music

Archived Posts from this Category

Jack Rose

Posted by ben on 07 Dec 2009 | Tagged as: music, r.i.p., rock!

Rest in peace, Jack Rose.

Horse of A Different Color (anyone can ride)

Posted by hillssnyder on 05 Sep 2009 | Tagged as: adventure day, art paparazzi, music, opportunities, responses/reviews

Gordon - In & Outlaws

6:39 am, September 5, 2009.

The In and Outlaws CD release party, Casbeers at The Church, San Antonio, TX.

“…a large vacant area.”

Not at all.

My favorite cow music this side of Jon Wayne.

Brad, the drummer, has a serious demeanor to say the least. Not that different than the visage of Charlie Manson, who appeared on TV a few hours earlier in the bar downstairs where I was hanging out with the chilled out blues of Los Mescaleros and intermittently watching the Cowboys play the Vikings in the last pre-season game of the year. It’s a contest in which a few players who may still have the chance of gaining a roster spot are said to be “on the bubble.” Choice quote, from one of the play by play guys, in reference to Patrick Watkins, who’s putting out an extraordinary performance: “He’s like Glinda The Good Witch. That’s how far inside the bubble he is.” Odie, of the Mescaleros, sitting down behind his stand up bass, has a tambourine strapped head side down to his boot. This makes me smile. I chill a little further in.

Later on, I join the standing room only congregation gathered for The In and Outlaws. The shadow of Lloyd’s bass head on a fluted column, which stands behind him, truncated, too white, supporting nothing. Burton, on pedal steel, wearing an Eleven Hundred Springs gimme cap with a high foam front. Ragged mic hole in Brad’s kick drum. Long red rag hanging from Matthew’s left pocket, has a Fifties Full Service look. Frayed hems of Gordon’s jeans splay around his too flat used car salesman shoes. These are the details that keep me alive between songs.

Downstairs, fetching beers, I hear Mike say, “In Utah they think 88 degrees is hot.” Justin says, “In Berlin they think 87 is.”

Brad - the cereal killer

Guys, thanks for playing the unicorn number for the encore. Matthew, I love the middle school lead you do on this song. Brad, rumor has it you don’t care too much for playing it, but I like it. You write most of the material — please come up with one titled Guernsey Girl. I know Gordon can sing it.

(photos by Justin Parr)

Video vs. Video or, Silent Stargazing

Posted by aaron on 17 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: adventure day, art paparazzi, celebrity sightings, music, party photos, photography, rock!, video/film

No audio. Play simultaneously for best effect.

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman.

Brooklyn’s Stars Like Fleas (featuring SA-town homeboy Ryan Sawyer on drums and lead beard) play a PopRally event at MOMA on June 8, 2009 – shot and edited by Austin Rhodes.

[hattips to albert flores & cosmo inserra for the first and ryan sawyer for the second.]

San Antonio’s Outrage! or, The Great Rock’N'Roll Poster Swindle

Posted by aaron on 15 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: coverage, design, music, rock!, typography

<i>An apparently forged Sex Pistols flyer fools Christie's authenticators and ignites controversy amongst internet design nerds.</i>

An apparently forged Sex Pistols flyer fools Christie’s authenticators and ignites controversy amongst internet rock’n'roll/design geeks.

As part of an ongoing project archiving San Antonio music flyers on my Facebook page, I have been frequenting the website Gigposters.com to comb through its San Antonio-related contributions. Early last week, I came across a singular new addition – the flyer pictured above, purporting to be from the Sex Pistols notorious Randy’s Rodeo concert in San Antonio on January 8, 1978. (Headline from the next day’s Express-News: “Pistols Win S.A. Shootout.”) The third date on the Sex Pistols short-lived American tour, it has gone down in punk rock lore as the concert at which Sid Vicious, after being repeatedly hit in the face with airborne full cans of beer, retaliated against the offending audience member’s head (and possibly innocent bystanders as well) using his bass guitar.

