Sunday Sept 8 2019, 4 – 5 pm, Building 10A Nolan Park, Governor’s Island
1 + 1 = 3
A Performance by Ben Manley, Michael Evans, and Peter Zummo.
Sounds will be brought together from far apart, with widely spaced outdoor microphones routed to indoor loudspeakers. Michael Evans and Peter Zummo will add sounds to the ambient sounds of Nolan Park. Outdoor sounds will be directed to Building 10a for re-broadcasting indoors with a quadraphonic loudspeaker array. Ben Manley will mix and sometimes process the live sounds, exploring outdoor time delays and other audible artifacts that are possible with four microphones in a rough square of 100 feet.
photo was taken by the artist in the Anza-Borrego Desert while recording with distantly placed microphones
Ben Manley is a sound engineer and sound experimenter. He has engineered or recorded thousands of concert events at venues including the Whitney Museum, Dia Art Foundation, Roulette, Jack Tilton Gallery, The Guggenheim, Symphony Space, DiMenna Center, and The Stone, for artists as diverse as La Monte Young, Alvin Lucier, Sarah Weaver, Daniel Goode, Connie Crothers, RoseAnne Spradlin, and others. As a solo performer, he presents abstract soundscapes in concerts and installations. New and developing interests include placing microphones at great distances from each other to collapse or re-broadcast outdoor sound.
“Manley has a whimsical imagination.” Kyle Gann, Village Voice
Peter Zummo has been composing since 1967 and has performed his works for solo trombone and ensemble worldwide. His work has been associated with the contemporary classical tradition, in combination with or juxtaposition to the minimal, jazz, world music, and so-called art-rock styles. He has pioneered new approaches to, and uses for, extended instrumental technique on the trombone and also uses the valve trombone, dijeridoo, euphonium, synthesizers and other electronics and his voice in performance. His many compositions for ensemble build on original melody and melodic fragments, and generate interactive situations in which musicians explore the boundaries of common and extended practice, without, however, having to act arbitrarily. Venues for performances of Zummo’s pieces have included the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival (Radical Filtering); City Center, Dance Theater Workshop; Interpretations Series/Merkin Hall (The Time Land Forgot), Lincoln Center Out Of Doors; Lotus Fine Aits (Semiotic Handgun); New Arts Program/Kutztown; Walker Art Center; Danspace; The Joyce Theatre; LaMama (Experimenting With Household Chemicals); New Music America; Experimental Intermedia Foundation (The Trombone That Devoured Cleveland); Boston Opera House (Fast Dream); Jacob’s Pillow; Roulette (Subway Dream Music); Snug Harbor Cultural Center (music for The Passage II); The Jacques Marchais Center for Tibetan Art (Drone World and Apache Fog); St. Peters Church at Citicorp and Deep Listening Space (Default Mode), the American Center in Paris, Seibu in Tokyo, and Logos Foundation in Ghent.
Zummo is a former Harvestworks Artist In Residence, with choreographer Stephanie Skura. His work has been funded by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Jerome Foundation, the Helen W. Buckner Charitable Trust, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, The Phaedrus Foundation, The Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island, including a 1999 Original Work award, and the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship program.
Michael Evans is an improvising drummer/percussionist/ thereminist/composer whose work investigates and embraces the collision of sound and theatrics.While his primary instrument is an unconventionally altered drumset, his work with unusual sound sources includes found objects, homemade instruments, the theremin and various digital and homemade analog electronics.
As an active and versatile New York City musician, he has worked with a wide variety of artists of all sorts including Ron Anderson, Jeff Arnal, Audio Artists, Claire Barratt, Samm Bennett, Jac Berrocal, Carla Bley, Naval Cassidy, James Chance, Martha Colburn, Combustible Edison, Lol Coxhill, EasSide Percussion (ESP), Roger Ely (the Devil’s Chaueffeur), Nicolas Dumit Estevez, Ken Filiano, Fast Forward (Gobo), Chris Ferris, Michael Gira (Angels of Light, Swans), Gisburg, Gilbert Godfried, God Is My Co-Pilot, David Grubbs, Alexander Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten), Susan Hefner, Steve Horowitz’s Code Ensemble, Jarboe (Swans), Pamelia Kurstin, Skip LaPlante’s Music for Homemade Instruments, Zach Layton, Gen Ken Montgomery, Neil Leonard, Aimee Mann, Karen Mantler, Sean G. Meehan, Donald Miller, Eric Mingus, Gordon Monahan, Joe Morris, Michelle Nagai, Anders Nilsson, Evan Parker, Andrea Parkins, Maxime De La Rochefoucauld, William Parker, Yvette Perez’s Birdbrain, Yvette Perez’s Mitra Sumara, Gino Robair, Lary Seven, Elliot Sharp, Moe! Staiano, LaDonna Smith, David Simons, Jesse Stewart, the Talking Band, Toronto Dance Theatre, Stephen Vitiello, Christopher Walken, Jason Willet, Peter Zummo’s Noisy Meditation Band and John Zorn.