Notes:Contagious Sounds at the Gershwin Hotel NYC
Music of Neil Rolnick
Scenes from MONO, music direction by Todd Reynolds
with singers Robert Osborne, Mellissa Hughes, Nick Hallett, and Dafna Naphtali
Notes:iEAR presents at EMPAC in Troy NY
presents Music of Neil Rolnick
Scenes from MONO, music direction by Todd Reynolds — with singers Robert Osborne, Mellissa Hughes, Nick Hallett, and Dafna Naphtali
“But I think overall, over the years, it’s been an astonishing adventure.”
—Merce Cunningham
Before Merce Cunningham, dance was a world bedecked with music and narrative, encased in sets and costumes. In a seventy-year career of incomparable importance, Cunningham tore those intricacies down and forever redefined his art form, rebuilding it on its most essential foundation: the near-limitless possibilites of movement.
Filling the entire complex of Frederick P. Rose Hall, this three-part day invites you to explore Cunningham’s lifetime of artistic achievements. In the morning, sit in on a company class and participate in family-friendly activities. In the afternoon and evening, enjoy performances by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, including Cunningham’s masterful Squaregame (1976) and Duets (1980). Learn his Field Dances (1963) with a member of the repertory company. Walk among the floating Mylar balloons of Andy Warhol’sSilver Clouds, used as décor for RainForest (1968). Pick up one of the iPods loaded with the music that most influenced Merce and listen as you explore multiple events happening simultaneously. There’s much more, including a special recording booth, where people may record their own impressions of Merce’s work and his legacy.
Dark Dining Projects feasts are participatory art events revolving around sensory awareness and pleasure.
Blindfolded diners are guided to tables by “dancer/embodiers” and served a specially conceived four-course meal paired with fine wines. Between courses, the room is quieted and guests are treated to artist performances. On a given night, that might be a tap dancer, a vocalist, a flamenco guitarist, a beat-boxer, or a baroque violinist. The menu is revealed at the close of the evening. Then diners are led outside where they remove their blindfolds. They never see the room in which they dined.
Dafna has been associated with Harvestworks since the mid-90’s, as consultant, instructor (classes and workshops in Max/MSP, live sound processing, Max for Live, Jitter, and other courses as well as one-on-one instruction). She also sat on many panels for various Harvestworks events such as Peekaboo Festival, Who’s in Control, and New Instruments for Improvisation and Experimental Approaches at HERE Gallery.
In 2010 she was an artist-in-residence, and worked on her solo pieces “Mahashefa” and “Robotica” for LEMUR robots and voice.
Dafna has been associated with the Music Technology program at NYU for many years. She teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses, ran the studios as Chief Engineer (’96-’98), and work in the 2000’s for seven years as an academic advisor.
Dafna is an alum– (BM ’92 Vocal Jazz, Masters in Music Technology ’96), she was Chief Systems Engineer ’96-’98.
Starting Fall 2011 and ever since, she teaches Electronic Music Performance, and in the Spring semesters since 2007, she teaches Advanced Max/MSP/Jitter. In the past she also has taught Digital Audio Processing (first year graduate course normally taught by the program director), and MIDI II: Intro to Max, as well as numerous workshops at the Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Magic Names is a six-member self-led vocal ensemble, founded in 2007 to champion Stimmung, the rarely performed vocal masterpiece of Karlheinz Stockhausen (written in 1968). The group’s premiere concert after an intensive 18-month rehearsal period was in May 2009 at the New Museum in New York City. We are an eclectic group of New York performing artists. We come together as composers, classical singers, pop singers, dancers, sound-artists, and film-makers. We are all avid improvisers – united by a shared passion for contemporary repertoire, and new experimentation. Current and sometime members of the group have included Gisburg, Nick Hallett, Dafna Naphtali, Robert Osborne, Daisy Press, Peter Sciscioli and Margot Basset.
Stimmung is a formidable 70-minute work for six singers, and a subtle sine-wave drone B-flat 9th chord. The score calls for nearly constant singing of quickly fluctuating phonemes in polyrhythmic overlapping patterns, creating a Western-influenced overtone singing style. Aleatoric sections of the piece pit one singer against another’s rhythmic disruptions and pitch deviations, creating beat frequencies, and other sound events that are reminiscent of the composer’s work for tape and electronics. The atmosphere is interrupted intermittently by lusty singsong texts, and by “magic names” of ancient gods and goddesses. Poetic levity is incorporated into otherworldly intonation.
We are an eclectic group of New York City performing artists. We come together as composers, classical singers, pop singers, dancers, sound-artists, and film-makers. We are all avid improvisers – united by a shared passion for contemporary repertoire, and new experimentation.
Stimmung was only the starting point for Magic Names. In recent seasons we have incorporated original works written by members of the group. Including “Fassbinder Songs”, written by Gisburg for the Vital Vox Festival 2010, and “Panda Half-Life” by Dafna Naphtali, commissioned by American Composers Forum Jerome Commissioning Program.
As well, we have a strong collaborative relationship with choreographer Daria Fain, an acclaimed New York choreographer who who invited the group to participate with her in her piece “Working with Stockhausen’s Stimmung” commissioned and presented by Danspace Project in New York City as part of PLATFORM 2010, with other performances in the past few years as Judson Church and 92nd street Y.