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CAM 1st THURSDAY

Posted by thomas-cummins on 14 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: music, upcoming events

Thu, Jul 2
6:00 pm to 10:00 pm


Texas Draws 1 (Exhibit)

Southwest School of Art & Craft
Alice Leora Briggs, Lubbock Susan Davidoff, El Paso Trenton Doyle Hancock, Houston Benito Huerta, Arlington Jules Buck Jones, Austin Jayne Lawrence, San Antonio Mona Marshall, Austin Katie Pell, San Antonio Jimmy Peña, Corpus Christi Regis Shephard, San Antonio Bonnie Young, Houston Christine Olejniczak, Marfa Eric Zimmerman, Austin
Thursday, Jul 2, 5:30 pm 7:30 pm
Sunday, Sep 6


Christine Olejniczak with Electric Dirt (Performance)

Southwest School of Art & Craft
Christine Olejniczak, Marfa
Thursday, Jul 2, 5:30 pm 7:30 pm


Gregory Alan Johnson – Solo Exhibition (Exhibit)

Southwest School of Art & Craft
Greg Johnson
Thursday, Jul 2, 5:30 pm 7:30 pm
Saturday, Sep 5


Eden’s Room (Exhibit)

Fiber Artspace
Laurel Gibson


Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm
Sunday, Aug 16, 2:00 pm 3:00 pm

Saturday, Aug 29


Paper, Canvas, Paint (Exhibit)

El Sol Studios
Cheryl Finfrock


Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm
Friday, Jul 3, 6:00 pm 11:00 pm

Friday, Jul 31


Gi Normous Prints (Exhibit)

StoneMetal Press Print Center
Hebron Chism Paul Karam Justin Parr Katie Pell Kathleen Baker Pittman Alex Rubio Crystal Rudis Gary Sweeney Robert Tatum Luis Valderas Bernice Williams
Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm
Friday, Jul 31


Con Ajo Y Baroque (Exhibit)

UTSA Satellite Space
Julia Barbosa Landois Beto Gonzales


Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm
Friday, Jul 3, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm

Sunday, Jul 26


Journey of the Opportunist (Exhibit)

Stella Haus Art Space
Mark Walley Angela Guerra


Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm
Friday, Jul 3, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm

Friday, Jul 3


Members and Friends “Hot Off the Press” (Exhibit)

StoneMetal Press Print Center
Carol Hayman John Semple Carlos Chavez Le Green Kristian Johnson Michiels Jim Kane Joe Lopez Terry Ybanez Paul Gentry


Saturday, Jun 27, 7:00 pm 9:00 pm
Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm

Friday, Jul 31


Joan Grona Gallery CAM (Exhibit)

Joan Grona Gallery
Derrick D. Durham Paula Cox Jason Jay Stevens
Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm
Saturday, Aug 8


Soomin Jung: Coexistence (Exhibit)

Three Walls
Soomin Jung


Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 8:00 pm
Friday, Jul 3, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm

Friday, Jul 31


and …. (Exhibit)

Blue Star Contemporary Art Center
Kevin Patrick McClellan
Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm
Saturday, Jul 25


Graham Toms: Live Exhibition and Performance (Exhibit)

Jump-Start Performance Co.
Graham Toms
Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 8:00 pm
Tuesday, Jul 28


Lonely Are the Brave (Exhibit)

Blue Star Contemporary Art Center
Kelly O’Connor Justin Boyd Chris Sauter Jesse Amado
Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm
Saturday, Aug 15


Experimenting Sound (Exhibit)

JUSTICEWORKS studio
Jessica Garcia Cody Willams Gary Wise Joseph Rains
Thursday, Jul 2, 6:00 pm 10:00 pm
Friday, Jul 3


Exhibition Talk: In Their Own Right: Contemporary Women Printmakers (Educational event)

The McNay Art Museum
Helen Frankenthaler Isca Greenfield-Sanders
Thursday, Jul 2, 6:30 pm 8:30 pm


