Loop38 @ Night Heron: STRANGE~WILD~WEIRD

MONDAY, DECEMBER 10TH @ 6PM

ON THE PROGRAM:

Jonathan Newman Ok feel good now

Sam Pluta Switches

Nicole Lizée Malfunctionlieder

Angelica Negron Technicolor

Gabriel Kahane Craigslistlieder

George Lewis Anthem

Hey folks, Siggy here…I absolutely cannot believe it’s December and we’re all running around town for “Gigmas Season.” Loop38’s Season Opening concert on November 14th Behind The Scenes-Behind the Sounds was evocative, challenging, and a great success! We usually have some time to breathe in between events but in addition to the holiday shows and end-of-year performances, we had our December Second Saturday at Sawyer Yards event today at 2:30 pm, STRANGE~WILD~WEIRD at Night Heron on Monday night, AND a $4000 fundraising campaign that closes on December 12th!!! We’re busy, ambitious, and if there’s something I can say about my Loop38 colleagues…they go all-out and want to do it well!

So I know you’re thinking “These new music nerds are cool; I’m gonna go to one of these events” right? We’re looking forward to seeing you there and here’s how you can help us fund the rest of our 2018-2019 Season…Click on the button above and check out our Giving Tuesday fundraising campaign! Our generous donors have helped us reach 33% of our goal thus far. I invite you to attend one of Loop38’s upcoming events and I hope you’ll consider supporting the work we do and the rest of our season!

Here’s an awesome writeup on STRANGE~WILD~WEIRD by Ally Smither, our program curator:

Do you like cocktails? Sounds? Laughs? Happy Hour?
Obviously, you do. We definitely do too.
And you know what we love even more? HOUSTON.

Join us at one of Houston’s best bars, Night Heron, for a happy hour program of things STRANGE~WILD~WEIRD. It’s going to be a fun, hour long, program of works that will shock, inspire, and make you laugh. Afterwards, you can catch Night Heron’s weekly SpeedRack practice. Did we mention that it’s happy hour priced cocktails and drinks ~ALL NIGHT~?

Night Heron is Agricola Hospitality’s fabulous bar close to the Menil Collection. The manager is Danny Kirgan; he is not only a veteran of the service industry, but also a trumpet player who has played with the Chicago Civic Orchestra. The program we devised seeks to show our audience that their perceptions about classical music and, especially new music, may be very wrong! As a group, we are all young and excited - this music really reflects that. It encompasses sounds, stories, and energies that are upbeat, exhilarating, and looking forward. Our composers come from a myriad of backgrounds, ethnicities, and genders; the world is incredibly vibrant and multifaceted, so we also seek to be just that.

From the trippy technicolor sound world of Angelica Negron to the wild, raucous, Big Brother-y commands of George Lewis’ “Anthem,” all of these pieces explore sounds that our audience may find closer to the pop music they are accustomed to. You’re doing to hear drums sets, electronics, wild words, and maybe even some references to your favorite movies.  We hope that the combination of this and Night Heron’s welcoming atmosphere will invite our audience to let down their guard and experience music in a new way.

Kick your night up a notch by opening your ears to new sounds in a new space! This is going to make your ears perk up, your body dance, and your brain tingle. Let us take you on a Strange, Wild, Weird journey through the music of George Lewis, Jonathan Newman, Nicole Lizee and MORE all while you sip on one of Night Heron’s vibrant cocktails. Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

NEW SOUNDS #3: LEWIS NIELSON

Hey there, reader/listener/new friend!

Thanks for stopping in! All of us here at Loop38 firmly believe that it’s much easier to enjoy a concert when you have some background in what you’re about to hear and why it’s incredible! SO, leading up our concerts this year, I will be posting these short little tidbits about our featured composers. Hoping that this will feel like you’re chilling with a friend, getting psyched about great music! Feel free to take a peak, have a listen, and get a taste for what’s to come!

Our upcoming concert BEHIND THE SCENES, BEHIND THE SOUNDS, on November 14 features performances of electro acoustic works by Maja Ratkje, Ashley Fure, and Lewis Nielson.

(CONCERT IS TOMORROW !!!!)

