sTRANGE mUSIC - News 2005

www.strangemusic.com
nEWS aRCHIVE 2005
21 DEC 05

sTRANGEmUSIC Closed for the Holidays

sTRANGEmUSIC will be closed from Friday December 23, 2005 until Monday January 2, 2006. Wishing you all a very Happy New Year!

On Wednesday December 7th at 2PM EST, the artist Kehinde Wiley will be on WNYC's SOUNDCHECK hosted by John Schaefer to discuss his projects: notably his commissions from VH1 and our collaborations in which I created hip-hop music for the soprano Shequida and string quartet (The Art Parade) and for the marching band of the Malcolm X. Shabazz H. S. (Rumors of War) in connection with his gallery Deitch Projects (for more iNFO see below).

Even though the show is broadcast locally here in NYC it can be heard via the internet or downloaded as a podcast at their web site: www.wnyc.org

01 DEC 05

The artist Jessica Lutz recently commissioned music for a video called "Water Behind the Veil." It will be premiered at the Pool Art Fair in Miami Beach on Dec. 2, 3 & 4. More details at: www.poolartfair.com

05 OCT 05

sTRANGE mUSIC to Create Score for Kehinde Wiley's "Rumors of War - Hip-Hop Experience II)" at Deitch Projects

Deitch Projects is pleased to present Rumors of War - Hip-Hop Experience II, a painting installation by Kehinde Wiley inspired by the history of equestrian portraiture. The installation features four larger-than-life canvases each updating a specific Old Master painting with a contemporary sitter, framed in custom-designed ornate, gilded frames. Soaring to heights of over nine feet, the paintings’ exaggeration of scale and high-keyed cinematic colour highlight Wiley’s interest in the aestheticization of power and masculinity.

Retaining the trappings of power implied in their sources, Wiley reproduces the rippling shoulders of thoroughbreds, the baroquely billowing fabrics, and the vague, idealized pastoral backgrounds-- but instead of polished riding boots in the gilded stirrups, we find Nike High-tops. The clash of centuries and societies heightens the sense that these men are riding steeds in a charged non-space outside of time, while the extraterrestrial greens and blues of the minimal landscape push the surreal aspect almost to the breaking point.

VH1 recently comissioned Kehinde Wiley to paint portraits of all the 2005 Art of Hip-Hop Honors honorees. Wiley met with the featured rappers and director John Singleton before painting his subjects. To link to the VH1 2005 Art of Hip-Hop Honors page please click HERE.

For the Veterans Day opening of this event sTRANGE mUSIC composer & producer Patrick Grant will be creating an urban contemporary score for military band performing live.

More details TBA

New Sounds
Hosted by John Schaefer
Airs daily at 11PM on 93.9 FM
www.wnyc.org

PROGRAM # 2457 MUSIC & FILM (First aired on Mon. 9/26/05)

ARTIST(S)	RECORDING	CUT(S)	SOURCE
Michael Gordon	Light Is Calling	Light Is Calling, excerpt [1:00]	Nonesuch #79801 www.nonesuch.com
Philip Glass	Philip On Film	Koyaanisqatsi, excerpt [3:00]	Nonesuch #79660 www.nonesuch.com
Philip Glass	Live	Etude #10 [5:00]	Available on Orange Mountain Music #0009 www.orangemountainmusic.com
Ethel	New Sounds Live	Todd Reynolds: The Solution [4:00]	Canteloupe #21017 www.canteloupemusic.com
Steve Reich	Drumming	Pt 1, excerpt [7:00]	Nonesuch #79170 www.nonesuch.com
Elliott Sharp	The Velocity Of Hue	Euwrecka [8:00]	Emanem #4098 www.emanemdisc.com
Patrick Grant	Release date TBA	Lonely Ride, Coney Island [7:00]	iNFO at www.strangemusic.com

Listen to the broadcast HERE.

Kehinde Wiley, the celebrated artist who collaborated with Strange Music when PG created hip-hop string quartet music for him in Deitch Projects' Art Parade earlier this month, was commissioned by VH1 to paint portraits of all of this year's honorees for the 2005 VH1 Hip-Hop Honors. The artist met with all the rappers and director John Singleton in the creation of these works. The show tapes tonight and will be aired on Monday the 26th on VH1.

