FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 12, 2003
For Release: May 25, 2003 - June 30, 2003
THE ELECTRIC ARTS ALLIANCE OF ATLANTA PRESENTS
THE EAAA LEGACY SERIES: JUNE 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd, & 30th, 2003 AT 8 PM
AT EYEDRUM ART AND MUSIC GALLERY, ATLANTA, GA
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EAAA LEGACY EVENT 1 -- Monday June 2nd, 8 pm
Dick Robinson
EAAA LEGACY EVENT 2 -- Monday June 9th, 8 pm
PART I: Howard Wershil
PART II: Robert Cheatham & Richard Gess
EAAA LEGACY EVENT 3 -- Monday June 16th, 8 pm
Marshall Avett and Tony Gordon<
EAAA LEGACY EVENT 4 -- Monday June 23rd, 8 pm
PART I: Don Hassler
PART II: Neil Fried
EAAA LEGACY EVENT 5 -- Monday June 30th, 8 pm
Steven Everett
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The Electric Arts Alliance of Atlanta is proud to present The EAAA Legacy Series every Monday throughout June 2003 at Eyedrum in Atlanta. Through a combination of concerts and discussions, the EAAA Legacy Series will celebrate the past and present work of some of the most active, influential and inspiring Electric Artists to grace the Atlanta art, music and new media scene over the years. The events will feature Dick Robinson, Howard Wershil, Robert Cheatham, Richard Gess, Marshall Avett, Tony Gordon, Don Hassler, Neil Fried and Steven Everett, and will include retrospectives of their careers and in some cases premieres of new work. Please join us for an exciting celebration of Atlanta’s Electric Arts Legacy.
[Info on individual artists and their presentations is attached below.]
Admission to each event is $3.
Doors open at 7:45 pm; Shows begin at 8 pm sharp
For more info on the EAAA:
http://www.theEAAA.org --- or --- EAAA@earthlink.net
For more info about Eyedrum, or for directions:
http://www.eyedrum.org --- or --- http://www.eyedrum.org/map.asp
Eyedrum --- Suite 8, 290 MLK, Jr. DR, Atlanta, GA 30312
This program is supported in part by the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs.
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EAAA LEGACY EVENT 1 -- Monday June 2nd, 2003 at 8 pm
Dick Robinson will talk about the history of his studio in Atlanta, begun in 1965, and will present a concert consisting of five or six electronic/computer pieces covering the period 1970 to the present.
Dick Robinson received Master's degrees in composition and violin at the American Conservatory in Chicago. Further studies in electronic/computer music were with Robert Moog, Hugh LeCaine, Charles Dodge, Kurt Hebel, and Carla Scaletti. He founded the Atlanta Electronic Music Center in 1965. In 1970 the piece Ambiencewas co-winner of the first prize in the Dartmouth International Electronic Music Competition and is recorded on Vox. Robinson played violin with the Atlanta Symphony for 36 years, retiring in 1987 to devote his full time to composition. His electronic and computer music has been performed in colleges and universities throughout the United States, as well as at the '91, '96, and '99 SEAMUS conferences, and in Europe at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, the Festival de Musique d'Aujourd'hui (Extasis 89), in Geneva, Switzerland,and the Futura 1994 series in Crest, France. An early piece, MLK (1968) is recorded on the album Mighty Risen Plea (Sacred Frame Records), and most recently two new CDs, Dick Robinson: Electroacoustic
Music Vol 1 and Vol 2, have been released, the first by Railroad Earth, and the second by Dharma Bums Studios.
Through the years Robinson has produced many collaborative works with visual artists and dance groups in the Atlanta area and enjoyed performing with improvising groups such as Phobia Nova, the Bluebirds of Happiness, the Hallucination Quartet, and the Carrier Band, as well as with many fine individual musicians, including Harold Kelling, Bill Porter, Bob Mann, Norm Tevander, Paul Brittan, Greg Diddy, Bruce Hampton, Robert Cheatham, and more recently, Jerry Cullum, Grady Harris, Pauline Oliveros, Andrew Deutsch, and Peer Bode.
