C. SPENCER YEH on March 22!!!

On SATURDAY March 22, at the UAG Gallery (place rules, if you haven't heard yet), we are very proud to be hosting a special solo gig from the one and only C. SPENCER YEH!!

C. SPENCER YEH (solo violin, electronics)

BRYAN EUBANKS (electronics) & ANDREW LAFKAS (bass)

MEG CLIXBY (bass, electronics)

The Upstate Artists Guild 247 Lark St.
Albany, NY: Saturday March 22, 2008
Doors at 7:30 pm: show at 8:00
$5 suggested donation at the door

The third in our 2008 monthly series of live improvised experimental music events at the Upstate Artists Guild, the Albany Sonic Arts Collective is proud to present this very special evening. Each musician brings a unique approach to the soundworlds they create, and to have them all in one place will be a treat for the Albany experimental music community. These musicians have played all over the globe with multiple collaborators and represent some of the guiding lights and innovators in creative improvised music. C. Spencer Yeh in particular is in high demand for his improvisational skills on the violin, as evidenced by his work with such luminaries as Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, jazz great Evan Parker, and minimalist legend Tony Conrad.

More on the musicians:

C. Spencer Yeh was born in Taipei, Taiwan 1975, moved to the US in 1980; studied radio/television/film at Northwestern University, and is now based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Yeh is active both as a solo and ensemble artist, as well as with his primary 'organized sound' project, Burning Star Core. As an improviser, Yeh has focused on developing a personal vocabulary using violin, voice, and electronics. As a sound organizer/composer, Yeh works with all aspects available surrounding a work, aurally and physically, as elements key to the cumulative experience. He is concerned not only with the sensual aspects of sound, but the gestural qualities as well. Yeh has performed alongside and collaborated with a deep and ever-growing list of artists and groups including Tony Conrad, Evan Parker, Thurston Moore, The New Humans with Vito Acconci, Paul Flaherty and Chris Corsano, John Wiese, Aaron Dilloway, John Olson and the Graveyards, Amy Granat, Jutta Koether, LaDonna Smith, Carlos Giffoni, Okkyung Lee, Atsuhiro Ito, Lasse Marhaug, Audrey Chen, Nate Wooley, JP Feliciano, Rafael Toral, Rhys Chatham's Guitar Trio All-Stars, Damo Suzuki's Network, and many others, and has performed across the U.S.A. and Europe in a variety of settings and festivals. Most recently he participated in the 24 Hour Drone People project in Stockholm (and the abbreviated 5 hour version in Amsterdam), alongside artists such as CM Von Hauswolff, Mika Vainio, Joachim Nordwall, BJ Nilsen, Hildur Gudnadottir, Hild Sofie Tafjord, and Mark Wastell. He has also had visual art and video works presented internationally. http://www.myspace.com/cspenceryeh

Bryan Eubanks is a musician and sound artist originally from the Pacific Northwest of the US, and since 2005 he has been living and working in Brooklyn, NY. He works in live electronic settings with an instrument that integrates open-circuits and samplers, as well as working in acoustic settings with the Soprano Saxophone. His primary focus is on collaborative improvisation and solo musical projects, and he consistently works with Andrew Lafkas, Vic Rawlings, and an acoustic chamber ensemble. His work with sound installation is exploring sound as a function of architecture, cognition, and temporality. He has presented his music across the US, Europe, Japan, and Korea and at festivals such as LineSpaceLine in Los Angeles, Erstquake in NYC, No Idea in Austin, Texas, Relay in Seoul, and recently exhibited sound installations at the Portland Art Center and Diapason Gallery for Sound (in collaboration with Andrew Lafkas). He has released recordings on Little Enjoyer, Gameboy, Last Visible Dog, Jyrk, Experimental Musical Research, and Rasbliutto Recordings, a label and online library of sound he founded in 2002. http://www.rasbliutto.net/bryaneubanks


Meg Clixby grew up in Maine and then quitted to Western Mass for eight years. She took a hiatus during that time to live in Brighton, UK where she began to play bass guitar and participated in The Polly Shang Kuan Band. This collaboration continued once back stateside for a NE US mini-tour after which Meg began to play with her WMass brethren in projects such as Duck and Bottoms Up. After moving to Brooklyn, she continued to play with friends indoors but now lives in the woods and jams with herself. Bass, pedals, tape.

Recent Events!

