Saturday, April 25, 2015

Arthur Brooks Ensemble V + Crank Sturgeon!



The Albany Sonic Arts Collective is proud to present a return appearance by the amazing Arthur Brooks Ensemble V. Also performing will be the one and only Crank Sturgeon!!

Saturday May 2
8:00 PM
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark Street in Albany

Trumpeter-composer Arthur Brooks is one of the unsung heroes of the new music. In his 40+ year career he has collaborated with such legendary figures as Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, Sonny Sharrock, and Alan Silva. For over 20 years he taught alongside Dixon in the Black Music Division at Bennington College.

Arthur Brooks - trumpet, flugelhorn
Jeremy Harlos - bass
Anthony Santor - bass
Matt Weston - percussion

http://wwwsoundcloud.com/arthurbrooksensemblev

Crank Sturgeon has empathy for the travails of Wile E. Coyote, but that's not where the story ends. Attending art school provided Crank with a tactical sensibility in where to place his future catapults. Sometimes this has required that he transform himself into an inflatable snow globe for an audience. Then there are periods when it's all about performing for months on end, wearing only a ventilation tube. Nevertheless, Crank Sturgeon has been at it for over two decades and countless timezones. Whether he's directing an orchestra using cue cards, fingerprinting six hundred art patrons' middle fingers, or leading a midnight parade -- wearing thirty gallons of water in each pant leg -- these impositions create an intersection between
comfort and calamity. It is this junction, the marriage of unlikeable strategies with cocksure optimism, that has become Crank Sturgeon's trademark.

In addition to his performance work, Crank directs technical workshops on how to be noisy and has participated in heaps of cultural programs and art residencies that condone this behavior. Sturgeon also has studio in a small barn located in Western Massachusetts where he churns out handmade microphones for folks all over the world to use.