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EAAA LEGACY EVENT 2 -- Monday June 9th, 2003 at 8 pm
PART I: Howard Wershil will give a concert and discussion, Retrospective and Premiere: Past and Current Work by Howard Wershil, with Correlated Historic Discussion of Atlanta’s New Music Community 1977 – Present.
PART II: Robert Cheatham and Richard Gess will discuss their collaborative performance work as well as their individual involvement in the Atlanta art and music scene over the years, and will realize some of their old and new work in concert.
As one of the driving forces of contemporary music activity in the Atlanta area and Southern region, Howard Wershil has been concerned with maintaining music creativity as an art form free to explore new areas and uncover new truths about sound, time, aesthetics, and our relationship to these elements as both individuals and a society. Composers’ Resources, Inc., a non-profit, tax-exempt organization which he founded, has been instrumental in presenting audiences with intelligent, thought-provoking instrumental and electronic music from some of the profession’s most innovative and challenging minds. In recent years, the electroacoustic ensemble Phobia Nova presented concerts of cutting-edge live electroacoustic music, and curated events for the 1997 Arts Festival of Atlanta. The Atlanta Contemporary Chamber Ensemble presented works by Eleanor Hovda (a Meet-The-Composer consortium premiere), Terry Riley, Fred Rzewski, Orlando Garcia, George Crumb, Toshiro Mayuzumi, Olivier Messiaen, and many, many other composers from 1983 to 1995. During the same time period, the ‘Bring Your Own Pillow’ concerts of electroacoustic music featured electroacoustic music from some of the world’s finest composers, including Eve Beglarian, Paul Lansky, Reynold Wiedenaar, Brian Belet, Kristi Allik, Robert Mulder, Scott Wyatt, Mark Wingate, Anna Rubin, and others. In 1988, Composers’ Resources sponsored the 16th Annual International Electronic Music Plus Festival, founded by composer Gilbert Trythall, featuring electronic music PLUS another media (visual, performance) from composers world-wide. Through Composers’ Resources, Mr. Wershil maintains an extensive library of electroacoustic works, with and without other media, available for presentation to college and community audiences on request.
Howard Wershil has served as a music panelist for the Georgia Council for the Arts, and as a performance committee advisor for the Nexus Contemporary Art Center. His works have been premiered at both local and national venues, including ArtsAlive!, a yearly Atlanta event for arts presentation, 800 East, an Atlanta presentation space for innovative performance, The Electric Mountain Music Festival in Central Wyoming College, featuring multi-media works by composers throughout the United States, the 1997 Atlanta Arts Festival, and the Festival Synthese Bourges (France) in 2000. Music from European Climates, produced by Howard Wershil in 1983, has received air play on both college and commercial radio stations nationwide. ‘to release... to allow... to emerge... ‘, premiered by The Atlanta Contemporary Chamber Ensemble for New Music America 1992, received favorable review by Kyle Gann in New York’s The Village Voice, and was sighted as an indicator that perhaps the most interesting work in contemporary music does not occur in our major cities, but in areas one might seldom think to explore. An interesting caveat to consider metaphysically as well as geographically!
Robert Cheatham began playing on a regular basis in 1982 at the Dance Unit's weekly dance and music improv sessions at the old Nexus art space (now the Contemporary). After a year or so of such weekly events and playing occasionally with one or two others as TINNITUS, he responded to an ad by Richard Gess, whereupon the industrial/freejazz/noise/performance group TINNITUS was fully under way. TINNITUS played every possible venue in town (how many folks remember TV Dinner in midtown on Peachtree?) and some that could hardly be considered a venue (the infamous Anarchist party where people tried to dance to feedback and then got concerned that we had lost our way and pulled the plug. literally. Big mistake there.)
Tinnitus released 7 cassettes (this was in the middle of the so-called 'cassette revolution' of the eighties) and had cuts on several vinyl compilations put out by Lowlife magazine. We played at the Montreaux jazz festival one year (not that one, this one) and at all of the Destroy All Music Festivals.
