Re: --OT: in praise of Zvonar's "Frikkit"

[Tim Nelson <tcn62@ici.net>]

At 07:09 AM 8/28/01 -0700, Peter Koniuto wrote:
>Caught the Ought-One music festival this past
>weekend.  Lots of great things going on, although
>i didn't notice any overt use of *real-time*
>looping in any of the concerts i heard/saw.  (I
>did spy a jamman, though, so perhaps i missed
>that performance.)

I was going to post a review yesterday, but I'm still recovering! What a
great time!

You're not as OT as you may think; among the artists I saw at the festival
there was a good amount of loopage happening. That's the problem with this
sort of festival, though; with four simultaneous performance areas in
different buildings, you're bound to miss a lot. We'll probably be hearing
the same sort of thing next week as people stagger back from Burning Man!

On Saturday, I caught a set by Loons In The Monastery, a duo consisting of
Jennifer Lowman on synths and Samuel Claiborne on whistles, percussion,
viola and guitar. The Loons are heavy on humor and Samuel looped a lot.
(I'm not sure what he was using; I saw a DL4 after the set, but it may have
been Tom Heasley's.) Check out the Loons at <http://www.sonotrope.com>

Saturday night, flautist Margaret Lancaster's set included a piece by Jon
Appleton called 'Stop Time for Tap-Dancing Flutist' in which she'd play a
passage, and then as it repeated, she'd tap dance along with it. It sounds
hokey, I know, but she pulled it off quite fetchingly. In addition to her
flute skills, Ms. Lancaster's resume also includes a starring role in the
motion picture 'Rockabilly Vampire'... Ohhhhh-kay....
<http://kalvos.org/lancast.html>

On Sunday, Odd Appetite (cellist Ha-Yang Kim and percussionist Nathan
Davis) did some real-time processing of their instruments through (I think)
a Mac powerbook using (I think) Max that included a bit of loopage.

The simultaneous festival scheduling almost made me miss violist Martha
Mooke's set, but I was fortunate enough to catch the last 20 minutes or so.
(That might have been her JamMan you saw...) She was using said Jammer and
an RDS-somethingorother (an 8000 methinks) to loop electric viola and an
electric octave violin (an electric violin with heavier(?) strings tuned
down an octave.) Very cool. <http://kalvos.org/mookema.html>

LD listmember Tom Heasley's set was ALL looping; how often do you get to
hear looped tuba? Tom arrived Friday night and set up his rig with the
understanding that the venue was secured until after his Sunday evening
performance, only to find mid-Sunday that his stuff had been dismantled for
a church service and sort of tossed over to the side in a mess o'
spaghetti. Fortunately his set was right after the dinner break, so he had
time to put it all back together. It was a very small crowd at Mr Heasley's
performance due to it being scheduled at the same time as Eve Beglarian's
set, but those of us who were there certainly enjoyed it. He did a 45
minute or so improvisation of tuba through a DL4 (with an EDP in the rack
for moral support) during which the tuba at times sounded like a whole slew
of other instruments/voices/creatures. Great stuff.
<http://kalvos.org/heasley.html>

I've probably missed some of the other loopcentric artists, and I've
omitted mentioning some really great non-loopers who performed at the
festival... 
>
>I must say one of the highlights of the 
>weekend for both me and my partner was taking
>in list member Richard Zvonar's octophonic 
>piece for tape, "Frikkit". ...
>I hope other folks (Tim from NH?) got to hear
>this piece.  Zvonar does dynamite work...

Absolutely, although I was somewhat dissapointed that many of the Dream
Room events either didn't happen or happened with nobody in attendance.
(There were several pieces during which Kalvos [a pseudonymous moniker for
composer/radio personality/festival co-organizer/helluva nice guy Dennis
Bathory-Kitsz] and I were the only ones in the room!) Dr. Zvonar's piece
was absolutely wonderful, there's no doubt about that, but I just wish more
people had heard it.  

>One never knew when you walked in which would be playing.

That's part of the problem; the Dream Room pieces were SUPPOSED to have
been scheduled, but that broke down rather quickly due to poor attendance
and the fact that some of the pieces had been cancelled. I think at first
nobody knew where the Dream Room was; I asked one of the volunteers at the
main info desk and he had no idea what I was talking about. But I had a
great time anyway, and I hope they do this again next year...

Tim