Harvestworks is pleased to partner with Experimental Intermedia’s December 2024 Series to present Duo Daxophone / Electronics with Kevin Ramsay and Contrabass Clarinet Yuma Uesaka. A night of improvised performance with through composed miniatures as a base utilizing concatenative synthesis, granular synthesis techniques to blend spontaneous improvisation with noise.
DATE: Thursday December 12, 2024
TIME : 7pm
LOCATION: Harvestworks 596 Broadway Suite 602 NY NY 10012
Suggested donation $10
The duo seamlessly blends spontaneous improvisation with noise, crafting a dynamic interplay between organic and electronic soundscapes. Ramsay’s daxophone interacts with his electronic manipulations, creating textural complexities that evolve in real time. Uesaka’s contrabass clarinet adds depth with its resonant low frequencies and extended techniques, enhancing the sonic dialogue. Together, they transform these compositional frameworks into a space of exploration, where noise, texture, and rhythm
converge in an ever-shifting auditory experience.
Bios
Kevin Ramsay is a composer, producer, recording/mixing/mastering/sound engineer, and musician on several critically acclaimed international albums. Brooklyn born and based, Ramsay’s work focuses primarily on theoretical, practical aspects of sound recording/reproduction with unpredictable pairings of acoustic and electronic instruments. Kevin’s current works explore new ways to capture, mix, and process immersive audio for playback, on multichannel sound systems. In addition to serving as the Lead Sound Engineer at Harvestworks Digital Media, he continues to collaborate with a variety of international artists committed to using sound as their main creative medium. Kevin has worked with notable artist such as Michael Byron, Henry Threadgil, Art Jones, Joan Jonas, Pauline Kim- Harris and Conrad Harris (String Noise), Anne Tardos, Danilio Correale, Maria Grand, Prince Harvey, Emilio Vavarella, Malik Ameer Crumpler, Daniel Belquer, Jon-Carlos Evans and many others.
Yuma Uesaka (b. 1991) is a Japanese-American saxophonist, clarinetist, improviser, performer, and composer based in New York City since 2014. Over the last decade, Yuma has contributed to scenes that embrace various experimental and historic practices primarily rooted in jazz, creative improvised music, and new music. His music often explores the fringes of instrumental and compositional techniques to question traditional musical roles and deconstruct assumed binaries of improvised/composed, acoustic/electronic, and music/noise.
Collaboration is central to Yuma’s musical practice. Described as “packed with unexpected details and aglow with shared intuition” by WBGO, Streams documents an intimate duo with pianist Marilyn Crispell. He is also a member of Ocelot, a co-led trio with Cat Toren and Colin Hinton whose eponymous album was listed as Best Jazz March 2021 on Bandcamp. In 2022, he joined Tropos, a collaborative quartet featuring Ledah Finck, Aaron Edgcomb, and Phillip Golub. Both Ocelot and Tropos received Chamber Music America’s Ensemble Forward Grant to produce forthcoming albums under the guidance of Wadada Leo Smith and Darius Jones, respectively.
More recently, Yuma has been developing works for solo woodwinds. These works emphasize the physicality of acoustic instrumental performance, pushing its sonic capabilities to the limit by engaging with circular breathing, vocalizing, and extreme articulations. He also incorporates and amplifies typically suppressed sounds such as saliva and air noise to emulate timbres often found in electronic music.
An active sideperson, Yuma has performed in groups led by Anna Webber, Lesley Mok, and DoYeon Kim, at venues such as Roulette, National Sawdust, and The Jazz Gallery. He can be heard on Pi, American Dreams, and NotTwo Records. As a composer, he has received recognition from the ASCAP Foundation, Metropolis, and Either/Or Ensemble.
About the Series: The Fifty-First Anniversary of EI performances, the Fifty-Sixth Anniversary of the Founding of Experimental Intermedia, the Fifty-Sixth Anniversary of the 224 Centre Street loft, and, notleast, The Thirty-Fourth Annual Festival with no fancy name, Part Two (or B). Katherine Liberovskaya, curator.
Harvestworks was supported by New Music USA’s Organization Fund in 2024-25.