This show will also be benefitting the Transgender Law Center! Come out for an exciting night of music, combat, and musical combat!

THE CONTENDERS:

ARMBITE - Philadelphia dawg rock, will bite if necessary.VSHAUNT DOG - Philadelphia scraggle-rock, enough riffs and noodles to melt your face off.

HOTEL BREAKFAST - Good ol’ fashioned Philadelphia guitar music, emo or whatever.VSCATS ON MUSHROOMS - Philadelphia emo/pop-punk, not to be confused with the musical group dogs on acid.BETTER LIVING. - Grungy, 90’s, alt-rock with a little bit of pop-punk, tasteful riffage from NYC.VSCHEAP 52 - If you often fantasize about accidentally getting stuck in a hole that’s being filled with concrete, you’ll love Cheap 52. Midwest-emo pop-rock goodness from Philadelphia.Admission is $10-15. No one turned away for lack of funds. 

The Rotunda presents a Free Admission In-Person concert with Chuck van Zyl on Sunday 9 March 2025 at 7:30pm (doors 7:00pm). Following the performance will be a brief Q & A and CD signing.

After decades on the Electronic Music scene Chuck van Zyl is credited with an impressive range of substantial live appearances, collaborations and album releases. Realized in the specific poetry of the Berlin-School of Kosmische Musik his creations draw on a unique understanding of texture, atmosphere and scale. With its deep-space gateways and brilliant sequencer breakdowns, from the heights of heedless improvisation on down to its quietly consuming fields, his work opens interior thought zones of inspiriting deliberation. Spontaneously composed in the moment, performances by Chuck van Zyl evoke the sense of discovery first heard in early pieces by Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream. Offering a Sci-Fi sense of wonder his recitals are uniquely designed for the informed listener and their journey within. To riders

of this rare aural plain his music is the perfect cerebral soundtrack. Somewhere between its mysterious sense of inwardness and celestial yearning audiences will find room to contemplate the cosmos. Gliding the spaceways, Chuck van Zyl presents pulsing passages of rhythmic flight. Slow chords hold forth, while cycling sequencer notes echo out under lithe keyboard leads. As synthesizer harmonies rise and fall, in passages dark and light, an unexpected beauty emerges. It is in this remarkable realm that we are asked to give in to the sensation of sound and connect with our inner stillness.

Perhaps best known for the past 40+ years as host of Star’s End - one of the world's most successful radio programs of Spacemusic - or as founder of The Gatherings - Philadelphia's premiere concert series of innovative music - Chuck van Zyl has also been producing his own electronic realizations, in collaboration and solo, since the mid-1980s. He has played live at a variety of venues, and issued numerous studio works and concert recordings - all in service to an enduring impulse for expression. The new album Transience represents the diverse sonic terrain he is capable of achieving in the studio - the release of which coincides with the Sunday 9 March 2025 event at The Rotunda.

This event will also include video artists Neil Cippon and Samara Talkin. Generating projections of original, ever-evolving graphics onto the features of The Rotunda staging space, their visual output will align with the improvised live musical expressions conjured by Chuck van Zyl.

The Rotunda presents a Free Admission In-Person concert with Chuck van Zyl on Sunday 9 March 2025 at 7:30pm (doors 7:00pm). Following the performance will be a brief Q & A and CD signing.

Fire Museum Presents: Paolo Angeli:

Sardinian musician Paolo Angeli’s professional career was spent deep in the avant garde, exploring post-rock, experimental opera, and more. His style was influenced heavily by that of guitarist Giovanni Scanu, who was a major proponent of the classic Sardinian canto a chitarra style. The combination of inputs inspired Angeli to create his own instrument: an 18-stringed hybrid of guitar, baritone, violoncello, and drums, adorned with hammers, pedals, and even propellers operating at various speeds. Working closely with craftsman Francesco Concas, Angeli created an instrument that enables an altogether new type of performance combining, referencing, and transcending free jazz, folk noise, and minimal pop.

"Paulo Angeli is a musical conjurer, an artist whose imaginative leaps defy gravity. A composer, ethnomusicologist and instrument builder who draws on his deep knowledge of traditional Sardinian music, he inhabits a timeless zone as a soil-rooted master and brash experimentalist. While suffused with Mediterranean cadences, Angeli’s original pieces encompass flamenco, jazz, Baroque, post-rock and new music. He plays a prepared Sardinian guitar of his own invention, a fantastical 18-string hybrid combining elements of guitar, cello and drums.