Coney Island "Sequel" Set to Premiere Oct. 15

"Lonely Ride, Coney Island," the follow-up to "Happy Ride, Coney Island," will have its premiere at the Coney Island Museum on Oct. 15 when it is part of artist and director Gary Beeber's one-man show and installation. The show runs through January 2006.

More details TBA

14 SEP 05

Pictures from The Art Parade

Deitch Projects presented it's first annual ART PARADE, an artist parade that took place Saturday evening, September 10, on Grand Street between Crosby and Wooster beginning at 4pm. Artists, performers and designers were invited to create floats, placards, spectacles and street performances. In addition to invited artists there was also an open call for parade projects. The Parade included 650 participants, showcasing over 60 projects and attracted over 3,000 spectators. Any one with photographs from the event is invited to send them to info@deitch.com! Please include photo credits as you wish them to appear on their website.

Kehinde Wiley featuring Shequida, vocal & string quartet arrangements by Patrick Grant (Hip-Hop Experience I).
The Art Parade 2005, produced by Deitch Projects in collaboration with PAPER Magazine and Creative Time.
Photo Credit: Michael Shmelling

The film by Gary Beeber with music by Patrick Grant has been chosen to be the opening screening at the Coney Island Film Festival taking place Sept. 30 through Oct. 2 at Coney Island. The screening itself will take place Oct. 1 at the Coney Island Museum at 1 PM. The full schedule can be found HERE.

25 AUG 05

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 4:00pm: The Art Parade with Deitch Projects
Kick off the beginning of the art season with a celebration of floating art — and more! — at Deitch Projects' First Annual Art Parade, presented in collaboration with Paper Magazine and with Creative Time's assistance.

Taking off from Grand Street between Crosby and Wooster, this first annual parade will feature floats, placards, spectacles, and street performances followed by a block party at Deitch Projects on Wooster Street.

For this event Deitch artist Kehinde Wiley has asked Strange Music to collaborate on a project of his with the singer Shequida in which she and singers will be performing hip-hop string quartet arrangements of L'il Kim, Kelis, Beyoncé, Snoop Dogg, Ying Yang Twins, and Salt 'n' Pepa called Hip-Hop Experience I.

Now, that is so September 10th!

HAPPY RIDE, CONEY ISLAND, a film by Gary Beeber with music by Patrick Grant has been chosen as an official selection of the 2005 Coney Island Film Festival.

The Coney Island Film Festival screens a truly eclectic range of films and much to the delight of the audience features a number of "made in Coney Island" productions each year. In 2005 the Coney Island Film Festival is celebrating it's fifth anniversary.

The festival's ties to carny culture are undeniable. The main screening venue is the legendary Sideshows by the Seashore theater, home to America's last authentic 10-in-1 circus sideshow. The infamous opening night celebrations feature live performances by sideshow & burlesque stars.

More details TBA

HAPPY RIDE, CONEY ISLAND, a film by Gary Beeber with music by Patrick Grant has been chosen as an official selection of the Bristols Silents Festival in the UK as part of Flicker: 21st Century Silents, exploring the dynamic relationship between contemporary silent film and soundtrack.

Left to right: Margaret Lancaster, Eve Beglarian, Corey Dargel, and PG at the concert.

Photographs of Songs
Corey Dargel and Eve Beglarian stick toes over pop's edge
by Kyle Gann

Anybody seen the line between classical music and pop lately? I can't seem to locate it. In the '80s, composers and incipient rock stars played in each other's spaces and stole from each other, the composers adding backbeats and the guitar bangers fixating on the harmonic series—but as with mismatched roommates, you could generally tell whose clothes were whose. Now the strategy, on both sides, is to sidle up to that line so gradually that you can't tell when they start sticking one foot over it.

