Revision Project Memo

New music and intermedia performance works will highlight offerings of experimental intermedia art at Fine Arts Studio 677 eXperimental interMedia. Presented by Metropolitan State’s Program in Experimental Music and Intermedia Art, the festival continues its tradition of offering cutting-edge performances in a casual, community arts setting.

Schedule:

Andre Stephani – The trombonist-composer presents his Senior Capstone of Cuban and Latin-influenced music and cultural improvisations featuring Cuban pianist Nachito Herrera.

Friday, March 30^th (7 p.m.)

Tom Kanthak – The Metropolitan State graduate and composer-musician brings a new collaborative work based on recent sounds and images from Japan, as part of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teachers Program.

Friday, April 6^th (7 p.m.)

asteroid 2004 MN4 ensemble – In honor of Friday 13^th, musicians Steve Goldstein, Dean Granros and David Means ponder the plight of the Earth on April 13, 2029.

Friday, April 13^th (7 p.m.)

Abdul Gindeel – The graphic designer and cultural collaborator presents a Senior Capstone linking images and sounds of two of the world’s largest rivers, the Nile and the Mississippi. French texts are woven into a musical collaboration featuring laptop musician Steve Goldstein

Friday, April 20^th (7 p.m.)

John Franzen – The Colorado-based composer-guitarist and photographer joins David Means in the world premier of “Longs Peak”,

a collaboration based on images and sounds of the Rocky Mountains.

Friday, April 27^th (7 p.m.)

Produced and presented by the Program in Experimental Music and Intermedia Arts; Communication, Writing and Arts Department; College of Arts and Sciences.

http://www.oocities.org/studio677

- More -

Andre Stephani began his musical adventures at age 14 playing his first professional gig on trombone. He spent the next 54 years playing and singing music--from a piano bar in Chicago to Don Ho's backup band in Hawaii. Stephani began work on his first album ten years ago. Though he knew he wanted a Cuban salsa sound, he says he was missing the "clave" (a Latin term for the pulse of Afro-Cuban music), a creative impediment that forced him to put the project on hold. His clave came a year ago in the form of Cuban pianist and one time musical director for the great Cuban group Cubanismo, Nachito Herrera. Stephani met Herrera at a gig , and the two hit it off so well that Herrera agreed to work on Stephani's album. Herrera ended up not only appearing on the album but also arranging and co-producing it. (Kathleen Kelly, in the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Tom Kanathak

In October of 2006, Tom Kanthak traveled to Japan for three weeks as a guest of the Japanese government as part of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teachers Program. It was his intention on that trip to explore and mine the Japanese culture for unique and interesting sounds that would define his immersion in the Japanese culture. Those sounds would then become the aural score for a new music travelogue. Strange Attractors will be the first opportunity for an audience to hear this new music exploration for the first time. Collaborators for this project will include the visual art of Bill Jeter, a new film by Ashley Wilkes, David Means, Steve Goldstein, and other special guests.

Asteroid 2004 MN4 Orbit

Friday the 13th is supposed to be an unlucky day, the sort of day you trip on your shoe laces or lose your wallet or get bad news. But maybe it's not so bad. Consider this: On April 13th--Friday the 13th--2029, millions of people are going to go outside, look up and marvel at their good luck. A point of light will be gliding across the sky, faster than many satellites, brighter than most stars. What's so lucky about that? It's asteroid 2004 MN4 ... not hitting Earth. The asteroid's trajectory will bend approximately 28 degrees during the encounter, "a result of Earth's gravitational pull". What happens next is uncertain. Some newspapers have stated that the asteroid might swing around and hit Earth after all in 2035. Charts, data, drawings and visual materials will provide score materials for electric guitarist Dean Granros, laptop computer percussionist Steve Goldstein and digital wind and computer musician David Means.

Mississippi and Nile River Watersheds

Out of Africa / Life on the Missippi is a collaborative performance installation by Sudanese graphic designer Abdul Gindeel and composer-sound designer David Means. The project focuses on geographic, historic and cultural connections between the Nile and Mississippi river basins, and features live performance calligraphy by Gindeel and music by Means and laptop computer musician Steve Goldstein with texts by Mark Twain, Haile Selassie, Isak Dinesen and David Means,.narrated by Mary Garvie and Jon Spayde.

Longs Peak, Colorado

Longs Peak is the tallest mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park, and forms the visual and sonic background for a collaboration between Colorado composer and former Metropolitan State faculty member John Franzen and Strange Attractors producer and composer David Means. Visual and sound materials were gathered on site during last October and refined via internet communications and MIDI (Music Instrument Digital Interface) signal processing to translate the waveforms, shapes and colors of the Colorado mountain into an experimental intermedia collaboration.

“Some of my ideas are based on the West, mountains and nature. I have been building samples of animals, water, even iconic Western songs like Maverick, Johnny Yuma, Long Ranger, High Noon, etc. into performance tools.Some other thoughts include using material from my past. Sort of a fragmented retrospective of the last 60 years (Ok, the last 42 years if you include only the years that I wrote music). I have sounds from the San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Colorado years incorporated in samples that are playable. I have been studying about Nicolas Tesla lately. He built a giant oscillator in Colorado Springs in the 1890's using 12 million volts which vibrated at 150,000 times a second into the earth. The wavelength was 6,600 feet long! This wave traveled through the planet and converged on the opposite side slightly west of the French Islands Amsterdam and St. Paul in the Indian Ocean. In other words he created an electrical north-south pole from Colorado Springs. He created man-made lightning which blow out the local power station which plunged Colorado Springs into darkenss. His thunder was heard in Cripple Creek 15 miles away which is over a high mountain pass. So it seems that Tesla should be part of this event. I have been constructing Tesla-like sounds. What a great synth he would have made!”

- John Franzen

http://www.oocities.org/studio677