Music for the Long Emergency: Naming the Virtual Residency with Poliça and s t a r g a z e /  by Liquid Music

By Lauren McNee

Over the course of the 2016.17 season, Liquid Music’s virtual residency with Poliça and s t a r g a z e has given audiences the unique opportunity to see the blood/sweat/tears that go into creating an artistic project. We’ve seen members of Poliça and s t a r g a z e jet back and forth between the Twin Cities and Berlin, and share sounds virtually across the ocean. And now it has a name: Music for the Long Emergency. Inspired by James Howard Kunstler’s book, The Long Emergency, about the long-term social consequences of oil scarcity and climate change, the name refers to the beauty of destruction. In the words of Poliça's drummer Drew Christopherson, “we can have bright happy moments too amongst the dark and chaotic moments in our lives”. 

“If it happens that the human race doesn't make it, then the fact that we were here once will not be altered, that once upon a time we peopled this astonishing blue planet, and wondered intelligently at everything about it and the other things who lived here with us on it, and that we celebrated the beauty of it in music and art, architecture, literature, and dance, and that there were times when we approached something godlike in our abilities and aspirations. We emerged out of depthless mystery, and back into mystery we returned, and in the end the mystery is all there is.”
– James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency

 

On November 18 of 2016, the world premiere of Music for the Long Emergency will take place at the historic Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, MN in partnership with The Current. You can help support this project by making a contribution to Music for the Long Emergency's Indiegogo campaign here. And don't forget to check out the Work In Progress Conversation on Sunday, May 22 at the Fitzgerald Theater! André de Ridder from s t a r g a z e will be in town to talk about the project onstage with Poliça. Bring your curiosity and your friends.

The Faces of Liquid Music's Adventurous Audience: Pt. 2 /  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. In this second part of our series we talk to three fans who are involved with Liquid Music in multiple ways.

Read pt. 1 here.

Jon Oulman, LIQUID MUSIC Advisory Council Member, owner of Amsterdam Bar & Hall (a Liquid Music venue) and man about town

Jon Oulman pic 1.jpg

Tell us something about yourself: 
I'm very interested in how you can create communities with culture. Music is an integral part of, or way to engage, a community. 

When and how did you first hear about Liquid Music?  
I first heard about it when Kate Nordstrum and Philip Bither visited the Amsterdam scouting a location for Ben Frost. The Amsterdam had only opened recently and I was planning on presenting music but was still figuring out what types. I immediately liked the idea of Liquid Music, and was definitely interested by Ben Frost since I’ve been a big consumer of that kind of music since the 70s – had been listening to electronica and kraut rock. 

What appealed to you about the series?  
I liked everything about it, including the connections to the SPCO and Walker Art Center. See my comment about music and building community.

How many performances have you attended?  
Almost all of them!  Probably about 90%

What are some of your favorite Liquid Music performances and why are they favorites? 
I really liked that Ben Frost concert – it was “sheer noise” in the best sense. Dawn of Midi because they created an atmosphere – the music was hypnotic. Tim Hecker because it was written, arranged and produced to be sonically visual. Glenn Kotche because it was intimate – he got to show us how he saw music from a percussionist’s perspective. 

What kind of music do you listen to at home? 
I listen to a mix of contemporary electronic music, 70s-80s syntho pop, ambient music, some singer-songwriter stuff.  I like late 70s to early 90s kraut rock, Danish, Dutch, Belgian music… 

How did you find all of this stuff? 
It may have started with listening to Tangerine Dream, not sure. I like Robert Fripp, Eno, Bowie. When I was a kid my friends and I would go to these high end stereo equipment stores because we were really interested in hearing music on those systems, which we couldn’t afford (until now!).

What kind of music do you play for a party? 
It depends on who is there – I usually know what kind of music they like and sometimes I play the opposite kind of music, as a way to “counter” or provoke them. My parties always end with dance music.

What other kind of music do you go to hear live? 
I like listening to bluegrass live because it’s better that way. I used to go to Pitchfork all of the time because they promote independent musicians and curate what should be important. They also book acts that influence new musicians, so you get a live sense of where this new music is coming from.  They are educational and trend setting.

Do you also attend SPCO concerts?  Are you a classical music fan? 
I like some classical music, and go to the SPCO occasionally.  I prefer chamber music to big orchestral pieces – there is just too much information to process with those.  I can’t sit back and relax and let the sound wash over me – I like to hear the instrumentation and when there are 20 violins it’s just too much to track.

