Extra-Curricular Listening Pt. 6 - Saul Williams & Mivos Quartet /  by Liquid Music

by Trombonist/Composer Christopher Misch-Bloxdorf

Saul Williams Image.jpg

As purveyors of contemporary chamber music with a growing and increasingly adventurous audience, we are wholeheartedly committed to the creation and cultivation of new and diverse types of music. An essential part of this process is providing bridges and context for new listeners to discover and appreciate what could sometimes be considered "challenging" music. Context that we will attempt (<—key word) to provide through our 'Extra-curricular Listening' blog series.

For each concert we will provide some extracurricular listening (or watching) and some rabbit holes for LM followers to excavate and discover their own exciting but perhaps obscure corner of the music world.

In preparation for next Tuesday's show at the James J. Hill Reference, composer/trombonist Chris Misch-Bloxdorf delves into the world of Saul Williams on the Mivos Quertet:

Blackalicious - Release

The first time I heard Saul Williams was on this track by Blackalicious. The song begins with a classic hip-hop track with a ‘boom bap’ figure that spurs on the rhythmic undulation provided by Blackalicious. The drumbeat dissipates into a mesmerizing collage of wind blowing through wind chimes while a quiet drum pattern fades in and out leading to a cello and synth dancing around melodies that provide a cohesive pattern in which Saul begins to speak over. The contrast between Blackalicious’ rapid fire verse and Saul’s slow and metamorphic poem gave me insight into the depth and diversity of the world of hip-hop.

Kronos Quartet - Howl, U.S.A.

The Mivos quartet are musical descendants of a long line of stringed avant-gardists - redefining traditional notions of the quartet in a very similar fashion to the prolific Kronos quartet. The Mivos quartet's collaboration with Saul Williams is reminiscent of the music written by Lee Hyla set to a reading of Allen Ginsberg’s iconic biography Howl. In a similar fashion, composer Ted Hearne will be setting music to Saul’s poem from his collection of poetry US(a.) entitled “the answer to the question that wings ask.” The goal of a composer in such a collaboration is to create a sonic landscape in which the words and music are reflective of one another capturing the mood and context of every syllable.

 

Vijay Iyer & Mike Ladd - Holding it Down: Veterans' Dream Project

In the rapidly developing catalog of music and spoken word collaborations, pianist Vijay Iyer and wordsmith Mike Ladd focus on providing veterans of recent conflicts an outlet through artistic expression specifically centralizing around narratives that have been inspired by US veterans’ dreams. One of the common threads of artists Ted Hearne, Jace Clayton, and Saul Williams is their commentary on social, economic, and political structures told through a narrative that teeters on the edge between fiction and non-.

Clipping - Midcity

Stalwart cast member of the revolutionary Broadway musical Hamilton,  MC Daveed Diggs paired with producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes create the group known as Clipping. Clipping is a band that blends a world of complex noise-influenced production paired with Daveed’s virtuosic rhythmic stylings that never reach verbosity. Much of the music composed by Ted Hearne and Jace Clayton deals with the aesthetics of noise music, often coupling field recordings and a slew of samples to achieve their vision. This ties directly into Saul’s most recent release MartyrLoserKing, in which much of the production is an amalgam of field recordings from areas in Africa contextualized through modern alt-rock and hip-hop forms.

Sun-Ra - The Sub-Dwellers

Sun-Ra is arguably the most prolific figure in approaching music through the lens of Afrofuturism and often expressed these ideas through musical and verbal improvisations. Weary of any label that could potentially restrict the artistic process, Saul deals with his own constructs within  Afrofuturistic ideals. In Saul’s most recent release MartyrLoserKing, he molds a universe that runs parallel to our own focusing on the life of a hacker from Burundi. This project utilizes repetition as an emphasis on an idea rather than the normative “hook” mentality. A phrase that generates power through repetition allows for the artist to adjust the drama of a piece leading to more spontaneous performances.


 

Def Jam Poetry - Saul Williams "Coded Language"

The Def Jam Poetry TV show influenced many young writers and artists. In the first season of the show, Saul is featured performing his piece “Coded Language”. This piece in many ways encapsulates Saul’s ideas of culture, all-encompassing Art, and fluidity of our individual trajectories. He challenges people to escape from the complacency of mediocrity that has been established by modern media outlets. This point is emphasized by a list of prolific contributors to culture that is used as a call to arms for the listeners. Saul’s view is one of optimism - he believes that collectively “we” understand the value of quality in art, but currently the “powers that be” are diluting our content. However, “we” are capable of creating and consuming art worthy of merit and Saul is reminding us that “we” are always evolving and can affect the expectation of quality on a daily basis.  

