Thursday, June 21, 2012

SUSAN ALCORN!! JEFFERSON PITCHER!! soundBarn!!




Come join us on a rare TUESDAY night show at ASAC. We'll be at the Upstate Artists Guild (247 Lark St. in Albany), and this amazing show will feature two astoundingly creative and well-known guitarists. Susan Alcorn will be visiting from Texas, displaying her improvisational skills on the pedal steel. Also performing will be Jefferson Pitcher, a phenomenal local guitarist soon to be moving out of the area. Make sure to catch him before he's gone!

Both sets will provide proof positive that the electric guitar (in its many guises) still holds the power to inspire musicians and audiences alike. Don't miss out!!

FULL BIOS are below...

SUSAN ALCORN

JEFFERSON PITCHER


+ soundBarn


Tuesday June 26th

8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany, NY

$5 suggested donation for the traveling musicians.

www.albanysonicarts.blogspot.com for more information!

Susan Alcorn is a Baltimore, Maryland-based composer and musician who has received international recognition as an innovator of the pedal steel guitar, an instrument whose sound is commonly associated with country and western music. Alcorn has absorbed the technique of C&W pedal steel playing and refined it to a virtuosic level. Her original music reveals the influence of free jazz, avant-garde classical music, Indian ragas, Indigenous traditions, and other musics of the world. The UK Guardian describes her music as "beautiful, glassy and liquid, however far she strays from pulse and conventional harmony."

In addition to frequent tours throughout North America and Europe, Susan has performed in the UK at the London Festival of Experimental Music, the On The Outside Festival in Newcastle, and the Glasgow Improvisors Orchestra Improvisation Festival; in France at the Musique Action Festival in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, Ateliers Tampon and Instants Chavires in Paris; in Germany at the Leipzig JazzTage and with the ICI Ensemble in Munich; The Stone, CBGBs, and Issue Project Room in New York; Il Continiere in Rome; and at Arsenic and Cave 12 in Switzerland.

Though mostly a solo performer, she has collaborated with numerous artists including Pauline Oliveros, Eugene Chadbourne., the late Peter Kowald, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Maggie Nicols, Joe Giardullo, Joe McPhee, Mike Cooper, Lê Quan Ninh, Ellen Fullman, Evan Parker, Ellery Eskelin, and John Butcher as well as continuing projects with Caroline Kraabel, cellist Janel Leppin and Scottish guitarist George Burt. Her newest release Touch This Moment is available on Uma Sounds.

Jefferson Pitcher is a guitarist and composer originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. He spent his formative years involved in the DIY Berkeley punk-rock scene, at 924 Gilman Street, which still influences him today. Yes, he was at Operation Ivy’s last show.

While much of his work explores free improvisation, he also draws heavily on his gift for melody, as well as on the simple repetitions of minimalism, the space and North African influence of flamenco, and a 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.

Since that time, Pitcher has released music with Standard Recording Co. (USA), Digitalis Recordings (USA), Camera Obscura (Australia), Tape Drift Records (USA), Moonpalace (Spain), Dutch East India (USA), Words on Music (USA), Tract Records (USA), and his own Mudita Records (USA). He has performed and recorded with a wide range of artists including Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Okkyung Lee, Scott Amendola, Rosie Thomas, Christian Kiefer, J. Matthew Gerken, Denison Witmer, Sarah Weaver, Mark Dresser, Mike Bullock, Tim Keiper, David Gibson, Kristina Forester, Ron Guensche and many more. He has twice been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and has been well reviewed by Pitchfork, Blurt, The Melbourne Sun, Prefix, and Harp magazines.

Pitcher holds an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he studied improvisation and composition with Pauline Oliveros and Neil Rolnick. He is married to author and visual artist Keri Smith, and can often be found on some hilly country road riding his bicycle while daydreaming about the minutiae of guitars and the endless wonder of sound.


soundBarn has been mining the possibilities of extreme guitar for years.  Thomas Lail and Patrick Weklar ply prepared and altered guitars, overprocess signals and pile loops of sound to orchestrate an arching instrumental tale of creation and destruction.  www.soundbarn.blogspot.com

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