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Laura Steenberge: Chant Etudes + Weston Olencki: HoneyDripper (by Michelle Lou)

Sat., May 14, 2016
Doors at 7:30pm | Show at 8pm
Radius Gallery
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$15 General / $10 Students
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Laura Steenberge and Weston Olencki bring a new conception of what a wind instrument could be to Radius Gallery in Santa Cruz.

Steenberge’s new work Chant Etudes imagines an era when the idea of a musical instrument was not yet fully formed. Over the course of the performance, she explores the sounds inherent and available in simple objects, paired with fragments of actual instruments. Olencki, on the other hand, performs composer Michelle Lou‘s “unflinching sheet of noise” HoneyDripper, for trombone, sheet metal, transducers, electronics, and chains of distortion and amplification. Both of these artists are not to be missed.

Laura Steenberge

Chant Etudes began by imagining an era when the idea of a musical instrument was not yet fully formed. Just as the wind howls through trees, breath blown across a hollow cylinder produces wild sounds. Humankind has attempted to tame these sounds for at least 40,000 years, evidenced by flutes with holes that control the pitch. The etudes in the collection seeks the musical properties of objects that inspired the invention of these first instruments. Using real and makeshift wind instruments, each piece searches for the secret vibrations hidden among the controlled tones, aided by simultaneously singing and blowing into the instrument. Combined, the sounds of the instrument and the voice reveal harmonies both simple and complex. The resulting music is a repetitive chant or folk tune that emerges from the act of learning to play each instrument, harnessing the sounds and finding the ritual music contained within.

Laura Steenberge is based in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. As a performer, she sings and plays viola da gamba, contrabass, piano, guitar and other things, in traditional and untraditional song styles. As a composer, she primarily writes vocal music. As a scholar she researches connections between music and language. Her current research is about the compositional practices of medieval composers of Byzantine chant, a study that has inspired a body of creative work about ritual and metaphors of the supernatural. She will be graduating from Stanford University in June 2016 with a DMA in music composition.

Weston Olencki

Michelle Lou’s HoneyDripper is a 40-minute unflinching sheet of noise. Loose transducers, squealing feedback, physically exhaustive drones, blacklight-lit ropes encase the performer in a dense tangle of wires and misused effects pedals, creating a complete sensory overload for both those performing and watching. Sounds are to be felt as much as heard.

Laura Steenberge is based in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. As a performer, she sings and plays viola da gamba, contrabass, piano, guitar and other things, in traditional and untraditional song styles. As a composer, she primarily writes vocal music. As a scholar she researches connections between music and language. Her current research is about the compositional practices of medieval composers of Byzantine chant, a study that has inspired a body of creative work about ritual and metaphors of the supernatural. She will be graduating from Stanford University in June 2016 with a DMA in music composition.

Michelle Lou
Michelle Lou is a composer, performer, and sound artist working mainly in the realm of electro-acoustic music. Her work has been presented at Wien Modern, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Schloss Solitude, The Festival of New American Music, the MATA Festival in New York City, The 66th American Music Festival at the National Gallery in Washington D.C., The Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg, Ultima Festival in Oslo, Chance and Circumstance in Brooklyn, and Kammer Klang in London, amongst others. She received degrees in double bass performance and composition from UC San Diego and Stanford University, with additional studies at the Conservatorio G. Nicolini in Piacenza, Italy and the University for Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. She was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and an Elliott Carter Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. She has taught at the WasteLAnd Summer Composition Course, the Akademie für Neue Musik in Boswil, Switzerland, and as a Visiting Lecturer at Dartmouth College. Michelle is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in Composition and Electronic Music at UC Santa Cruz.

Laura Steenberge is based in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. As a performer, she sings and plays viola da gamba, contrabass, piano, guitar and other things, in traditional and untraditional song styles. As a composer, she primarily writes vocal music. As a scholar she researches connections between music and language. Her current research is about the compositional practices of medieval composers of Byzantine chant, a study that has inspired a body of creative work about ritual and metaphors of the supernatural. She will be graduating from Stanford University in June 2016 with a DMA in music composition.

Weston Olencki is a New York City based trombonist/composer specializing in the performance and production of experimental music & art. Weston is a member of Ensemble Pamplemousse and the Wet Ink Large Ensemble, one half of RAGE THORMBONES and People Making Sounds, and has performed with Ensemble Dal Niente, ICE, wasteLAnd, wildUP!, Fonema Consort, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Talea Ensemble, sfSound, Wild Rumpus, Eco Ensemble, Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW, and a.pe.ri.od.ic - under conductors Alan Pierson, Enno Poppe, Steven Schick, and Marino Formenti. He was awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis for Performance [2016] and a Stipendiumpreis [2014] from the Darmstadt Ferienkurse.

His compositional work has been performed/commissioned by the Talea Ensemble/Earle Brown Music Foundation, Pamplemousse, Bass2Bass [Michelle Lou + Scott Worthington], People Making Sounds, trombonist Matt Barbier, clarinetist Erin Cameron, and saxophonist David Wegehaupt.

Weston has pursued collaborative work with wide range of artists including Eric Wubbels, Michelle Lou, Michael Pisaro, Katherine Young, Zachary James Watkins, Timothy McCormack, Sam Salem, among others. Festival/series appearances include Alatszto Hang [Budapest], Weisslich [Manchester/London], Qubit [NYC], Constellation's Frequency Series [Chicago], FOCIarts [New Orleans], Permutations [NYC/SF], sfSoundSalonSeries [SF], NUNC [Chicago], Indexical [Santa Cruz], Switchboard Presents [SF], OPTION [Chicago], and Omaha Under the Radar. He also co-curates/presents the Chance and Circumstance festival with Pamplemousse, an annual festival for experimental arts in NYC.

Weston has held residencies at the University of California Santa Cruz, Harvard University [HGNM], NYU, and Stanford University, with upcoming residencies at Northwestern, Columbia, and CalArts. He has recorded for HatHut, Not Two, Sound American, Parlour Tapes+, Indexical, and Clean Feed and for Ryuichi Sakamoto, with forthcoming solo releases on Carrier Records.

Laura Steenberge: Chant Etudes + Weston Olencki: HoneyDripper (by Michelle Lou)

Sat., May 14, 2016
Doors at 7:30pm | Show at 8pm
Radius Gallery
Add to Calendar
$15 General / $10 Students
Buy Tickets

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