Today we’re going to be getting to know the final featured composer on our November 14th program: Lewis Nielson! We were lucky enough to have Lewis come and visit us this past weekend to offer valuable insight on his piece USW.

When he isn’t coming to Houston to ~hang~ Nielson is busy doing all sorts of not-so-low-key incredible things. He was the chair of the composition department at Oberlin College, had received numerous awards, and has had his works recorded and performed by symphonies and groups across the United States and the world. His music is infused with the picturesque and the political, his work that we will be performing on Wednesday is no different.

Since we had Nielson captive for a couple days, I was lucky enough to have him answer some relevant (and maybe not so relevant) questions

Which composers have inspired your work?

Not many composers, really.  If anyone, Helmut Lachenmann and his ability to do what is necessary, not what others would do regarding the present day.  I love the music of my friend Reiko Füting in NYC--he's one of the few I listen to these days. Mostly, I spend my time listening to Renaissance polyphony (Ockeghem and Dufay mainly), some Bach, some Beethoven and Chopin piano music.  The present is too present. The past helps me hear without being influenced by the actual materials.

What is your favourite piece of music theatre/opera/performance art etc?

In history, [Mozart’s] “Die Zauberflöte” for sure; in present  “Das Mädchen mit dem Schwefelhölzern”, although I've seen two productions and the staging didn't do justice to the music

Favourite food?

India India India!!!

Favourite city?

Amsterdam......although there's also Berlin.

How did you find Houston on your little visit!!

Wetter and colder than I had thought it would be!  I live in Vermont now and I was expecting some heat..

Nielson’s work that we will be performing on Wednesday is USW, a multimedia chamber opera based on the life of revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg. Nielson himself combined fragmentary passages in several languages from Luxemburg, Karl Marx, German poet Georg Trakl and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The overall work is striking in it’s beauty as well as it’s affect. If that hasn’t peaked your interest, our bassist Austin will also be singing in the work! You do not want to miss this, he sounds fantastic.

So, all in all, if you like well-written, beautiful, and arresting political music, you NEED to know the works of Neilson. Luckily for you, you can come get to know them with us! So, you know the drill:

Hope to see you there tomorrow (!!!)

Xx ally xx

NEW SOUNDS #2: ASHLEY FURE

Hey there, reader/listener/new friend!

Thanks for stopping in! All of us here at Loop38 firmly believe that it’s much easier to enjoy a concert when you have some background in what you’re about to hear and why it’s incredible! SO, leading up our concerts this year, I will be posting these short little tidbits about our featured composers. Hoping that this will feel like you’re chilling with a friend, getting psyched about great music! Feel free to take a peak, have a listen, and get a taste for what’s to come!

Our upcoming concert BEHIND THE SCENES, BEHIND THE SOUNDS, on November 14 features performances of electro acoustic works by Maja Ratkje, Ashley Fure, and Lewis Nielson.

__________

Hope you had a great listen to Maja Ratkje’s stuff from last time and are ready for MORE because this week we are hitting up the one and ~only~ Ashley Fure.

If you’re into new music (which you DEFINITELY should be), you have undoubtedly heard about Fure. She has racked up a substantial and impressive resume, including the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a nomination for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize. Not too shabby. All of those accolades are beyond well deserved: her work constantly tears apart what sounds belong in the concert hall (answer: all of them) and how we listen. Think: wild bassoon, ASMR, and megaphones.

If you saw ASMR and did a double take, no, you read that correctly. For the uninitiated, ASMR stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response”. This refers to a tingling feeling that you can get listening to certain sounds that start in your head (re: ears) and then travel to the rest of your body. The internet has made a killing off of ASMR videos, with people whispering, crinkling, and scratching into high quality microphones. Definitely check it out if you haven’t before.

Now, although Fure’s work is not explicitly ASMR, it does frequently incorporate sounds that made your skin tingle and have a similar affect. In both her piece The Force Of Things: An Opera for Objects and her recent premiere Filament with the New York Phil, Fure used megaphones to amplify unusual sounds, lending an experience every similar to ASMR. You can read more about Filament here! And listen to a clip from rehearsal below:

You should also take a listen to a bit of The Force Of Things here (featuring the incredible Lucy Deghrae whose festival, Resonant Bodies, you should also check out).

