Lo Còr de la Plana | FMM 2008 | by retorta_net

“Lo Còr de la Plana … weave(s) a raucous, often dizzying, polyphonic, a cappella storm of ricocheting voices that sound both deeply traditional and contemporary. It’s overflowing with energy and irreverent spirit, feeding off often-satirical lyrics that recount ancient and modern tales about tricking death, lecherous spinsters, neglected brides, (and) bad influences…” – City Pages
Read more of the A-List article here

Singing in the disappearing Romance language of Occitan, the vocal and percussion ensemble Lo Còr de la Plana of Southern France not only brings a captivating ancient culture to life, but combines its rich traditions with 21st-century polyphony and subtle electronics.

Have a listen!

Tickets: Sat., March 28, 8 p.m., 2009 at Walker’s McGuire Theater

Cedar Cultural Center is co-hosting this event.

DP’s at Terrace F Club, Princeton,Photo by jimbosity

Style-smashing Brooklyn art rock ensemble Dirty Projectors is a well-tuned pop supercollider. Leader Dave Longstreth’s compositional brilliance shines through rapid-fire sonic changes and fastidious pop/punk/soul songs that careen from tense to joyful to irreverent, achieving a soundscape that’s “completely strange and oddly familiar at the same time,” says David Byrne. Hear what lies ahead as DP premieres music from its forthcoming CD (and other surprises) in this specially constructed Walker evening. Click for more information

WHAT THE REVIEWERS ARE SAYING

“There’s a world of cross-references in Dirty Projectors’ music: stuttering modal riffs from Mali . . . pygmy antiphonal vocals, Captain Beefheart, Zimbabwean and Congolese rock, King Crimson, Talking Heads, Dan Hick and his Hock Licks.” —New York Times

“[Longstreth] is (why pull punches?) a nobrow genius, who claims to find similar solaces in the work of Beethoven, Wagner, Zeppelin and Timberlake.” —Pitchfork

RELATED LINKS

Dirty Projectors Bio

Interview with Dirty Projectors from Under the Radar

Review of Dirty Projectors’ Rise Above from Pitchfork Review of Dirty Projectors’ Rise Above from Spin

VIDEO CLIPS OF DIRTY PROJECTORS

Live in Toronto, 2007

Live in Denver, 2007

@ the Southstreet Seaport show, Photo: BrooklynVegan

Ray Lee’s work investigates his fascination with the hidden world of electromagnetic radiation and in particular how sound can be used as evidence of invisible phenomena. He is interested in the way that science and philosophy represent the universe and his work questions the orthodoxies that emerge and submerge according to the currently fashionable trends.

The Talk will be at:
University of Minnesota
Carlson School of Management
Hanson Hall ( on Riverside and 20th Ave S. )
Room 1-106

About ‘Siren’:

“I could have sat for hours hypnotized by the final crystal chord of the spinning oscillators” – Live Art Magazine

‘Siren’ is a whirling, spinning spectacle of mechanical movement, electronic sound and light. Twenty-nine large metal tripods, up to 3m tall, have rotating arms that spin around, powered by electric motors. Hand built electronic tone generators power loudspeakers at the end of each arm creating an extraordinary sonic texture of pulsing electronic drones. Small LED’s at the end of the arms trace circles of light as the arms rapidly rotate creating a compelling visual image.

The audience, kept at a safe distance from the whirling arms by a safety barrier, are able to move freely about the space and experience different sonic and visual perspectives of the work. Meanwhile the performers move about within the mass of swirling metal machinery, operating their machines and tuning oscillators to change the musical composition while dodging and ducking the rapid movement of the rotating arms.

Siren will be at Walker Art Center this week only:
Performance Information
Date: Friday February 20, 7:00 pm, 9:00 pm and
Saturday February 21, 2:00 pm, 7:00 pm, 9:00 pm
Place: McGuire Theater
Price: $15 ($12 Walker members)
Click here for more.

Interview with Jon Hassell from BBC Radio
BBC: Now, Jon Hassell: you may not know the name but you probably know the sound. A very distinctive trumpet sound, muted and swirling around in electronics and you can hear him playing on albums by people like David Sylvian, 808 State, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno and Talking Heads, an impressive list if ever there was one, or you can catch him on any of his ten solo albums where he plays an original mix of styles he calls Fourth World. Well, he was over recently from the States and we got him to take us through his eventful career and explain what exactly is Fourth World.