Robert Cheatham would be deathly ill after many of these events and vowed to stop playing lest he die on stage in a fit of melted protoplasm and horrid regret. He did stop for a number of years until forming SHEAR, a trip hop band that made one EP and played various venues around town for about a year. He still likes Tricky.
Robert Cheatham also likes Berio, Ligeti, Cage, Stockhausen, Varese, Xenakis, etc. as much as Albert Ayler, Trane, Ornette, Cecil, etc... On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays, he no longer believes in the virtues of transparency; on all other days, he worries about how to reconcile a free musical society with certain notions of opacity. From time to time, he pushes around (like a loose tooth) whether everything is improvised (made up), or whether there is any such thing as predestination (nothing is made up/improvised).
Robert and Richard will play some old stuff and some new stuff. They will talk but they will not dance. They will no doubt 'perform.'
Richard Gess's involvement in the alternative arts and music scene in Atlanta dates back to 1985, when his musician's free classified ad in Creative Loafing connected him with Robert Cheatham's Tinnitus, one of the scant teaspoonful of advanced music groups in town at the time. Richard has since surfed along with Robert on wave after wave of reconfigurations and reformats of Robert's ongoing sonic subversion project. Beginning as an unamplified drummer, Richard gradually added layers of heavily stompboxed bass, guitar, Farfisa organ, drum machine, and MIDI wind controller to the Tinnitus mix, often rigging these tools to function in interactive loops with similar signals generated by Robert (thus making attribution of a particular sound to a specific player nearly impossible). As Tinnitus shaded off into a performance art unit in the early '90s, Richard pursued the electronic arts as an author of hypertext fiction, publishing pioneering word-and-image works on floppy disks with Robert's Perforations magazine and later on a national scale with Eastgate Press. He eventually took up various cameras and is now primarily known as a photographer and video artist, relying on digital technologies in both areas. Richard serves currently as drummer/bassist/guitarist with the Tinnitus sequel Konx and as one of the four altered-guitar players in the feedback + video ensemble Pre-Revolutionary. Musical influences include Sunny Murray, Donald Ayler, Scott LaFaro, Gary Peacock, and Syd Barrett. Faves in modern music include Autechre, Boards of Canada, Richard D. James, and Randy Castello.
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EAAA LEGACY EVENT 3 -- Monday June 16th, 2003 at 8 pm
Marshall Avett and Tony Gordon will discuss both their individual and their collaborative projects, and they will perform as MaTo.
Marshall Avett moved to Atlanta in 1994. He was already recording music of his own at home under the name Petland Toy Faktory, and began playing music with friends at various open mic nights around town. This group became known as More and has released eight cassette tapes and one CD of its spontaneous rock/tribe-based sound. The group performs annually these days. Also in 1994, Ben Young and he began a label called Old Gold. Originally dedicated to promoting music and art produced by their friends, the label soon released works by artists from around the world. The label's early base though was Atlanta, and the fervent improvised music scene in town led to two early compilation CD's.
Avett organized the Ice Cream Festival in 1996. It was a two-night event held at the Tula Art Center that brought together such luminaries as Eugene Chadbourne, Davey Williams, LaDonna Smith, and the Shaking Ray Levis, with younger groups such as Gold Sparkle Band, Charlie Parker, William Carlos Williams. The second night featured performances by the New World Music Ensemble from Tallahassee and members of San Agustin. Selections from each set of the first night were compiled onto a CD. The second compilation was born out of weekly improv nights at the Red Light Café during 1996. Entitled Ones. Two and Threes, the series was intended to mix and match performers who had not played together previously in unique settings. After nearly a dozen such nights, the venue pulled the plug, but the CD captures some of the magic. At the same time, Old Gold helped release a seven inch by San Agustin and a one-sided 12" by Charlie Parker.
About this same time, the label began putting on monthly shows at the Moreland Avenue Tavern. These nights combined bands and musicians who had never played before (or were playing for the first time) with more established groups who didn't have many options when it came to live venues for their music. Most of these nights wound up on cassette tape and will be compiled in a retrospective/memorial CD set in the near future.