Fure once said that, “classical instrumental technique deemphasizes the body behind the sound: one is meant to hear the melody, not the fingernails on the keys.” Fure takes up the challenge of flipping this narrative: in her works the bodies playing become instruments as well, and the movement and physicality of the players is of utmost importance. In Albatross, which you’ll hear if you come to our concert November 14 (!!!!), physical gestures and textural sounds on the instruments are written into the score. In the piece below, Soma, you will here all kinds of environmental sounds. Close your eyes and allow you mind to let go of expectations and completely drift!

Most importantly, since the piece we are performing is called Albatross, here are some facts about the aforementioned bird:

• They have the longest wingspan of any bird

• They have a special tendon in their shoulders that allows their wings to maintain spread, with minimal muscle expenditure. This allows them to soar for AGES.

• They do a special mating dance, and then they mate for life.

Finally, if you’d like to know more about Fure, articulated MUCH better than I attempted here, check out this interview! My favourite part is where she talks about the process/struggles of notating all these wild things (and how notation holds us back). Also, this interview features maybe my new favourite quote:

“LET YOUR AUDITORY FREAK FLAG FLY” - ASHLEY FURE

(screaming)

Hope that all made sense and got you just a lil’ tingly with excitement! If you want more of where that came from, you know what you need to do:

xx ally xx

*tingly*

NEW SOUNDS #1: MAJA RATKJE

Hey there, reader/listener/new friend!

Thanks for stopping in! All of us here at Loop38 firmly believe that concerts are even more enjoyable when you have some background in what you’re about to hear and why it’s incredible! SO, leading up our concerts this year, I will be posting these short little tidbits about our featured composers. Hoping that this will feel like you’re chilling with a friend (that’s me), and getting psyched about great music (literally my constant state of being)! Feel free to take a peek, have a listen, and get a taste for what’s to come!

Our upcoming concert BEHIND THE SCENES, BEHIND THE SOUNDS, on November 14 features performances of electro acoustic works by Maja Ratkje, Ashley Fure, and Lewis Nielson.

——

Today, we’re getting to know the SoUndS (and there’s a LOT of them) of Maja Ratkje! Get those ears ready!

It can truly be said that Norwegian composer Maja Ratkje is unlike anyone else. Her compositions are known for their vibrant, feral, and jarring sound worlds. She frequently incorporates her own voice (which you can’t help but be obsessed with) into her work.

Her breakout album, Voice, released in 2002, took an absolute gamut of extended vocal techniques and gave them the electronic treatment. For those of you who might not know what an ‘extended technique’ is,  it’s actually pretty simple. If you think of ‘standard technique’ as the normal sounds you would expect from a singer (re: do re mi, la di da, I’m singing a lil’ song over here), ‘extended technique’ encompasses everything else! It’s a special art to be able to grunt, yell, whisper, shriek, vocal fry, and make the guttural, jarring noises Ratkje does. Listen below to two of my favourite tracks off that album:

DICTAPHONE JAM FROM VOICE — make sure you listen at LEAST until the middle!!

For something on the other side of that spectrum (but equally trippy), check out the title song:

VOICE FROM VOICE — again, don’t stop at the beginning, progression and form is KEY to Ratkje’s music! Take it ALL in!

You can hear that Ratkje samples some traditional-ish singing, but distorts it with extended techniques and electronics. Unreal. If that doesn’t get your heart rate up, I don’t know what will. So,

I HOPE THAT GOT YOU ALL FIRED UP BECAUSE….

You’ll definitely be hearing lots of Ratkje’s incredible voice on November 14 in her piece ‘and sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep’. Her raw vocals are sampled, processed, and imitated throughout the piece. That being said, this singing is not like any singing you’ve heard - and you definitely will not fall asleep.

Before I sign off, here’s one more clip of her, this time live!

MAJA RATKJE LIVE (OMG)

Hope that this opened your ears a bit and you’re PUMPED for what is going to be a fantastic concert! I’ll be coming at you with our other featured composers shortly!

xx ally xx