In fact, I have a theory that post-minimalism is a kind of sonic Silly Putty, capable of taking impressions of world music, reggae, birdsongs, whatever. Ever hear a piece by San Francisco composer Belinda Reynolds called Sara's Grace? It's a boogie-woogie for orchestra, very nice, only no one would ever mistake it for real boogie-woogie—it's a stylized photograph of boogie-woogie, pixilated so it's a little cleaner and more formal, but with that boogie energy trapped in there like a fly in amber. Classical people, knowing that they're not really going to be rock stars—I mean, c'mon, get real—are taking musical photographs of pop songs and resolving them a little differently.

Certainly that's what Eve Beglarian and Corey Dargel were doing June 20 at the Opia Lounge (what a weird, corporate place for a new-music concert, up on 57th and Lex). They sang songs to taped electronic backgrounds, with liveliness added by amplified flutist Margaret Lancaster, who sometimes played in rhythmic unison with the lyrics, and elsewhere leaped in with virtuoso riffs. Beglarian is an established composer with orchestra pieces behind her, and her basslines were a little too interesting, her lyrics too spiritual and literary, her textures too conceptual, to avoid raising suspicion in a pop context. But her recording technique is cutting-edge, and her electronic backgrounds, like the richly textured drone with illusionistically realistic bird chirps in Robin Redbreast, made you listen hard to try to fathom what was in there.

Dargel, though, is a young composer only a few years on the New York scene, who with his static songs and deadpan persona could be mistaken for an ironic pop icon. Has anyone else ever hit Downtown with such full-frontal vulnerability? His every song is about how he can't swim, or how in high school a girl called him a sissy, or how he used to love karaoke but now he can't remember the words. And yet there's something bold and simple about his delivery, like it wouldn't occur to him to regret these calamities. His post-minimal backgrounds, too, comprised elements too neutral to draw notice, yet combined in rich profusion. The drums never outline a regular meter or punctuate the words; they're just kind of back there as a symbolic presence. Unlike David Garland's, his lyrics aren't creatively wacky; he's just telling you what happened—but somehow the phrases come out symmetrical, and the singing and electronics, which never seem to be coordinated as they're going on, suddenly end together. A lot of art goes into Dargel's music that he doesn't call your attention to.

He and Beglarian took turns singing each other's songs, which was a trip—she having to tone her bad-girl sassiness down into innocence, he having to loosen up and emote. From my perspective they ventured dangerously close to commercial viability, but that line must still be out there, because afterward a woman came up to Dargel and asked, "Do you ever do pop music? My daughter works with [celebrity's name withheld], and if you have any recordings of yourself singing pop songs, she might be interested." That made me feel better.

11 JUL 05

New Music for a Video by Gary Beeber

The same team that brought you "Happy Ride, Coney Island" is working on a new video called "Victoriana."

More details TBA.

01 JUL 05

ONE-TWO-THREE-GO! Venue Change Etc.

The July 11th performance of THE THREE GUNAS IN HISTORY - featuring David First (guitar & audio/video laptop), Tom Chiu (violin/electronics), and William Hooker (drums/poetry) has been moved to Desmonds at 433 Park Avenue South (29th & 30th Streets) at 8:30 PM.

The previous venue Opia has suddenly decided to change the direction of their live events.

This also means that the July 18th performance of Beata Moon has had to be postponed as a venue with a suitable piano could not be found at such short notice. Thank you for noting these changes.

21 JUN 05

PG received a commission to create the music for a video short by Gary Beeber, "Happy Ride Coney Island." The video depicts the kinetic energy and culture of the Astroland Amusement Park. A concert version of the piece will be premiered on the June 6th One-Two-Three-Go! concert at OPIA.

Just in time for the Mermaid Parade!

Read a review of the photo exhibition HERE.

01 MAY 05

ONE-TWO-THREE-GO!
Monday Night Performance Series

Egizio Panetti and I originally ran the One-Two-Three-GO! concert series at his gallery during autumn through spring of the 2001-2002 season. These concerts went very well with the public and the press. I always felt that one of the reasons for this was, besides the very strong artists that performed, was that the concerts were scheduled on Sundays at 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon. This was great during the colder and darker months of October through April.

iNFO on this previous series can be found HERE.

