OPENSOUND: improvised and experimental music

Opensound, a monthly concert series of improvised and experimental music

** Next Concert:  This Saturday, November 16, 2013
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duo:Michael Rosenstein, electronicsVic Rawlings, cello, electronics

Triode analog synthesizers & electronics
Stephen BonnerJesse
CousineauPeter Gumaskas

solo:Howard Stelzer, tapes, electronics

Gay Shapes Circuit-bent electronics, samples, and analog synthesizers

Joe Bastardo
Mickey O’Hara
Abdul Sherzai

Concert curated by Michael Rosenstein
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Saturday, Nov. 16, 2013
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 at 7:45.
Music at around 8:00 p.m.
$8 admission
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Opensound is a Greater Boston concert series featuring improvisers and interpreters of avant-garde, experimental, acoustic, and electro- acoustic music. We program monthly concerts featuring local and touring musicians, sound artists, and the un-categorize-able. Hailing from disparate backgrounds, styles, and genres, our musicians, dancers, video and performance artists, form a vibrant community that presents unique events in Somerville, Massachusetts.
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Some Bios
Peter Gumaskas is a Boston based musician who performs using his own home built modular synthesizer.For the last four years he is usually seen playing experimental improvised electronics with Stephen Bonner and Jesse Cousineau as Triode. Before forming Triode, he played in Message Force Multipliers with Tom Piracini. In his solo work, Peter tends toward more minimal and drone soundscapes. Peter has releases with Triode out on YDLMIER and Sticky Shed.

Vic Rawlings (Boston- amplifier/ prepared cello, speaker elements/ exposed circuitry) employs a still and unstable sound language that traverses from the visceral excess of the Laurence Cook Disaster Unit to the extreme austerity of undr quartet.  He has designed and built 2 separate instruments to realize this aesthetic, including extensive and invasive cello preparations- some directly based on obscure baroque instrumentation.  The amplified cello is used as a resonant wooden microphone.  He also continually develops an electronic instrument from the exposed circuit boards of sound processors, effectively producing an analog synthesizer with a highly unstable interface.  This electronic instrument is realized by a flexible array of exposed speaker elements, chosen for their often unpredictable and idiosyncratic acoustic qualities.  His solo performances deny conventional assumptions about the use of time and refuse alliance with dominant trends in improvised music.

Michael Rosenstein spent many years of careful listening, writing about music, and supporting the Boston music scene, before diving in to the practice of improvisation. If there is a single word that is central to his music, it is "resonance." There is the resonance of amplified strings, metal, exposed circuit boards, and everyday objects; the resonance between acoustic/mechanical sounds and timbres and those which are purely electronic; and the resonance of unstable and mutable textures and frequencies created by musicians playing together.

Howard Stelzer (born 1974, in Belle Harbor, New York) is a composer of electronic music, whose work is made primarily from sounds generated by cassette tapes and tape players. In 1997, he founded the independent record label Intransitive Recordings, through which he published CDs and records of experimental music. After 2004, Stelzer performed less frequently, and concentrated instead on solo compositions and studio collaborations. One of these was Exactly What You Lost, a long-distance collaboration with New Zealand artist Stephen Clover, aka Seht. Stelzer's other collaborators have included Frans de Waard (Kapotte Muziek), Jazzkammer, Emil Beaulieau, Giuseppe Ielasi, Peter Wright, Antony Milton, nmperign, The Cherry Point, Jason Lescalleet, Joseph Hammer, Will Guthrie, Otomo Yoshihide, Jessica Rylan, Sawako, Ben Hall, AMK, John Olson (of Wolf Eyes), Skeletons Out (a duo with turntable and harmonium player Jay Sullivan) and Ouest (a trio with Sullivan and Brendan Murray).
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Upcoming Concerts
Saturday, December 14, 2013: Natalie Spehar, cello + electronics | Michael Dobiel, electronics, string bass (and friends) | trio: MJ Patchett, saxophone, Eve Boltax, viola, Caroline Park, electronics | solo: Peter Gumaskas, homemade modular synthesizer | Concert curated by Matt Samolis

Tuesday, December 17, 2013: Ensemble Tzara: horn, cello, synthesizer: playing new works by Robert Ashley, Timothy McCormack and David Sonton | Dave Gross, saxophone | David Michael Curry, viola & electronic accessories

Saturday, January 18, 2014: Ken Ueno, voice and Frances-Marie Uitti, cello |More TBA

Saturday, February 8, 2014: Orlando Cela, flute, plays Sciarrino and more | Bats from Pogo: Walter Wright, electronics, Andrea Pensado, voice, laptop | more TBA

Saturday, April , 2014: Ben Hersey, more TBA | curated by Arkm Foam