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

Help us say goodbye to Holland Hopson!!

Join us on Saturday June 16th at the Upstate Artists Guild in Albany for an incredible night of music. Help us bid farewell to Holland Hopson, one of our ASAC co-founders, who is moving southwards.  Featured performers will be:

BEN MILLER - alto sax, tapes, the zoo, voice and projection in support of a new release on Living Records. Ben has performed at ASAC a few other times, and was formerly a member of Destroy All Monsters, Sproton Layer, and other units. He's one of the best out there, and you shouldn't miss this performance.

HOLLAND HOPSON - one of the founding ASAC members, and an incredible multi-instrumentalist. This will be Holland's last performance as a local Albany resident. He's moving to Alabama (you know the rest of the song, right?!?), so this will be your best opportunity to see him live before he skips town.

BARN OWL - amazing trio of improvising musicians extraordinaire. Matt Weston on drums/percussion, Andy Crespo on bass, and Chris Cooper on prepare guitar/electronics. You're always in for a treat with these guys.

CLAYMATION - solo electric guitar improvisation from C. Baird Buchanan. We're excited to have Baird bring his solo project to ASAC for the first time.

SATURDAY JUNE 16th
UPSTATE ARTISTS GUILD
247 Lark Street 
Albany, NY

8PM Sharp!!
5$ donation suggested for touring musicians

SEE YOU THERE!

SUNDAY 5/20 = Joseph Hammer / LA Lakers / Case / Rambutan !!

Join us on Sunday May 20th for yet another astounding night of strange and wonderful music, featuring experimental music legend Joseph Hammer! 


JOSEPH HAMMER 

LA LAKERS 

CASE 

RAMBUTAN


           at the 

UPSTATE ARTISTS GUILD
8pm on Sunday 5/20
247 Lark St. Albany, NY

Joseph Hammer has actively created experimental works since 1980 as a member of the LAFMS collective. His practice draws on the complexities of the process of listening and playing, reflecting on the role of the audience versus the performer, and uses music as it influences our notion of time, memory and intimacy as the basis for improvisation and abstraction. In various collaborations, solo, and as a founding member of the trio Solid Eye along with several other projects (Joe & Joe, Dinosaurs With Horns, Dimmer, Points of Friction), Hammer has performed widely and is an influential contributor to the Los Angeles underground scene.

Jack Wright/Evan Lipson/Johan Nystrom!!

Join us on Sunday May 6th for an incredible night of music + poetry! 8pm on Sunday 5/6 Upstate Artists Guild 247 Lark St. Albany, NY Jack Wright, alto and soprano saxes, Easton PA Evan Lipson, double bass, Brooklyn Johan Nystrom, drums, Philadelphia Michael Peters will also be reading poetry. Jack Wright was a soprano choir boy and a marching band saxophonist in the fifties, a bluegrass washtub bassist in the early sixties, a university lecturer in history, and a revolutionist in the late sixties and seventies. Since then he has been playing freely improvised saxophone, touring the US and Europe, and has been dubbed "the Johnny Appleseed of Improvised Music". He is accused of impersonating pigs, ducks and human blowhards, but lately has been remembering the proper use of the saxophone --to support the tottering universe. His roots are in Philly, where he owns a house for wayward improvisers (Johan Nystrom is one of them and Evan used to be). Jack plays with everyone but performs and tours only with the finest, which usually means the most obscure, from Europe and the US. He and his partners are among the few true believers in absolutely free, unrestrained, unstructured, unselfconscious improvisation, played at soberingly high levels of musicianship. www.springgardenmusic.com Evan Lipson (b. 1981) has been active as a bassist, composer, and improviser since adolescence, now living in Brooklyn. From Philly (like a great portion of the best musicians). In an on-going pursuit of all things occult and aberrant, Lipson acquired an early interest in the latral realms of visionary & experimental music -- quickly seeking to transcend the existent paradigms of idiomatic expression. This particular 'left-hand path' has afforded him the opportunity to work in a wide variety of contexts and styles (esoteric and otherwise); his formative experiences being primarily rooted in modernist composition, underground rock, jazz, outsider pop, noise, as well as various modes of improvisation. Johan Nystrom is a drummer working with sound and things he finds on the street. Activities since 2005 include playing high concept composition in a large orchestra for pirate TV, gamelan, amplified food, and countless free improvisation solos and groups. He has developed a range of extended percussion techniques that have more to do with electro acoustic and microtonal musics than paradiddles, but he refuses to relinquish the musicality of simple sticks and skins. Rather than dissociate these two elements, he plays a traditional kit but with a jerky, polyphonic fluidity to move as if he played a pitched instrument: the drum is a voice. He has been active on the East Coast, USA (Pittsburgh to Philly) and in London, U.K.

