An event with experimental keyboard and piano music + avant-garde sounds.
Piano Noir is a space to discuss and share relevant music history, meet new friends, and enjoy a complimentary glass of wine.
Guests are encouraged to share any "experimental" piece you have been working on - originals or works in progress are fine too! For this workshop, there will be the grand piano set up for some jamming and song-sharing.
Guest speakers:
Adam Kivisaari // on Harry Partch and his instruments
Jeremy Reinhold // on the music of John Cage
Sponsored by Vesper School of Music // vesperschoolofmusic.com
21+ Free
The collaboration between Kneebody – keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, electric bassist Kaveh Rastegar, saxophonist Ben Wendel and drummer Nate Wood – and Daedelus had its initial roots planted as far back as high school for old friends Wendel and Alfred Darlington (aka Daedelus). “Often when I lived in LA, I would go to practice saxophone at Alfred’s house in the bathroom next to his studio. He would knock on the bathroom door and say ‘Would you mind playing something on this track?’,” recalls Wendel. “So I ended up being on at least five or six of Alfred’s albums because I happened to be there practicing."
The pair’s early musical kinship in southern California seeded a connection that grew through numerous collaborations, recordings and live performances over the years, coming to fruition in an improvised performance in 2009 at “Jazz A Vienne” between their two primary music vehicles. When Wendel was awarded a composition grant through Chamber Music America based on the theory of technological singularity, it became a catalyst to write a series of pieces that would bridge the gap between the oft-indescribable world of Kneebody and the unique aesthetic of Daedelus.
Conceived in tour busses, hotel suites, and basement studios initially as fodder for DJ sets, Mr. Divine is the feeling of déjà vu between delirious post-show fevers and the road-torn sleep through the night on the way to the next city, driving the circumference of the Earth in nine weeks, dreams of Pangea, of forever ago and infinity from now. Imagine: impossibly, and without the recollection of flying, you're in Europe with tour manager DJ Fitz at the wheel maniacally driving a silver Mercedes Sprinter through the pre-dawn to catch the first P&O ferry to Belgium, to Spain, to Sweden. There is Dur Dur on the stereo, is William Onyeabor, Khaira Arby, and Dizzy K, is compilations and mixtapes of unknown origin and content. This too is a dream, and tomorrow you're starting over, another opportunity to bask in the irrelevance of the present moment, "all we have," while keeping one eye on the future and one on the past.
Naytronix's music is the key to this, as if the slipstream of time that our lives drag on behind could be cross-cut, altogether avoided, or drafted and overtaken. The expression of this for Brenner is simplicity. The intricate and wide-spanning production of his debut is cinched tight as a racing foil as he goes back to where it all started: his bass, his voice, the secrets of drum machines and dreams, narrowing down his songwriting style to focus on narrative and cohesive arrangements, the Song. The result was hours of music not likely to see the light of day, tracks taken to the chopping block at the now iconic Oakland studio New, Improved Recording with friend, collaborator, and guitarist Mark Allen-Piccolo. He and Brenner, along with percussionist Robert Lopez, sculpted nine songs into something resembling a compact trio album, which was then filled out with sounds and textures from fellow Oberlin Conservatory family members Matt Nelson and Noah Bernstein (tUnE-yArDs saxophones) and synth master blaster Michael Coleman (Beep!).
