Notes Vol. 4
Brooklyn, exhibits, Cape Town, new album?
The year is off to an interesting start, all stateside this time, and no more dramatic fraud activity as of writing this!
I made New Years goals (I hate “resolutions”, but somehow I like “goals”?) to 1. read more during the day; and 2. to actually do less. Just for a moment, hold off on the application hustle. Put less on my calendar. Take time for those I love. I don’t know how that’s going. Life happens, but it feels like a small mantra of sorts.
Just this past weekend, Sydeboob Duo premiered my piece FILL THAT HOLE on their ‘Operator’ concert in Brooklyn, and I got to be there! They had two concerts, one very sold-out, with opening side show act, improvised interludes from gay personal ads, videos of vintage phone sex hotlines...it was incredible. I was nervous about my piece. It’s long (almost 20 minutes); it’s acoustic; it’s one side of a phone sex conversation and then it flips to the other side of the conversation. But if the hollering audience reactions were any value, it landed really well. Thanks to all my NY connections who came out to support.
Duo Sydeboob Sarah Steranka and Anna Elder rehearse my work, Mitu Theater, Brooklyn. Below, score excerpt.
Later this month, I’ll then have a couple openings for pieces in group shows more visual-art in nature, though still connected to soundscape and music. With the pressure for many artists to make new new new all the time, this feels like part of my New Years goal to say: I have works that I’ve already made that I’d like more people to experience. Let’s explore what that feels like!
Jan 17 I’ll be installing a wall full of graphic scores called ‘A Stone’s Throw’ for the Lakewood Cultural Center show ‘Instrumental’. Thus far only people in Homer, Alaska got to see it. And exhibit title on brand!
A Stone’s Throw installed at Bunnell Street Arts (2022), Homer, AK, photo Jesse Egner.
There will be a music performance involved in the coming weeks- me on keyboard and special guest on percussion. Date for that TBD. Show runs until Mar 31. Curated by Laine Gosley.
Jan 24 I’ll be exhibiting ‘Visby’ at the RedLine Opening for ‘Living Land’. Opening reception: Friday, January 24, 6-9pm. The show features current artists and some alumni from RedLine, curated by Jane Burke. I haven’t shown this work since 2018, and I’m excited to see how it looks in a new context- I always liked this plexiglass component of the work and my harpsichord soundtrack for it. I’ll be happy more people can see it (and hear it). Runs until Mar 30.
‘Visby’ plexiglass ‘standing stone’ originally installed at Understudy Denver, 2018.
Feb 22 ‘Vessels’ for flute and singing bowls will be on a Playground Ensemble show about community and collaboration. Originally commissioned by Cobus du Toit, intrepid audience members get to read graphic scores and play singing bowls on stage while a with a flutist plays (and coaches through).
March 8, (11), 14 Probably the most distant performance location for the year (or ever?): My second opera ‘Atlas of Remote Islands’ gets performed in Cape Town, South Africa! I sadly won’t be able to attend. But for the youth singers there, and the company (there is only one opera company in all of South Africa?!), I send toi toi toi and hope they enjoy the roller coaster ride of the music I wrote to tell stories of 50 islands of the world.
For the future: I’m working on an album! Tentative release Sept 2025. My first in almost ten years; I think it will be a collection of music and writing from travels to Greenland and Sweden—meditations on life, death, maybe even the universe and everything. Wish me luck.