Resonance: A study of Tensegrity in Our Connective Tissue (Exhibit)

Suzanne Wright Crain Studios, LLC
Suzanne Wright Crain


Thursday, Jul 2, 7:00 pm 9:00 pm
Friday, Jul 3, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm
Friday, Sep 4, 6:00 pm 9:00 pm

Saturday, Sep 5


EXPERIMENTING SOUND

Host:
JUSTICEWORKS studio
Type:
Network:
Global
Start Time:
Thursday, July 2, 2009 at 6:00pm
End Time:
Friday, July 3, 2009 at 10:00pm
Location:
113-1 blue star
City/Town:
San Antonio, TX
Email:

Illusions of Minimalism

Posted by ben on 01 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: architecture, image & sound, music, responses/reviews, sound art

In a post at my new blog on Glasstire, I discuss the relationship between Rudolf de Crignis (currently showing at Lawrence Markey) and La Monte Young, as a way of exploring uses of the term minimalist. This comparison could be extended to some of the other minimalist composers, such as Phill Niblock, who activate architectural space through dense layers of sound at high volume.

But it’s worth noting that while the perceived variation induced by the Dream House’s standing waves calls attention to the physical space, the effect of these relatively small de Crignis paintings is to absorb the viewer in an alternate, purely visual space. It is perhaps the same effect Francis Bacon aims at when : “You would love to be able in a portrait to make a Sahara of the appearance — to make it so like, yet seeming to have the distances of the Sahara.” So while de Crignis’ paintings play with visual perception in a way that is analogous to Young’s or Niblock’s effect on the ear, they are perhaps more disorienting because they absorb the viewer in layers of paint, supplanting for a moment the physical space around them. It is interesting, though, that de Crignis is sometimes compared to James Turrell, an artist who does work with light sources and architecture in a way that is more obviously akin to Marian Zazeela’s light installation in the Dream House.

artpace Potluck: Anne Collier, Charlie Morris, Silke Otto-Knapp

Posted by thomas-cummins on 09 May 2009 | Tagged as: music, upcoming events

Thu, Jun 4
6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

Potluck: Anne Collier, Charlie Morris, and Silke Otto-Knapp
Come greet our 09.2 International Artists-in-Residence with a smile. Please bring any dish that serves twelve and RSVP by June 3.

1st Friday

Posted by thomas-cummins on 30 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: music, upcoming events

Fri, Apr 3
5:00 pm to 10:00 pm
From the WPA to the SA [Artist] PA
San Angel Folk Art
Opens Friday, Apr. 3, 5-7 pm
Through April 30.
Check out work by local artists, Jon Karl Dawson, Carolina Flores, Alex de Leon, and Karl Frey (shown).
Mira Hnatyshyn: Lineage
Cactus Bra Gallery
Opens Friday, Apr. 3, 6-9 pm
Through April 17.
Cactus Bra presents Hnatyshyn’s “room-sized exhibit of painting and sculpture that places historical icons from the English aristocracy in a contemporary context – the White Cube. Loosely based on the naïve style of anonymous court painters, Mira’s installation challenges the viewers’ knowledge of history and art with a contemporary comment on violence and gender roles.”

Jeffrey Gibson: Totems
Sala Diaz
Reception Friday, Apr. 3, 9 pm
Through April 12.
Sala Diaz presents Gibson’s totemic sculptures made of found and altered objects from local thrift and dollar stores in San Antonio.

