Musical Ecologies

THURSDAY MARCH 16, 2023, 8PM, $15

JOSEPH KUBERA: At the Piano

The Old Stone House
in Washington Park, 3rd Street & 5th Avenue
Park Slope, Brooklyn – Map
TICKETS

Musical Ecologies continues Thursday, March 16th with New York-based pianist Joseph Kubera. A long-time New York city resident and a leading interpreter of contemporary music for over three decades, Kubera will perform Daniel Rothman’s Queens Plaza, and Dry County by Conrad Winslow. The evening will begin with a conversation hosted by series curator Dan Joseph.

Founded in 2012, Musical Ecologies is a monthly symposium on music and sound held at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Curated and hosted by composer Dan Joseph, each event focuses on a single artist, who presents a recent work or project in the form of a talk or lecture, a multimedia presentation, a performance, or combination thereof. Each presentation is preceded by an extended conversation between the artist and curator.

About the artist:

Joseph Kubera demonstrates a “formidable combination of instrumental athleticism, technical precision and conceptual lucidity,” wrote Julian Cowley recently in The Wire. Recent activities include concerts and master classes at New England Conservatory of Music, direction of Julius Eastman multi-piano performances in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York, and new CDs of music by Daniel Goode, Lejaren Hiller  and John J. Becker.  He has been a soloist at major European festivals and has worked closely with such luminaries as Morton Feldman, La Monte Young, and Robert Ashley. Composers who have written works for him include Larry Austin, Michael Byron, Anthony Coleman, David First, Alvin Lucier, Roscoe Mitchell, and “Blue” Gene Tyranny. 

A longtime Cage advocate, Kubera has made definitive recordings of Music of Changes and the Concert for Piano, and toured widely with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Cage’s invitation.  He is a core member of the S.E.M. Ensemble, and has worked with myriad ensembles in New York City.  He has collaborated with pianists Marilyn Nonken, Adam Tendler and Sarah Cahill, and baritone Thomas Buckner. Kubera has been awarded grants through the NEA and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He has recorded for Wergo, O.O. Discs, New Albion, New World, Lovely Music, Mutable Music, Cold Blue, Tzadik, and Opus One.  

Facebook event page: facebook.com/events/222491950166392

Upcoming:  Jerome Harris (4/20); Outdoor Session (5/18)…

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 16, 2023, 8PM, $15

MARCIA BASSETT: Imagined Symmetries

The Old Stone House
in Washington Park, 3rd Street & 5th Avenue
Park Slope, Brooklyn – Map
TICKETS

Musical Ecologies continues Thursday, February 16th with New York-based multi-disciplinary artist Marcia Bassett. Working with analog modular synthesizer, guitar, handmade instruments, contact microphones, field sounds, and vocal experimentation, she approaches sound making through experimentalism, activating a heady sonic interplay of noise, drone, and otherworldly narratives that are equal parts trance and critique. For tonight’s event she will be joined by musician and musicologist Ted Gordon for a duo performance using the Buchla Music Easel. Taking inspiration from Pauline Oliveros who once asked, after John C. Lilly, “how have I programmed my human bio-computer?” Bassett and Gordon will ask this question of each other, smudging distinctions between analog, digital, body, and instrument, and positing not-yet-legible connections between electronic sonic events in real time. The evening will begin with a conversation hosted by series curator Dan Joseph.

Founded in 2012, Musical Ecologies is a monthly symposium on music and sound held at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Curated and hosted by composer Dan Joseph, each event focuses on a single artist, who presents a recent work or project in the form of a talk or lecture, a multimedia presentation, a performance, or combination thereof. Each presentation is preceded by an extended conversation between the artist and curator.

About the artists:

Marcia Bassett is a NYC-based artist working in the areas of sound collage, improvisation, and visual creation. Bassett’s work is equal parts trance and critique. Her sound pieces thread the needle between the conceptual and the sensual, between ritual invocation and cold semiotic gaze. She is the founder of Yew Recordings. Recent solo recordings include  Midnight Xpander LP recorded at the EMS (Stockholm); Undulating Arkasboning cassette released on Artsy Records (2022), and a digi-EP on the KraakRecords label KRUT. She frequently joins others in collaborative installations and multimedia projects. Recent work includes FA/CE sound and live visual collaboration with Ursula Scherrer; Buchla Music Easel improvisation with Ted Gordon; sound and video collaboration with Katherine Liberovskaya; Social Entropy a 4-channel sound installation at Human Resources, LA; group collaboration with Margarida Garcia, David Maranha and Manuel Mota, and guitar and violin improvisations with Samara Lubelski.

Ted Gordon is a musician and musicologist whose work connects experimental music with the critical study of science & technology. His scholarly work maps new organizations of bodies, practices, and politics made imaginable through new electronic musical instruments in the mid-20th century and beyond, and his writing been published by Contemporary Music Review, Current Musicology, Cultural Anthropology, and the Library of Congress. As a musician, he performs with the viola and the Buchla Music Easel. With Matthew Mehlan, he has released music as the Chicagoland Electric Music Box Association, and he has collaborated with Marcia Bassett and Jeffrey Perkins. He is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Baruch College, City University of New York.

Facebook event page: fb.me/e/3dYYHu9BU

Upcoming:  Joseph Kubera (3/16); Jerome Harris (4/20)