OPENSOUND: The BSC improvised and experimental music

The BSC

Bhob Rainey, saxophone
Mike Bullock, string bass
James Coleman, theremin
Chris Cooper, electronics
Greg Kelley, trumpet
Vic Rawlings, cello, stressed electronics
Liz Tonne, voice

The BSC was formed by composer / improviser Bhob Rainey in August, 2000. Comprised of eight improvisers with a variety of musical backgrounds, the ensemble’s intent has been to confront the challenges of large group improvisation while engaging with contemporary repertoire that is geared towards innovative, electroacoustic sound production. (full bio below)
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Saturday, Oct 13, 2012
Third Life Studios
33 Union Square
Somerville, MA(Almost at the heart of Union Square, on the segment ofSomerville Ave. coming into Union Square from Porter Square)

For directions and parking:http://www.thirdlifestudio.com/directions.html

Doors open after 7:30. / music at around 8:00 p.m.$8 admission

------------------------------------------------------------Opensound is a monthly concert series that explores improvised and experimental music, bringing artists from disparate backgrounds together for unique events in Somerville MA. The process of improvisation combines the distinctive voices of its individual performers. The music that results is often surprising, unconventional and dynamic. It s not uncommon to hear music made of electronic crackles, noisy multi-phonics, gurgling, hissing, quiet vocalized gibberish, atonal noodling, bowed metal, blowing sounds, post-everything harmony, and a thousand shades of hullabaloo.
You may also see video and dance cohabitating with buzzes, clicks, drones, wooshes, and bleeps in a bizarre galaxy of pitch and spectra!

------------------------------------------------------------Bio

The BSC was formed by composer / improviser Bhob Rainey in August, 2000. Comprised of eight improvisers with a variety of musical backgrounds, the ensemble’s intent has been to confront the challenges of large group improvisation while engaging with contemporary repertoire that is geared towards innovative, electroacoustic sound production.

Though the members of the BSC live in several different cities, Boston remains the ensemble's primary working base. There, the BSC has been a mainstay of concert series that promote both improvised and composed music, often involving collaboration with international artists and with the New England Conservatory (where the BSC has appeared numerous times, especially during the annual SICPP festival). Fruits of these collaborations include a recording for Mode records with composer Christian Wolff as well as a recently released performance from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's EMPAC center that included Pauline Oliveros on accordion.

The BSC's idiosyncratic approach to instrumental performance has made it attractive to composers working in the electroacoustic idiom, especially those involved with non-traditional notation. This interest has led to workshops and performances at both Princeton and Wesleyan Universities, where graduate students in composition scored works for the ensemble. Improvisers have also found much to exploit with the BSC, and fewer events have better illustrated this than Bowerbird's Phoneme Festival 2007, which featured the BSC for three straight evenings, performing as a full ensemble and in smaller groups with local musicians.

In 2010, Bhob Rainey commissioned four writers from different disciplines to contribute to a book on the BSC's improvisational practices. The book, Manual, which received a grant from Loyola University New Orleans' "Year of the Writer" program, was released along with a full-length album at the end of 2011. That same year, musicologist Lou Bunk contributed an article on the BSC to Analytical and Cross-Cultural Studies in World Music from Oxford University Press, adding a wealth of new literature to the subject of contemporary music performance practices.
------------------------------------------------------------Upcoming 2012 Concerts
November 10: Moogist, The Mimi Rabson Trio, 2lousDecember 15: Bolt, Grau Garden, Band/Flower, Andrew Neumann