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Past Events: 2013 | |||
Secret Weave and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: C. Lavender Dinner Music Segamented Worms Tuesday, January 15, 2013, 10:00 PM Sluggo's North 501 Cherokee Blvd. Chattanooga, TN 37405 $5 C. LAVENDER is a solo noise project based out of Hudson, NY and a recording artist for Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! label. Her performances are based on intuition which reflect the mood and atmosphere of the space, using a constantly changing arsenal of instruments and equipment. Heathen Harvest called her “a creative and individualistic noise artist with an ear for atmospheric textures,” and her work has inspired a painting by Kim Gordon (SONIC YOUTH) in her series The Noise Paintings. DINNER MUSIC is the St. Louis/Chattanooga multi-instrumentalist and experimental video artist RICK WEAVER, who creates warped cinematic music, like a Lynchian smear of discomfort, beautiful in its controlled chaos. The Riverfront Times wrote “[Weaver’s] music often explores the underbelly of dementia through tales of the grotesque...harnessing the ability to put life back into the art of performance..." SEGAMENTED WORMS is Soilcore—experimental power noise and lo-fi sound manipulations influenced by insect life, dirt, sludge, grime, disease, and whatever else lies underfoot. Chattanooga musician JOSEPH J. MICOLO III improvises all material using cheap plastic toy noisemakers, effects pedals, and samplers with extreme, high volumes, treating listeners’ ears like the trespassing of a friendly earwig searching for shelter. Quotes about C. LAVENDER: “National goddess of hot-wired electronics and semiotic dissonance.” – Baltimore City Paper “A talented performer…she brought the scary, the contemplative, and the running for your life bit, too.” – Wm. M. Berger (WFMU, Uncle Wiggly) Bob Stagner / Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel / Roger Ruzow / Edgewood Saxophone Trio Saturday, March 2, 2013, 8:00 PM First Existentialist Congregation 470 Candler Park Dr. NE Atlanta, GA, 30307-2113 $7 Note: With the passing of Dennis Palmer, the concert will serve as a tribute to him. Please consult the Facebook event page for the latest information on this event. Secret Weave and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: VEST FEST 2013, featuring: LAZY MAGNET ID M THEFT ABLE SECRET BOYFRIEND Monday, March 4, 2013, 8:30 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN, 37404 $6 admission with vest / $8 admission without vest Secret Weave and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: An Evening of Tennessee-bred Electronic Mayhem, featuring AETHER JAG (Chatt./Nashville) TRAVIS MORGAN (Knoxville) RURNT (Chattanooga) Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 10:00 PM Sluggo's North 501 Cherokee Blvd. Chattanooga, TN 37405 $6 AETHER JAG a.k.a. Bridget Venuti, recent transplant from Nashville, blends her musical inventions (home built sequencers, circuit-bent and rerouted riggings) with the traditional (keys, voice, strings), coaxing textural soundscapes in the microcosm of personal electronic evolutions that drift in the quinta essential. TRAVIS MORGAN from Knoxville has been on the national noise scene for 15 years as a member of BLACK MEAT with Graham Moore (of TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN L.A. and the owner of the label Blossoming Noise) and the former owner/operator of NCC Records. He has shared the stage and compilations with the likes of Z’EV, Jarboe (Swans), and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and has curated noise events in Tampa and Atlanta. RURNT is the noise alter ego of Jerry Reed, who has been making some sort of noise in the Tennessee Valley for the past 10 years in such acts as Hoth, Gravebound, Neon Viking Funeral, and Rough Rope. With Rurnt, he explores such themes as loneliness, regret, despair , and loss. Ugly feelings require ugly sounds. Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: The Ever-Loving Astral Etheric Weekend for Dennis Palmer (Tribute Festival) March 29 (Friday, 8 PM) and March 30 (Sat., 7 PM), 2013 Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 March 29 tickets: $10 advance, $15 door March 30 tickets: $15 advance, $20 door Or $20 advance for BOTH NIGHTS. NOTE: advance tickets are not mailed - bring ID to door - TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR ONLY FOR THE SATURDAY SHOW. ADVANCE TICKET SALES ARE CLOSED. Friends of Dennis Palmer - musician, visual artist, and co-founder of the Shaking Ray Levi Society - are converging in Chattanooga this weekend to pay tribute to him, through music, dance, poetry, art, and film. Performers thus far (and the list is expanding every day!) include: Mark Bradley-Shoup (The Heroes are Horses), Christie Burns, Jill Burton, Amanda Cagle, David Greenberger (Duplex Planet), Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel, The 4th Ward Afro Klezmer Orchestra, Terry Fugate, Tim Hinck, Bruce Kaplan, Killick, Ann Law, Evan Lipson (Normal Love), Kofi Mawuko (Ogya), Ernie Paik, Kenny and Shani Hedden Palmer (Sweet & Lowdown), Mary Piper, Red Okra King, Tyson Rogers (Allison Krause, Don Williams), LaDonna Smith (TransMuseq, String Trek), Bob Stagner (Shaking Ray Levis), Buddy T (Lambchop), Davey Williams (Curlew, TransMuseq), and Jack Wright. Video art contributors include: Brian Cagle, Megan Hollenbeck, Rick Weaver, Jarrod Whaley, and Ben Williams. Poetry by Mia Hansford and Laurie Perry Vaughen. Masters of Ceremonies: David Greenberger and Lee Shook. All ticket sales support Dennis Palmer’s work through The Shaking Ray Levi Society.  Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: WREST TRIO (feat. Ben Bennett, Evan Lipson, Jack Wright) Thursday, April 4, 2013, 8:30 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 In the fifties Jack Wright was a soprano choir boy and marching band saxophonist, in the early sixties a washtub bassist and college kid, in the late sixties and seventies a university lecturer in history, a revolutionist and community organizer. Since then he has been playing freely improvised saxophone, touring the US and Europe, and has been dubbed "the Johnny Appleseed of Improvised Music". He is accused of impersonating pigs, ducks and human blowhards, but lately has been remembering the proper use of the saxophone - to support the tottering universe. His roots are in Philly, where he owns a house for wayward improvisers. Jack plays with everyone but performs and tours only with the finest, which usually means the most obscure, from Europe and the US. He and his partners are among the few true believers in absolutely free, unrestrained, unstructured, unselfconscious improvisation, played at soberingly high levels of musicianship. Evan Lipson has been active as a musician since adolescence and acquired an early interest in the lateral realms of visionary & experimental music -- quickly seeking to transcend the existent paradigms of idiomatic expression. This particular 'left-hand path' has afforded him the opportunity to work in a wide variety of contexts and styles (esoteric and otherwise); his formative experiences being primarily rooted in underground rock, modernist composition, freak pop, jazz, noise, as well as various modes of improvisation. Ben Bennett's current music stems mainly from various forms of free-improv: maximalist, reduced, noise, etc. A desire to get the most varied and visceral array of sounds from the simplest instruments has led to an ongoing process of distilling the drumset to its essential sound-maker, the vibrating membrane. Using extended techniques involving breath and friction, as well as the time-honored tradition of hitting things with sticks, he plays an evolving pile of frame drums, pre-tuned drum heads, metal things, tubes, and other objects that can be combined and recombined to get a variety of sounds during a performance. This set-up lends itself greatly towards being crammed in a backpack, strapped to a bike, dragged along the ground, or thrown down the stairs, generally without physical or psychological damage. Listen to Wrest on Soundcloud here. AVA and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Music at the 4 Bridges Festival: 4th Ward Afro Klezmer Orchestra Big Kitty Alex Thompson Orange Grove Center Chorus Sunday, April 14, 2013 First Tennessee Pavilion Chattanooga, TN $7 (Sunday only) / $10 (Saturday and Sunday) noon: Alex Thompson 1 PM: Big Kitty 2 PM: Orange Grove Chorus 3 PM: 4th Ward Afro Klezmer Orchestra Choir boy turned cynic singer-songwriter, Chattanooga troubadour Alex Thompson's folky pop has a delicate charm and lithe and supple delivery, with his distinctive singing style that floats with a silky smoothness and adeptly controlled modulations. "Both a calico cat of leisure and a fearless feline guardian (and apparent reincarnation of bluesman Blind Willie Johnson), Big Kitty lends its name to Chattanoogan Clark Williams, who has his own spin on folk music with an infusion of pop turns and wide-eyed magic...Williams’s musical persona is secretly something mystical and a refreshing anomaly in the local folk scene." - Chattanooga Pulse The concept behind Big Kitty's latest album, Recordings of Ferns, is that Clark Williams meets a strange character in St. Elmo who uses a handheld tape recorder to record the sounds of ferns for medicinal purposes. He then sells the tapes at local pharmacies and makes his living thereby. The album is a facsimile of one of these tapes. It is music meant to heal. Orange Grove Center of Chattanooga leads community agencies serving individuals with intellectual disabilities and features a full-time music instructor who provides a variety of training techniques to assist individuals in acquiring an appreciation for music and to explore talents and interests in singing and musical instruments. Orange Grove is blessed with talented choral members who perform as the Orange Grove Center Chorus. The Fourth Ward Afro Klezmer Orchestra is an original Atlanta musical entity: a nine piece jazz orchestra playing original compositions and arrangements that combine West African influenced rhythms with Eastern European Klezmer melodies. "...tunes that swing like Ellington’s jungle nights at the Apollo, carve soulfunk grooves reminiscent of Fela Kuti’s Africa ‘70 and rock the bar mitzvah like there’s no Second Coming. It’s a mash-up of seemingly incompatible styles that, nevertheless, sounds like some of the freshest jazz ever generated by a gang of (mostly) ATL homeboys." - Doug DeLoach - Stomp and Stammer, Atlanta
