Sweet Soubrette w/ horns @ The Living Room
Date: August 14, 2012
Time: 9:00 pm
What’s My Desire? Sweet Soubrette Big Band Show
EP Release & Tour Kickoff
Tues, Aug 14th
The Living Room
154 Ludlow St, NYC
Varispeed presents John Cage: Empty Words
Date: August 3, 2012
Time: 8:00 pm
Varispeed’s Empty Words
by John Cage
Fri., August 3rd, 8 PM – Sat., August 4th, 8 AM
Brooklyn, NY
8 PM – 10:30 PM
Part I: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Avenue
11 PM – 4:30 AM
Parts II & III: Exapno, 33 Flatbush Avenue, 5th floor
5 AM – 7:30 PM
Parts IV: Procession from Borough Hall over the Brooklyn Bridge
All parts of the performance are free and open to the public.
Following their acclaimed reimagining of Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives as Perfect Lives Manhattan, Varispeed
tackle John Cage’s epic, rarely performed Empty Words. This overnight realization on Cage’s centennial is a
meditation on the voice’s power to transform language into music. Varispeed’s new arrangement will lead
audiences on a 12-hour journey of sound, from an ensemble of electronically manipulated and mutated song in the
concert hall of Roulette to the noise of naked voices on the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn.
Written in the early 70s, Empty Words stands as an epic culmination of Cage’s exploration of the
“demilitarization” of syntax and the voice’s power to evacuate meaning and create music. Using Thoreau’s
journals as his source text, Cage employed chance procedures to remove all syntax from the original, creating four
separate movements through which the level of textual abstraction grows.
Part One (utilizing phrases, words, syllables, and letters) begins in the concert space of Roulette, employing
multiple performers and theatrics to employ the musical extremes of language. The performance then moves to
the new music community space Exapno, where Varispeed transform Part Two’s words, syllables, and letters into
new spatial arrangements. Peppered with food (and perhaps a nap), Part Three scatters syllables and letters
around the building in a performance that is both a participatory scavenger hunt and a solo lecture. In conclusion,
listeners will become performers on a communal sound walk through Downtown Brooklyn across the Brooklyn
Bridge at sunrise, vocalizing the letters of Part Four in equal partnership with the surrounding urban “silence.”
Varispeed’s premiere performance of Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives Manhattan was listed on Time Out New York’s
Best of 2011 list and received praise in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Varispeed has worked to
discover new inroads into contemporary vocal music and opera in creating site-specific, sometimes-participatory,
oftentimes-durational, forevermore-experimental events. As individuals, they are all multi-faceted performers,
composers, songwriters, and thinkers who collaborate in ensembles such as thingNY, Panoply Performance
Laboratory, and Cough Button.
This performance is funded in part by the 2012 Stefanos Tsigrimanis Artistic Scholar Award.
Experimental collective Varispeed performs John Cage’s 12-hour Empty Words
Varispeed’s Empty Words
by John Cage
Fri., August 3rd, 8 PM – Sat., August 4th, 8 AM
Brooklyn, NY
8 PM – 10:30 PM
Part I: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Avenue
11 PM – 4:30 AM
Parts II & III: Exapno, 33 Flatbush Avenue, 5th floor
5 AM – 7:30 PM
Parts IV: Procession from Borough Hall over the Brooklyn Bridge
All parts of the performance are free and open to the public.
Following their acclaimed reimagining of Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives as Perfect Lives Manhattan, Varispeed tackle John Cage’s epic, rarely performed Empty Words. This overnight realization on Cage’s centennial is a meditation on the voice’s power to transform language into music. Varispeed’s new arrangement will lead audiences on a 12-hour journey of sound, from an ensemble of electronically manipulated and mutated song in the concert hall of Roulette to the noise of naked voices on the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn.
Written in the early 70s, Empty Words stands as an epic culmination of Cage’s exploration of the “demilitarization” of syntax and the voice’s power to evacuate meaning and create music. Using Thoreau’s journals as his source text, Cage employed chance procedures to remove all syntax from the original, creating four separate movements through which the level of textual abstraction grows.
Part One (utilizing phrases, words, syllables, and letters) begins in the concert space of Roulette, employing multiple performers and theatrics to employ the musical extremes of language. The performance then moves to the new music community space Exapno, where Varispeed transform Part Two’s words, syllables, and letters into new spatial arrangements. Peppered with food (and perhaps a nap), Part Three scatters syllables and letters around the building in a performance that is both a participatory scavenger hunt and a solo lecture. In conclusion, listeners will become performers on a communal sound walk through Downtown Brooklyn across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise, vocalizing the letters of Part Four in equal partnership with the surrounding urban “silence.”