Wed. 4/18 @ VALENTINE's!!

ASAC folks,

please join us on Wed. April 18th at VALENTINE's MUSIC CLUB for a fantastic night of music, featuring:

DISAPPEARS (members of the Ponys and SONIC YOUTH!)
LOTUS PLAZA (solo project from Deerhunter guitarist)
LOCATION ENSEMBLE (multiple guitar ensemble featuring many ASAC members!

8pm start - get there early to see all the sets!

Valentine's
17 New Scotland Ave.
Albany

Suzanne Thorpe returns! With Philip Greenlief!

Saturday April 7th 8:00pm

Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St. in Albany

ASAC presents Suzanne Thorpe & Phillip Greenlief at the UAG gallery. More info to come.

West Coast saxophonist Phillip Greenlief visits New York, and mixes it up with East Coast electroacoustic flutist Suzanne Thorpe. Together they explore what it sounds like when warm winds of the west meet cool breezes of the northeast, and the spaces in between, with electronics, singalongs, and improvisations.

We'll also be unveiling new chairs for "enhanced listening comfort" (TM) complete with music for amplified folding chair.

Plus one more act TBA!

Collective DRONE event - join us!!

On March 7th, join us at the ARTS CENTER OF THE CAPITAL REGION in TROY (265 River St.) for a collective DRONE event!

Bring an instrument and spend some time making drone-music together.

7pm start time

Hope to see you there!

RANGDA + CENTURY PLANTS!!!

ALBANY SONIC ARTS COLLECTIVE, in partnership with WCDB Albany is proud to announce....

Monday Feb. 27th in Albany, NY - the mighty RANGDA (Drag City Recording artists), featuring SIR RICHARD BISHOP, CHRIS CORSANO, and BEN CHASNY! Three musicians of the highest caliber you're likely to find anywhere on the globe. Don't miss these gentlemen on the opening night of a rare minitour of the Northeast. Rangda, the child-eating demon queen of Balinese mythology, finds a sonic voice via the epic, thrashing jammerisms of Sir Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls), Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), and the incredible Chris Corsano.

Special opening guest will be Albany's own CENTURY PLANTS, providing their take on guitar-centric noisy psychedelia, with guest Phil Donnelly sitting in on drums!

RANGDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hudHpfUbuuI&feature=related

CENTURY PLANTS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xm2gUZpr6Q

Monday Feb. 27 @ 7:30 PM
Valentine's
17 New Scotland Ave.
Albany NY

See you there!

HUGE EVENT to HELP SAVE the UAG!!!

JOIN US FOR THIS INCREDIBLE EVENT!!!

To help save the Upstate Artists’ Guild, an essential resource for the Capital Region’s art and music scenes, the Albany Sonic Arts Collective (ASAC) is proud to present a showcase event, featuring an array of local performers in the Albany area’s improvised and experimental music world. Now in its 5th year of programming exciting and innovative music in the Capital Region, the Albany Sonic Arts Collective wants to officially thank and give back to the Upstate Artists Guild, which has so generously helped support and develop the local music community.

Sunday January 29th, 2012
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St. Albany, NY
4:00PM - 10:00PM
$5 suggested donation.


All donations at the door, and all proceeds from merchandise sales will benefit the Upstate Artists Guild!! Special raffles/doorprizes too!

On Sunday January 29th at 4PM sharp, ASAC will present an extravaganza of local experimental music talent in new and fascinating configurations.