Now that I'm producing concerts again in 2005 in the music room in the Opia Restaurant at 57th & Lex in the spring and summertime, I had to find a different time of day to hold these events. I chose Monday nights because a lot of people go away for the weekend during that season. Also, I would have them earlier in the evening: doors will open at 6PM with the music beginning around 6:30 and lasting 60-75 minutes. The concept here is that people could always catch a performance after work and still be anywhere they have to by 8PM, the idea being to maximize our audience.

Also, there is the hope that since the location is easy to get to from the 6 train from downtown and from the west via the N & R trains, that we'll get people from a wide range of NYC.

The One-Two-Three-GO! performance series will program the cutting edge of music for the curious listener, from post-classical, jazz and world music to neo-cabaret, electronic and beyond.

Live at OPIA
130 East 57th Street at Lexington Avenue
(212) 688-3939 - Tickets $15 at door
doors at 6:00 PM - performance at 6:30 PM
Check out the complete schedule at the
1-2-3-GO! Web Page

11 APR 05

Margaret Jenkins and DANGER ORANGE on SPARK TV

CLICK HERE to view the KQED special on Margaret Jenkins and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.

Jenkins and her Company were featured on KQED's arts program SPARK. This 11-minute episode highlights the making of Jenkins’ recent site-specific work from last October “Danger Orange” with music by Patrick Grant. The program takes the viewer from the streets of San Francisco to Beijing, China, with seldom seen historical footage from Jenkins’ career as a dancer, teacher and choreographer.

"I'm kind of fond of saying I was in everybody's first company, because the field is not very old." — Margaret Jenkins

SPARK is about Bay Area artists and arts organizations -- it is a weekly television show, an educational outreach program and a Web site. More than a showcase for art objects and the artists who make them, SPARK takes the audience inside the creative process to witness the challenges, opportunities and rewards of making art.

Catch SPARK every Wednesday at 7:30pm and Fridays at 11pm on KQED Channel 9 – and now see repeat broadcasts on KQED’s digital channels…

01 APR 05

The alt+SPACE Festival, Monterrey, Mexico

In July 2005, Patrick Grant will be performing amongst some 20 musical events in Monterrey, Mexico. This is The alt+SPACE Festival produced by Ricardo de Quesada of the Sociedad Artística Daniel from Madrid, Spain and, like the title implies, all events will be taking place in the alternative spaces in the city of Monterrey. The program for the concert will be similar to the one that Grant will be performing at The Monkey in NYC on May 20-21 just prior to leaving for Mexico.

21 MAR 05

ALCOHOL, TOBACCO & FIREARMS
atone poem in three parts
performance TBA

1. C2H6O
2. C10H14N2
3. KNO3+C+S

02 MAR 05

UPCOMING CD RELEASE

In June 2005, sTRANGEmUSIC will release a new CD by Patrick Grant called Driving PATTERNS.

The CD will feature music that Grant has been performing in his sTRANGe LOOPS concerts, music for dance, theater, art installations and film, as well as new tracks that were created especially for this release.

More details TBA regarding the accompanying CD release party and performance.

23 FEB 05

Who Breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?

I am haunted by a powerful line from Alexander Pope's 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot': "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?"

Writing in the 18th Century, Pope was witness to the hideous tortures méted out to all kinds of miscreants, breaking the villain's bones on a Catherine Wheel with an iron bar being one of the more inventive. To break a delicate creature like a butterfly in such a brutal way as upon a wheel has come to be synonymous with applying excessive effort in the accomplishment of a small matter.

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;

Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'r enjoys,
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.

Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks...

