Spring Garden Music
Presents
Andrea Pensado electronics, Salem MA
Walter Wright electronics, Lowell MA
Ben Bennett, solo, unamplified objects (percussion), Columbus OH
Bob Falesch, electronics, Ogdensburg, NY
Jack Wright, alto and soprano saxes, Easton PA
Andrea Pensado works with sound as a performer, composer and teacher. She has been using digital media and live interactive musical systems since 1995. She studied in Argentina and Poland. At first, she composed mainly for acoustic instruments. However, she gradually felt more attracted by different sound realms. Today, the abrasive digital noise of her improvisations is far away from her earlier pieces. Harsh dense layers of sounds, often interwoven with her voice, combine hybrid synthesis and sampling techniques to create a highly personal sound language, which reflects an intuitive, emotional and paradoxically also logical approach to music making. She currently lives in the US.
Walter Wright is an improviser on electronics of his fabrication. He is also a interdisciplinary artist, and community arts advocate. Educated as an architect, he has graduate degrees in engineering and interdisciplinary art. He is a co-founder of 119 Gallery in Lowell MA where he produces new music and performance events. One of these is XFest, an annual festival for improvised sound, video and movement. He teaches new media at UMass Lowell. He is a member of Apocalypso, bodydrama, Los Condenados, Loup-Garou, and One-Armed Mist. Most recently he toured with Stephanie Lak and this summer will tour Apocalypso.
Ben Bennett's current music stems mainly from various forms of free-improv: maximalist, reduced, noise, etc. A desire to get the most varied and visceral array of sounds from the simplest instruments has led to an ongoing process of distilling the drumset to its essential sound-maker, the vibrating membrane. Using extended techniques involving breath and friction, as well as the time-honored tradition of hitting things with sticks, he plays an evolving pile of frame drums, pre-tuned drum heads, metal things, tubes, and other objects that can be combined and recombined to get a variety of sounds during a performance. This set-up lends itself greatly towards being crammed in a backpack, strapped to a bike, dragged along the ground, or thrown down the stairs, generally without physical or psycological damage. Ben will be resident at the Spring Garden Music house during Dec. and Jan. 2012-13. For more info on playing partners and recordings: http://milmin.nixsyspaus.org/index.html
Bob Falesch, from Chicago, uses computers in freely improvised performance contexts for which he has designed several software systems. He has composed works for instrumental soloists and vocalists, for small ensembles, electronic music for tape, musicians with live electronics, and for theater and dance. He is the founder/producer and formerly co-host of the weekly two-hour "Classical and Beyond" program on WNUR-FM, has brought to Chicago the music of composer Karlheinz Essl and Hans Tutschku, and founded and organized two performing groups: Ensemble Mobius Midicus and FM Reception, the latter of which was the core of a semi-monthly series of improvised music workshops. As performer, Falesch has appeared at the High Zero(Baltimore), NEMO'96(Chicago), and Big Sur (California) international music festivals, the 2oo2 SEAMUS Conference, and at various other events in the USA. Falesch is documented on CD releases "Co-lage" and "Water Music" with Bob Marsh, solo releases "5xd" and "2k", and "Clang" and "I'd rather be a sparrow" with Jack Wright.
In the late 1970s, following an academic teaching career and radical politics, Jack Wright began directing his energies into playing the saxophone, which he had done in his youth. He is today one of the few musicians that have played improvised music exclusively since that time. Through years of touring in Europe and North America he came to be regarded as the "Johnny Appleseed of Improvised Music", inspiring countless others, and widely recognized as an original and virtuosic saxophonist, continually renewing his approach to music. As one reviewer said, he is an "undergrounder by design", but another reviewer (in the Washington Post) said, "In the rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is king". Now living in Easton PA.
Admission is FREE