Thanks to everyone who attended either of the ASAC events this weekend! We had a great time both nights, and all the music was wonderful. Here are some snaps, in case you weren't able to make it. Drop us a line and say hi anytime!

Photos are from the last three events:

* The Great Snowball Tour (w/ Andrea Neumann, Jack Wright, & Mike Bullock, along w/ Alex Chechile) at UAG.
* Century Plants Sound System (Ray Hare, Eric Hardiman, Paula Gaylord, & Jason Cosco) in Schenectady
* Holland Hopson and Jason Cosco at UAG in January

February Event on 2/16!!!

Hey everyone - It's that time where we try to drum up some excitement for our monthly series. This next one is going to be an AMAZING treat for the senses, so do whatever you can to be there!

Why not get this date on your calendars now?!? Seriously, this is not to be missed!!!

ALBANY SONIC ARTS COLLECTIVE presents THE GREAT SNOWBALL TOUR

The Upstate Artists Guild 247 Lark St.
Albany, NY: Saturday Feb. 16, 2008

ANDREA NEUMANN(innenklavier, Berlin)

JACK WRIGHT(saxophones, Easton PA)

MICHAEL T. BULLOCK (contrabass, Troy)

also:

ALEX CHECHILE (guitar, Troy)

JEFFERSON PITCHER (guitar, Troy)

doors at 7 pm: show at 7:30
$5 suggested donation at the door

As the snowball rolls around the east coast it picks up players who then melt off, and new additions are joined. In the words of Jack Wright: "This is the idealistic version of free improvisation, that wants never to think that our individual projects of aesthetic adventure can be separated from the generous spirit of community. So in that spirit please share the information of this series with others, with your mailing lists and friends."

Jack is one of the busiest improvisers ever. I'd say "he's played with everyone," but I think a more accurate description is: he hasn't played with everyone yet but he's working on it. Through his efforts he's brought together countless musicians across many scenes - large and small, domestic and foreign - and taught a lot of people that if you play improvised music, or just like it a lot, you are far from alone.

Andrea operates at the heart of Berlin's hotbed of improvised electro-acoustic music, which in its turn is a vital organ of the global electro-acoustic music scene. Her instrument, the innenklavier, is a scale model of the insides of a grand piano (no keyboard), which she amplifies and plays with her hands and other objects. Imagine if "prepared piano" stopped apologizing for being a piano, graduated, and started its own company. Scratch that - its own country.

More on the musicians:

Andrea Neumann: Born 1968 in Freiburg, grew up in Hamburg. Since 1996 primarily active as improviser and composer in the areas of experimental and new music. In the process of exploring the piano for new sound possibilities, she has reduced the instrument to strings, resonance board and metal frame. With the help of electronics to manipulate and amplify the sounds (sometimes to make parts of the sound audible which are inaudible without amplification), she has developed numerous new playing techniques, sounds, and ways of preparing the dismantled instrument. Because the original inside piano is very heavy, a piano builder (Bernd Bittmann, Berlin) constructed a new and lighter one for her. She has worked intensively in the crossover area between composition and improvisation, and in the field between electronic and handmade sounds, with Berlin musicians such as Annette Krebs, Ignaz Schick, Axel Dörner, Robin Hayward and Burkhard Beins.

Jack Wright began playing saxophone in 1952, and after eight years quit to pursue an academic life. After turning to political activism in the late sixties, he began again in 1979, and has been touring the US and Europe since 1983. He created Spring Garden Music as a vehicle for organizing an improvisational music community, and is still active in encouraging the improvised music scene in Phila. He currently plays with about fifty partners in Europe and the US, bringing European musicians to the US for collaborations with Americans. He was originally focused on free jazz and now largely uses the instrument simply to play with sound. These days he is playing mostly alto and soprano saxophones, and as a musical explorer his music ranges widely in vocabulary, depending on the situation and partners. He lives in Easton, which enables him to commute easily to NYC and Philadelphia. He has released 35 recordings, samples of which are available at his website:

Michael T. Bullock is a composer, sound artist and visual artist based in Troy NY. The range of his work includes contrabass, banjo, video instrumentalism, and illustration. Bullock performs across the entire US and in Europe, collaborating with a huge range of artists, including Pauline Oliveros, Christian Wolff, Steve Roden, Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley of nmperign, Mazen Kerbaj and Theodore Bikel.