05 FEB 05

Internal Reflection in an LA Times Article on artLA

"Diane Tuft, has a gorgeous installation, a kind of burned-out forest. She has cast charred trees in resin and put them on a mirrored surface in a dark space illuminated by spotlights." - The LA Times

Diane Tuft, INTERNAL REFLECTION, 2004.
Mixed Media Installation including sound and light. 8 X 16 Feet.
Music: Patrick Grant

"Internal Reflection is an installation that illuminates the complexity of nature through photography, sculpture, lighting, and sound. I have created an environment of natural forms trapped and frozen in time. It is both vulnerable and fragile, permanent and vanishing. I hope that the experience of entering this work will inspire internal reflection." - DT

"The artist Diane Tuft has created an installation that I have created the music for called Internal Reflection. It is a large meditative artwork surrounded by an electronically processed atmosphere of flute, harp, strings and metal percussion." - PG

This installation was one of the highlights of the artLA in Santa Monica, CA which recently took place from Jan 27-30.

More details can be found on the Performance History page.

01 FEB 05

COLLABORATION! Dance & Music 2005
Moves to the Cowell Theater in San Francisco

This 2005 edition of Dance Outre's Collaboration! Dance & Music will be the first time the event will be held at its new San Francisco home, The Cowell Theater at the Fort Mason Center. The performances will take place on September 16, 17 at 8:00 PM and September 18 at 2:00 PM.

More details TBA.

23 JAN 05

"Talk to the Palm" or
"How I Spent the East Coast Blizzard of '05"

wish you were here :(

12 JAN 05

"SILENT TREATMENT" LOGO
FOUND IN A 1988 EAST VILLAGE COLLAGE BY ARTIST JOHN EVANS

Left: "Nov. 16, 1988," a collage by John Evans
Middle & Right: "SILENT TREATMENT" graphics designed by Patrick Grant

The neo-Dadaist and East Village artist John Evans made a collage a day from 1964 to 2000, mostly using things he found on the street that day. He embellished each collage with watercolor, and added the image of a duck's head, which he called "Ursuline Duck" in tribute to his friend Ursule Molinaro (1914-2000). These neat, almost architectonic works move from the personal to tales of social and political discontent.

In autumn 1988 I conceived of a concert series called "SILENT TREATMENT" that I co-founded with composer/performers Brian Jost, Miki Navazio and Larry Simon (we had all met through C.F.Peters, publisher of classical music as well as that of John Cage) that gave new music concerts with various guest artists in the East Village during 1989 (see the Performance History page). In preparation of our January 19, 1989 inaugural concert I created the graphic for the series two months before which I put on stickers and totally plastered all over the Lower East Side in order to create a buzz. Being so, it is no surprise that one of these stickers ended up in a John Evans collage from that time. Other uses of the logo, on a program and another poster, are seen above.

These collages have been shown at the New York Historical Society and most recently at the Pavel Zoubok Gallery on West 23rd Street in NYC last Oct/Nov.

Read more about Evans' recent show in this month's ArtNet magazine in an article by Valery Oisteanu HERE.

05 JAN 05

QUOTE DU JOUR:

Bird on a Ledge (2005) *see 17 NOV 04

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the sTRANGEST sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

-Emily Dickinson

01 JAN 05
hAPPY nEW yEAR !

Music for an Art Installation at Los Angeles Art Fair

THE NEW LOS ANGELES ART FAIR - FOR CONTEMPORARY AND NEW ART

JAN 27-30, 2005
Santa Monica, CA

Internal Reflection (2004)

art installation by Diane Tuft
music by Patrick Grant

artLA It has been over a decade since Los Angeles hosted a major contemporary art fair and much has happened since then - an explosion of contemporary art galleries and an expansion of local museum programs that highlight new and contemporary art. Many cultural critics are declaring Los Angeles as the destination to find the latest and most vital artists and galleries in the country. More and more artists are moving to live and work in Los Angeles and their work is increasingly finding greater exposure around the world. It is fitting that Los Angeles now have an exciting new art fair through which to re-present itself to the art world.

artLA has been created as a public event to bring together a mix of national and international galleries, artists, collectors and curators for a visual discussion of the current art scene. Galleries will present innovative works by established artists and cutting-edge newcomers. Site-specific installations will feature robotic, video and digital art. New art and new media in the avant-garde tradition will offer the next generation of artists to the public.

artLA is positioned to take the excitement of the local Los Angeles art scene and present it to the community at large as it incorporates the best new and exciting art from around the globe.

Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
1855 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA