronics, Chen’s work delves deeply
into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. A large component
of her music is improvised and her approach to this is extremely personal and
visceral. Her playing explores the combination and layering of a homemade
analog synthesizer, preparations and traditional and extended techniques in both
the voice and cello. She works to join these elements into a singular ecstatic
personal language.
Recently, her primary focus has been her SOLO project but she is also involved
in many various collaborations. Among musicians, she has worked with Phil
Minton, Tetuzi Akiyama, Toshimaru Nakamura, Ko Ishikawa, Elliott Sharp,
Aki Onda, Phill Niblock, Frederic Blondy, Jerome Noetinger, C. Spencer Yeh,
Alessandro Bosetti, Mats Gustafsson, Mazen Kerbaj, Michael Zerang, Tatsuya
Nakatani, Le Quan Ninh, Joe Mcphee, Susan Alcorn, Michele Doneda, Paolo
Angeli, Gianni Gebbia, plus many more. Some current projects include: duos
with Phil Minton, Frederic Blondy, Robert van Heumen, Katt Hernandez, Nate
Wooley, and Id M Theft Able. Trio with Nate Wooley and C. Spencer Yeh. Plus
three new quartet projects with Jeff Carey/Morten J. Olsen/Raed Yassin, Miya
Masaoka/Hans Grusel/Kenta Nagai and also with Frederic Blondy/Michael
Johnsen/Jerome Noetinger.
Chen has performed in Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, China,
Japan, Taiwan, Canada and the USA. She is currently based in Baltimore, MD
USA but primarily maintains an active touring schedule throughout Europe.
www.myspace.com/audreychen
Carver Audain
Carver Audain (b 1981) composes music in the Acousmatic tradition, which, as defined by French composer and theorist Pierre Schaefer, refers to "a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it." Materially, he produces audio using digital signal processing and editing techniques on a variety of field recordings and other non-specific sampled material. Strategically, he manipulates and structures these materials into situation-specific compositions. Sonically, he produces an array of slowly shifting sound fields that both merge with and transform their physical surroundings.
He has presented works at venues such as The Red Room, Zebulon, Pyramid Atlantic, Mirkwood Estates, The Bank Loft, Floristree Loft, 119 Gallery, Studio Soto, Santos Party House and ISSUE Project Room, and performed as a part of the Sonic Circuits Festival, and the Floating Points Festival. He was the first recipient of ISSUE Project Room's Emerging Composer's Commission grant, care of the Greenwall Foundation.
He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
carveraudain.tumblr.com
Margaret Rorison
Margaret Rorison is a visual artist who uses a combination of still and motion photography reflexively through long exposures, projections and animation. She is currently a MFA candidate at The Maryland Institute College of Art's Photographic and Electronic Media Program. Her current work focuses on temporality, shifts in light, movement and the anachronistic sensations created among the rhythm of moving images. She is interested in exploring the way images can expand planar space and challenge conceptions of narrative.
megrorison.blogspot.com
Jenny Graf
Jenny Graf is a Baltimore based artist who works with the social dimension of art and the consequences of performance. She is interested in using art to explore perceptual states and social pretexts. That art must not always be a product of a particular form of personal agency and instead become a mutually produced reality, between people is a fact that is supported by her work. She has engaged people in the production of a restaurant in the basement of her home, she has designed projects for a group of women with Alzheimer’s in which the guitar serves as voice, and she started the Stone Carving Oraclestra, which explores Experimental Archeology and the use of phonemes to channel “readings” for members of the audience.
Her sound work includes solo work and long term collaborations with MV Carbon in the duo Metalux and other such as John Wiese, Twig Harper, Marcia Bassett, Chiara Giovando, Ami Dang and Susan Alcorn. She has been commissioned by Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago to create a sound installation in the Fern Room at the Chicago Lincoln Park Conservatory. She has also worked on several films such as I Remember Better When I Paint a film that explores the cognitive impact of creativity on those with Dementia. With Chiara Giovando, she wrote, directed and created a sound score for Proud Flesh, an experimental Western shot in the Badlands.
Graf’s work has been performed and exhibited at PS 1 in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Maryland Film Festival, Mukha Museum in Antwerp, MOFFOM Festival In Prague, Ladies Fest in Copenhagen, and the Director’s Lounge in Berlin.
jennygrafsheppard.com
Sunday Apr 10th 2011 7 p.m.
$10.00
Pyramid Atlantic
8230 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD
(map)
http://www.pyramidatlanticartcenter.org/