Anne Ferrer: Country Wave
Blue Star Contemporary Art Center
Opens Thursday, Apr. 2, 6-8 pm
Through May 23.
Parisian artist and temporary San Antonio resident Anne Ferrer, who exhibited at Cactus Bra last November, has transformed the middle gallery into a “country furnished home being invaded by a wave of pink frosting.” On view in the other galleries are works by Danville Chadbourne, Joel Carreiro, and Roberta Cohen.
Danville Chadbourne: RETROSPECTIVE 1, ARTIST’S COLLECTION
Blue Star Contemporary Art Center
Opens Thursday, Apr. 2, 6-8 pm
Through June 14.
Check out thirty large-scale paintings and sculptures by San Antonio artist Danville Chadbourne. Don’t miss the other galleries, which are featuring work by Anne Ferrer, Joel Carreiro, and Roberta Cohen.
Nivia Gonzalez
Galeria Ortiz Contemporary
Opens Thursday, Apr. 2, 6-8 pm
Through May 2.
Richard Kelly Deaver & Nicholas Hay: WAR
JusticeWorks Studio
Opens Thursday, Apr. 2, 6-9 pm; closes Friday, Apr. 3, 6-9 pm
Through April 3.
Kimberly Aubuchon: Private Idaho
Three Walls
Opens Thursday, Apr. 2, 6-8 & Friday, Apr. 3, 6-9 pm
Through April 24.
In Aubuchon’s world, Private Idaho is a place where “real” potatoes dwell. Check out her homage to Mr. Potato Head and his “below average” family.
Willie Sanchez: Penance
UTSA Satellite Space
Opens Thursday, Apr. 2 & Friday, Apr. 3, 6-9 pm
Through April 19.
UTSA presents Willie Sanchez’s MFA Thesis Exhibition

San Antonio Beauty College, 02.21.09

Posted by aaron on 24 Feb 2009 | Tagged as: art paparazzi, music, sound art

jason kahn performs at the former san antonio beauty college, saturday feb. 21st.

jason kahn performs at the former san antonio beauty college, saturday feb. 21st.

this is what the stage looked like post-show.

the stage, post-show.

apologies to annette krebs and chris cogburn, who were too blurry to post.
(photos: a famous cell phone photographer; lamps by saavedra + coltrane.)

Jason Kahn’s “San Antonio Beauty College”

Posted by ben on 19 Feb 2009 | Tagged as: architecture, music, public art, sound art

Posting has been light this week because I’ve been helping Jason Kahn set up his sound installation downtown on E Travis St (which is officially opening this Saturday). Kahn, a Zürich-based artist, has been working with sound as a material for years, in both performance and installation contexts. The idea is to activate existing spaces in a way that reveals unnoticed qualities, architecturally, environmentally, and perhaps socially.

In some senses “San Antonio Beauty College” has a strong relationship to Max Neuhaus’ Times Square piece; it is unmarked, and mostly invisible (if you look closely you’ll spot some small speakers); it uses abstract textural sounds that change as you move around them; its significance in the environment is meant to shift as other sounds move along the street. But socially, it feels very different. Times Square could hardly be further from this little piece of Travis street in terms of the amount of foot traffic and the socio-economic makeup of that traffic.

The block of Travis where he is installing this piece (titled “San Antonio Beauty College”) is between Broadway and Alamo. Although it is near the Express-News building, and around the corner from the popular Twin Sisters café, we’ve noticed that no one who has a home seems to walk on this little stretch of Travis Street. The space has become a kind of social eddy, as the employed flow down Pecan or Houston Streets.

As I’ve been publicizing this installation, which is meant to be experienced from the sidewalk in front of the building, I wonder how the existence of the piece will impact the social space it inhabits. Will the people who ordinarily walk down this street notice the subtle sonic textures that Kahn has engineered to be concealed and revealed as the city sounds ebb and flow? Will it attract visitors from nearby businesses, or just the occasional art observer? I’ve often wondered if we’re too limited in the ways that we think about using public art: a monument here, a mural there. Have we overlooked the power of small, almost unnoticeable environmental responses to shift the social landscape? I don’t expect this installation to have much impact in that regard, but if you see me sitting in Twin Sisters watching the sidewalk all day, you’ll know what I’m doing.

By the way, check our event listings to the right for more information on Jason Kahn’s performance this Saturday.

Image vs. Image or, I’ve Got Levitation

Posted by aaron on 28 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: music, performance art, r.i.p., vs.

