THURSDAY APRIL 11, 2013, 8:00 PM, Admission by contribution
Zach Layton: Stridulitrum
The Old Stone House
336 Third Street, bet. 4th/5th Avenues
Park Slope, Brooklyn
718-768-3195
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 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. Admission is by contribution and a reception follows.
Musical Ecologies continues on Thursday April 11 with Brooklyn-based composer Zach Layton who will present a new work for string quartet and bowed electric guitar entitled Stridulitrum. Performed by Alex Waterman (cello), Amy Cimini (viola), Eli Spindel (violin), Laura Ortman (violin) and the composer (bowed electric guitar), the work is inspired by a study of the sound production process used by many insects involving the scraping together of different body parts, typically legs or wings. The mechanism, know as stridulation, is best known in crickets and grasshoppers, but other insects include Curculionidae, Cerambycidae, Mutillidae, Reduviidae, Buprestidae,Hydrophilidae, Cicindelinae, Scarabaeidae, Glaresidae, Passalidae, Geotrupidae, Alydidae, Miridae, Corixi.
About the artist:
Zach Layton is a guitarist, composer, curator, improviser, teacher and video artist based in Brooklyn. His work investigates unconscious autonomic musical impulses via improvisation and indeterminacy. Using an EEG which can monitor brainwave signal in realtime, he is able to sonify and visualize this stream of unconscious data. His music involves a combination of digital and analog processes, field recordings and electric guitar played in non-standard tunings. He has performed and exhibited at the Kitchen, ISSUE Project Room, Roulette, Diapason, PS1/MoMa, Anthology Film Archives, Performa, Exit Art, Transmediale Berlin, Audio Art Festival Krakow and many other spaces in New York, South America and Europe. Zach is also founder of the acclaimed experimental music series, “Darmstadt: Classics of the Avant Garde” (co-curated with Nick Hallett), and former co-curator of the PS1/MoMa warmup music series and of Issue Project Room. A graduate of Oberlin, NYU and Bard College, he is currently an assistant professor of music theory at Bloomfield College and Music Supervisor for the upcoming 3D dance film, Cunningham.
Latest sounds by zachlayton
Upcoming on Musical Ecologies: Jason Cady 5/16; TBA (6/13).
Facebook event page: facebook.com/events/435857139842081/