RAGE Thormbones is a low-frequency duo whose work exists at the intersections of “fuck around” and “find out”. Both members, Weston from Vermont and Mattie from Los Angeles, are classically trained trombonists but jumped that ship awhile ago and thankfully found each other in 2014.
RAGE Thormbones
RAGE Thormbones is a low-frequency duo whose work exists at the intersections of “fuck around” and “find out”. Both members, Weston from Vermont and Mattie from Los Angeles, are classically trained trombonists but jumped that ship awhile ago and thankfully found each other in 2014. Their sounds bring together various de/re-constructed brass instruments and electronic synthesis + amplification, with many trips to the hardware store and the polyphonic hum of Mattie’s fabrication shop and Weston’s overworked CPU load. They produce sculpted masses of high-density sound, carving metallic resonance and subcutaneous tones to make rooms feel really heavy. They aim to shift the role of brass instruments away from vocal virtuosity and more toward their true selves as improvising organic air compressors - physically-modeled synthesis transcribed back into the acoustic domain.
RAGE has collaborated with a range of artists including Kevin Drumm, Sarah Davachi, Michelle Lou, and British pop maverick Scott Walker. They’ve tooted their trombones everywhere from Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Darmstadt Summer Courses, and ISSUE Project Room to their favorite basements/living rooms/warehouses/crypts and more recently, a charming community center deep within the Swedish countryside.
Mattie will fill the Tannery’s space with an oscillatory mass streaming from Highland pipes.
Weston will present an ongoing work entitled a vine that grew over the city and no one noticed which juxtaposes lineages of old time Appalachian music, rural geography, and the industrial histories of the Carolinas where they grew up. The piece is devised for an unorthodox setup consisting of retuned and electromechanically controlled banjo, AM radios, railroad spikes, homemade electromagnetic resonators, and AI-synthesized country music - a futurism of sentimentally preserved past.
RAGE THORMBONES will present a heavily amplified set of low frequency vibrations.
Mattie Barbier:
three lines
Weston Olencki:
a vine that grew over the city and no one noticed
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.
RAGE THORMBONES:
[live]
RAGE THORMBONES is an ongoing collaboration between Matt Barbier and Weston Olencki. They explore the outer reaches of performance and brass technique. They have been in residence through Harvard, Stanford, and New York Universities, recorded for HatHut Records, and are best friends. Weston lives in New York City and Matt lives in Los Angeles.
Program
| Mattie Barbier | three lines |
| Weston Olencki | a vine that grew over the city and no one noticed |
| RAGE THORMBONES | [live] |