Highlights will include:

* Century Plants performing Spacemen 3’s DREAMWEAPON in its entirety

* Jason Cosco & Asa Morris premiering a new duo project, CONTINENTS

* Holland Hopson transforming the gallery’s front windows into loudspeakers

* Pete Edwards (Casper Electronics)

* Nonhorse (G. Lucas Crane)

* Parashi

* Jefferson Pitcher

* Shape Shifting Shepherds

* soundBarn

* Matt Weston both solo and with Insect Posse

* Plus surprise guests!

Video projections by 1983 (Jason Cosco) will be displayed during the event.

Facing a financial challenge in the coming year, the UAG is in danger of losing its current gallery space. UAG president Rebecca Schoonmaker Finnen has issued a call for support: “We need to generate a continuous flow of money from as many sources as possible so that our organization can continue to keep a roof over its head.”

ASAC and UAG have worked together since 2007 to provide a regular space for audiences to experience a wide range of musical styles not represented by other area venues. Some of the many memorable performers ASAC has brought to Albany include:
- Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore
- legendary music critic Byron Coley
- former member of 70s punk pioneers Destroy All Monsters, Ben Miller
- former member of the Cecil Taylor Unit, trumpeter & composer Arthur Brooks
- acoustic guitar virtuoso Jack Rose
- Chinese sound artist Yan Jun
In November of 2008, ASAC and UAG hosted the marathon River of Drone, producing a continuous 12-hour drone of sound.

About the Albany Sonic Arts Collective:
The Albany Sonic Arts Collective (ASAC) is a grassroots organization dedicated to building a thriving community of listeners and performers of music that exists outside of traditional boundaries. The Collective supports a wide variety of music and sonic art forms, with an emphasis on those that stress freedom and exploration of new ideas. Styles include free improvisation, drone, noise, electroacoustic improvisation, electronic music, avant jazz, and many others. ASAC have been presenting regularly since November 2007. The Albany Times Union called ASAC a “sonic bright spot” of the Capital District arts scene. In 2011 ASAC celebrated the 99th birthday of composer John Cage, with 99 consecutive performances of Cage’s seminal “silent” composition 4’ 33” followed by an evening length performance of Cage’s music.

Sunday January 29th, 2012
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St. Albany, NY
4:00PM - 10:00PM
Donations at the door and proceeds from merchandise sales to benefit the Upstate Artists Guild

5 Acts: An Evening of Experimental Music at the soundBarn

The soundBarn presents:

5 ACTS -- An evening of experimental music.
Sunday Dec 11 8pm suggested donation $8/$5 students

The soundBarn in Valatie, NY is pleased to present an evening of experimental music featuring Valerie Kuehne, Paul Pinto, Jeffrey Young, Century Plants and soundBarn from New York City and the Capital Region.

"Electrically-charged virtuoso of all-purpose cello," Valerie Kuehne from New York City performs a musical collage for cello and voice of dark and comedic vignettes about shopping, food, and drugs. http://dreamzoo.bandcamp.com/.

Paul Pinto performs For Stefanos Tsigrimanis , an elegy scored for two turntables, voice, guitar and electronics for Pinto’s friend and collaborator whose life was cut short after a bicycle accident in September 2010. Paul Pinto is a composer, vocalist and founding artistic director of thingNY in New York City. http://pfpinto.com/forstefanos

Jeffrey Young premiers a new set of alternatively energetic and deeply meditative work for violin, voice, and live electronics. Young is a composer and violinist from Brooklyn, NY who specializes in experimental classical and rock music. www.jeffrey-young.com

Century Plants are the Albany-based experimental guitar duo of Eric Hardiman and Ray Hare who have been described as “part raging metallic clang by way of the holy Shred, part meditative feedbacking in total Zen style.” Century Plants are highly regarded in the international underground noise/psych/rock/drone scene and have released music on labels from all over the globe. http://www.myspace.com/centuryplants

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


The soundBarn is a project of artist/musician Thomas Lail and artist/gallerist Tara Fracalossi and is located on what was once Heald Orchards in Valatie, New York. The soundBarn has recently initiated soundBarn Press and now publishes limited editions of poetry and experimental writing. Forthcoming publications include poetry by musician/artist/writer and founding member of rock band Sonic Youth Lee Ranaldo and poetry/writings by artist James Cullinane.


For more directions and more information visit: soundbarn.blogspot.com