The Rabbit Hole

Roc Marciano
Trent Reznor
Shabazz Palaces
Milo
Open Mike Eagle
Aceyalone (The Freestyle Fellowship)
Busdriver
Ambrose Akinmusire
Jay Electronica

Follow Chris Misch-Bloxdorf:
chrismisch-bloxdorf.bandcamp.com
 

Interview w/ composer Ted Hearne /  by Liquid Music

By composer JP Merz

photo by Nathan Lee Bush

photo by Nathan Lee Bush

Ted Hearne is composer and performer whose music is infused with a love of pop, hip-hop, jazz, noise, rock and musical theater, often creating a raw sense of energy and urgency. His large-scale works deal with current political issues, such as oratorios about Hurricane Katrina (Katrina Ballads) or Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks (The Source) which both set text from primary source documents surrounding the events. I wrote these questions for both Ted and Jace Clayton, who is also composing a work for this concert, and tried to address themes that draw connections between their works. You can see/compare/contrast Jace’s answers here.

In this interview Ted discusses his inspiration from Audre Lorde, the intrigue of Saul Williams and shares some of his favorite music.

JP: How did you first get involved with Saul, Mivos, and Liquid Music?

Ted: This is my third time at Liquid Music—I love coming up to Minneapolis and really love the programming and audience at Liquid Music. The last time was I came up was two seasons ago with Timo Andres, Gabriel Kahane and Becca Stevens in "Work Songs," and before that I had a new piece premiered with Ashley Bathgate and Ian Ding in 2013. Mivos and I go way back from our time together in the new music community in New York, and I've been a Saul fan for a long time, so am thrilled that we're working together for the first time.

Work Songs 2014&nbsp;Liquid Music performance

Work Songs 2014 Liquid Music performance

JP: A huge variety of musical genres will often exist side by side within one of your pieces, placing familiar sounds in unfamiliar contexts. What interests you in this recontextualization and in drawing on such a broad musical palette?

Ted: The thing I love about music is that it communicates a place and a time, a perspective and a cultural context, without ever relying completely on the limiting specificity of language. De/recontextualization of sound from its origin, and the mixing of different mediums and genres, can cause us to re-examine governing frameworks we often take for granted.

There's a power to be found in the difference between genres or styles of art, and in the difference between the cultures they represent. Audre Lorde said: "Difference must not be merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic." I'm drawn to explore the ways music can point at, or even harness, those differences, as a spark.

JP: What aspects of Saul’s work do you find particularly fascinating, inspiring or moving?

Ted: Saul sings when he talks, and the rhythm of his performances seems to imbue his words with a meaning I wouldn't have gleaned if I had merely read them and not heard them. To be a musician who lives by the word—that fascinates and moves me, and it mystifies me because I'm not a poet.

Also, Saul is an artist who confronts and embraces the world around him, with all its problems, and that's just inspiring.

JP: Text is often an essential element in your work. How did you approach the use and role of text in this piece? Does it differ than the ways you’ve approached text in previous works?

Ted: Yes definitely, it differs. I often use texts as lyrics, but have never before worked with a poet who will be performing as part of the piece. Saul's text was not only written by him, will be performed by him, and the music I'm writing is completely tied to his performance of that text. So in that way it's like writing for an improvising musician (which in many ways Saul is)—there are many rhythmic and melodic elements of the piece that must be left up to him, in the moment, because they are his words, and he knows how to deliver them better than anybody.

JP: You worked with Saul’s poem “The Answer to the Question that Wings Ask” which asks a never ending series of deconstructing questions while weaving seamlessly between religion, reality, sex, morality and many other topics. What is this poem about for you and what themes were you drawn to?

Ted: The poem does weave and bob. And yes, it asks a series of questions. For me, the power of the poem is not found in the themes of the specific questions as much as in the way Saul portrays the unrelenting interrogation of the self. I feel bare when I read it, and I think part of its purpose is to strip away the artifice self-consciousness creates by confronting it head-on.

The music I wrote is based off a circular but somewhat confounding chord progression, sort of like the series of Saul's questions. There are many repetitions, but each is colored differently, implying slightly skewed modalities or tonal centers. And I tried to think of the string quartet's bowing motions as an image in a mirror–what would it mean for bowings that were first moving in lock-step to split apart and do their own thing? Can a path of individual discovery be mirrored in the physicality of Mivos's playing? (We'll see, I guess.)

