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VITAL VOX: A VOCAL FESTIVAL explores the myriad power of the human voice in its solo and ensemble forms across a multitude of genres. The 3rd Annual festival will take place on November 5 and 6 at 8pm, at the brand new Roulette, 509 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, NY (2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, G, D, M, N, R, B & Q trains and the LIRR). Tickets are $15 ($10 Students/Seniors/Members) and can be purchased at www.roulette.org or by calling 917-267-0363. VITAL VOX (www.vitalvoxfest.com) celebrates composer-performers in the vocal arts who stretch and expand the voice in new and original ways, continuing a strong contemporary tradition developed in the United States.

Over the course of two diverse evenings VITAL VOX explores “Voice + Keys” as well as “Voice + Strings.” The first evening will explore vocal works supported by keyboard instruments, whether the keys of the piano or ‘keys’ of a laptop. The second will delve into vocal music utilizing traditional western string instruments such as the cello and violin alongside world instruments like the bowed psaltery, hurdy gurdy and Finnish kantele. Performances draw from wide-ranging international influences and genres including jazz, experimental, contemporary, free improvisation, world music, and interactive electro-acoustic; Morse code, audio sampling, a house plant and theater collide in a heady, appealing mix of experimentation.

The November 5, 2011 program (Voice + Keys) includes ‘Vor an Sicht’ by Judith Berkson; ‘Scaling’ performed by Gelsey Bell and Paul Pinto; ‘{kaleid-o-phone}’ performed by Dafna Naphtali.

The November 6, 2011 program (Voice + Strings) includes ‘Wood in the Wind’ performed by Iva Bittova; Toby Twining Music (Toby Twining & Malina Rauschenfels); SoCorpo (Sasha Bogdanowitsch & Sabrina Lastman)

VITAL VOX premiered in May 2009 at Teatro IATI (International Theatre Arts Institute) in the East Village and continued in 2010 at ISSUE Project Room. Since its founding, the Festival has brought together some of the most talented & creative vocalists in NYC, and featured nearly 20 projects and 30 vocalists. Sasha Bogdanowitsch & Sabrina Lastman are Artistic Directors for the festival, which is produced by World in One & Roulette. Roulette is a major New York City venue for contemporary music and intermedia art, internationally recognized for the presentation and promotion of experimental contemporary music, an incubator for young talent and a laboratory where new ideas and new technologies are examined, appraised and developed.
VITAL VOX 2011 PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS:

Continue reading “Vital Vox Festival at Brooklyn’s New ROULETTE, Nov. 5-6”

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Chicago Dance Makers Forum 2010 Lab Artist Erica Mott and the Chicago Park District present The Victory Project Trilogy — a series of performance installations, solos, duets and trios focused on the female body as a representation of the nation state and victory in art, political propaganda and literature addressing specific moments in time from the ancient Greco-Roman era to present day. This evening length work, to be held October 6 – 9, 2011 at Northerly Island, incorporates image, text, movement and elements of puppetry to dismantle body parts and allegories that fuse and confuse patriotism and perversity.

The Victory Project Trilogy features movement by Joy Davis, Silvita Diaz-Brown, Suzy Grant, Karen Faith, Melissa McNamara and Erica Mott developed through intensive research and training in Mott’s unique interdisciplinary methodology. Influenced by Bunraku puppetry, Jacques Lecoq, Phillip Zarilli and Euginio Barba of Teatro Odin, Mott developed a hybrid choreography highlighting the energetic relation between dancer site and object. Award-winning Chicago composer Ryan Ingebritsen adds a shifting soundscape generated directly from the dancers’ movement and mixed live.

“My choreography highlights the curious body in unusual and often transformational moments, allowing a journey into an ever-evolving landscape for the viewer. Sometimes warped, often political and irreverent this world invites the spectator the re-view and re-envision their own environment,” said Mott.

The Victory Project started as a series of conversations Mott had with female veterans of the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf War in addition to interviews with women living during World War II including some of the original Rosie-the-Riveters. These casual conversations left her wondering if victory is truly a gendered notion and if so what does that mean for women as we become more integrated into a male constructed and dominated military? Deeper historical and theoretical research followed in an attempt to address the complicated relationships between the female form and notions of victory.