Performer/composers Kitty Brazelton and Dafna Naphtali collaborate on a montage of extremes: textures hard/soft, noises white/red, harmony rooted/disembodied, silence. Both women sing with startling multi-octave ranges*. Both women play electric guitar / bass. Both women compose hard-core computer music. All this is woven, spliced, patched, threaded, then drummed together by BAT’s third member: Danny Tunick. Their eponymous CD was released 2003 on Tzadik label. The band active 1996-2006, on hiatus, but with a new track “Stabat Mom” still unreleased. visit What is it Like to be a Bat ? orginal website. Tzadik CD info here.
!! new!! video from one of their first performances, at the Kitchen in 1999.
full press release..
*Both women sing with startling multi-octave ranges: Brazelton honed her edge as vocalist in rock bands since 1969, and in the 90’s with her large ensemble DadaDah (Village Voice: “Wild-woman vocalist . . . with a wailing intensity in all her genres” ) . Naphtali vocalizing for years in improv bands as well as classical recitals and new music ensembles.
Both women play electric guitar: Naphtali has toted hers from coast-to-coast, purveying jazz, folk, disco, whatever the gig required , while Brazelton makes unheard-of sounds on a bass guitar, with punk pick, Soviet-made fuzz box, never having played a bass before (though she’s written concertos for the instrument).
Both women compose hard-core computer music: Naphtali (consultant-teacher at Artist in Residence programs at Harvestworks and Engine 27 and former Chief Engineer of NYU’s Music Technology program) conducts live interactive radical ambience processing using her custom Max/MSP programs, while Brazelton ( D.M.A. Columbia University, 1994; now composer/professor, Bennington College) created digital sound tracks and samples from natural sound sources and field recordings using old time software re-synthesis at Columbia’s Computer Music lab or written-from-scratch, CSound code at home on her desktop, unwilling to settle for current off-the-rack plug-in sound.
All this is woven, spliced, patched, threaded, then drummed together by BAT’s third member: Danny Tunick, percussionist extra-ordinaire, whose credits span alterna-rock and contemporary classical realms. He’s a recorded contributor to bands Barbez, Guv’ner, Camp and Mad Scene as well as the Princeton Composer’s Ensemble, Common Sense Composer’s Ensemble and the Bang on a Can Festival’s Spit Orchestra.
While Naphtali, Brazelton and Tunick alchemize in plain view, for their 2003 CD, sound artist Paul Geluso finalized this strange brew from the mixing board.
Brazelton and Naphtali are still hope to get back to mixing their work StaBAT Mom, which documents their lives as women in a punk digital montage true to what they have done with the Bat? trio since 1997. This latest chapter is about what it’s like to be a working mom, and incorporates that famous statement on the all-enduring mom — Pergolesi’s 1736 Stabat Mater — singing his gorgeous soprano-alto duet with the achingly poignant major-2nd suspensions, which they put through a computer as an isorhythmic/morse code cantus firmus, so they could play some math-rock over it. Into that they peppered Naphtali’s outrageous song fragments about losing one’s sense of reality with two active young daughters, weave in Brazelton’s 1992 lullaby written when her daughter was 3 mos. old with colic. In addition to computers and singing, Brazelton plays electric bass and keyboard and Naphtali plays electric guitar, sings, does live sound processing (and of course with Danny Tunick on drums, glockenspiel, custom music boxes, toys).
What is noise to the old order is harmony to the new…”—Jacques Attali “Please ask me if you like it.”—Gertrude Stein.
News Winter/Spring 2011
–January 9th — Magic Names performed an excerpt of Stimmung with choreographer Daria Fain
at Dance Theater Workshop — as part of the APAP conference.
Here is documentation of a performance at St. Mark’s Church in September
[vimeo clip_id="16940978" width="400" height="225"]
This past winter, I was busily preparing for recording planned for the Spring, and also for a special performance of a piece I am developed with help from Franklin Furnace Fund —
April 29th, 2011 — recording of Panda Half-Life (American Composers’ Forum Commission) at NYU’s Dolan Studios. With Magic Names vocal sextet (Robert Osborne, Nick Hallett, Peter Sciscioli, Gisburg, Daisy Press)
Recent Performances 2010
Europe tour — workshops / performances:
Nov. 4 Orbis-Pictus Gallery, with Michael Delia (opening of “Play” exhibition), Prague
Nov. 5 Workshop at FAMU (Film and TV school), Prague
Nov. 6 Skolska — solo performance
Nov. 8 Altes Finanzamt – with Thea Farhadian, Berlin
Nov. 9 Workshop at Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg
Nov. 10 Hörbar – solo performance
back in NY:
Nov. 13 Magic Names Ensemble (Vital Vox festival) premieres work by Gisburg
Nov. 16 annual “in-C” reading Darmstadt New Music at Poisson Rouge http://lepoissonrouge.com/events/view/1498
Nov. 22 quartet with Ras Moshe, Shayna Dulberger, Andrew Drury Evolving Voice series Local 269
Performer/composers Kitty Brazelton and Dafna Naphtali collaborate on a montage of extremes: textures hard/soft, noises white/red, harmony rooted/disembodied, silence. Both women sing with startling multi-octave ranges*. Both women play electric guitar / bass. Both women compose hard-core computer music. All this is woven, spliced, patched, threaded, then drummed together by BAT’s third member: Danny Tunick. Their eponymous CD was released 2003 on Tzadik label. The band active 1996-2006, on hiatus, but with a new track “Stabat Mom” still unreleased.