Flying Fingers Productions, Secret Weave, and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Jason Lescalleet Aether Jag Millipede Thursday, April 25, 2013 Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 Maine musician Jason Lescalleet's sound world occupies a space between noise, contemporary composition, and minimal electronics. Using decidedly primitive tactics and equipment (e.g. antiquated reel-to-reel recorders, damaged tape, etc.), his work focuses on extreme frequencies and microscopic audio detail. He's been a member of Due Process, performed and recorded with Keith Rowe, Joe Colley, Jason Kahn, John Hudak, Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley (both separately and as Nmperign), and most recently Graham Lambkin in their Breadwinner project which has yielded unprecedented and glorious results in the electroacoustic music of today. Read this Pitchfork article about Jason Lescalleet. AETHER JAG a.k.a. Bridget Venuti, recent transplant from Nashville, blends her musical inventions (home built sequencers, circuit-bent and rerouted riggings) with the traditional (keys, voice, strings), coaxing textural soundscapes in the microcosm of personal electronic evolutions that drift in the quinta essentia. "MILLIPEDE is the project of Joseph Davenport, who primarily uses heavily treated guitars to create thick, abrasive, abstract hailstorms of sound...motifs and melodies emerge to listeners who allow themselves to drown in the relentlessly swirling sound pools." - Chattanooga Pulse "Overload layering for a variety of nerdly senses" - The Wire "Scathing & grating guitar harshness, a Neil Young worshipper getting high on Skullflower, My Bloody Valentine recording on the surface of the sun" - Anti Gravity Bunny Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Matthew Shipp Trio Friday, May 10, 2013, 8 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $15 advance, $17 door Matthew Shipp is one of the most acclaimed jazz pianists of the past two decades, truly being one of the leading lights of a new generation of jazz giants. He has reached the holy grail of jazz in that he possesses a unique style that is all his own—and he’s one of the few in jazz that can say so today. Having recorded over 40 albums as a leader or co-leader, Shipp has created pioneering work with hip-hop artists DJ Spooky, Antipop Consortium, and El-P, and has collaborated with notables such as Roscoe Mitchell (Art Ensemble of Chicago), William Parker, David S. Ware, Jason Pierce (a.k.a. J Spaceman of Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized), and Spring Heel Jack. “Mr. Shipp is finding success on his own terms,” writes Nate Chinen of The New York Times. His diverse and independent body of work has earned him a reputation as “exciting and daring” (Will Layman, PopMatters), “entertaining and demanding in equal parts” (Gary Giddins, JazzTimes) and “one of the most talented players of this era” (Tad Hendrickson, Spinner). “Even a passing listen will tell you that he’s smart,” adds Michael J. West of the Washington City Paper. “Close attention reveals that he’s exponentially smarter. Shipp is a musician of scholarship and precision, harmonic and otherwise.” Hear Shipp play an intimate, one-of-a-kind performance on Barking Legs Theater’s 1916 Steinway grand piano. "A true artist and visionary...the real thing" (Henry Rollins of Black Flag) "A composer and improviser of the highest order" (Troy Collins, All About Jazz) “A true American eccentric…at his best, he gets you to hear music in a different way: you’re in the maze with him, sure enough, but there’s no place you’d rather be.” (Adam Shatz, The New York Times)
Flying Fingers Productions, Secret Weave, and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Crank Sturgeon PCRV (Matt Taggart) Red Okra King Thursday, May 16, 2013, 8:30 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $8 door Crank Sturgeon has been active in performance, installation, and sound art since the early 1990's. A comical conceptualist, Crank is something of a misnomer: whether blending pun with the profane, or transforming the precious into an oil spill, a Sturgeon performance defies categorization. Accompanied by ridiculous costuming, pointed instructions and parables (gone awry), and even the occasional dirigible or two, these elements intertwine, transforming into space-defying interventions, and invariably involving audience participation. More than just possessing a predilection for the absurd, Crank wears the goggles of the perpetual optimist: infusing his processes with a classical struggle, and yet always with a leery salmon grin, awash in an undertow of delicious and celebratory noise... An indefatigable nomad, Crank Sturgeon frequents independent galleries, alternative venues, and DIY spaces across the USA and Europe. Many of these performances have also featured a collaborative installation element, such as constructing and performing with an interactive, life-size cardboard airplane for the festival of the Sacred and Profane, Peaks Island, Maine; in the manner of artist residencies, such as "Eyes Used for Tooth Support," a three week onsite residency held at SPACE Gallery, in Portland, Maine; and guerilla-style environments, such as "Smell Sound of Forensic Y's," a participatory environment featuring artists Fritz Welch and id m theft able, held at the Grey Area Gallery in Brighton, UK. PCRV explores improvisation with solo and collaborative fields, using tools ranging from laptop, MIDI controllers, bass guitar, various synths, tape players, cd players and a multitude of computer based effects, instruments and recording programs. Working still within a realtime context, PCRV is utilizing all of these simultaneously to give the illusion of postediting in his music. Prior thought is kept to a minimum during the creative process to stop conscience influence into the music, keeping one foot ahead of the spider without knowing all his moves before hand. Intuition, problem solving, purity. Red Okra King is everyone’s favorite geodesic gnome—an astral being and protector of the Southern Appalachian dream world, bridging the gap between the opposing forces of Santa Claus and Cthulhu. Past sightings have been few and far between, but lately he has had much to say, being the world’s foremost expert on gnome mythology. As any witness can attest to, each and every ROK appearance is one that will not soon be forgotten. His May 16 performance will feature a VERY special guest.
