THURSDAY NOVEMBER 7, 2013, 8:00 PM, Admission by contribution ($10 suggested)
TRAVIS JUST: The Music of Object Collection
The Old Stone House
In Washington Park, 3rd Street & 5th Avenue

Park Slope, Brooklyn
718-768-3195
Musical Ecologies continues Thursday, November 7 with Brooklyn-based composer Travis Just. Known for his experimental scores for the music and theater performance group Object Collection, Just will discuss the musical side of this innovative collaborative project he co-founded in 2004 with writer-director Kara Feely. Mixing conversation with audio and video examples, the evening will explore a number of recent and past works including the 2013 opera NO HOTEL which premiered in September at Incubator Arts in New York.
About Object Collection, Feely and Just write: “…the group operates within the intersecting practices of performance, experimental music and theater. We are concerned with simultaneity, complexity, and radicality, combining dense layers of text, notation, objects and processes. We work to give audiences unconventional viewing experiences through our merging of theatricality and pedestrian activity. Our works upset habitual notions of time, pace, progression and virtuosity. We value accumulation above cohesion.”
Musical Ecologies is a monthly symposium on music and sound held every 2nd Thursday (except where noted) at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Curated and hosted by composer Dan Joseph, each event typically focuses on a single artist who presents a work or project either in the form of a talk or lecture, a multimedia presentation, a performance, or combination thereof. Each presentation is preceded by a 30-minute conversation with the curator and audience and a reception follows.
About the artist:
Travis Just comes from a background in improvised music and experimental composition, his work often uses texts, gesture, and unconventional technologies in addition to instruments and electronics. He received his BFA from the Mannes College of Music/New School University in 1999 while studying with Andrew Cyrille, and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2002 as a student of James Tenney, Wadada Leo Smith and Michael Pisaro. Travis was a 2003 DAAD Scholar at the Hochschule für Musik, Köln and studied composition there with Johannes Fritsch. He was a guest artist at Kenyon College in 2005 and has received residencies from Abrons Arts Center, The Ontological Theater and The Chocolate Factory (New York). The New York Times recently praised his opera NO HOTEL calling it "innovative…[a] theatrical coup…the music erupts into spasmodic punk-metal hammering…and bursts of what might be termed shriekstimme…No Hotel may lay its figurative cards on the table in relatively short order – but they're all jokers." (Steve Smith, New York Times). Time Out New York said of his opera Problem Radical(s): "the sheer noise, aural and visual, packs a thrill…Just's electronic, antimelodic score has drama and humor." The Huffington Post wrote that Innova "…is compelling, disturbing, and shockingly beautiful." A native of Minnesota, Just lives with his wife and son in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Upcoming on Musical Ecologies: Michael Lowenstern (12/19); JD Parran (1/9) and Stephanie Loveless (2/6) and Eleonor Sandresky (3/13).
Facebook event page: facebook.com/events/1427408900812593/
NO HOTEL trailer from Object Collection on Vimeo.