lovely is the new loud
friday, january 31 doors 8pm
964 natoma, sf, ca, usa
$6-10 sliding scale donation requested ~ no one turned away

Electronics extend the reach of traditional instruments, new sensibilities breed a new music of groove, drone and ambiance. For "Lovely is the New Loud," the artists have been asked to present work that pursues unabashedly the lovely. In these loud and painful times, take a moment for something softer...

Lovely features Bay Area artists:

christopher willits & scott pagano
guitar and laptop, projection

Christopher Willits and Scott Pagano overlap an audio generating system and an image generating system. The two networked systems share data, producing moments of synthesis and synchrony: a duet for sound and image.

Christopher's interests lie in music that is generated spontaneously by self-organizing systems; his music is a direct result of the processes involved: software processes recontextualize warm guitar chords and fold acoustic timbres into fluid forms that retain geometry and centeredness. These systems take on a life of their own, generating a music of constant variation and repetition: structures that persist yet gradually drift.

Willits recently completed graduate research at Mills College where he studied with Pauline Oliveros and Fred Frith. Prior to Mills, Willits received a visual arts training at the Kansas City Art Institute, studying under Patrick Clancy. Christopher has proliferated music through the collaborative space of visuallistening.com and has released CDs with Fallt (Ireland) and 12k (New York).

Scott Pagano is a video / sound artist currently living in San Francisco. His work ranges from experimental video and film and video performance, to architectural photography and electronic music composition. Driven by a keen interest in the byproducts of machine errors, graphic reworkings of architectural spaces, and breakdowns in communication systems, his work foregrounds precision image reworking and malfunction fetishism. Communication technologies, transportation, the physical layout of cities, and the pathways through which we are 'informed' of events around the world are the impetus behind his compositions...

Through careful/chaotic video works, Scott focuses on developing an intense visual language to offer up an alternate view of the multitude of systems and interactions that fill our lives.

Scott's work has been shown in the New York Underground Film Festival, Transcinema, the Rotterdam Film Festival, Frieze magazine, Pond, and Mass MoCA. He has accompanied musicians from Kid606 to the Kronos Quartet.

http://www.visuallistening.com
http://www.12k.com/index2.htm
http://www.fallt.com/pollen/index.html

tom heasley
tuba and electronics

'Forget all previous conceptions of the tuba. When composer Tom Heasley conjures his music for tuba, didjeridu, throat singing, electronic processing and loop sampler, you will be transported to a cavernous panorama of stunning sonic exploration: delicious deep drones; sublimely spiraling swells of brass shifting like seismic plates...'

Tom's music has been featured on National Public Radio, BBC Radio 3, Public Radio International, John Schaefer's New Sounds on WNYC, Hearts Of Space, and many other radio programs. In 2002 Heasley was awarded an Artist Fellowship in Music Composition by Arts Council Silicon Valley. His work has also been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Composers Forum and the McKnight Foundation.

http://www.tomheasley.com
http://www.epitonic.com/artists/jhno.html

kristin miltner & james livingston
saxaphone and laptop

Kristin Miltner is a composer, electronic musician, and video installation artist from the midwest. She received her BFA in photography and new media from the Kansas City Art Institute, where she studied with Kristine Deikman and Patrick Clancy. She moved to the west coast to study music with Alvin Curran and Pauline Oliveros at Mills College in Oakland. Recent performances
include the Strictly Ballroom series at Stanford University, the CEAIT festival at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, and the T-10 Video Festival at 21 Grand. A performance of her small ensemble piece at the Blackbox Theatre in Oakland entitled "altamont" had musicians using interlocking rhythmic elements to emulate machine sounds. Kristin plays laptop music at the Hush Hush Club and 26Mix as k*m*t*v. She is also a member of the Brown Bunny Ensemble and Bilge/Radiolaria, a group dedicated to the performance and composition of original expiremental music. She composed and arranged music for the Shotgun Players' production of "A Fairy's Tail" by Adam Bock.

Composer, saxophonist, and electronic musician James Livingston lives in Oakland, California. He has composed music for orchestra, theater (Latin Hustle, Theater Rhinoceros), dance (Blondell Cummings, Krista Denio), chamber ensembles, and electronic instruments/media. He holds an MA in Music Composition from Mills College and a BA in Cognitive Science and Music from UC Berkeley.

http://www.wonkido.net

installation: sweet nothings
elliot lessing

'These 2 new fibre-based pieces share a symbiotic relation with each other that can only be activated by the viewer or attendee. Keeping in mind that they are somewhat fragile, I encourage people to interact with them, especially with the sound component. Same-Species Communication is as old as the hills... and is as critical to maintain. These "sculptures" behave as mini-environments for you to communicate various light intimacies, flirty repartee & genuine nonsense. They may be used among strangers & friends.'

Seating mostly on futons to encourage comfortable deep listening. Hopefully we'll still have beanbags (thanks to Blasthaus!).

Depending on weather, hot or cold drinks will be available. Hopefully someone will make cookies again.

This information is not for print distribution or advertising. This is a private event for friends, family, and our community.

questions?