John Hassell: Well it began as a term some fifteen years ago to describe my interest in ethnic music combined with my interest in electronics technology. I studied with Stockhausen and with an Indian musician and an incredible classical vocalist Pandit Pran Nath and I began doing things like, he would sing a phrase and I would play the phrase on the trumpet, given that raga is a form that depends on curves, it’s shape making. It’s like making a beautiful shape and that resulted in a sound that was very vocal. But I was also deeply touched by Miles Davis and jazz. So I wanted to show that there was a music in which improvisation played a part but it wasn’t jazz, which in fact reflected the state of music in the rest of the world. It’s the only music in the Occident in which there is no improvisation in classical music. I wanted to take these three elements of Indian music, the background the tamboura, the foreground of the solo, and the tabla. I used those as a model but I didn’t want to have an association with Indian music. So I would create an electronic background, which might be made up of a sample of pygmy voices mixed in with a sample of Yma Sumac, a little bit of Hollywood orchestration behind her, something from the fifties, plus a bit of gamelan music from Java. Then my playing the Raga, Darbari. I’m leading up to a record called Aka-Darbari-Java / Magic Realism. This was an attempt to take the spirit of various places and then create a world that doesn’t exist.

WHAT THE REVIEWERS ARE SAYING:
“Almost all of the musicians I meet at the moment seem to regard Jon Hassell as one of the God-like geniuses of contemporary music.” —David Toop, The Wire

“Work of quite extraordinary beauty . . . This pan-cultural music swirls and rises like smoke . . . Hassell blends his experiences in such a way that the components—African drumming, Indian microtonality, Balinese tranquility—make a new palette while forfeiting none of the individual colors.” —London Times

RELATED LINKS
Jon Hassell Biography
Strange Magic Article on Jon Hassell from LA Weekly by John Payne

VIDEO CLIPS OF JON HASSELL
John Hassell and Maarifa Street live in Belgrade, Serbia

TICKETS to the Minneapolis show at Walker
Thursday, February 12, 2009 @ 8pm McGuire Theater

“It’s an unorthodox contemporary worship service, complete with sermon, praise dancing and a gospel choir… Her slyly subversive drama ambushes its audience with an earnest and surprisingly moving Christian church service that might be the most unlikely provocation produced in years.” Click here to read the complete New York Times Review of Church.

Even as Church’s charismatic and left-leaning central preacher defies traditionally held Christian assumptions, he conveys a passionate message about religion having the power to transform lives, backed up by three female ministers. Hear the word and feel the power as the preaching, dance, and a full gospel choir deliver “a work so enjoyable, so intricate, and so thought-provoking [that] it’s only appropriate to give thanks and praise” (New York Sun).

Young Jean Lee on writing “Church”: ” The premise that all of my shows begin with is, I ask myself the question, “What is the last show in the world that you would ever want to make?” Then I force myself to make that show. My whole aesthetic is about fighting complacency. So if I make a show that goes against my instincts of what I want to do, that creates a very tense and complicated dynamic. For “Church” the last show in the world I would ever want to do was an evangelical Christian service that’s sincerely trying to convert the audience to Christianity, and that’s not ironic or a joke or making fun of Christianity at all. That just seemed like a real nightmare and a challenge for me, and it has been.”
Click to read more of “Faith Confronted, and Defended, Downtown” an interview with director Young Jean Lee and Lear deBessonet in The New York Times.

On Young Jean Lee’s new work “The Shipment”:
“Critics have lavished praise on “The Shipment,” which Ms. Lee also directed and whose run has been extended until Saturday in New York. In his review in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood called the play “a subversive, seriously funny new theater piece.” The New Yorker also gave “The Shipment” a warm and lengthy review — an unusual laurel for a young, relatively unknown writer. ” (New York Times)

Young Jean Lee’s play Church has been highly praised for its writing and direction, and this will be a fun and easy opportunity to perform on the Walker’s McGuire stage and be part of this acclaimed new play.

We are gathering a wonderful bunch of volunteers to sing in the choir and take part in a piece by the director and playwright Young Jean Lee. Church requires a 50-person choir to sing one song (”Ain’t Got Time to Die“) at the end of the show each night. Participants need only to be willing and able to perform on stage with a group; all ages and ability levels are welcome.