I hope Ben doesn’t mind me borrowing his trademark vs. trope, but I couldn’t resist posting these images. Levitate over them for deeper enlightenment.

doncherry

Pocket trumpet master and frequent Ornette Coleman collaborator Don Cherry.

doughenning

Magical TM devotee and 1970's teevee phenomenon Doug Henning.

henningworld

Bonus levitation.

U!S!A! U!S!A! U!S!A!

Posted by aaron on 20 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: celebrations, image & sound, music, politics

Performed by Los Dorados del Norte.  Music & lyrics by… ?

“Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness”

Posted by ben on 19 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: music, r.i.p.

Calma con La Algebra of Life: Remembering Manny Castillo

Posted by aaron on 14 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: arts organizations, essays, in yo face, music, mustaches, possibilities, public art, r.i.p., rock!, wordy

Unknown artist's rendering of Manny Castillo and Ram

Manuel Diosdado Castillo, Jr. tragically succumbed to lung cancer on January 6th at the age of 40 – a matter of weeks after receiving the diagnosis – leaving behind a remarkable legacy of music, public artwork, of pride in and a powerful sense of responsibility for his beloved Westside San Antonio barrio. Manny was, for nearly twenty years, a singular presence in both the underground music scene in San Antonio (whose spiritual epicenter is marked by the centuries-old live oak tree at his favorite local dive/venue: the legendary, much-missed Tacoland) and in the non-profit community organization he built, originally as an offshoot project of Patti & Rod Radle’s Inner City Development, but which quickly blossomed into San Anto Cultural Arts.

My friendship with Manny goes back to a spontaneous garage rehearsal circa 1991. Marshall Gause and I were fruitlessly waiting at my folks’ house for some now forgotten drummer we wanted to try out, as our last band line-up hadn’t worked out. Marshall suggested trying to get in touch with this guy he had played a couple of times with the year before – they had enjoyed it, but it didn’t go anywhere as Manny soon left for New Orleans to follow Academic Pursuits. Marshall had a hunch he might be back in town now. After a few calls, the hunch was confirmed and we had a drummer on the way.

That first rehearsal (guitar, bass, & drums – singer Terry Brown had to work) immediately revealed an undeniable chemistry between Marshall’s hippy-punk musicologist guitar explorations, my intuitive but rudimentary bass playing (which, lucky for me, sounded better than it had much right to thanks to my chronic music obsession, a plethora of interesting audio exposure at a job selling used records, and especially Marshall’s unpretentious ability to cover for my lack of formal musical knowledge,) and Manny’s balls-out, hit-the-drums-hard-enough-to-break-at-least-one-head-per-session-but-always-dead-on-the-beat style, using complex rhythms even formally trained jazz drummers wouldn’t have the nerve to try. He was, and remains, one of the fastest, most precise drummers I have ever seen (even faster when he was nervous,) augmented by the physical strength to just bash the hell out of his drums – a steamroller cross between John Bonham, Neil Peart, Mitch Mitchell, George Hurley and Elvin Jones. All on a minimal and creaky drum set usually somehow held together with yarn.

That afternoon we quickly bonded musically over our mutual love for Rush, The Plugz, Esteban Jordan, Thin Lizzy and especially The Minutemen. Spontaneous jams we engaged in that day became the basis for numerous songs later fully developed and forming the initial base of our oeuvre (some still included in the set list at the time the band imploded.) In short order, we brought Terry back into the circle, sat around with some Lone Stars or whatever was cheap that day and soon agreed to call ourself El Santo, in homage to the legendary Mexican lucha enmascarada/film star who never lost a match.

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How to Say Goodbye

Posted by ben on 13 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: art paparazzi, music, party photos, public art, r.i.p.

A few photos of Manny Castillo’s casket being painted by his friends and colleagues in the local art community:

Manny Castillo Coffin

Manny Castillo Coffin

Manny Castillo Coffin

Manny Castillo Coffin

Manny Castillo Coffin

See also: San Antonio Express-News blog post with a number of murals facilitated by Castillo’s San Anto Cultural Arts; the Express-News obit; the San Antonio Current’s just before his death.