Contemporary
Performing Arts of Chattanooga, New
Dischord and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Trained as a classical violinist, Goldstein gravitated to the works of American composer Charles Ives early in his career and recently completed an authoritative edition of Ives’s Second String Quartet for the official Ives Edition. Goldstein’s entry into the vanguard of music dates back to his participation in the early ‘60s in the Judson Dance Theater—an important showcase for independent, postmodern dance—in Greenwich Village and being a co-founder of the Tone Roads Ensemble, which tackled modern music including Olivier Messiaen, Fluxus pieces and everything in between. Goldstein has created an impressive and extensive catalog of “structured improvisation compositions,” including stage, orchestral, chamber, vocal and choral works, along with multimedia and radio productions. He
has taught at some of the most prestigious colleges in the
nation, including Columbia University, Dartmouth College and the
New England Conservatory of Music and has written extensively
about musical improvisation including the book Sounding the
Full Circle. Now
living in Montreal at the age of 77, his skills are undiminished
although his appearances in the U.S. are becoming increasingly
rare. AC Faux and Flying Fingers Productions present: Faun Fables Joshua Songs Sunday, June 9, 2013, 8 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave, Chattanooga, TN, 37404 $8 Faun Fables (on Drag City Records) is Dawn McCarthy's songtelling and vivid imagination come tolife at a crossroads where ancient ballad, art song, physical theater, and rock music meet. With partner and multi-instrumentalist Nils Frykdahl (co-founder of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), McCarthy makes "...music of near-frightening beauty, at times sweetly sad, other times heartrending and disquieting,rendered with an intensity akin to supernatural force" (Nashville Scene). (This is not a Shaking Ray Levi Society presentation, but presented by our partners and worthy of attention.)
Secret Weave and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: BLURST FEST featuring Mincemeat or Tenspeed (Providence), Unguent (Philly), Some Pepper (Philly), Luminous in Nummer (W. Mass.), Jack Callahan (NYC), Millipede (Chatt.) Wednesday, July 24, 2013, 10:00 PM Sluggo's North 501 Cherokee Blvd. Chattanooga, TN 37405 $6 BLURST FEST promises to be the most intense musical event of the summer, offering hot-wired electronics, onerous noise and crushing, take-no-prisoners-style sonic onslaughts from six unique acts operating at the bleeding edge of today's most provocative music. "Davey Harms has been composing on pretty much just guitar pedals under this ludicrous moniker for like eight years. This project’s always been on a pretty fun 'not new age, not synth pop, not techno' melodic-noise trip, but this iteration RIPS." - VICE Magazine, on Mincemeat or Tenspeed "Luminous in Nummer from Western Massachusetts builds impressive drones, with 'Lichoned Forest' exuding a tranquil and almost blissful suspension of tones." - Tracks to Sync "MILLIPEDE is the project of Joseph Davenport, who primarily uses heavily treated guitars to create thick, abrasive, abstract hailstorms of sound...motifs and melodies emerge to listeners who allow themselves to drown in the relentlessly swirling sound pools." - Chattanooga Pulse "Overload layering for a variety of nerdly senses" - The Wire "Scathing & grating guitar harshness, a Neil Young worshipper getting high on Skullflower, My Bloody Valentine recording on the surface of the sun" - Anti Gravity Bunny Generation Nothing and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: What
Cheer? Brigade The WHAT CHEER? BRIGADE from Providence, RI is a 19-piece mobile party, like a marching band on an atomic fireball sugar rush that darts from New Orleans brass band tunes to Bollywood dance numbers to whirlwind Balkan folk to bombastic hip-hop, with a ton of surprises along the way. It has been four years since the SRLS brought their merry insanity to Chattanooga, and their return will guarantee to deliver an unforgettable dance 'splosion. “Thrillingly competent,
with undimmable energy…an explosion of good cheer.” - The
New York Times The Indianapolis, IN band Male Bondage, described as sounding "Like Karp and Fugazi making out," has released its latest album Love Moon this summer. "This is a rock and roll band, heavy on the rock. They put on my Torche and Hatred Surge records and wrestle every time they come over." - Matt Aull
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Ars Supernova featuring Davey Williams Thursday, July 25, 2013, 8:00 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 advance/door ARS SUPERNOVA (not to be confused with the young Austin band of the same name) is an institution—in the good sense—dating back to the 1970s, when they were the infamous restless spirits of rock/jazz/what-not in Jackson, Miss. Their periodic reunions are infrequent yet mind-blowing by all accounts, and this swing through the southeast is cause for celebration. Core members participating in this incarnation of Ars Supernova are Evan Gallagher, Bruce Golden and Jeb Stuart with special guest guitarist Davey Williams. Composer and keyboardist Evan Gallagher has performed in John Zorn’s “Cobra” game piece ensembles and with a variety of similarly adventurous and notable musicians, including cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm (Wilco), guitarist/banjo player Eugene Chadbourne, saxophonist George Cartwright, Joe Gallant, and the world’s foremost player of the latex rubber balloon (!) Judy Dunaway. Drummer, improviser and experimenter Bruce Golden is a self-declared “mongrel percussionist” who has an incredibly wide musical vocabulary, playing everything from jazz, classical, folk and blues to more innovative music in the form of computer-based soundscapes. He has performed with The Windbreakers, Tim Lee and The Assemblers, and Golden and Davey Williams were band mates in the legendary genre-bending group Curlew, which The New York Times called “one of the best of New York’s downtown bands.” The inimitable guitar virtuoso, writer and artist Davey Williams is considered one of the three “Founding Fathers of American free improv guitar,” having co-founded the music group TransMuseq and The Improvisor journal of free improvisation with longtime collaborator violinist LaDonna Smith. Williams has played extensively with a variety of artists including Rev. Fred Lane, Col. Bruce Hampton, John Zorn, Roger Turner, Kramer and The Shaking Ray Levis.
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Andrew Raffo Dewar (Tuscaloosa) Andrew Drury (NYC) Evan Lipson Sunday, August 11, 2013, 8:00 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $12 door/$10 students “Though he’s a noted composer of chamber music, Dewar’s flutters and wails show that he’s no slouch when it comes to heavyweight sax playing either” - Clifford Allen, Signal to Noise “The drums must be the oldest musical instrument of human kind, and no one has ever confronted it with a more unbounded, yet skilled, creativity than has Drury.” - David Yearsley, Counterpunch Critically-acclaimed soprano saxophonist and composer Andrew Raffo Dewar has a strikingly diverse career, having studied with avant-garde jazz legends Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy and Bill Dixon and also experimental music composer Alvin Lucier. Dewar, who holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University, has expertise in Indonesian music, experimentalism in the arts, intercultural music, jazz, improvisation, technology in music, 1960s intermedia arts and ethnographic fieldwork. As a saxophonist, Dewar has been praised as having “complete control of the instrumental nuances,” and being “inherently clever [and] intuitively rational” (Massimo Ricci, Temporary Faults), while noted as “having the rare ability to translate his knowledge into something beautiful” (Matthew O’Shannessy, Foxy Digitalis). Percussionist Andrew Drury is a fearless music explorer of new materials and techniques, as a free-improv soloist, a self-taught composer and collaborator with some of the most adventurous and acclaimed improvisers in the world. A bold and inventive performer, Drury often performs using one drum, scraping the head with wood slivers and fingernails, manipulating drum head tension and harmonic patterns with bells and using the drum as a wind instrument. He has been called “a thoughtfully avant-garde drummer and composer” by The New York Times and an “outstanding jazz and experimental percussionist” by Time Out New York, and he has led hundreds of workshops around the world and composed pieces for dance performances and street theater. Evan Lipson has been active as a musician since adolescence and acquired an early interest in the lateral realms of visionary & experimental music -- quickly seeking to transcend the existent paradigms of idiomatic expression. This particular ‘left-hand path’ has afforded him the opportunity to work in a wide variety of contexts and styles (esoteric and otherwise); his formative experiences being primarily rooted in underground rock, modernist composition, freak pop, jazz, noise, as well as various modes of improvisation. He has played upright and electric bass in numerous groups including Normal Love, Satanized, Psychotic Quartet, Wrest Trio with Jack Wright and Ben Bennett, Femme Tops, Legion of Strategic Deception, Dynamite Club, and Ruins.  Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: T.J. Borden Evan Lipson Bob Stagner (Shaking Ray Levis) Friday, August 23, 2013, 8:00 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $8 door “Borden is inventing new and unconventional ways to play...you’ve never heard a cello played like this.” - Upstate Soundscape “...committed, technically polished...[Borden] mastered the work’s intricacies with elegant grace.” - Artvoice, on Borden’s performance of Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra Tyler "T.J." Borden is a classically trained cellist, starting at the age of 6, and since has developed a passion for experimental and contemporary music, performing in venues ranging from concert halls to basements, art galleries and theaters. In his home of Buffalo, NY, he is a member of Wooden Cities, a new music collective dedicated to performing the work of emerging and underrepresented composers, and he is an emerging composer himself, commissioned to compose and perform a cello piece by the Cleveland Institute of Art for its 2011 commencement ceremony. Borden is an active improviser and collaborator, and he has worked with composers such as Tony Conrad, Steven Mackey and Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky. Evan Lipson has been active as a musician since adolescence and acquired an early interest