Brenner has digested a lot in the three years since introducing this world to Naytronix. tUnE-yArDs has turned into something of a perpetual motion machine, taking him to far corners of the Earth, as well as Carnegie Hall and the TV sets of Jimmy Fallon, Conan O'Brien, Jools Holland, and Austin City Limits. He did some recording and performing with music royalty Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon, got to collab and learn from Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda, and even found some time to take the Naytronix band around the US and across the Atlantic from London to Istanbul. And while his music keeps its characteristic reflection of the '70s of Onyeabor and Bootsy Collins, there is too a new face of the sincerity and vulnerability of the '70s of Arthur Russell he shows here amid the psychedelia, as if wishing to land the Naytronix Mothership down to stay with us for a bit. Brenner returns to his adopted hometown Oakland (he's originally from Bloomington, IN) to find friends lost one by one to the allure of New York City in "Living in a Magazine." On the track "Back in Time," he grapples with a fleeting youth, crooning, "Time is tricky 'cause you only get a single play, not like a record you can throw on every single day." As music and life become one for the touring musician living (in) the dream, the line between plays and days gets more and more blurred. And in the Naytronix dreamland, no one's there to dictate which is which.
“...we—as audience members, spectators, readers, participants, consumers—cannot hope to ferret out injustices, protest certain forms of injury, violence, and violation, while also deriving pleasure or excitation from representations of them.” - Maggie Nelson
(we sleep) In the Seconds Between is a new media video installation that uses appropriated video content taken from popular file sharing forums on the internet. The main concern of this work is to investigate a passive/active relationship to violence in words and video while calling attention to the systems that make this content accessible ie. technology, the internet, digital forums. Through using platforms that foster community based file and media sharing such as DIGG, Reddit, Youtube and LiveLeaks, (we sleep) In The Seconds Between explores how technology functions as a stage for accessing content that has both assimilated and dissimilated into human consciousness. This video installation seeks to reframe a familiar relationship to networks while investigating the moments that are bookends to violence. By using video screens, projections, and sculpture the treatment of space leads the audience to activate the visuals, thereby forcing a relationship between viewer and video content.
Many experiences are constructed through screens and interactivity, this all encompassing dependency upon technology holds imaginations captive. Access to images, media and information drives the human need for immediacy. As computing and production speeds double and triple past the landmarks that have been documented in the past century, so do the future expectations for stimulus and efficiency. Does the immediate access to information or the act of viewing make the viewer implicit in the propagation of that content? Or can a person look safely from their screens and be free of the emotions that come along with viewing the images that exists in the world around them?
Micah Schmelzer is a new media video artist whose work looks at violence as a metaphor for systems of control that exist within the frameworks of interactivity and technology. He earned his BA from Columbia College in Chicago where he studied Graphic Design and Photography, and his MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland Oregon. He has worked with organizations such as Ditch Projects (OR), PICA (OR), Disjecta (OR), and UPFOR (OR) as a tech consultant and preparator. He has shown his work in both Chicago and Portland at gallery’s and festivals including Duplex (OR), Disjecta (OR), HOLOCENE (OR), DESIGN WEEK PORTLAND 2014 (OR), PICA TBA at Bronco Gallery (OR), BLACK CLOUD (IL) among others. His current interests revolve around the interactive distancing and use of screens as control mechanisms for the conditioned viewing of violence.
Tim Stigliano was born and raised in northeastern New Jersey. In 2002, he graduated from Tufts University and School of the Museum of Fine Arts with bachelor’s degrees in English and Painting. Stigliano completed Pacific Northwest College of Art’s MFA in Visual Studies Program in 2012. His sculptures, videos and performances have been shown nationally at venues such as Rocksbox Contemporary Fine Art, Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Zena Zezza, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Art Basel Miami Beach, and online at Art F City. He lives in Portland, OR, and makes work
that critically engages everyday experiences with fear and desire.
A transcendent evening of chamber music by some of today's most creative composers.
WORKS
Einhorn by Eve Beglarian
Flicker by Vivian Fine
Ashes into Light by Robert Kyr
Blindsight by Michael Norris
Silent Moon by Augusta Reed Thomas
Grime by Evan Williams
PERFORMERS
Sarah Pyle, flute
Colleen White, clarinet*
Rebecca Olason, horn
Mitchell Falconer, piano*
Bryce C. Caster, violin
Andrew Stiefel, viola
Elizabeth Gergel, cello*
Milo Fultz, double bass
*Indicates guest artist
Tickets are $8 in advance. Click the link above to purchase. $5-$20 donation at the door. Credit/debit and cash will be accepted at the door.
