justin snyder

What is “experimental” music?

The term “experimental” often denotes someone consciously toying with the paradigms of their medium and the expectations of their audience. Panoply hosts music artists which could fall into this category, experimenting with different types of performance, the body, electronics, and concepts surrounding the issue of "music" as such. The night will close with a talk-back about the meaning of “experimental” as it relates to each artists’ practice.

A E Kingsmill (with Justin Snyder) Combining the disciplines of performance art and contemporary classical music, Snyder and Kingsmill will come together for a performance which creates a unique rite where sound arches directly into the physical and visceral. This merging brings the stark ritualistic aspects of each of these disciplines to the center stage.

No Collective No Collective (Jay Barnacle, Ai Chinen, Kay Festa, Earle Lipski, You Nakai, et al.) makes various works that examine and (re)construct different modes of temporalities. Most often, these have resulted in music performances which explore and problematize both the conceptual and material infrastructures of music and performance. Other formats of work include play-scripts, picture books, haunted houses, and performance arT. Since its inception circa 2007, members of No Collective have varied both in quantity (from one to fifty) and quality (from reluctant music novices to professional instrumentalists) according to each works’ objective and situational conditions. Recent works include "VESNA'S FALL," A DECIDEDLY MODERNIST DANCE PIECE MADE IN COLLABORATION WITH LINDSEY DRURY (JUDSON CHURCH, BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE, 2014), AND "Concertos No.4," performed with ball-shaped speakers operated by blind performers in a completely darkened 16,000 square feet performance space (National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, 2012); curatorial projects include the first concerts of the Argentinian composer Ellen C. Covito in New York city and Tokyo; publications include "Concertos" (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011), a book which describes and prescribes the process of preparation, performance, and documentation of a music concert in the form of a playscript, and "Sonnet for Concertos No.4" (National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, 2013), a score of a pop song whose lyrics are the entire instructions for making another ('serious') music concert. A brief portrayal of NO COLLECTIVE'S activities can be found in "an interview with You Nakai" by Elizabeth Hoffman, published in Perspectives of New Music (Winter, 2013). FROM MAY 2014, NO COLLECTIVE HAS STARTED A PUBLISHER CALLED 'ALREADY NOT YET.'

Al Margolis and Tom Hamilton Link to some sounds by Tom & Al right here: https://soundcloud.com/dataday Some jpgs here: url.jpgurl.jpg

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TOM HAMILTON has composed and performed electronic music for over 40 years, and his work with electronic music originated in the late-60s era of analog synthesis. Hamilton was a 2005 Fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, participating in a residency at the foundation’s center in Umbria. Hamilton’s performing and recording colleagues have included Peter Zummo, Bruce Gremo, Karlheinz Essl, Bruce Arnold, Rich O’Donnell, Thomas Buckner, Al Margolis, id m theft able and Richard Lerman. Hamilton has released 15 CDs of his music; his CD London Fix received an award in the Prix Ars Electronica, and a 2 CD set of his electronic music of the 1970s was named one of The Wire’s Top 50 Reissues of 2010. Hamilton was the co-director of the 2004 Sounds Like Now festival, and he co-produced the Cooler in the Shade/Warmer by the Stove new music series for 14 years. Since 1990, Hamilton has been a member of composer Robert Ashley's touring opera ensemble, performing sound processing and mixing in both recordings and concerts. His audio production can be found in over 60 CD releases of new and experimental music.

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AL MARGOLIS has performed and recorded under the name If, Bwana since 1984, making music that has swung between fairly spontaneous studio constructions and more process-oriented composition. He is known as an activist of the 1980s American cassette underground through his cassette label Sound of Pig Music, and is the co-founder of experimental music label Pogus Productions. Margolis is label manager for Deep Listening and XI Records; plays bass guitar in the legendary punk/post-punk band Styrenes; and continues his work as If, Bwana. He has recorded and/or performed with Pauline Oliveros, Ione, Joan Osborne, Monique Buzzarté, Katherine Liberovskaya, Adam Bohman, Ellen Christi, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jane Scarpantoni, Ulrich Krieger, David First, and Dave Prescott, among others.