JP: What are you listening to lately and what do you find interesting about it?

Ted: Jürg Frey, for dissected and disembodied sonorities; Tim Hecker, for a noisy but comforting continuum; Clipping for noisy and not exactly comforting; Robert Glasper In My Element for totally genre-bending and with the best voicings, Becca Stevens for always classy intellectual songwriting; Mingus, Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is so rich and rhythmically complex.

JP: What’s next?

Ted: I want to write a bunch of songs for me myself to sing...

From Virtual to Reality: s t a r g a z e + Poliça's first musical meet-up /  by Liquid Music

By Lauren McNee

Liquid Music artists in virtual residence Poliça and s t a r g a z e have certainly been keeping themselves busy in the past few months. The stars aligned back in Feb when Poliça was on tour in Berlin for their new album United Crushers, and the two met to make sounds together for the first time. s t a r g a z e musicians Maaike van der Linde and Marlies van Gangelen gave us an inside look into the collaboration with a diary-style narrative on the creative process. 

Don't miss the virtual residency Work-In Progress Conversation at the Fitzgerald Theater on Sun, May 22! 

Check out Channy Leaneagh's podcast interview on Liquid Music Playlist to hear about Poliça's thoughts on the collaboration

Photo Credit: Kate Manley

Photo Credit: Kate Manley

2016 Berlin

11 Feb
Poliça, Kantine am Berghain

On Thursday night we went to see Poliça performing at the Kantine am Berghain. They did a great job and we loved it! For most of us it was the first time seeing and hearing them play live. Whilst we were listening we got excited thinking of the possibilities and how to add s t a r g a z e sounds to their soundscapes. Channy has a beautiful voice and the band played very nicely attuned. It was a really nice surprise when bass player Chris started singing too. Almost all of the s t a r g a z e musicians play several instruments and like to alternate between playing and singing. Chris has a special voice and we will definitely ask him to sing with us! Maybe we can create backing vocals for Channy?

12 Feb
Workshop

On Friday we had breakfast with Poliça at André's place. It was nice to get to know the musicians better personally. After a cup of coffee we were ready to make some noise. Ryan prepared sound tracks, specifically for this Poliça/s t a r g a z e collaboration and we started to improvise along it. We played drones and invented minimal patterns. Our viola player Justin created a melody, accompanied with long notes by Maaike on bass flute and Marlies on cor anglais (English Horn). André played a groove on violin that connected nicely with one of Ryan's tracks. We had several go's at the improvisations and it really went into all directions from very romantic and lyrical to underground noise played on classical instruments. The great surprise is that we don't know what Poliça will use from the recordings, and how! Poliça liked our sounds and spontaneously applauded after our first improvisation. We are looking forward to the continuation of this project! 

2016 Amsterdam

19 March

Today we recorded music for Poliça. We planned two sessions in Amsterdam in Maaike and Marlies' house, to create new material. We started off with listening to the 'song' track that Ryan sent us, and we started arranging the electronic piece on our instruments, it's really catchy. Besides this we also worked on finding new harmonies for the melody, for a new version and we made a start of a completely different B part. We also had some completely free improvisation which we recorded and listened back to in the next session. Marlies also used her Delta Harp for this, and Romain brought his electronic set-up. There was one part of an improvisation that we particularly liked and which we want to work out further. So this is what we'll do in the next session! 

Keep up with the Virtual Residency:
First Look
Channy Leaneagh Interviews André de Ridder
Tables Turned: André de Ridder interviews Channy Leaneagh
Catching up with s t a r g a z e: Weekender Festival, Berlin 2015
Virtual Residency Mini Doc Part I
Meet s t a r g a z e
Podcast interview with Channy Leaneagh on Liquid Music Playlist

Follow s t a r g a z e:
Website: we-are-stargaze.com
Twitter: @wearestargaze (twitter.com/wearestargaze)
Facebook: www.facebook.com/wearestargaze/
Vimeo: vimeo.com/wearestargaze

Follow Poliça:
Website: thisispolica.com
Twitter: @thisispolica (twitter.com/thisispolica)
Instagram: @thisispolica (instagram.com/thisispolica)
Facebook: facebook.com/thisispolica
Youtube: youtube.com/user/polica

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Podcast: Liquid Music Playlist

 

Interview w/ composer Jace Clayton (DJ/Rupture) /  by Liquid Music

By composer JP Merz

Jace Clayton is an artist who exists between the cracks of DJing, art music, media art, and theater, among other disciplines. The themes of his projects are specific as an obscure, experimental musician or as grand as the U.S. terrorist threat level system to thoughtfully weave together issues of politics, identity, and the role of technology. If you want to get a better sense of of the breadth of Jace’s work - you can hear him speaking about it in a beautiful, concise way in his Creative Capital artist talk:


In this interview we touch on some of the most inspiring aspects of Jace's work while learning about Jace’s brand new piece for Saul Williams and the Mivos Quartet to be premiered at the next Liquid Music show on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at 7:30pm at the James J. Hill Reference Library in Saint Paul, copresented with the Givens Foundation for African American Literature.