Varispeed’s premiere performance of Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives Manhattan was listed on Time Out New York’s Best of 2011 list and received praise in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Varispeed has worked to discover new inroads into contemporary vocal music and opera in creating site-specific, sometimes-participatory, oftentimes-durational, forevermore-experimental events. As individuals, they are all multi-faceted performers, composers, songwriters, and thinkers who collaborate in ensembles such as thingNY, Panoply Performance Laboratory, and Cough Button. Varispeed is Paul Pinto, Gelsey Bell, Aliza Simons, Dave Ruder and Brian McCorkle.
This performance is funded in part by the 2012 Stefanos Tsigrimanis Artistic Scholar Award.
Sweet Soubrette – Cake Shop
Date: July 23, 2012
Time: 9:00 pm
Monday, July 23, 2012, 9pm – Sweet Soubrette Big Band show
“BROOKLYN’S FISHNET-CLAD FEMME FATALE” (BUST MAGAZINE) SWEET SOUBRETTE TO STRUT AT CAKE SHOP JULY 23
Sweet Soubrette – the inventive, Brooklyn-based, ukulele-strumming, indie pop performer – will perform July 23 at Cake Shop with her 6-piece backing band, previewing the August 14 EP ‘What’s My Desire?’
The EP’s dark and passionate title track was inspired by the book Henry and June by Anaïs Nin, a work based on Nin’s diaries when she was becoming a serious writer and romantically involved with author Henry Miller. Love, art and ambition collide in this powerful song.
The Philadelphia Inquirer has called Sweet Soubrette’s music “sensational…dark vaudeville-pop.” Time Out New York dubbed Sweet Soubrette “at once sweet and sassy, celebrating reckless behavior with a charmed wink.” The Deli Magazine has praised Sweet Soubrette’s “rock star command and intelligently crafted music.”
The show also previews a northeast August tour: http://www.sweetsoubrette.com/shows.php
WHO: Sweet Soubrette
WHAT: Preview show for ‘What’s My Desire?’
WHEN: July 23, 2012, 9pm
WHERE: Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow Street, NYC, (212) 253-0036
TICKETS: TBA
Seven Immediacies Series, Vol. 7
Date: July 15, 2012
Time: 7:00 pm
thingNY presents:
Seven Immediacies Series, Vol. 7
Sunday, July 15th
doors 7:00pm, performances ca. 7:45pm
Vaudeville Park
26 Bushwick Ave, Brooklyn
Featuring:
Leah Asher String Quartet + Tristan MacKay
Yoni Niv + Adam Kendall
Satoshi Takeishi +Shoko Nagai
with Michal Samama
Experimental music ensemble thingNY closes its Seven Immediacies Series with multimedia works, chamber music and an experimental opera. Leda is violinist Leah Asher’s graphic score for string quartet performed with Jeffrey Young, Meaghan Burke and Hannah Levinson, followed by pianist Tristan MacKay’s premiere of Leah Asher’s Lullaby. Then videoist and musician Adam Kendall, Vortex (Satoshi Takeishi and Shoko Nagai) and Michael Samama present a set of multimedia works for electronics, video and dance, including the premiere of the experimental opera in progress, Nach der Heilung.
The Seven Immediacies Series is thingNY’s first foray into curating a series as a group. Each Installment takes place at Vaudeville Park and will pair local visiting and emerging classical and experimental artists with a new work, difficult to program because of its extreme length or unusual ensemble.
New Thread goes to Scotland!
Date: July 14, 2012
New Thread Quartet is pleased to be presenting the works of New York City composers to the World Sax Congress in St. Andrews, Scotland this July. The New York arts scene offers a wealth of exciting and diverse styles of new music. New Thread’s mission to spread the word and to bring these talented, creative voices beyond Gotham will reach a milestone this summer as we take to the international stage. Please help us get there! Support our pledge campaign to help us get to Scotland and receive exciting rewards in return. Visit our Rockethub campaign to donate: http://www.rockethub.com/projects/7742-new-thread-quartet-goes-to-scotland
Program/schedule TBA. For more information on the WSC and how to attend, visit: http://www.wscxvi.com/main.php
Still in its inaugural year, New Thread has given 5 full-length concerts, including premieres by New York composers Richard Carrick, Anthony Gatto and Gilbert Galindo. The quartet has presented recitals at SUNY Potsdam, George Mason University in Fairfax, VA; Arizona State University in Tempe, at the South Oxford,Vaudeville Park, Brooklyn and the D’Addario Studio in Chelsea.