in the lateral realms of visionary & experimental music -- quickly seeking to transcend the existent paradigms of idiomatic expression. This particular ‘left-hand path’ has afforded him the opportunity to work in a wide variety of contexts and styles (esoteric and otherwise); his formative experiences being primarily rooted in underground rock, modernist composition, freak pop, jazz, noise, as well as various modes of improvisation. He has played upright and electric bass in numerous groups including Normal Love, Satanized, Psychotic Quartet, Wrest Trio with Jack Wright and Ben Bennett, Femme Tops, Legion of Strategic Deception, Dynamite Club, and Ruins. Chattanooga percussionist Bob Stagner is a co-founder of the acclaimed free improvisation duo The Shaking Ray Levis with Dennis Palmer, which is the first American band to record for the legendary British record label Incus Records and has collaborated with Derek Bailey, folk artist Rev. Howard Finster, Duplex Planet-creator David Greenberger, Steve Beresford, Davey Williams, Frank Pahl, Shelley Hirsch, award winning artist Wayne White, Borbetomagus and countless others. Stagner co-founded the non-profit arts education organization The Shaking Ray Levi Society in 1986 and works with The Rhythmic Arts Project which uses drumming as a way to address life and learning skills for those with intellectual, physical and developmental disabilities. Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Jill Burton Misha Feigin Friday, September 27, 2013, 8:00 PM Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 door JILL BURTON is an American improviser, extended vocalist, dancer, performance artist and energy worker. Noted as one of the great foundation improvisers of America, she is also known for incorporating spiritual healing with improvised performance. Active in the American improv scene since the early 1970s, she has lived and worked all over the country, including a ten-year stint in the 1980s as part of the downtown East Village experimental arts community, and six years in Sitka, Alaska, where she worked with Tlingit storytellers providing musical accompaniment for their healing stories. Burton is unusual for a musician in that her work is ephemeral, in-the-moment, and therefore recordings of her work are rare. She has collaborated with many notable experimental musicians and dancers, including LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, Jane Scarpantoni, Judy Dunaway, David First, Rain Worthington, Gino Robair, Jack Wright and Scott Walton. MISHA FEIGIN was born and raised in Moscow and is known as one of Russia’s premiere guitarists. When he immigrated to the US in 1990, he left behind an established position in the Moscow arts scene highlighted by features on major radio and television shows and national and international tours. He began recording free improvised music in 1986 in Moscow and has performed extensively internationally, including performances at the Vancouver Jazz Festival and in NYC venues such as the Knitting Factory, Tonic and the Stone. Feigin has played with some of the world’s most distinguished improvisers, including Elliott Sharp, Eugene Chadbourne, Amy Denio, LaDonna Smith, Craig Hultgren and Peter Kowald. Russian and English are heard throughout Misha’s dynamic performances, which incorporate original poetry and spontaneous storytelling. Misha Feigin at the Stone (NYC) in 2010:
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present The Old-Timey Avant-Garde Series: The Molecules Korybantes Red Okra King Thursday, October 3, 2013, 9:00 pm Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 door Formed in 1990, the Bay Area trio The Molecules built a reputation for its frenetic, no-holds-barred live performances and unclassifiable, unique rock amalgam that stretches the limits of punk, noise, prog-rock and more. Front man guitarist/vocalist Ron Anderson was a founding member of the legendary band Rat At Rat R in the early ‘80s, alongside contemporaries Sonic Youth and Swans in the New York no-wave/noise scene. A regular on the European festival/club circuit for over two decades, Anderson has performed on over 60 releases, including Secret Curve by Anderson’s ensemble PAK released on John Zorn’s Tzadik Records, and Time Out New York said, “Ron Anderson is among the lifers forming the vital backbone of the NYC new-music scene.” On The Molecules, Anderson said, “The idea was to take all the music that we liked and try to do something new. Free jazz and improvisation, punk and hardcore, prog-rock, performance art, twentieth century classical music. The basic ideas: take highbrow art and make it lowbrow, make it ugly, make it ‘rock’, make it not ‘rock,’ play beyond our limitations, make it wrong.” Ron’s co-conspirators in The Molecules are two of the most innovative musicians ever to come out of the Bay Area; John Shiurba (bass) and Thomas Scandura (drums) are both composers and improvisers who have performed with Fred Frith, Anthony Braxton, Carla Kihlstedt and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. “It’s got your daily suggested intake of no-wave, punk and prog-rock...wacky, loud, aggressive, atonal and ultimately, fantastic.” – Impose Magazine, on Friends by The Molecules “[The Molecules are] the logical extension of the Minutemen, i.e., insane musicianship, odd time signatures, music and lyrics that somehow worked even though logically they shouldn’t, combined with a