JP: How did you first get involved with Saul, Mivos, and Liquid Music?

Jace: I actually used a Saul Williams track on my first mixtap–mixed live to cassette back in the day! The one where he's rhyming over a kind of mournful cello line, that begins "I will not rhyme on a track--niggers on a chain gang used to do that." I have yet to meet Mivos or Saul personally, but am very much looking forward to working with them. This is the second time I participate in a Liquid Music event. The first was my 'Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner' performance.

JP: You often work with a huge variety of musical genres which will often exist side by side within one piece, placing familiar sounds in unfamiliar contexts. What interests you in this recontextualization and in drawing on such a broad musical palette? 

Jace: Genre guidelines are increasingly irrelevant and ideas of historical lineage are falling by the wayside. It's a fascinating time to be making music. The question is: what to do with this freedom?  And at a very pragmatic level, the question becomes: who comes out to hear your work, and how?  Music isn't political (unless it's propaganda like anti-war sing-a-longs or jihadi rap) but the site of its production always is, because you're talking about gathering bodies and manifesting in a place.

JP: Politics, social justice, surveillance, power structures and identity are topics that are common throughout your work. Do you see your music as a response to these issues, do you feel like music can actively influence politics, or does your music do something else entirely?  

Jace: Something else entirely! One way to put it would be: people doing the hard work of organizing for social justice is a very necessary, very particular thing. Music is something else entirely. It is a meeting ground and a place where the past and future share a moment. If politics asks the question 'how are we to live"  music slips in at another level, wondering "how much can happen in a moment." So it is sensual and philosophical all at once. Basing a politics on identity is just as bad as basing one's music on some identity. Music interrupts tidy edges. The idea is to stay plural. To stay as open and flexible and tender as a folksong.

JP: Text is often an essential element in your work. How did you approach the use and role of text in this piece? Does it differ than the ways you’ve approached text in previous works?

Jace: I'm asking both Saul and Mivos to speak the texts, which I'm excited about. I love incredible world-class vocal performers, and I also love asking people who don't read in public at all–gathering different voices with different relationships to vocal authority is fascinating to me. Part of the text is from N.H. Pritchard, an experimental black poet from late 60s/early 70s NYC. I'm treating a few pages of his highly idiosyncratic poems (that play with typography and layout) like scores, in part because you can't simply read them aloud without adding layers of your own interpretation. Like with my Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner performance (dealing with Julius Eastman), I do value engaging with lesser-known artistic figures from the recent past whose work has a certain restlessness and power. It's good to add complexity to the historical record.

JP: You asked the musicians for the first piece of music that they memorized as a child and composed using that material as a starting point. I see this process as relating to your work as DJ: discovering a fixed sound which can carry so many cultural associations and implications and then placing it in a new context, through the lens of your own musical voice.  Do you see this process as relating to your work as DJ and how do these musical memories shape the sound world of this piece?

Jace: I'm interested in rethinking classical composer-ly structures.  In the classical world it's fully expected that you'll write music for musicians you haven't met, who will have to play it whether or not they even like it. That's quite alien to my way of working. I prefer dialog and negotiation. I actually don't like giving commands to musicians. So a simple beginning for me was to ask musicians for their earliest memorized piece, and use that as little DNA fragments that seed my creation.

JP: What are you listening to lately and what do you find interesting about it?

Jace: My essay on Vince Staples for The New York Times Magazine last month is a good place to begin!

JP: What’s next?

Jace: This summer my debut book will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It's called Uproot: Travels in 21st Century Music and Digital Culture. I can't wait for you to read it! I'm curating an event series this summer that I'm extremely excited about, but that's hush-hush until we finalize the schedule in a few weeks.... And of course, I'm working with another string quartet for a performance at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art this May, for a festival called Medialive.