“The Paul Rand of Metal”

Posted by ben on 12 Jan 2009 | Tagged as: design, music

Death Messiah logo by Christophe Szpajdel

Death Messiah logo by Christophe Szpajdel

I was tipped off (by Design Observer) to an interview in Vice magazine with Christophe Szpajdel, who Vice calls “The Dark Lord of Logos” (but who Design Observer has dubbed “The Paul Rand of Metal”) — the designer responsible for the logos of over 7,000 metal bands.

Score vs. Score or, Instructions for Improvisation

Posted by ben on 07 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: image & sound, music, vs.

It can be performed by any kind and number of instruments or voices. Only one instrument must play ad libitum the series with the last three or four notes (right) at random, but returning always to A flat. All other instruments and voices can be well tuned or fluctuate within a very small interval above and below the notes frequency of the instrument playing ad libitum: they can’t play more than five notes of the series for each performance.

— Roberto Donnini, instructions for Tunedless, 1977

The first drafter draws a not straight vertical line as long as possible. The second drafter draws a line next to the first one, trying to copy it. The third drafter does the same, as do as many drafters as possible. Then the first drafter, followed by the others, copies the last line drawn until both ends of the wall are reached.

— Sol LeWitt, instructions for Wall Drawing #123: Copied Lines, 1972

[Cross-posted at Scattered Work]

Infinity Asylum

Posted by ben on 11 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: image & sound, music, performance art, sound art

I’m honored to be able to offer a recording of Crevice’s Infinity Asylum performance on this blog. This is a truly beautiful recording by one of the few groups in Texas to successfully bridge the music and art worlds. Infinity Asylum was part of an installation / performance at the Friedrich Building, a 500,000 square foot space on the east side of San Antonio, originally built to produce air conditioners. Tucked away in little nooks and crannies of the building were a number of installations (artists included: Dwayne Bohuslav, Christopher Biasiolli, Nate Cassie, Rae Culbert, and Jack Robbins). As visitors explored the space, Crevice played this “peaceful, hypnotic, cyclical music” (to quote from the original press release), which fell in and out of earshot. Many of the vocals you hear in the recording are samples of people talking about the installations, thus folding audience reaction into the performance. It was recorded on July 11, 2003.

Performers on this recording: Jeff DeCuir (guitar, processors), Jessica Barnett DeCuir (harmonica, percussion), John Navarro (theremin, processors), Bryan Stanchak (synth, bass), Stephen Reyna (guitar/e-bow).

Download Infinity Asylum through SendSpace »

The New Textament

Posted by michelle on 03 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: music


A pleasant way to start the week with a video that treats text as a visual equivalent.

Bill Fontana on the Riverwalk

Posted by ben on 01 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: acquisitions, arts organizations, music, public art, sound art

Now that the first batch of artists commissioned for the Riverwalk expansion has been announced (there will be others as the expansion proceeds), I wanted to highlight the most historically significant artist selected, and the most interesting one to me personally: Bill Fontana. I missed the reception for him at Artpace earlier this week, so if you attended feel free to let us know how it went in comments.

Fontana studied at the New School for Social Research in New York, graduating with a B.A. in 1970. From 1972 to 1978 Fontana showed several sound sculptures in galleries, but it was in 1976 that he began producing the large-scale sound installations for which he has become known. Fontana’s work follows directly from the thought of John Cage, who was the most prominent inspiration for the early sound artists:

I began in the late 60s, when I was a student in New York and had taken a John Cage course at the New School, and was really beginning to experiment a lot with sound, found sound, recording sound and playback. The very first sound installation I made was in the very early seventies called Sound Sculpture With Resonators, in which I took some resonant objects, like large bottles that someone had made wine in, and placed them on the roof of a building in New York and put little acoustic microphones in them, and transmitted the sounds to the gallery space below. So you’d hear the object which became this very musical, filtered noise of the city. That’s probably one of the earliest works for me. [source]