His groundbreaking solo contrabass playing has brought him to medieval chapels and the side of a mountain. He also performs with the BSC, an octet of Boston-based improvisers; as the trio MAWJA with Kerbaj and Vic Rawlings; and in the multidisciplinary duo rise set twilight. Bullock is the founder of Chloë Recordings. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the Arts Department at RPI in Troy, where he researches noise, feedback, and non-idiomatic music cultures.

Alex Chechile (b.1980, Boston, MA) is a composer, improviser, and interdisciplinary media artist who is currently working to explore and utilize the relationship between human physiology and the act of musical creation by developing homemade biofeedback music performance systems. He received a BA in Composition and Theory from Tufts University in 2003, and is presently finishing an MFA in the Electronic Arts at Rensselaer in Troy, NY.

An avid performer of music with improvisation at its core, Alex has played in a variety of ensembles ranging from New Music to Noise, Javanese Gamelan, and West African Drumming, and is frequently performing with Pauline Oliveros both in and out of Tintinnabulate.
His previous work includes compositions for acoustic chamber ensembles, electro-acoustic configurations, as well as installations, video pieces, and stop-motion animation. His work has been shown in festivals both stateside and abroad.

Jefferson Pitcher (b. Redwood City, CA, 1972) is a composer, improviser, sound and video artist from Northern California. He plays primarily electric guitar, making sounds like birds, boats, engines and whales gliding in and out of a dense fog. Although much of his work explores feedback and prepared guitar, he also draws heavily from his love for melody, the simplicity of minimalist composers, and a long history of performing and recording in the west coast indie-rock scene as a singer-songwriter, where he fronted the band Above the Orange Trees. During his teens, Pitcher was immersed in the San Francisco Bay Area punk scene, playing in bands and attending volunteer meetings at the now legendary 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley. He was deeply influenced by the DIY philosophy, and the clean, simple melodies of the music, both of which extend into his work today.


Stay in touch, and we'll be seeing you

Show on SATURDAY Jan. 5 !!!

Happy New Year to everyone. I'm tremendously excited to finally be announcing the first event in our 2008 monthly performance series for ASAC. It's coming up in just a few short days, and I hope you will all make every effort possible to be there. It's going to be a GREAT night of music and comraderie. Both performers are amazing musicians, and this is a rare treat for us to see them in this context. This will be Jason's debut solo performance, and Holland's first local performance since moving back to the Capital Region. Trust me - this is the place to be on Saturday night!! And it's a great way to kick off 2008 in style. As always, be in touch if you have any questions!

End of the Year stuff

So 2007 is rapidly drawing to a close. We'd like to post some year-end lists, so please submit them if you have them! No rules, no boundaries, just list some stuff that impacted you this year and that you'd like to share your perspective on. We'll try to get 'em compiled and posted ASAP.

A full announcement will follow soon, but for now, make sure to hold SATURDAY JANUARY 5th open on your calendars for the next ASAC event. It'll be the first in our monthly series for 2008, and will feature a solo set by Holland Hopson on banjo + electronics. Also playing a solo set that night will be Jason Cosco on turntables, percussion, and electronics. It'll all go down at the UAG gallery on Lark St. again, a wonderful space.

Don't forget your lists, have a great end of the year, and we'll be seeing you all soon!

KILLER show in Troy on Sunday night!

Hi everyone - We're not sponsoring it (though we would if Ross hadn't beat us the punch!), but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you simply CANNOT miss this show in Troy on Sunday night. What better way to end yr weekend and prepare for another week?!? Even if you don't know these artists, by all means check out their myspace pages - this show promises to be a secret treat of the highest order. You know, one of those shows that people talk about years later and you WISH you had been there?!? And even better, it features Barkhausen, with two of our favorite ASAC members Mike Bullock and Linda Aubrey Bullock! YEAH!!

So here's the full scoop...

Ross Goldstein presents:

Sunday December 16th @ 8:00 pmLIVE ELECTRONICS fromLEXINGTON,KENTUCKY !
at 51 3rd Street garage in Troy!

Three Legged Race (http://www.myspace.com/mountaain)
Caboladies (http://www.myspace.com/caboladies)
And from Troy, NY:Barkhausen (http://barkhausen.blogspot.com)

(Linda + Mike = Noise. Do the math!)

Plus a special video screening by Takeshi Murata !!