In 1998, Avett moved to 249 Trinity Avenue in downtown Atlanta. Soon after, he and Woody Cornwell began hosting monthly art parties in the loft. Each event offered attendees creative music and a one-night-only visual art show. The ceiling of the loft was coated with aluminum foil, and quickly became known as the Silver Ceiling. The first event, featuring 105-degree heat and the 200-degree sound of Freebass, attracted 30 or so people. Within a year, the events were attracting nearly 200 people, and Avett was tired of moving furniture.
So, when a larger space in the same building became available, he and seven other art and music lovers vowed to pay $100 a month to open a new space. It was dubbed Eyedrum, and found similar success in attracting people interested in new music and new art. Avett booked most of the music for the first few years. This included a weekly open improv night on Wednesdays, and unforgettable performances by Caroliner Rainbow, John Duncan, nmperign, Dennis Palmer, Cut Chemist, Eugene Chadbourne, Billy Bang and Abbey Rader, Saturnalia String Trio with Daniel Carter, the Melted Men, and more.
Having access to such spaces allowed Avett to put together his own solo performances involving multiple turntables, cheap electronics, alto saxophone and voice, as well as create works of art that involved pre-recorded sounds or invited the audience to compose the soundtrack.
In 2000, Avett moved south to Butts County where he is the editor of the Jackson Progress-Argus. Old Gold turns 10 next year. He still performs solo, with More, Charlie Parker and Zandosis.
Musician Tony Gordon has been involved with the ensembles Charlie Parker, Freebass and Zandosis, and currently hosts the Destroy All Music radio show on WREK 91.1 FM in Atlanta.
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EAAA LEGACY EVENT 4 -- Monday June 23rd, 2003 at 8 pm
PART I: Don Hassler will present some of his music from the past will also discuss his work in developing the electronic music and experimental sound program at the Atlanta College of Art.
PART II: Neil Fried will perform the story of Railroad Earth--a parallel university--and related themes.
Don Hassler holds the position of Manager of Instructional Technology and adjunct instructor at the Atlanta College of Art. He has been working with electronic music since 1979. He attended college in Arizona, Colorado, and Georgia, and studied composition privately with Carter Thomas.
Neil Fried is a musician, director and creator of artistic community. He is affiliated with The Artery, an arts series at the Railroad Earth studio in Atlanta.
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EAAA LEGACY EVENT 5 -- Monday June 30th, 2003 at 8 pm
Steven Everett will present a concert of several of his works, including works for flute, gamelan, and electronics, for percussion and tape, and for dance and tape. He will also discuss his ideas on compositional approaches and aesthetic issues on performance and digital music.
Steven Everett teaches composition, electronic and computer music, music of Asia, and directs the Computer Music Studios and Javanese Gamelan Ensemble at Emory University in Atlanta and currently serves as chair of the department. He was also recently visiting professor of composition at Princeton University. This fall he will perform several interactive compositions at the Résonances 2003 Festival at IRCAM in Paris and teach workshops in interactive composition at the conservatory of music in Paris and Geneva. In 1998 he received the Mayor’s Fellowship in the Arts, awarded by the City of Atlanta for "outstanding contributions to the arts in Atlanta."
As a composer, many of his works involve interactive computer-controlled electronics with performers. These have been performed in over fifty concerts in Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Germany, France, Sweden, England, Scotland, Italy, Canada, and throughout the USA. Composition awards have been received from the Rockefeller Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, Chamber Music America, American Composers Forum, Bogliasco Foundation, and International Trumpet Guild.
Recent premieres include Opaque Silhouette for music-video presented at ICMC2002 in Sweden and the 2002 Seoul Computer Festival, Quiver Songs for shakuhachi and guitar performed by Yoshio Kurahashi in Kyoto, Japan, a music-drama shadow play, kaM, based on a work by Indonesian author and political dissident Pramoedya Ananta Toer, and Blow Back for trumpet and live electronics which received first place in the International Trumpet Guild Composition Contest. He is recorded on SCI, Crystal, Mark, and ACA Digital Records.
He was also co-artistic director and conductor of Thamyris New Music Ensemble and has guest conducted the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and Contemporary Chamber Players of Illinois.
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