What upcoming Liquid Music events are you most looking forward to?  
All of them!  I really enjoyed last weekend's Devendra Banhart and Friends...

Follow Jon's upcoming happenings here: www.jonoulman.com

deVon Gray, composer, Producer and musician

Tell us something about yourself: 
I’m a composer, multi-instrumentalist (keyboard, flute, sax, bassoon) and producer. I've been a keyboard player for 20 years in my band Heiruspecs. Favorite instrument (that I can play) – acoustic piano.  But I also love strings – viola and cello.  If I weren’t a composer I’d be a poet, but music chose me.

When and how did you first hear about Liquid Music? 
I’ve known [Liquid Music curator] Kate [Nordstrum] since her days at the Southern Theater when she was programming music. Adam Levy and I programmed a music festival there at the same time, called Southern Songbook, featuring local artists making their way through the American Songbook. Then we collaborated with Kate on the String Theory Music Festival. We’ve kept in touch ever since, and Kate has become a sounding board for me. When Jace Clayton (DJ/rupture) was coming to town for Liquid Music’s Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner she recruited me to be one of the keyboard players.

You’ve been gigging all over the world for the past several years – what are some of your favorite performances and why? 
I played at the Capetown Jazz Festival three years ago (right before the Julius Eastman performance). I was there with Brother Ali and we were in Capetown for a week but only had to play in the festival for a couple of hours. The rest of the time we traveled around, met great people and saw amazing things – I swam in a cage next to great white sharks!  That was all about the place and the people. Another great gig was with Chastity Brown in the UK – we met Damien Rice there and also connected with Jools Holland who liked us so much we ended up performing on his show.

What are some of your favorite Liquid Music performances and why are they favorites? 
The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner, of course. That was two grand pianos and two acoustic uprights and Jace was managing the sound with a sufi plug in. We had two half days to rehearse and everything came together in the first few hours. That was a beautiful performance and the audience was great – such a diversity of people came out. I liked the Jherek Bischoff concert for its collaborative aspects and the variety of artists involved, including some SPCO musicians. The Reid Anderson collaboration at SPCO center was gorgeous – he had these amazing visuals. Most recently I really enjoyed [William Brittelle's] Spiritual America. I loved hearing Michi Wiancko's music and learning about Wye Oak and Bill Brittelle and I really like that venue.  For me it is the overall experience – setting, lighting, people, visuals, mood – that makes the performance, not only the music. I like the Liquid Music series overall because of that.

What other kind of music do you like or go to hear live? 
When I was growing up I compartmentalized my music experience. I liked classical music because I played the bassoon.  I liked jazz because I played the sax. I liked church music because of my mom. And my friends introduced me to whatever they were listening to at the time. Now I listen to everything all the time and accept it for what it is. 

Do you also attend SPCO concerts?  Are you a classical music fan? 
I do go to SPCO concerts. I have liked classical music since day one and everything else since day two.

Jayme Halbritter, Liquid Music fan and photographer

Tell us something about yourself: 
I'm a photographer and photojournalist.  I met Kate [Nordstrum] during university when we both worked at the Minnesota Daily.  I've also worked at the Boston Herald, and was in New York City for 9/11 and documented that in photos.

When and how did you first hear about Liquid Music? 
I’m a longtime friend and collaborator with Kate, and have followed her music curating since she was at the Southern Theater. 

What appealed to you about the series? 
Liquid Music has a knack for putting together artists that I’ve never heard of before, and I always like them. 

How many performances have you attended? 
I think I’ve been to almost all of them!  Mainly because I’m there working, but I would attend otherwise – I am super proud of what Kate has done with this series.

What are some of your favorite recent Liquid Music performances and why are they favorites?  Third Coast Percussion Wild Sound was fascinating – I’ve never seen anything like it before.  It was choreographed improv, visually and sonically awesome, a great mixture of performance and music.  I also liked Helado Negro's Island Universe Story at the Ordway; I liked the whole production, the use of the new Ordway Concert Hall space, the flow of the evening, his persona. The Dawn of Midi and Nils Frahm split bill was great too – such a contrast between the two performances!

What kind of music do you listen to at home? 
If I’m working I usually listen to electronica, something down tempo with no words since I find words distracting while I work. 

What other kind of music do you like or go to hear live? 
I think I was listening to alternative music before there was a genre called alternative. In the early 90s I was into the Grateful Dead and my musical palette has always been pretty broad – I like bluegrass, electronic, beats, Umphrey’s McGee – everything from punk rock skateboarder to metal.