JP’s next project is also at BMoCA’s Medialive where he is making a series of computer-controlled, musical massage chairs - attempting to create an intimate human experience mediated through technology.

jpmerz.com
facebook.com/jpmerzcomposer/
@merz_jp
soundcloud.com/merzjp

 

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The Faces of Liquid Music's Adventurous Audience: pt.1 /  by Liquid Music

By Karla Brom

At Liquid Music we think and talk a lot about the audience for new music. Our patrons inspire us creatively and in many ways shape our course. With this new blog series, we decided to go directly to the source and ask our audience members what draws them to new music, and especially to Liquid Music. Our questions were always the same: How did you hear about Liquid Music? What are some of your favorite recent performances? What kinds of music do you listen to at home? Are you a fan of classical? 
But the conversations went all over the place...   

David Dybiec AND ALBERTO FIERRO, Liquid Music subscribers

Alberto and David.jpg

Tell us something about yourselves:  Alberto: I am a Mexican citizen and have been a diplomat for 23 years.   My responsibilities have always been promoting cultural awareness and cultural affairs and now I am the Consul of Mexico in Minnesota (there are 200,000 Mexicans living here). I became a cultural promoter because I love the arts but I’m not an artist myself. 

David: I lived in Minnesota from the age of 6-18 and this is the first time I am living here since then.  I’m an arts educator (mainly for primary school students), painter and sculptor.  We moved to Minnesota almost 3 years ago, during Liquid Music’s first season. 

When and how did you first hear about Liquid Music?  David:  When Alberto accepted the post in Minnesota, we were very excited. Our last posting was in Orlando and the cultural scene there was not as diverse as we knew the Twin Cities would be.  We started googling everything about culture in the Twin Cities and found Liquid Music that way. 

What appealed to you about the series?  Alberto: We have pretty adventurous musical appetites and have been exposed to new music before – we attended a new music festival in Ottawa, which was our first exposure. Mexico also has an interesting new music festival. We are music lovers, but not experts or academics, we like to be surprised.  

How many performances have you attended?  David: We’ve been to at least 80% of the performances –  the only reason we’ve missed any is because we were out of town when they happened!

What are some of your favorite recent Liquid Music performances and why?  Alberto: They’ve all been wonderful in different ways. The series feels like a laboratory – music in the making.  Our expectation is that we’ll see something performed for the first and maybe the only time.  Some favorites are Glenn Kotche and Third Coast Percussion – we were delighted that something that outlandish could happen – here we were literally watching music being made [Wild Sound included Third Coast Percussion constructing their own instruments]. We don’t imagine hearing or seeing it again.  

David: We liked the Timo Andres program, the way it was structured with his work at the end.  Ethel:  Documerica for the imagery – the vocabulary of visual and musical overlap. Julia Holter because of her ethereal voice. 

Alberto:  We don’t do research on the artists before seeing a show, usually have no clue about them unless they are famous. So we don’t know what to expect, but we trust the Liquid Music brand.  We love the intimacy of many of the venues and the diversity of the audience. This isn’t music you can hum along with, like you can with classical music (and that’s a good thing!) – you have to listen from within – it is all about letting yourself be taken.

What kind of music do you listen to at home?  David:  We are happy to have such great public radio available in the Twin Cities – we’re often tuned in to 99.5 (classical) or 88.5 (jazz). Otherwise the music we listen to depends on the mood. If it’s a party it is going to be something like Tito Puente!

Do you also attend SPCO concerts?  Are you a classical music fan?  Yes and yes. We are so lucky to have two great orchestras in the Twin Cities, and we go to the SPCO frequently. Classical music is a totally different experience – you know what to expect, you usually know the music already. 

What other arts activities do you take advantage of in the Twin Cities?  A little bit of everything.  We live close to the Walker so we go there for performing arts. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Soap Factory, Minneapolis Film Society, Schubert Club, contemporary dance. We love TU Dance!

Kaitlin Frick, Liquid Music patron and volunteer

Tell us something about yourself:  I am an arts administrator currently working at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Uptown, Minneapolis. I love working with artists and creative types, and spend most of my free time checking out new music – recorded and live music. I hit a personal landmark last year by attending 100 shows over the course of the year!  I’m always on a quest for newness – I do a lot of reading and listening. 

How did you hear about Liquid Music?  What appealed to you about the series? I was working at the SPCO in 2012, when Kate Nordstrum started there. I had followed her work at the Southern Theater and was immediately intrigued by her desire to present innovative music programming.

