Poliça and s t a r g a z e: Summer in Berlin / August 18, 2016 by Liquid Music

Three months and ten days. Audiences in the Twin Cities are counting down until the world premiere of Music for the Long Emergency, the culmination of our year-long virtual residency with Poliça and s t a r g a z e. This July, the two ensembles spent valuable time together in Berlin collaborating, jamming and bonding over schnitzel and soccer.

Drew Christopherson, one of Poliça's two drummers, shares his words and thoughts on this exciting, new collaborative experience.

This week at Funkhaus might have been the most thrilling experience I’ve had making music. It was hard not to feel overwhelmed by every little aspect. We were in Berlin to make music, which has been a life-long dream. The building itself is so rich with stories and history that Chris [bassist in Poliça] and I would spend our breaks reading the wiki about the place. The one small restaurant in the building served the best schnitzel we had ever tried. The rooms and studios we explored throughout the massive complex were incredible works of architecture and design, and the room we spent four days rehearsing in felt as close to church as anything ever has.

The way the members of s t a r g a z e discuss music is totally foreign to me, and I loved to hear them talk through an idea, section, or whole song, discuss a few changes, and then execute those changes effortlessly and flawlessly. Like I said, it was thrilling.

We ended the week with a cookout, watching the Germany vs France Euro semi-finals and listening to records deep into the night. We are all very excited about the next rehearsal with our new friends in s t a r g a z e, and to watch Music For The Long Emergency come together in full.

The most outstanding part of it all was finally hearing s t a r g a z e in their full form, and to watch the way they work together. The level that each of them are operating on is absolutely chainless, and I was happy to sit there all day listening to them work out ideas, with Ryan of Poliça and André of s t a r g a z e trading off directing and leading the rehearsal. The sound of the room was so crisp and loud that some of us in Poliça were timid about playing out, but by the second day we had all found a balance and it became very fun to just ride out ideas with everyone improvising. — Drew Christopherson

See the premiere of Music for the Long Emergency:
World premiere
Copresented with The Current
Friday, November 18, 2016, 8pm (Purchase Tickets)
Fitzgerald Theater, Saint Paul, MN

Keep up with Music for the Long Emergency on the Liquid Music Blog:
First Look
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
From Virtual to Reality: s t a r g a z e + Poliça's First Musical Meet-up
Music for the Long Emergency: Naming the Virtual Residency with Poliça and s t a r g a z e
Podcast interview with Channy Leaneagh on Liquid Music Playlist
Music for the Long Emergency Indiegogo Campaign

Follow s t a r g a z e:
Website: we-are-stargaze.com
Twitter: @wearestargaze (twitter.com/wearestargaze)
Instagram: @we_are_stargaze (instagram.com/we_are_stargaze)
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

FOLLOW LIQUID MUSIC FOR UPDATES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
Twitter: @LiquidMusicSPCO (twitter.com/LiquidMusicSPCO)
Instagram: @LiquidMusicSeries (instagram.com/liquidmusicseries)
Facebook: facebook.com/SPCOLiquidMusic
Podcast: Liquid Music Playlist

Celebrating National Poetry Month with Saul Williams, Mivos Quartet, Ted Hearne and Jace Clayton / August 9, 2016 by Liquid Music

By J.P. Merz

On April 26, 2016 at the James J. Hill Reference Library in St. Paul, Minnesota, Liquid Music and the Givens Foundation for African American Literature presented Saul Williams and Mivos Quartet: No One Ever Does, which included the Minnesota premiere of NGH WHT, a collaboration between Williams and composer Thomas Kessler, world premieres by composers Ted Hearne and Jace Clayton, and Moonblood by Mario Dias de Leon.

Excerpts from No One Ever Does

Ted Hearne's The Answer to the Question that Wings Ask uses Saul William's poem of the same name. In the poem, Saul asks asks a never ending series of questions that intensify and seamlessly weave between religion, reality, sex, morality and many other topics. The music echos this relentless questioning through a circular but somewhat confounding chord progression. But for Ted, 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 self. Check out our interview with Ted to learn more.

The world premiere of Ted Hearne's "The Answer to the Question that Wings Ask".

The title and libretto for Jace Clayton's .d.u.s.t..s.t.a.r.c.h..m.e.a.t.s. comes from N.H. Pritchard, an experimental black poet who lived on NYC's Lower East Side from the late 60s to early 70s. Pritchard was a part of the Umbra magazine group and distinctively employed language as material, using unusual typography to strip away semantic meaning and syntax. Clayton's version operates in a similar way, using the first piece of music that each member of Mivos Quartet ever memorized as musical building blocks to interweave and deconstruct. Our interview with Jace dives further into these topics and more.