Friday, July 7, 2006
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adam overton and mark so
Adam Overton and Mark So
Episode One of You Too Can Play Difficult Music, a series of audience participation performances
Sunday Feb 12th 8:00pm
Machine Project
1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA 90026
213 483 8761
Free
DESCRIPTION:
Adam Overton will present acoustic works requiring the participation of those in attendance. His instrumental and vocal music considers music performance as simply another branch of body art and a fun way to map the limits and being of the performer.
Based on the presumption that living-is-[sometimes-]difficult, any-living-body is automatically hoisted into the realm of the virtuosic, and those within earshot are here invited to celebrate by performing some difficult music.
Difficult Music for Everybody score by Adam Overton [pdf]
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Mark So presents as it is – mattes 2 and readings 14, new pieces which exhibit narrowly-defined structures yet posit an almost impossibly open-ended potential for realization. Performers and listeners alike must hear their way through these strange spaces, encounter and judge what’s there for what it is. There is a special kind of thinking which takes place here, leaving behind the apparatus of knowing and being led by the ear. You, too*, can join Mark and musical guests Johnny Chang, Adam Fong, James Orsher, Harris Wulfson and others in bringing these pieces to life for the first time.
*bring a simple, soft sound that you’d like to play — a low hum, a faint whistle, a personal electric fan, water, your breath across an open bottle, flesh against gossamer, a radio tuned to static, stones rubbed together, your favorite grain poured onto a towel, a private sound from home, a butterfly beating its wings in Africa, etc. — and something to read (even if only to yourself…)
Readings 14 score by Mark So [pdf] Mattes score by Mark So [pdf]
Adam Overton is a living composer, performance artist, sound artist, and curator currently based in Los Angeles. His work is an investigation of invisible performance, a look into the hidden or overlooked performative worlds of the body, the mind, and the medium [within culture]. He has been busy developing two parallel streams of work – his Medi[t]ations series, which uses biometric sensors and interactive sound software, and more recently a series of body-based performance texts for instrumentalists or spectators in acoustic settings. This latter body of work is serving as the basis for a book and DVD project entitled i am sediment, set to be published in 2006 with the help of Fifth Planet Press.
more information on Adam Overton visit http://plus1plus1plus.org
Mark So is a composer living and working in Los Angeles since 2000. In the last few years, he has written over 150 pieces for a wide variety of sounding scenarios, including the blind documents series for various instumental goupings and field recordings, readings 1-13 (so far) using text-reading as the genesis of musical structure, the empire series exploring differing fields of potential harmony, several atmosphere studies and constellations, a group of landscapes, numerous pieces loosely inspired by foods (spring mix, bean medley, whole-note gumbo, 3 baby greens: radicchio, endive, romaine, 4 chards in 11 cheeses) and planets (quaoar and sedna, pluto and charon), and myriad other pieces often involving semi-indeterminate text-based and graphic scoring strategies.
Mark So’s music strives for unforeseen results within restricted fields of musical decision and action.