I play violin – I was trained classically from a young age, and had spent a lot of time with classical music throughout my teens and in college – so much time that I kind of burned out on the traditional classical music experience. The work that Kate was doing blew my mind – the fact that concerts were being programmed in non-traditional venues and blurring the lines defining musical genres. To hear work performed by artists who are drawing from all sorts of inspirations and backgrounds in classical, folk, electronic, spoken word, rock, etc. was inspiring to me and sort of refreshed my interest in classical music – allowing me to listen with new ears.  I’ve probably been to 2/3 of the Liquid Music shows.

What are some of your favorite recent Liquid Music performances and why?   The Dawn of Midi/ Nils Frahm show was a wonderful pairing. I had been a fan of Nils Frahm for a while and was so pleased to see he was coming to town in a venue so intimate as the Amsterdam! It was incredible to see him at the helm of his multi-keyboard setup. But Dawn of Midi I had not heard of and was really quite floored by what they do – an acoustic trio that sounded like minimalist electronic music! It was like they were physically looping their sound. When I closed my eyes, I couldn’t always tell which instrument (piano, drums, bass) was making which sound.

The Helado Negro Island Universe Story show was also a highlight for me. I had seen Roberto play for something like 20 people, opening for Sinkane the previous fall at the Turf Club. So I was so thrilled to see that his Liquid Music show could catapult him onto the national music scene the way it did when he sold out the Ordway Concert Hall last spring. This show exemplified for me one of Liquid Music’s strengths: the ability of the series to allow for unbridled collaborations, which serves audiences and the musicians – as the artists are able to take their work into new territories, audiences are able to discover new music. For example, after this show, I started listening to Stereolab and Laetitia Sadier, started listening to Wilco with new ears, and I was turned onto the techno stylings of Oliver Chapoy aka Certain Creatures!

I also very much appreciated the collaboration of Son Lux, Serengeti and Sufjan Stevens as Sisyphus. The talk at the Walker with these guys and the artist Jim Hodges was fascinating. We were working on a print with Jim at Highpoint at that time, so it was really cool to hear him talk about the role music plays in his artistic process.

What kind of music do you listen to at home?  What other kind of music do you go to hear live?  I listen to lots of different kinds of music, as well. In terms of rock music, I really love post-punk – Protomartyr is one of my favorite newer bands, and the band Shopping was also a favorite discovery from last year. I also, not surprisingly, love music that crosses genres, like The Soft Moon, which is a post-punk band which is post-punk but also darkwave and electropunk. Liquid Music alum Noveller opened for them last year at the Entry.  I’m also very into electronic music, my favorite album of the year was by a local group called Beat Detectives. Super fresh sounding innovative art-house/ outsider house group.

I see a bit of everything, I mostly stick with small venues in town for intimacy and also affordability, so I usually end up seeing lots of shows at the (7th Street) Entry – also some underground venues like house basements and I’ve been exploring the underground techno scene as well.  I’ve been to Pitchfork twice and also made it to Decibel last year.  I’m more an urban festival goer than someone who is going to camp out for the weekend to listen to music.

Billy Elliot, Liquid Music subscriber

Tell us something about yourself:  I’m a huge music fan and save all of the stubs from performances I’ve been seeing since 1976.  I have about 1700 ticket stubs which is something like 43 shows a year.  Also, I had my name about 40 years before the movie came out!

How did you hear about Liquid Music?  I used to go to the Southern Theater all of the time and that is how I heard about Liquid Music.  I’ve been going since the first season and try to go to all of the shows if I can.  I like that it is quirky and eclectic, that it is not part of the mainstream, that it is off the wall.  Also, each venue has a different feel and different acoustics and that adds to the performance.  I never look up artists to listen before the performance – I like to be surprised when I get there.

What are some of your favorite recent performances?  Nils Frahm – I loved the way he played multiple pianos. Nadia Sirota swept me away. Ethel: Documerica – I liked the way they transformed some old rock and roll songs. Miranda Cuckson was amazing.

What kind of music do you listen to at home?  I like progressive rock and roll, jazz.  I’m a big Tangerine Dream Fan. 

Are you a classical music fan?  Yes – Stravinsky’s Firebird Suites or Mussorgsky for example.  I like string quartets and the viola. 

What other kinds of arts activities do you take advantage of in the Twin Cities?  I’m a member at the Walker; go to a lot of theater – Theater in the Round, Guthrie, Mixed Blood, Gremlin Theater.  I probably see one modern dance performance a year.

Thanks to David, Alberto, Kaitlin, and Billy for sharing their stories with us. Tell us about your Liquid Music experience(s) in the comments section and be sure to follow us for updates and announcements and Liquid Music artists' happenings:

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