This January, 2015, the Boston-based experimental music ensemble Deleuzer will take up residence at the Washington Street gallery in Somerville, MA. The month-long program, will feature an exhibition of visual arts, DIY electronic instruments, and sound installations by all of the members. There will also be performances throughout the month including a performance of compositions by Nick Hennies and Mike Bullock, commissioned for this residency. The composers will be performing with the ensemble.
The title of this residency, “One or two things - for a long time,” comes from practice strategies utilized by the ensemble.
Events:
January 10 – Exhibit opening and performance featuring solos by the ensemble members
January 17 – Performance of compositions by Nick Hennies and Mike Bullock
January 23 – Collaboration with the Worcester electronics ensemble Lean Shapes
January 30 – Closing performance featuring Deleuzer and special guests
All performances will be all-ages and start at 8:30pm.
The performances and exhibit will be held at:
Washington Street gallery
321D Washington Street
Somerville, MA
About Deluezer
In the fall of 2012, Morgan Evans-Weiler contacted a group of Boston-based musicians with the idea of forming a regular working ensemble to explore approaches to collective ensemblemusic. The members of the group committed to weekly working sessions with a core goal of developing tactics which would provide a framework of continuity and intent within the context of open-form playing for a mid-sized ensemble. Drawing on a variety of backgrounds, there was also a conscious choice to work toward the integration of acoustic and electronic instruments utilizing a shifting ground of pitched and purely textural timbres.
Over the last two years, the group has convened on a regular basis, working on compositional forms, collective improvisation, and group exercises. The group has settled in to a committed membership of Morgan Evans-Weiler (violin), Howard Martin (reeds), Jesse Kenas-Collins (trumpet, reeds, feedback objects), Peter Gumaskas (modular synthesizer), Michael Rosenstein (amplified surfaces and oscillators), Chris Johnson (laptop), and Dan Wick (keyboards). The name Deluezer came from an initial thought that the group would read and discuss “A Thousand Plateaus” by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. That never came to pass, but the name for the group got batted around and stuck.
http://deleuzer.bandcamp.com/
About the Guest Artists
Nick Hennies is a percussionist and composer from Louisville, KY currently residing in Ithaca, NY. His work is primarily concerned with an immersive, psychoacoustic presentation of sound brought about by an often grueling, endurance-based performance practice that Nathan Thomas of Fluid Radio described as, “a highly sophisticated and refined performance technique...that starts and ends with listening and encourages a different way of listening from its audience.”
http://www.nhennies.com
Mike Bullock is a composer, improviser, intermedia artist, scholar based in Philadelphia, PA. His modes of work include electroacoustic composition, installation, drawing, and video. Bullock performs across the 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.
http://www.mikebullock.com
Lean Shapes is a quartet comprised of the trio Gay Shapes with Joe Bastardo, Mickey O'Hara, and Abdul Sherzai along with Seamus Williams. The Worcester, MA group skirts the line between peaceful emptiness and absolute darkness. Circuit-bent electronics, samples, and analog synthesizers merge together, creating a massive atmosphere that shifts between vast, open spaces, and claustrophobic caverns of doom. Mind-numbing frequency blasts and fizzy electronic splatter fuse together to create a uniquely organic wall of sound.
http://gayshapes.bandcamp.com/
About the Experimental Music Series at Washington Street Morgan Evans-Weiler and Michael Rosenstein and have been curating a music series at Washington Street since November, 2012. The bi-weekly series has presented a cross-section of the New England experimental musicscene ranging from improvisation to power electronics to composition. The series also brought national and international musicians as well as collaborations with Non-Event.
http://www.washingtonst.org/