In his work, Fontana chose to focus on the idea of musicality being a state of mind more than a characteristic of the sounds themselves:

I began my artistic career as a composer. What really began to interest me was not so much the music that I could write, but the states of mind I would experience when I felt musical enough to compose. In those moments, when I became musical, all the sounds around me also became musical. [source]

One thing that has distinguished Fontana from other sound artists (such as Max Neuhaus) is that throughout his career he has kept working with ambient sound, and never moved into electronically generated sound. He has often worked with types of sound displacement in installations such as “Sound Island” (1994) which allowed people at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to hear ambient sounds from the coast of Normandy and from various locations in the city. This work, which is in a sense extremely minimal, has a number of historical and philosophical implications.

In “Harmonic Bridge,” on the other hand, Fontana deals not simply with displacement of sound, but with revealing the relationship between environmental sounds and the acoustic properties of objects within those environments. By applying microphones the London Millenium Foot Bridge, and amplifying sounds “hidden” in the bridge, Fontana reveals a “music” created from wind, foot traffic, etc., engaging with the resonant structure of the bridge itself. As with “Sound Island,” this piece has a number of social implications lurking just below the surface. A recording of “Harmonic Bridge” can be heard below.

The Sun Also Rises

Posted by ben on 25 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: adventure day, music, renegade performances, sound art

The Sun Also Rises

Steve Roden posts on a gig canceled, then rescheduled with only the Sun as audience. Be sure to listen to the audio linked at the bottom of his post.

Tonight in San Antonio

Posted by ben on 11 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: announcements, music, performance art, upcoming events

Since we’ve been incredibly lazy with the upcoming events list lately (please don’t hate us), I thought I’d highlight a couple of events happening tonight that should be fun: the Hometown Artist’s Rodeo at the Cove and Exhibit with a “Z” at SoHo.

The Hometown Artist’s Rodeo was once a monthly event featuring performances by many of San Antonio’s more talented artists and musicians. Ken Little resurrected the show just for July. Performers will include Ken Little with Rodeo Ho Ho, The Mark Little Jazz Experiment, Hills Snyder, Gary Sweeney, Chris Sauter & Rick Frederick, and Jason Trevino. There’s a $5 cover and the show goes from 8 pm to midnight. The Cove is located at 606 W. Cypress.

Exhibit with a “Z” includes new work by Alejandro Diaz, Kristy Perez, and Hector Ruiz, with appearances by tequila and empanadas. The show is organized by Franco Mondini-Ruiz and David Shelton. This one also runs from 8 pm to midnight. SoHo is located at 214 W. Crockett.

Bruce Connor, RIP

Posted by ben on 10 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: music, performance art, r.i.p., rock!, video/film

I just learned that Bruce Connor died on Tuesday. Here’s a wonderful little film he made in 1966 featuring the dancing of Toni Basil (aka Antonia Christina Basilotta) and the music of Ed Cobb (NSFW — there are a few nude shots):

Umm Kulthum

Posted by michelle on 14 May 2008 | Tagged as: music, performance art

[hat tip]

The Beaten Path

Posted by ben on 10 May 2008 | Tagged as: essays, music

I just ran across a wonderful series of essays on New Music Box covering the history of percussion in American music. Considered in Europe to be a non-essential, accentual part of music, it was largely American musicians who brought percussion out of the shadows in Western music. The author, Nicole V. Gagné, identifies three strains in the development of American percussion: the rise of multiculturalism and “world music”; the increasing reliance on percussion in jazz and other popular music; and the more philosophical “all-sound music of the future,” in which John Cage’s break from harmonization was the watershed moment. Of course these strains are not independent; jazz drummers incorporated African, Cuban, and Indian percussion, just as the “all-sound” musicians had their flirtations with popular music.

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