The Victory Project Trilogy runs Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 7pm from October 6 – 9, 2011 at Northerly Island Visitor Center, 1400 S. Lynn White Drive, Chicago. CTA bus line #146 (Marine-Michigan), CTA Red/ Orange/ Green Line to Roosevelt & State Station. Parking available in the north parking Lot. Bike rack also available. Tickets are $17/$12 Students. Bicyclists receive a $10 discount price – bring your helmet as proof ($2 from each ticket price goes toward Chicago Park District Programming). For more information contact [email protected] or purchase tickets online. Visit www.ericamott.com for more information about The Victory Project Trilogy.

Erica Mott is a choreographer, puppeteer, performance maker, and cultural organizer who utilizes body based sculptural forms (mask/costume/object), and transforms discarded materials and disregarded spaces. Using the tools of humor and surprise, she captures and heightens the magic and mystery of the mundane and invites communities to re-view and re-envision shared spaces and practices. Erica’s recent site-specific performances were featured at Ingenuity Fest (Cleveland), SOMArts/Performance Art Institute (San Francisco), NES (Iceland), Museo del Ferrocarril (Mexico), CAD Special Exhibitions Space/Artopolis. Erica performs with Synapse Arts Collective, Blair Thomas and Company, and has collaborated nationally with Tim Miller, Eighth Blackbird, Sharon Bridgforth, Coman Poon/re[public] in/decency, and Guillermo Gomez-Pena. She continues to work with Gomez-Pena’s collective, La Pocha Nostra as a core troupe member. Erica recently was awarded The Santa Fe Art Institute Residency and the Chicago Dancemakers Forum Fellowship. She is funded by the City of Chicago Community Arts Assistance Program, The Driehaus Foundation and the Illinois Arts Council. Erica serves as the Director of Education and Community Programming at Links Hall, Chicago.

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On October 21 and  23, pianist Inna Faliks will perform a varied program at Chicago’s Music in the Loft including Schubert’s Sonata in a minor opus 143, Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes, numbers 10 and 11, Sofia Gubaidulina’s Chaconne, and Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata opus 57. Music in the Loft, founded in 1992, is dedicated to advancing the professional careers of today’s finest young musicians by providing a venue for the performance of chamber music in an intimate and acoustically superior setting. Performances will be held on Friday, October 21 at 8pm and Sunday October 23, at 3pm. Tickets are $25 ($10 for students) are area available at www.musicintheloft.org

Cecily Parks

And on November 18, Inna’s Music/Words series returns with Ms. Faliks on the piano along with Cecily Parks, poet. Cecily Parks’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Five Points, The Paris Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. The program will include works by CPE Bach, Debussy, Rameau and Beethoven. Pianist Inna Faliks created the series Music/Words in order to foster a chance for poets and musicians to work together and inspire each other, as well as to allow different audiences to come together for these musical-literary events. The concert will be held at Yamaha Artist Services Piano Salon, 689 5th Ave., New York City. Tickets are $20. 212-339-9995 for more information.

 

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Composer, cellist and vocalist Jody Redhage announces the upcoming release of her new solo album on New Amsterdam Records, of minutiae and memory, featuring eight electro-acoustic works for cello, voice, and electronics by some of today’s most talented young composers. It’s the culmination of an ongoing commissioning project over the past six years, resulting in close to 30 new works for voice, cello, and electronics. The disc features works by Joshua Penman, Anna Clyne, Paula Matthusen, Wil Smith, Missy Mazzoli, Ryan Brown, Stefan Weisman, and Derek Muro.  Redhage will play the album LIVE on Monday, September 12 at DROM on the Lower East Side at 7:30 pm. Corey Dargel and Cornelia Dufallo open with a set of art pop songs for voice & violin. Doors 6:30, show 7:30 pm. DROM is at 85 Avenue A (@ E. 6th St.) New York, NY 10009. $10 cover.

The album is officially released Aug. 30 by New Amsterdam Records, and distributed nation-wide by Naxos. Physical copies or downloads will be available at all the usual online sources; physical copies will be sold at the CD release event on Sept. 12.

 

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In “The Prince’s Muse,” New York based early music ensemble BaroQue Across the River explores music from J.S. Bach’s Cöthen years when Prince Leopold’s passion for the arts prompted Bach to write to a dear friend ‘There I had a gracious Prince as master, who knew music as well as he loved it, and I hoped to remain in his service until the end of my life’. As music performed during this period was in the court rather than the church, this program will offer secular arias, instrumental trios and solos from Bach, Handel and Abel.

This free program is held on Sunday, September 11, 2011, at 3:30pm, at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, 58 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY.

BaroQue Across the River is:

Kathy McDonald, baroque flute

Michele Eaton, soprano

Lisa Terry, viola da gamba

Dongsok Shin, harpsichord