MYSTERY GUEST presents multichannel works live

and John Cage’s “RYOANJI” Performed by The Daxophone Consort

2640 St. Paul St. Doors at 7:30pm

Hi, Martin Schmidt, here, president of High Zero Foundation and one of the beginners of the DIFFUSION Festival.

One of my original thoughts for this festival was that every year we would invite someone uniquely suited to create a sort of history survey of the electro-acoustic, multi-channel music of the country they were from…and it’s gone remarkably well considering our limited…resources. We’ve covered two major countries so far, France and Germany. This was thanks to the extremely hard work and generosity of Francois Bonnet and Marcus Schmickler who basically volunteered to provide this to High Zero for…the joy of doing it and the meagre amounts we could give them. (PLEASE JOIN OUR PATREON AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL YOU CAN AFFORD!) We have managed to convince another beautiful soul to help us with our education, this year from Norway.

We can’t say his name here because an organization like ours could not begin to provide the “paperwork” necessary to have him in the country for this purpose. Is this wrong? Yes it is…the bureaucracy necessary for artists to visit our country to present work is obscene and absurd…perhaps if we could manage to elect some decent officials in this country for a WHOLE decade perhaps we could make some actual meaningful progress for the arts, but that discussion is for some other forum, surely?

THIS NIGHT FRIDAY the 17th of NOVEMBER (doors at 7:30) we have a guest coming to present for us from Norway! Tonight he will be presenting his own work, and on the 18th will present his personally comprehensive historical survey!

I promise this guest‘s sound work is worth hearing, he has made dozens of records, publishes a magazine (10 + issues so far), makes films (showing on Saturday afternoon at the Red Room), has played hundreds of concerts in many countries, crosses musical boundaries between electro-acoustic music, free improvisation, rock, noise and sometimes extreme metal.

Here’s an album by our mystery guest. Then you’ll know their name and you can listen to any of the MANY other things by them. But please don’t write on the internet about him and our festival…because border bureacracy. Sigh.

https://portraitsgrm.bandcamp.com/album/how-to-avoid-ants

https://becoq.bandcamp.com/album/void

—————> BUT THAT’S NOT ALL <—————

Also presented this evening is “RYOANJI” by John Cage performed by The Daxophone Consort in quadrophonic.

In 1983, John Cage began a composition-in-progress called Ryoanji, named after the rock garden in Kyoto, Japan. This garden is a collection of 15 rocks, placed in a landscape of raked, white sand. In the summer of 1983, Cage started a series of drawings entitled Where R=Ryoanji, using (by drawing around) 15 different stones. Around the same time, the oboist James Ostryniec asked Cage to write a piece for him, which resulted in the first part in a series of pieces entitled Ryoanji. Between 1983 and 1985, Cage added 4 more: for voice, flute, double bass, and trombone. For the score, Cage traced parts of the perimeters of the given stones. These curves are to be played as glissandi within given pitch ranges. In some places, contours overlap, thus making materials impossible to play. In these cases, one or more tape recordings are used. Alongside the live performers, the tape parts make this a multichannel piece. Being a work made up of glissandi, the piece perfectly suits the idiosyncrasies of the daxophone. The Consort began working on a transcription for daxophones in 2019. The percussion part in this performance, a single complex of 2 unspecified sounds, will feature the recorded performance of Alvin Lucier and Trevor Saint.

The Daxophone Consort is Daniel Fishkin, Cleek Schrey, and Ron Shalom. The daxophone is a modern instrument consisting of a thin, bowed wooden strip, whose sound ranges from delicate whistles to wild screams. Drawing on backgrounds in instrument building, theater, costume, and concert music, the Consort creates and commissions new works and reinterprets the classical music canon from the 20th century through the middle ages. Past collaborations include Alvin Lucier, Yasunao Tone, Science Ficta viols, Gelsey Bell, Judith Berkson, Douglas Dunn, and Poncili Creación.

JOIN US THE EVENING OF NOVEMBER 18th for an world class sonic event, brought to Baltimore by High Zero. DOORS AT 7:30, music at 8PM, sharp.

Event location:

2640 St. Paul St. Baltimore, MD