Tickets: http://sndofl.at/1m35iKj
More about Sound of Late: https://www.soundoflate.org/
Please join the 3 year anniversary of Sanctuary Sunday, bringing Ambient/Experimental to every third Sunday of the month at various Portland haunts. The monthly line-ups represent varying genres of electronic music, from Glitchy IDM to Ambient, Drone and coolly Experimental soundscapes.
Come out for a night filled with delicately blended electronic sounds, samples, and live instruments guaranteed to bring the electronic heads out of their basements and into this cozy sanctuary.
This month welcomes:
| Opaline |
Kaleidoscopic New Age
http://opaline.bandcamp.com/
| Soul Ipsum |
Emotional Glo-Fi
https://soulipsum.bandcamp.com/
| Glas + Schneider |
Academic Computer Music
https://soundcloud.com/sound-portfolio/live-shortspace-glasschneider-10242015
| HOM vs Anthony Bisset |
Nü Myth / Dream Gender / Multi Flesh
http://soundcloud.com/hom
http://soundcloud.com/anthony-bisset
Visuals by: Krystal Perez
Tape Jockey: No Lunch
FREE
Booking/Promotions:
Coco Madrid - djchachapdx@gmail.com
ARTISTS
Richard Aldrich
Elizabeth Bishop
Louise Bourgeois
Robert Creeley
Jimmie Durham
Melvin Edwards
Gaylen Gerber
Robert Grenier
Rob Halverson
Bill Hayden & Sam Pulitzer
Gareth James
Yuki Kimura
Nevine Mahmoud
Christoph Meier
Jean-Luc Moulène
George Oppen
Nathaniel T Price
Sara Greenberger Rafferty
Anne Sexton
Jack Spicer
Sue Tompkins
Dinah Young
Stefan Tcherepnin
THE LASTING CONCEPT
Translation from one language into itself.
An inquiry as to the nature and purpose of images and words entwined.
Our reasons both slender and unreasonable, we proceed with the greatest urgency.
For the preservation of certain inalienable rights.
A life which is lifelike. Pursuit rather than attainment.
Free speech and the right to remain silent.
There are times when rage and matter simply … collide.
Our belief in free association, well trampled though it may be, perhaps the greatest path to reason.
We will amend you. This is the enforcement of law.
A human certainty …
Is every life interesting enough for a play?
A song heard in the distance, familiar even as the record turns hazily.
m a t e r i a l … o b j e c t s … p o s s e s s i v e … u n r e a l c i r c l e s … g a m e s …
c o n t r a d i c t i n g l i e s … w h y s e e y o u r s e l f …
as it comes to an end, the voice stutters in the dust …
y r e g o … y r e g o … y r e g o …
After all, the difference between a groove and a grave is only … a matter of depth.
A desiccated hand shudders to lift the arm and the needle.
All the untidy activity continues, awful but cheerful.
The lasting Concept will prevail.
- – Above excerpt from Bob Nickas
what a mess everything is,
a group show points at a “human certainty”.
the end that is the dot in the distance and all bumps on the way there.
what a mess everything is
- -
notation
proof
skill
incomplete thoughts
touch
mark
reportage
name in fragments
the list grows longer and strangely less intelligible
alternative to the facts of lived experience
territorialize
so abstract
would it not be
- above some words plucked from description of scorched earth journal project.
death at the end of that dot in the distance
Love
never exhaustible filling than refilling
every month or so?
next up a dog shitting in the streets
digestion
a pointing system of stored moments
help help
they heard the new fruit drop
the waves keep at it
furniture is moved
it’s all overlapping
and look for it
images_file
all repeat or you could say
big smiling face this is everyone
what a world it is when the center is that
tangle
With light refreshments. Free + open to the public.
rock show
Post Moves ~ http://postmoves.bandcamp.com/
Cool American ~ http://cool-american.bandcamp.com/
Drunken Palms ~ http://drunkenpalms.bandcamp.com/
In Live Buy Build Kayla Mattes breaks down the rules for how we construct interior and exterior space. By looking at the toolkits of various digital architectural programs such as Google SketchUp and The Sims Build Mode, Mattes has created a series of woven sculptures representing her own structure for building space. The resulting ‘floor plans’ rely on the grid-based framework of both looms and computers to create abstractions guided by color, form, tile, carpet and hardwood.
In conjunction with the weavings, Mattes presents an immersive wallpaper installation and a series of risograph prints that play with digitalrepresentations of landscape as a neutral zone. While the patterned tiles of grass and dirt do not feel natural, they activate an understanding of place. The viewer walks within a foundation of gridded terrain which in itself serves as a guideline for building.
How do we choose to construct space when it does not even physically exist?
About Kayla Mattes
Kayla Mattes is an artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. Her work typically takes the form of tapestry and installation and is heavily influenced by the interaction between the internet, memories, consumerism and technology. She has exhibited throughout the US and internationally, most recently at S1 and Compound Gallery in Portland, Trestle Gallery in Brooklyn, NY and PLY in Manchester, UK. She received a BFA in Textiles at Rhode Island School of Design in 2011 and is a recent recipient of the Regional Arts & Culture Council Project Grant.
www.kaylamattes.com
Beer provided by Montucky Cold Snacks
Project funded by RACC
Open February 20 — March 11
Yoshi Wada is a composer and artist associated with the downtown New York experimental art scene of the last fifty years. Wada was born in 1943 in Kyoto, Japan. He studied sculpture at the Kyoto University of Fine Arts, and then moved to New York in the late 1960s. In the early 1970s, Wada began building homemade musical instruments and writing compositions for them based on his personal research in timbre, resonance, and improvisation with the overtone series. He studied music composition with La Monte Young, North Indian singing with Pandit Pran Nath, and Scottish bagpipe with James McIntosh and Nancy Crutcher. His recorded works are published by Japanese record labels EM Records and Omega Point.
Tashi Wada grew up in New York and lives in Los Angeles. He presents his music often in collaboration with other artists including Charles Curtis and Stephan Mathieu, in addition to performing regularly with his father.
Search
Blankstairs ALL NIGHT in PDX
~
with
Kristen Dalen (SEA)
Alex Harden (NYC)
Nathaniel Young (NYC)
Warren Mattox (NYC)
+
MORE TBA
TICKETS: https://goo.gl/tM41mE
$15adv. / $20door
Complimentary martinis by Warren Mattox (while supplies last)
Visuals by Gary Tyler
Installation by Will Elder
www.blnkstrs.com
Spend The Night & Blankstairs Present:
GALCHER LUSTWERK
White Material, Tsuba - NYC
http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/galcherlustwerk
https://soundcloud.com/galcher-lustwerk
http://lustwerkmusic.com/
SIMIC *live*
secondnature - Seattle
https://soundcloud.com/simictacoma
ALEX HARDEN
Blankstairs / Forbidden Lovers - NYC
https://soundcloud.com/djalexharden
+ Spend The Night residents Ben Tactic & Graintable
DJ Lamar LeRoy
Blossom
Coco Columbia
Rare Diagram
PULSE is a quarterly music event curated by Willamette Week showcasing the diverse and talented musicians and producers under the radar and on the rise within the Portland music scene.
Hosted by Holocene Portland, PULSE shines a spotlight on an eclectic mix of hip-hop, R&B, soul and their extended genres. Expect up and coming MC’s and DJ’s, as well as rock bands with rhythm and creative individuals marching to the beat of their own drum machine.
Thursday, February 18
Holocene
8:30 p.m. doors + DJ / 9 p.m. show
21+
$6 cover at door, with $1 supporting non profit partner XRAY.FM
Join us in celebrating the epic release of "PARTY BOYZ: A LIFESTYLE ZINE Vol. III" with live performances by...
Eyelids // MY BODY // Golden Hour
this is also a welcome home show for MY BODY!! :):):)
Doors 8pm / $10 ADV+DOS
ZINE III FT. INCREDIBLE ART, ESSAYS, COMIX + MORE from
-Sallie Ford
-Kevin Clark / Moon By You
-Larry Crane / Jackpot Recording Studio
-Eric Gilbert / Treefort Music Fest
-Darren Bridenbeck / My Body
-Isabel Perez / illustration
-Katie Summer / photography
-Sarah Neineber/ Candace FKA Is/Is
-Mail Fischer-Levine illustration
-Christopher Slusarenko / Eyelids / Clinton Street Video
-Nathan Baumgartner / And And And
-Jon Lewis
-Shana Lindbeck / Bitch'n/Orchestra Pacifico Tropical/Dreckig
-Party Boyz
PDX Jazz is a non-profit cultural arts organization dedicated to curating jazz in Portland, Oregon and fostering the growth of musical offerings in the Pacific Northwest. The contributions and sponsorship of the public is to inspire, educate and develop future jazz audiences for generations to come. PDX Jazz, the presenting organization of the Portland Jazz Festival, began operations in 2003 in preparation of the inaugural 2004 Jazz Festival. Conceived by former Mt Hood Festival Artistic Director Bill Royston, the proposed annual event was awarded a three-year city government grant with co-founder and partner Travel Portland (formally POVA). The Festival’s mandate was established as a cultural tourism initiative to celebrate February’s Black History Month by highlighting a series of jazz education and outreach programs that would extend into Portland’s schools and community centers.
Events calendar for this year: http://pdxjazz.com/events/category/pdx-jazz-festival/list/
The Broadcast, Siren Nation's storytelling event, features women from all walks of life telling true stories live in front of an audience. Theme: Get Over It!
Emcee: Bri Pruett!
Storytellers:
Dana Thompson
Alicia Rose
Dylan Meconis
Decoteau Wilkerson
Arrive early to sign up to tell your own story! We will choose two storytellers from the audience!
Bri Pruett is a stand-up comic and improviser from Portland. In addition to regular appearances at Helium Comedy Club and other venues, Bri is the co-host, writer, and co-creator of the live talk/variety show Late Night Action with Alex Falcone; is a frequent contributor to the Portland Mercury; and performs new material monthly with the New Shit Show at the Clinton St. Theater. www.bripruett.com
Dana Thompson is an actress (best known as Lt. Uhura in Atomic Arts’s Drammy award-winning production of Trek in the Park), a model (commercial and print ads), and a singer in local punk rock band Dartgun & The Vignettes. www.facebook.com/DartgunandtheVignettes
Alicia Rose is a filmmaker and an award-winning still photographer who has created music videos for national artists like Cake and Bob Mould, as well as playing a key role in branding NW bands like The Decemberists and Menomena. In 2015 she created/directed/co-wrote the web series “The Benefits of Gusbandry,” which has received widespread critical acclaim.www.aliciajrosephotography.com
Dylan Meconis is a cartoonist/writer/illustrator whose career as a professional comics artist began with Bite Me!, a vampire farce. In 2012 her short story Outfoxed was nominated for an Eisner Award in the category of Best Digital Comic. She is currently several years into Family Man, a long-form comic updating at lutherlevy.com. www.dylanmeconis.com
Decoteau Wilkerson is co-founder and host of A People’s Choir, a communal-style sing-along that has brought people together at Last Thursdays, TEDx, and Crush Bar in Portland; through Art In Odd Places in NYC; and more! Decoteau also leads a double life as Dee Dee Pepper, a burlesque performer who co-founded and co-hosts “Pepper + Bones Presents: Anything Goes Burlesque.” apeopleschoir.weebly.com anddeedeepepper.com
A Performance by Phill Niblock (b. 1933) composer and filmmaker. He has been a fixture in New York’s art scene since the 1960s and is still notably present in the world of new music. If he is not performing, he is making films, composing, recording, or hosting performances at Experimental Intermedia, a foundation and performance space located in his downtown loft.
$12—TICKETS (Free to members)
Survival Skills (AKA Aaron Bergeson), the electronic producer, live DJ, and radio host from Portland, Oregon, releases his second full-length album Deep Space Survival Skills. Deep Space Survival Skills, on Cavity Search Records, is a tribute to space exploration; it’s an homage to the feeling of weightlessness, deep loneliness, and abandonment. Survival Skills is host of the popular KMHD radio show “Beat Parlor” – a weekly showcase of the best instrumental, electronic, and off-jazz beats. Survival Skills draws from the inspiration of brutalism, deep meditation, and the absurd.
survivalskills.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/Survivalskillsportland/
soundcloud.com/aaronbergeson
✽ Charlie Hilton ✽
Though she maintains some reservations about the implications of something as abstract as identity, Charlie Hilton, known up until now for her work in the band Blouse, has now forged a new one with her debut solo album, Palana.
Enlisting Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait as producer, Hilton freely experimented with diverse sounds and moods — some minimal and some cacophonous — out of the confines of a band structure.
www.charliehilton.us
http://www.capturedtracks.com/?ct_artist_page=charlie-hilton
✽ Candace ✽
Psychedelic and shoegaze influences emerge throughout their catalogue: the atmospheric tones of early Verve, a droning pulse reminiscent of Loop. Some songs bounce gleefully forward with a pop sensibility, while some keep a cool distance and move with a language distinctly their own.
http://candaceisaband.bandcamp.com/
✽ Mini Blinds ✽
Songs polished with bright ideas and shiny musical finesse till they emerge sparkling and attractive.
https://miniblinds.bandcamp.com/
$10 ADV / $12 DOS
Please join Portland State University for an evening commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Black Lives Matter Founders
A Vision of Justice for All
With a vision of justice for all, the Founders of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, engage audiences in discussion about race relations in America and how their activism from the fringes became the national movement it is today, galvanizing individuals to stand up together against the state violence, police brutality and social injustice plaguing our country. The MLK Tribute is part of Black History Month and the “Living the Legacy” series of campus and community events honoring the memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This event is presented by the Office of Global Diversity and Inclusion.
Reserve free tickets online or 503-725-3307
Ches Smith (drums, percussion), with Craig Taborn (piano) and Mat Maneri (viola) together work with big-picture composition designed to be given meaning in the moment by three renown improvisers. Simultaneously process-oriented and iterative, each performance produces a new result, infused with the energy of following the moment’s thread.
Ches Smith is an American musician whose primary instruments are drums, percussion, and vibraphone. He writes and performs music in a wide variety of contexts, including solo percussion, experimental rock bands, and small and large jazz ensembles
Blue Cranes
Since their formation in 2007, Blue Cranes have become a key player in the Portland, Oregon creative music/DIY scene and one of the most exciting groups to keep tabs on in the Northwest. They’ve developed a singular musical voice grounded in melody and explosive improvisations–marking off their unique microcosmic territory in post-jazz circles.
The members of the quintet–Reed Wallsmith on alto saxophone, Joe Cunningham on tenor saxophone, Rebecca Sanborn on keyboards, Jon Shaw on bass, and Ji Tanzer on drums–bring a unique array of experiences to their group-centered aesthetic, including work with AU, The Decemberists, Laura Veirs, Wayne Horvitz, Rebecca Gates, Laura Gibson, Ethan Rose, Pete Krebs, Black Prairie, and Portland Cello Project.
Tickets at: http://www.mississippistudios.com/event/1026675-ches-smith-craig-taborn-mat-portland/