It's going to be AWESOME! Please come out for this one!
Suggested donation $5

Be seeing you.

Pictures from First Friday

Here are a few shots from last night's First Friday event with Century Plants, Sleepy Demons, and Grab Ass Cowboys. An excellent time was had by all, many thanks to the bands and the video guys as well.

Also - if you want to be added to the ASAC email announcement list, just shoot us a quick email (albanysonicarts@yahoo.com) First few shows in the 2008 series to be announced any day now!!

RIP Stockhausen...

Century Plants in Albany on Friday night!

Hope everyone's well and managing to navigate the ice... We're busy working on the 2008 performance series, and we know you'll dig it - lots of exciting things happening soon, so check here often. We don't want you to miss any of the action!

Also - A last minute news bulletin - this Friday night (12/7), Century Plants will be playing as part of the First Friday series. The show is happening at 217 Lark St. in Albany. Also on the bill are Albany's own Grab Ass Cowboys and Sleepy Demons will be making the journey up from Hudson. There will be art on the walls, some video projections as well, and a guaranteed good time to be had by all. We hope you can make it out for this show and start your holiday season right. Stop over and introduce yourself if you get the chance.

Area C to play Albany

December's almost here, and there's a good show in the works this coming Saturday (12/1). Sponsored by The Capital District Federation of Ideas, (383.5 Madison Avenue, Albany). We're big fans of Area C, and it's bound to be a good time. Try to make this one if you can!

Saturday, December 1 at 4pm Michael Peters and Area C

Michael Peters: The "writing" attributable to "Michael Peters"--his poetry, his visual poetry, his fiction, his critical writing--has appeared in SleepingFish, Wordfor/Word, Lungfull, Xtant, Spell, Tool a Magazine, Rhino, Spinning Jenny, Posted, Generator Press, American Weddings, and Kostelanetz's Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, among many others. His visual poetry has appeared innumerous galleries and exhibits, and can be found in the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry,as well as in the Special Collections/Avante-Garde Libraries of both the Ohio State University and the University at Buffalo, among others. As a musician, most notably in Poem Rocket, Michael Peters has released recordings on a number of independent labels. In 2007, Atavistic (the avant jazz and rock label based out of Chicago), released Poem Rocket's fourth full-length recording, a double CD titled Invasion! Peters also performs and records with the sound-text performance group: The Be Blank Consort. In 2005, he performed at the Subtropics Experimental Music Festival in Miami both independently and as a member of the Consort. VAAST B1n; n Ephemerisi (Calamari, 2007) is his first book. Calamari Press: www.calamaripress.com/

Area C: A vertical of error; a transplant to the chamber. Dubbed "space rock for the information age" by WIRE magazine, AREA C weaves a complicated web of sound from minimal sources, mainly guitar, field recordings, Farfisa organand harmonium, sometimes with an old Hammond drum machine thrown to the wall. Drawing on remnants of other times and places, outdated and untested technologies, signals sent out but never received, AREA C was formed by Erik Carlson in 2003 as a means to examine the texture and tonal characteristics of sound. He also works with audio art, installations,and soundtracks and his work has been featured at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum and Terrastock. AREA C recently completed a permanent interactive installation titled "Low Rez / Hi Fi" on Vermont Avenue in Washington DC, a collaboration with architect J. Meejin Yoon. AREA C also has a new trance-like cd called "haunt" out on Last Visible Dog. http://www.areacmusic.com/

Stay tuned here for announcements about upcoming Albany Sonic Arts Collective shows - we've got some really exciting things happening in the Spring!

First Event

Thanks to everyone who attended our first event. The Albany Sonic Arts Collective (ASAC) is off to a good start. It was great meeting everybody, and we hope you enjoyed the music and food. We certainly did!

More pictures from the evening are available for viewing on the Upstate Artists Guild website:

http://upstateartistsguild.org/189

Special thanks to Rebecca, Colin, and Jason from UAG for helping us put the show on. And thanks to all the musicians who played - Grant, Cory, Jen, Ray, Eric, Cyrus, Ged, Noah, Kyle, and Jeremy.

Please send us an email at ASAC if you'd like to get on our announcement list for upcoming events, or to get involved with the collective in other ways. We can be reached at albanysonicarts@yahoo.com.

See you all soon for the next event! And drop us a line anytime, especially if you have ideas or would like to get involved...