The literal meaning of Oto Zono in Japanese is “Sound Garden,” here it is translated into a performance concept cultivating diverse experimental music/sound. New York City is the most linguistically diverse city in the world, a vibrant garden and forest of aural culture. Not to mention the strata of city noise we experience. This incredible multifarious aural experience leads to a rich and complex fusion of musical styles even in experimental music. Alongside music from various cultural backgrounds, many genres flourish, such as contemporary classical, avant-garde jazz, and experimental rock. The city permits layers of music from different traditions and genres to come together to create new sounds.
“Oto Zono becomes a bridge to new musical expressions, welcoming listeners to a realm where sound grows wild.” Curated by Masa Hosojima.
LOCATION: HEART @ 442 Broadway
Tickets: $10 to $20 suggested donation at the door
Date: Saturday November 30, 2024
| 6:00 PM | Doors Open |
| 7:00 PM | Lorin Roser and Friends |
| 7:30 | Keiko Uenishi |
| 8:00 PM | Elliott Sharp and Janene Higgins |
| 8:30 | The Indeterminate Ensemble |
| 9:00 PM | Devin Gray |
Sunday December 1, 2024
| 6:00 PM | Doors Open with sound by MJS |
| 7:00 PM | Michael J Schumacher |
| 7:30 PM | DUO METRIX (Tom Chiu & Dan Joseph) |
| 8:00 PM | David Seidel |
| 8:30 PM | HxH – Lester St. Louis + Chris Williams |
| 9:00 PM | Mo-system ensemble |
Video Program throughout the evening
| Lorin Roser and Nina Kuo |
| Kenji Kojima |
| Michael J. Schumacher |
| Janene Higgins |
About the Artists
Dave Seidel is a New Englander, composing and performing electroacoustic music with an emphasis on long tones and microtonal sonorities. For Oto-Zono, he will perform a version of Catherine Christer Hennix’s classic piece The Elecric Harpsichord with his my own interpretation. Based on the existing documentation, He will use the same scale (Multani), tuned according to Alain Danielou’s “Ragas of Northern Indian Music”. Hennix performed the piece using a retuned electronic keyboard; he will be using Meng Qi’s Wingie2 resonator (a digital electronic instrument) with additional processing.
Devin Gray is not only a great solo percussionist but strives for quality and sincerity in his collaborative works, Gray’s exciting energy has compelled him towards many different musical directions. Trained at Curtis institute of Music and Manhattan school of music. Devin currently lives, performs and composes in Brooklyn, NY and in Berlin, Germany.
DUO METRIX (Tom Chiu and Dan Joseph) Synth-pop duo comprising Tom Chiu, Yale and Juilliard graduate, on violin/electronics and Dan Joseph, Cal Art and Mills college graduate, on synthesizer/electronics, specializing in recontexualizing riffs and hooks from a variety of genres, spanning the popular to the experimental. From Kraftwerk to Thelonious Monk, from Stereolab to Deee-Lite, Chiu & Joseph will create energetic mashups and weave extended jams that promise to be trippy and surprising fun.
HxH (Lester St. Louis and Chris Williams) utilizes a mix of trumpet, cello and electronics to build worlds traversing through acoustic sound, grainy textures, expansive pools of sounds, breaks, cuts and beats. The approach is conceived as an expansiveness that holds a personal intimacy. HxH wants to bring the listeners in, tune them to the experience and take a long trip. HxH functions as a vehicle to bring together the mass of references and influences Chris and Lester share and create ways to crystalize those ideas in real, expanded time to an experience over minutes or hours.
Michael J Schumacher, Juilliard graduate, not only is an advocator of sound arts, having been a director of a gallery, Diapason, dedicated to sound art since 1997 to 2011, but he is an inventor of the Portable Multi-Channel Sound System is a unique musical instrument designed specifically for his spatialized compositions. It sets up in less than an hour and can be carried in a single suitcase, yet provides up to 12 fully discrete audio channels, complete with speakers, amplifiers and sound sources. Building on the pioneering work of composers such as Alvin Lucier and Maryanne Amacher, presentations explore the relationship between musical form and architectural space and how this relationship can inform listening. Combining installation and performance, algorithmic composition and improvisation, this goes beyond acoustics to the way people inhabit and use spaces, creating paradigms for listening and formal expectations.
