The IAP’s Music program presents radical, genre-blind music from composers and musicians based in New York City and around the world. The series covers as broad a range of sound art as possible (improvisation, time-based, graphic, electronic, text-based/verbal/performance, new composition, installation, homemade devices etc.). The Music curator is Travis Just.
May Days
A new Music Festival
may 23 - 25 // 8pm // $12 advance // $15 door
Program
James Ilgenfritz's STRESS ADDICT / Aaron Meicht
Thursday May 23, 2013
8pm
Sexual Energies School: Rome / On Structure
Friday May 24, 2013
TWO TRANSCRIPTIONS / ODE TO SCHOENBERG
Saturday May 25, 2013
8pm
Thursday 5/23
James Ilgenfritz's STRESS ADDICT / Aaron Meicht
The percussive sound of this quartet led by James Ilgenfritz offers crisis and catharsis. The group's guitar/bass/two percussion lineup suggests both a new music ensemble and a loud rock band, with the band's brutalist aesthetic tempered by pages upon pages of dense notation. With Shayna Dunkelman and Mike McCurdy (percussion), Taylor Levine (electric guitar), and James Ilgenfritz (electric bass, compositions), the band revels in a blend of harsh noise, frenetic melodies, and compounded rhythms.
Aaron Meicht presents a new extended composition: "[The] servant (cleaning up in the next room) cannot make music."
Friday 5/24 - Sexual Energies School: Rome / On Structure
Sexual Energies School: Rome is the latest iteration of Nick Hallett and Zach Layton's electro-acoustic improvisation project, featuring special guest Megan Schubert (vocals) and live projections by Brock Monroe. Oscillating between the pulse of percussion-less disco and angelic synthesizer drone, Hallett's and Layton's textures are held together with live voices and guitar. Past performances include Performa, The Stone, and ISSUE Project Room's takeover of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
On Structure's "Twistisch"
A formal narrative of childish rituals gets pulled apart and reassembled rendering confused emotional states, rhythmic schizophrenia, and near tantrums while a specially designed "magical table top" illuminates and augments the minutia of a glitchy and sometimes dangerous game.
Friday 5/25
TWO TRANSCRIPTIONS / ODE TO SCHOENBERG
Two Transcriptions celebrates the release of G Douglas Barrett's vinyl record project TWO TRANSCRIPTIONS/ODE TO SCHOENBERG, a historical revision of Arnold Schoenberg's 1942 composition Ode to Napoleon performed by artist Zackary Drucker and musician Theo Baer. Featuring a roundtable discussion including activist Che Gossett and musicologist Benjamin Piekut, Two Transcriptions is curated by Justin Luke (Audio Visual Arts gallery).
TWO TRANSCRIPTIONS/ODE TO SCHOENBERG is a vinyl record based on Schoenberg’s 1942 composition Ode to Napoleon for string quartet, piano, and voice. Schoenberg’s piece has an interesting history: the composer arguably over-asserted his authority in writing a letter protesting a recording of the work (originally scored for a male reciter) performed with a female voice. Challenging Schoenberg’s position with respect to musical authorship while considering identities beyond the gender binary central to the dispute, a pair of “transcriptions” of Ode to Napoleon feature the voices of performance artist Zackary Drucker and musician Theodore Baer, two transgender artists. Scheduled for release May 25; pre-order a copy today.