Are you a classical music fan? 
I rarely listen to classical music, though I’ve recently gone to a few Minnesota Orchestra concerts and Schubert Club performances.  I really enjoyed Ashley Bathgate when she played for Liquid Music.

What other arts activities do you take advantage of in the Twin Cities? 
A little bit of everything, mainly off the beaten track. I’m into poetry and songwriting and there are some great local groups that organize around that. Outside of the Twin Cities, I’ve been to Burning Man several times.

Thanks to Jon, DeVon, and Jayme for telling us a little about their relationship to Liquid Music. Maybe you will be on pt. 3? 

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Extra-Curricular Listening pt. 7 - Devendra Banhart and Friends /  by Liquid Music

By JP Merz and Patrick Marschke

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.

For this particular project—Devendra Banhart's Wind Grove Mind Alone, copresented with the Walker Art Center—rather than suggest related/tangential artists to check out, we thought that digging into the treasure trove of artists involved in this weekend’s shows would be exploration enough. Each artist is well deserving of their own LM show and we can’t wait to see how they coalesce onstage this weekend. In no particular order:

William Basinski is an experimental, ambient electronic musician with a classical music training based in New York and more recently California. His compositions primarily use a single, short tape loop, which repeats with infinite variations. Basinski intentionally selects tape loops that have no clear beginning or end. In this way the tape loop can act metaphor for timelessness, seeming to loop onto and into themselves. He is also interested exposing the materiality of this obsolete, analog technology. This can be heard in the Disintegration Loops, which documents the process of digitizing a tape loop over and over again, until the magnetic tape itself falls apart.

Lucky Dragons is the collaborative project of LA based artists Sarah Rara and Luke Fischbeck. Their work uses multiple mediums (music, performance, instrument design, installation, visual art) to investigate ideas about participation, dissent, perception, and attention. One notable example is their “make a baby” project, which is an instrument that responds to low voltage signals created by audience members making skin contact. The resulting composition is dependent on the participation and choices of the audience, creating an unique social ecology/dynamic within the performance space.

Harold Budd

LA-based composer and pianist, Harold Budd makes music that incorporates elements of drone music, free-jazz, minimalism and ambient music. Budd is an essential part of the West Coast minimalist movement, which had Cal Arts, where Budd started teaching in 1970, as one of it’s epicenters. He has collaborated with other luminaries such as Brian Eno, James Tenney, Jon Gibson, and many others. In the 1980 collaboration between Eno and Budd, Ambient 2: The Plateax of Mirror, Eno would set up a sonic landscape for Budd to perform on piano and electric piano. Budd’s tender, sparse, and lyrical playing moves freely between composition and improvisation and Eno’s addition of effects and textures clarifies the dreamy sound world of the album.

The Haunting voice of Singer/Songwriter Jessica Pratt is affiliated with the infamous “freak-folk” scene; familiar to Banhart followers - though her ‘freak’ might be a little softer around the edges than early Devendra. The rawness of her voice and the familiarity of her simple acoustic orchestrations easily lure the listener into a haze and it will be interesting to hear her delicate and ghostly vocals in a larger ensemble setting. Her work brings to mind the sinewy songwriting of Joni Mitchell and the distinct vocals Joanna Newsom. Check out her solo KEXP set here:

Liquid Music’s dear friend and collaborator Roberto Carlos Lange aka Helado Negro returns for the first time since his premiere of “Island Universe Story (Cuentos del Universo Solitario)” at the Ordway last year–and he has been busy since. He just put out a new limited edition vinyl of the work along with a new album earlier in the year. We wonder if he brought any tinsel to town this time :). “Young, Latin & Proud” is one of our favorites from Roberto’s recent work.

Rodrigo Amarante 

How to pin down Rodrigo Amarante? Whilst being a part of Los Hermanos, Orquestra Imperial, and Little Joy, Amarante is somehow able to work on his own material - sweet, multilingual, lullaby-esque songs that have a youthful joy and innocence. Check out Amarante’s recent NPR Tiny Desk Concert:

Hecuba

Performance artist Isabelle Albuquerque and musician/designer Jon Beasley make up the art-pop duo Hecuba and it is easy to hear how their various art practices seep into their musical project. It is dancey, quirky, and it can get pretty weird–just how we like it. Here is a video collaboration with MOCA filmed entirely on an iPhone 5:

 

Devendra Banhart

You all know him right? Why don’t you tell us YOUR favorite tracks in the comments below?

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