Keiko Uenishi is a sound art-i-vist, socio/environ composer, and a core member of SHARE.nyc since 2001.Uenishi is known for her works formed through experiments in restructuring and analyzing one’s relationship through aural memory/perceptions in sociological, cultural, and/or psychological contexts.
Elliott Sharp and Janene Higgins will present Suspension of Disbelief, a structure for improvisation using video and sound. In their work together, the images provide a visual counterpoint to the music. Foreground and background are continuously shifting as both sound and visuals emerge from fixed elements and then expand with improvised extrapolations. The projections may solidify the abstract but may also elevate that which is obvious to another level of meaning, never literal, never explaining, but creating an immediate visceral response. A graphic designer by profession, Janene Higgins uses original footage, hand-painted textures, and digital processing in her projection design which she may then manipulate live, using various software operations.
The Indeterminate Ensemble is an aleatoric curation of improvisers, instrumentalists & sound artists from an ever evolving New York-based collective specializing in free form large group improvisation. Sonically, pieces explore the emergence of form & interactions within the intersectionality of multi-faceted interplay between diversely contrasting musical genres & instrumentation; from computer music to electro-acoustic to tonal music – sound, time, timber, texture, instrumentation, personnel & ensemble size all are determined by chance. Longtime members include organelle-ist Trey Cregan, multi-instrumentalists Thom Miritello, Jonathon Grover, electroacoustic luthier Tim Pickerell, synthesists John Franco, Laura Feathers, guitarist Kevin Ramsay, sound-painter Sam Day Harmet, thereminist/projectionist Carlos Johns-Davila, shaman Theo Woodward, PYRON the arsonist, violist Sara Wentworth among many others.
Lorin Roser and Friends, Lorin is an architect from Princeton and UCLA, is a composer of code driven mathematical constructs, simultaneous 3D objects and stochastic melodies with today’s fast computers allowing conductor like manipulation of the equations’ polynomials. As we shoot into the techno future with the haptic feedback of traditional instruments, add the chaos of a granular experiment in sound. Steel strings against the fingers, vibrating wood; all channeled through the digital interstices of AI control, a hybrid hum. Improv tempered by years of interaction; an instinctual community of sound influenced by Bo Diddley and Duchamp. Cross cultural experiments with world and Asian instruments pollinated with electronics in diverse venues including UK Boiler Room.
Mohamed Kubbara is an Egyptian composer, music researcher, percussionist & bandleader based in New York city specializing in large ensemble improvisation with a focus on the intersectionality & simultaneity of diverse electronic, electro-acoustic & acoustic music practices, instrumentation, ensemble sizes & genres. Works incorporating maxmsp/laptop-guided improvisation aim to explore directly questions about indeterminacy, aleatoric processes, emotive potency, improvisational challenges & freedom.
Nina Kuo is a Chinese American multimedia artist, creator of surreal 3D animations with partner Lorin, shown in NYC Museums and international art fairs. renowned for her activism as well as her art. She traveled across Asia many times. This formative experience led her to a profound connection to nature that is Kuo’s driving force for Making.
Kenji Kojima explores the link between seeing and hearing through computer art. He views binary data—simple on-off electrical states—as a fundamental, pure art material, capable of transforming into sensory experiences, though its artistic, rather than commercial, value is his focus.
About the Curator
Masa Hosojima, trained in music composition, is an artist exploring, composing, making objects, curating, and conducting interviews about visual and auditory culture and aesthetic practices. He has published a catalog of his curated exhibition, “Women On Making.” and translated books about Jewish refugees escaping to Japan during World War II.
“From The Viewpoint of “Making”
4/7/21-4/30/21 at WhiteBox NYC
“Women On Making”
10/3/22-10/23/22 at WhiteBox LE
Interview Project since 2015
https://masadon.wixsite.com/interviewsbymasa
https://www.facebook.com/masa.hosojima.9
Interviewed by On Kawara’s one million years foundation
About Michael J. Schumacher