dead-set punk rock attitude...the songs twist and turn like carnival rides gone haywire.” - Big Takeover Magazine Korybantes is a new ensemble featuring three formidable Chattanooga musicians, and this performance at Barking Legs Theater will mark the group’s debut. Bassist Evan Lipson (Normal Love, Psychotic Quartet, Wrest) has been called “The Midas of underground music” by Chloe Lum (AIDS Wolf/Seripop) and seeks to transcend the existent paradigms of idiomatic expression. Percussionist Bob Stagner is a co-founder of the acclaimed free-improv duo The Shaking Ray Levis with Dennis Palmer and has collaborated with Derek Bailey, folk artist Rev. Howard Finster, Duplex Planet-creator David Greenberger and many others. Multi-instrumentalist Rick Weaver (Dinner Music, The Four Hands, Female Topics) creates warped cinematic music, like a Lynchian smear of discomfort. The Riverfront Times wrote “[Weaver’s] music often explores the underbelly of dementia...harnessing the ability to put life back into the art of performance.” Red Okra King is everyone’s favorite geodesic gnome — an astral being and protector of the Southern Appalachian dream world, bridging the gap between the opposing forces of Santa Claus and Cthulhu. Past sightings have been few and far between, but lately he has had much to say, being the world’s foremost expert on gnome mythology. Using storytelling, movement, singing, musique concrete, improvised music and homemade costumes, the Red Okra King assures that every appearance is completely unique and one that will not soon be forgotten.
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present The Old-Timey Avant-Garde Series - Dennis Palmer Birthday Weekend: Konk Pack (feat. Tim Hodgkinson of Henry Cow, Thomas Lehn and Roger Turner) Friday, October 11, 2013, 8:00 pm Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 door “With startling combinations of punkish nuisance, ingenious change-ups, and rolling, stumbling, tripping and flipping sound inventions, Konk Pack are one of the most exciting improv groups in the world” – The Wire Since forming in 1997, the dynamic, explosively colorful, yet nuanced free improv trio Konk Pack has received numerous international accolades for its unforgettable performances and breathtaking recordings. Tim Hodgkinson (London) is a composer, ethnomusicologist, co-founder of the legendary, acclaimed art-rock group Henry Cow, and a seasoned improviser on lap steel guitar and clarinet. Thomas Lehn (Cologne, Germany) draws from his background in pianistic interpretation and plays exclusively on vintage analog synthesizers in numerous international ensembles. Roger Turner (London) is one of the most innovative improvising percussionists of the last four decades and has performed with artists such as Cecil Taylor, Annette Peacock, and Evan Parker.
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present The Old-Timey Avant-Garde Series - Dennis Palmer Birthday Weekend: Nief-Norf Project Saturday, October 12, 2013, 8:00 pm Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 door nief-norf is a contemporary music ensemble devoted to performing, studying, and commissioning imaginative and challenging musical works. Utilizing a flexible roster of musicians, nief-norf performs works from both the historical and emerging avant-garde, and shares their commitment to this music through creative programming concepts, educational initiatives, and interdisciplinary collaboration. With percussionists at its nucleus, the ensemble pursues the unknown, constantly seeking opportunities to challenge and expand our ideas about what music is and can be. Its members include faculty from the University of Kentucky and Tennessee; former participants of the Lucerne Festival and the Banff Centre’s Roots & Rhizomes seminar; and finalists from the Tromp International Percussion Competition. “Nief-Norf is simply a gas – a smorgasbord of contemporary percussion works played with superb artistry and resounding musicianship. The energetic performance of these five inspirational percussionists challenged our students to experience the nuance and complexities inherent in the music. Every instrument – from flowerpot and wind-mallet to wooden sticks and saucepans – was played with flawless technique and marvelous expression. The performance was eye opening, inspiring, and musically outstanding – it still rings in my ears! Certainly a joy to experience!” - David McKee, Virginia Tech University
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present The Old-Timey Avant-Garde Series - Dennis Palmer Birthday Weekend: Dennis Palmer Date Night Movies - presented by Tom Landis Sunday, October 13, 2013, 8:00 pm Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 Free admission Dennis Palmer’s longtime friend and Outside Pleasures radio show collaborator Tom Landis presents an evening of classic experimental cinema, free and open to the public. In his words: “Hear ye Hear ye! Ya’ll come on down fer some cinema lovin’: It’s Dennis Palmer’s birthday and he’s treatin’ everbawdy to some fun and snuggling! Meet Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Peyton Farquhar and many more.” Also to be screened is Paradise Garden with the Shaking Ray Levis, a new short film by filmmaker Lee Shook, featuring Dennis acting as a tour guide on this moment-in-time home movie and stroll through folk artist Rev. Howard Finster’s visionary installation. Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present The Old-Timey Avant-Garde Series: The Home of Easy Credit Saturday, October 19, 2013, 8:00 pm Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 door  Queens-based The Home of Easy Credit challenges the boundaries of free-improvised music, jazz, folk, and pop music with an iconoclastic approach that defies all those who seek to classify music by genre. Two musicians who met in New York in 2008 and were married one year later, Danish multi-instrumentalist Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen and bassist Tom Blancarte have teamed up musically as The Home of Easy Credit, releasing their self-titled debut album on Northern Spy in 2012. Taking their name from a department store sign in a dilapidated section of downtown Houston, Texas which they photographed while on tour there, the duo seeks to hold up a mirror to contemporary musical tastes to create a dark, beautiful and thrilling sound world that reflects upon the decline of contemporary civilization. Recently gaining notoriety for her improvised solo performances, Jensen uses a broad range of colors, drawn from a long lineage of Scandinavian artists including Jan Garbarek, Arve Henriksen and Björk but blended with saxophone sounds as diverse as Lee Konitz or Mats Gustafsson. An experienced veteran of the New York DIY music scene, Blancarte, who plays electronic futuristic jazz with the Peter Evans Quintet, hyperactive prog banjo/guitar shred with Seabrook Power Plant and provides hellish bass insanity to tubist Dan Peck’s improvised doom metal outfit The Gate, utilizes every trick in his book to underpin his wife’s apocalyptic musical narratives. “…gorgeous, eerie, and unsettling. Pushing away from the crowd, The Home of Easy Credit distinguishes itself with its playful, strange, yet sometimes angelic discordance.” – Chattanooga Pulse
Flying Fingers Productions and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Thollem McDonas November 5, 2013 Barking Legs Theater 1307 Dodds Ave Chattanooga, TN 37404 $10 door Thollem McDonas is a bold, inventive, often astounding improvising pianist who tours perpetually as a soloist, vocalist and collaborator, regularly covering much of North America and Europe playing free music and free free music. In the past seven years, he has added 30 albums to his discography on twelve different vanguard record labels in four different countries. His musical experiences are extremely diverse and his ever-expanding variety of approaches to making music result in dramatically new and different outcomes. He plays in punk clubs, museums, concert halls and riots. He works regularly with film makers, dancers, poets and painters as well as a wide array of divergent musicians. He has won numerous awards and is the founding director of Estamos Ensemble, a Mexican-American cross border ensemble for musical exchange. McDonas has collaborated with an unbelievably diverse array of artists, including Nels Cline (Wilco), Mike Watt (Minutemen), Pauline Oliveros, William Parker, Arrington de Dionyso, John Dieterich (Deerhoof), Jad Fair (Half Japanese), Henry Kaiser and Damo Suzuki (Can), to name a few. He has also worked with various filmmakers, including Matthew Barney (The Cremaster Cycle), dance companies and ballet groups. On Barking Legs Theater’s beautiful Steinway grand piano, McDonas will present Thollem’s Confluence, the result of a musician who has been traveling perpetually and playing internationally for years. Absorbing approaches to the music of a wide variety of cultures, these comprovisations contain nuances and collisions from his studies of 350 years of keyboard music, gamelan, West African drumming, Native American music and those he finds in the ever-changing environments he encounters. “Thollem’s keyboard flights unleash cascades of notes of seemingly impossible velocity…as an improviser, he inhabits a world uniquely his own, rhythmically, harmonically and formally. A true original.” - Terry Riley, composer
Secret Weave and the Shaking Ray Levi Society present: Cellular Chaos Chatoyant Rick Weaver Saturday, November 9, 2013, 10:00 PM Sluggo's North 501 Cherokee Blvd. Chattanooga, TN 37405 $7 door 
The
blisteringly intense NYC-based CELLULAR CHAOS
fuses ballistic rock-and-roll energy with no-wave weirdness and
touches of '70s glam and free jazz, garnering a singular
reputation in the contemporary underground music scene for their
incendiary live performances, manic musicianship and
futuristically left-of-center songwriting. The Michigan underground supergroup CHATOYANT creates mind-expanding madness with all-improvised music that suggests non-existent structures, featuring drummer Crazy Jim Baljo (Wolf Eyes), reedist Marko Novachcoff (Only a Mother), Joel Peterson (Immigrant Suns) on Fender Rhodes electric piano, and guitarist Matt Smith (Outrageous Cherry, The Volebeats, Crime and the City Solution). From tranquil to explosive, dense to spare, the band draws on the full range of musical expression and imbues it with a rhythmic intensity. Chattanooga multi-instrumentalist and experimental video artist RICK WEAVER creates warped cinematic music, like a Lynchian smear of discomfort, beautiful in its controlled chaos. The Riverfront Times wrote “[Weaver’s] music often explores the underbelly of dementia through tales of the grotesque...harnessing the ability to put life back into the art of performance...” |
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