The choir director and Young Jean will need one four-hour rehearsal on Monday January 26 (7-11 pm) with the choir. The choir members should learn the song in advance based on the information sent and have it ready before the rehearsal. Dress rehearsal is on Wednesday, January 28 at 8 pm so that they can learn their entrance, blocking, and curtain call on the stage. Shows are Thursday – Saturday January 29-31 at 8 pm.

Although volunteers will be unpaid, each participant will receive a stipend for parking in the city underground heated parking ramp ($20), a comp ticket for the performance, and a free gallery admission for a day at the Walker Art Center.

Click here for a review from the New York Times.
Click for more information on the performance at Walker Art Center on January 29- 31st, 2009.

This quirky and darkly humorous work Five Days in March by director Toshiki Okada recounts the daily lives of four adolescents in Tokyo’s trendy suburbs of Shibuya and Roppongi during the first five days of the U.S.-Iraq war in 2003.

About the performance: A couple of drifting kids stay for five days in a love hotel worrying about their futures, while outside in the “real” world, war changes everything. The precarious balance of Five Days in March juxtaposes the grand sweep of history and the insignificant patterns of real daily life. And the insecurity held by urban Japanese youth of the “N” generation (no job, no income) takes form in this startling and indelible performance.

About the director: Toshiki Okada is a playwright and director who has gained international acclaim for his plays, called “super-real” for the way the characters speak in broken sentences, like fragments from private conversations.

About the company: The company’s name, “chelfitsch,” is Okada’s coinage. It represents the baby-like disarticulation of the English word “selfish.” It is meant to evoke the social and cultural characteristics of today’s Japan, not least of Tokyo.

Click here for more information and tickets for this performance beginning Thursday at Walker on January 15-17th at 8pm.
Join us for a post-show reception in the Warhol lounge by 20.21 for discounted drinks and conversation. Opening night the artists will be joining the party.

New York Times (Jon Pareles) gave a smashing review this morning of Kassin + 2 who is performing at Cedar Cultural Center Thurs, December 11th.

Here is a sampling:

“Their music was elegant as well as kinetic. Packed with ideas, the songs faced down private cares not by withdrawing, but by opening up to more possibilities: tuneful and clamorous, buoyant and barbed.”

“It’s a band from Rio de Janeiro that’s grounded in Brazilian pop and familiar with funk, rock and Caribbean and African music. And it made sure that noise infiltrated the supple tunes…for this band the noise is half the fun.”

“wistful melodies…enmeshed in layers of ingenious funk that could be dissonant or jovial”

“Mr. Kassin switched between gentle tunes and upbeat ones laced with Afropop guitars, carnival beats and siren sounds. Mr. Lancelotti…was the extrovert, clowning when he took over the microphone and building songs with riffs and quick chants. He started one song by clapping (joined by the audience) and slapping rhythms on his chest.”

Click here to read more
Click here to listen to a sample of Kassin +2

Performance Information
Date: Thursday, December 11, 2008
Time: 8:00 pm
Place: Cedar Cultural Center
Address: 416 Cedar Avenue South, Minneapolis
Price: $18 ($15 Walker and Cedar members); $20 day of performance

Click here to purchase tickets through the Walker website

Martin Dosh, Andrew Bird and Jeremy Ylvisaker at the Wilco Loft in Chicago. Photographs by and courtesy of Jason Tobias.

From NYTimes online article “Cheap Thrills”

“Writing songs and performing live have with time become almost the same process for me. The improvisation and conversation with the audience from show to show keep the songs fluid and alive. On the other hand, making a record is like a show that gets drawn out over a year or more, but with no cathartic resolution. When I’m in the studio things can quickly unravel and that’s not surprising. The audience has disappeared and you are given the attractive, but dangerous option to control everything. This is why I decided to start in Nashville with the basics – voice and guitar – because it’s easy to lose your rudder in overdub realm. Knowing that the mostly unadorned Nashville songs sound great frees me up to indulge myself a bit. Sometimes you make the song better; more often than not things can get over-wrought.” – Andrew Bird

Click here to read more.

Bon Iver who will be featured in Walker’s sold out Rock the Garden 2008 recently stopped by The Current Studio for a Minnesota Public Radio/ KCMP live session.

You can download from Live Indie Sessions here.