A feast for the eyes as well as the ears, Angeli in full flight is an astounding sight, as he bows, strikes, hammers, plucks and strums an instrument with strings going in all directions and foot-pedal-controlled motorized propellers. With sympathetic strings creating shimmering drones, he adjusts tunings on the fly to create exquisitely lapidary, orchestral music using electronic effects in real time (he eschews loopers, creating every sound in the moment).

It’s not surprising that this singular musician has improvised and collaborated with masters such as Pat Metheny, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Zeena Parkins, and Phillip Greenlief. Angeli’s music may be unclassifiable, but it takes no expertise to recognize its strange and extravagant beauty"-SF Jazz

Admission is FREE; donations greatly appreciated. Advance registration recommended. Register HERE

Bowerbird is pleased to present Philadelphia favorites Alash at The Rotunda for a FREE concert. Alash are masters of Tuvan throat singing (xöömei), a remarkable technique for singing multiple pitches at the same time. Masters of traditional Tuvan instruments as well as the art of throat singing, Alash are deeply committed to traditional Tuvan music and culture. At the same time, they are fans of western music. Believing that traditional music must constantly evolve, the musicians subtly infuse their songs with western elements, creating their own unique style that is fresh and new, yet true to their Tuvan musical heritage.

Alash are: Kang-Khüler Saaia: vocals, byzaanchy, chadagan, Ayan-ool Sam: vocals, doshpuluur, igil, xomus, guitar, Bady-Dorzhu Ondar: vocals, igil, doshpuluur, bayan, guitar, Ayan Shirizhik: vocals, kengirge, shoor, shynggyrash, murgu

Bowerbird is pleased to present Nathan Davis in a solo performance at The Rotunda.

Finding narrative in natural processes and acoustic phenomena, Nathan Davis’s solo work elucidates essential characters of instruments and objects. This concert presents his recent work with the bowed psaltery alongside pieces for river stones and amplified computer, supported by and immersive video projections.

“It is beautiful, haunting, immersive. A meditative sound world to live in for a time and think about once you’ve left… In Davis’ hands, the psaltery soars and twangs, pings and croons. Gentle and meditative at one moment, sharp and melancholy the next, evoking fluid shapes and celestial voices moving together through a complex, slowly shifting soundscape. It is both of this world and somehow beyond it.” – Megan Westberg – STRINGS Magazine

Nathan Davis “writes music that deals deftly and poetically with timbre and sonority” (NY Times). His opera/ballet “Hagoromo” was produced by American Opera Projects and premiered at the BAM Next Wave Festival with the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, choreographer David Neumann, and dancers Wendy Whelan, and Jock Soto. Lincoln Center presented the premiere of “Bells”, a site-specific work for ensemble, multi-channel audio, and live broadcast to audience members’ mobile phones.

Nathan received other commissions from GMEM and Ensemble CBarré (Marseille), FringeArts and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Yarn/Wire, Claire Chase, Ekmeles, Miller Theatre, Ojai Music Festival, the Calder Quartet, and Third Coast Percussion, with premieres at Tanglewood, Park Avenue Armory, Guggenheim Museum, and Carnegie Hall. His music has been released on Starkland, Tundra, New Focus, Bridge, Infrequent Seams, and Sono Luminus.

An Aaron Copland Fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, Davis received awards and fellowships from the Camargo Foundation, New Music USA, NYSCA, Meet The Composer, Fromm Foundation, Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, MATA, and ASCAP. He and Phyllis Chen won an NY Innovative Theater Award for their score to Sylvia Milo’s play “The Other Mozart”.

An active percussionist and multi-instrumentalist, Nathan has premiered hundreds of works by luminaries and by emerging composers, and he appeared as a concerto soloist on hammered dulcimer with the Seattle Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, and Nagoya Philharmonic. Davis holds degrees in composition and in percussion from Rice, Yale, and the Rotterdams Conservatorium on a Fulbright Fellowship, and he teaches composition and electronic music at The New School. www.nathandavis.com

Admission is FREE/pay-what-you-wish. Registration is not required but it is appreciated. Please register HERE