Wednesday, September 21
$6, all ages
doors at 8:30, show at 9
Michael Bullock/Vic Rawlings/Mazen Kerbaj Trio (avant-improv bass/cello/electronics/trumpet from Boston and Lebanon)
The Cutest Puppy In The World (DC improv)
Insect Factory (microscopic ambient guitar drone from DC)
Boston's Vic Rawlings/Mike Bullock electronics/string duo will be joined by Lebanese trumpet player Mazen Kerbaj. The Vic Rawlings/Mike Bullock duo combine classical string instruments and meta-musical electronics in ways that bring out the rawest parts of each. Vic Rawlings plays amplified cello and a rack of electronics he built out of exposed circuit boards and stripped speaker cones. Mike Bullock plays amplified contrabass and a tone generator originally made for scientists. The result is an unbelievably stark sound world utterly alienated from the glib fluidity usually associated with bowed strings.
MICHAEL BULLOCK (contrabass, Boston)
http://www.mikebullock.com Free improvisor Michael Bullock has played bass in eight countries, on a dozen records, and in a variety of bands, touring extensively both solo and as part of various ensembles. He has also played with well-known improvisors Eddie Prévost, Lê Quan Ninh, and Peter Kowald, in addition to working with numerous members of Boston's improvised music community. Two of his current obsessions include IIbasSpit, an electro-acoustic trio with Tucker Dulin (trombone) and Seth Cluett (bass, voice) which is planning a CD release this year; and an ongoing curiosity with acoustic feedback. Bullock has released recordings on such diverse labels as Emanem, Rounder, and Naxos.
VIC RAWLINGS (cello/electronics, Boston)
Vic Rawlings (prepared/amplified cello, circuitry) is active as an improviser and instrument builder. His performances focus on the metamusical potential of unstable sounds and silences. He has developed instruments that are specific to this compositional aesthetic. As an instrument builder he specializes in modifications of existing instruments and has developed extensive cello preparations. He also continually
develops an electronic instrument from extant exposed circuitry, producing, in effect, a modular analog synthesizer with a highly unstable interface. This electronic instrument is paired with a flexible array of exposed speaker elements, chosen for their often unpredictable and idiosyncratic acoustic qualities.
He performs as a soloist and as a member of undr quartet, The BSC, and in duo and trio ensembles with Michael Bullock, Greg Kelley, Bhob Rainey, Sean Meehan, Jason Lescalleet, James Coleman, Liz Tonne, Tatsuya Nakatani, and Howard Stelzer, among others. Collaborators have included such diverse musicians as Eddie Prevost (AMM), Donald Miller (Borbetomagus), Daniel Carter (Other Dimensions in Music), Laurence Cook, Jaap Blonk, Masashi Harada, and Stephen Drury.
He appears on the following record labels: Grob, Sedimental, Emanem, Boxmedia, Chloe, Absurd, and Rykodisc. He has performed as a soloist/composer with Nicola Hawkins Dance Company and has composed scores for films by Alla Kovgan and Jeff Silva. He has toured in the US and France.
MAZEN KERBAJ (trumpet, Beirut Lebanon)
http://www.kerbaj.com Mazen Kerbaj was born in 1975 in Beirut and lived there since. His main activities are comics, painting, and music. After a lot of works for different publishers and magazines, it is in March 2000 that he releases some of his more personal works in his Journal 1999 (a diary in comics' format). He self-published eight other books and many short stories since.
It is also in 2000 that he plays for the first time in concert, in the Strike's pub in Beirut. This concert, a duo with Lebanese sax player Christine Sehnaoui, is probably the first improvised music concert in the Middle East.
In 2001, together with guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui, he creates the MILL association that curates since IRTIJAL an annual international festival for free music in Beirut as well as various concerts and events (IRTIJAL saw over the years some great improvisers like Fred Van Hove, Johannes Bauer, Lê Quan Ninh, and Franz Hautzinger).
In August 2002, together with Sharif Sehnaoui and double bass player Raed Yassine he recorded the album
A published by La CD-Thèque, Beirut.
After meeting Franz Hautzinger by chance in Lebanon in February 2003, they played in a duo in Beirut and in Paris and in a trio with Japanese laptop player Taku Unami at the IRTIJAL 2003 festival. Then they were joined by Sharif Sehnaoui and Helge Hinteregger to form Oriental Space quartet that played in Nickelsdorf, Berlin, Vienna, and Klagenfurt. A recording of this group is avilable on the Austrian label aRtonal, and
Abu Tarek, a recording of the duo Hautzinger/Kerbaj is available on the Portugese label Creative Sources.
In 2005, Kerbaj releases two new albums on the Lebanese newly-born label Al Maslakh (The Slaughterhouse), one in solo and the other with Rouba3i quartet.
Between 2000 and 2005, Mazen Kerbaj played in solo and various groups in a lot of venues in Lebanon, Damascus, Paris, Bordeaux, Vienna, Berlin, New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia.
Regular and occasional partners includes: Sharif Sehnaoui, Christine Sehnaoui, Raed Yassine, Charbel Haber, Jad Balaben, Jassem Hindi, Franz Hautzinger, Helge Hinteregger, Lê Quan Ninh, Bertrand Denzler, Stéphane Rives, Edward Perraud, Taku Unami, Guillermo Gregorio, Gene Coleman, Toshimaru Nakamura, Michael Zerang, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jim Baker, Jack Wright, Mike Bullock, and Vic Rawlings.
The Cutest Puppy in the World http://www.myspace.com/thecutestpuppyintheworld DC-area avant-improv informed by out-jazz, psychedelia, and noise, influenced by Sun Ra, No Neck Blues Band, Animal Collective, Acid Mothers Temple, John Zorn, etc.
Insect Factory http://www.myspace.com/insectfactory Solo microscopic ambient guitar drone infleunced and inspired by the likes of Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Fripp/Eno, John Fahey, and Coltrane. Hypnotic layers of drone textures.