fields have ears (6) : released!

I'm very happy to announce that fields have ears (6) is now officially available from erstdist and can be ordered from this page or that site. There's some information about the release a couple posts down. The inside of the card comes with notes on the piece and a page of the score (which you can see in Yuko Zama's photo of the packaging below).

Soon I hope to post about the concepts behind the two series, Hearing Metal and fields have ears. Each series has so far been represented by three recordings - on Gravity Wave (Hearing Metal 2, Hearing Metal 3, and now fields have ears (6)), Edition Wandelweiser Records (Hearing Metal 1, EWR 0902) and another timbre (fields have ears (1) and fields have ears (4), both on at37).

Artwork for GW 007

Here is a preview of Yuko Zama's striking final design for fields have ears (6) (GW 007). It is now at the printers, and we are still expecting this disc to be available by the end of February.

Some Upcoming Performances

In the last week of February I will have a strange little trip to Oberlin (Ohio) and Amsterdam (Holland).

From 19 to 22 February, I'll be a guest at Oberlin College for some talks and master classes. There will be a public performance of my work by students at the college on 22 February. Here's the program:

The shipwreck of the singular [harmony series no. 13] (2005)

within (2) (1996)

Tomorrow [harmony series no. 16b] (2005)

July Mountain (2009) (in a new version by David Bird, Eugene Kim and Christian Smith)

Where there is [harmony series no. 16a] (2005)

melody, silence (2011), Michael Pisaro, guitar

No longer wild [harmony series no. 15] (2005)

From 23 to 26 February, I will be at this year's Sonic Acts festival in Amsterdam. I'll be giving a talk on "music minus time" (on the same session with Keith Fullerton Whitman) at 10:30 a.m. on 25 February. Starting at 7:00 p.m. on the 26th, there will be a long evening of music of extended duration. This will include performances of my pieces Ils: harmony series no. 18 and fields have ears (5): vapor by Konzert Minimal from Berlin; and an extended guitar duo with Taku Sugimoto.

Announcing GW 007

The next Gravity Wave release (GW 007) will be fields have ears (6), a 56-minute piece for guitar and electronics. It has had a long composition history, starting from a solo for classical guitar and sine tones (premiered in Munich in July of 2010). It was subsequently performed in Seattle (August, 2010), A Coruña, Galicia (May, 2011) and New York (September, 2011). For each performance a new version was created, incorporating recordings from the previous locations (including parts of previous performances), and other sounds that I began to associate with the history of the piece: turntables, radios, records, field recordings, earlier pieces of mine, etc. The process reached its endpoint in December of 2011 (with me recording all the parts on electric guitar). What started as a fairly simple piece is now a densely layered object, that carries its history on its back like a tortoise shell.

The disc should be available near the end of February.

Year-End Sale

Starting today there is a sale on all six Gravity Wave discs.

Normally discs are $14 each, but until December 31, 2011 they will be $11 each or $60 for all six (plus shipping).

This sale has been extended until January 8, 2012 (at the stroke of midnight, EST).

If you are interested send a note to erstrecs@aol.com.

Thanks for your continued support of this label!

Zeit Werden

This performance of my zeit werden: harmony series no. 3, by Lucio Capece (bass clarinet), Johnny Chang (violin), Hannes Lingens (accordion) and Koen Nutters (contrabass) is so wonderful that I thought it was worth sharing on the blog. Hope you enjoy it!

Concerts: October/November, 2011

I'm going to try to maintain something of a list of upcoming performances, especially when groups of them are occurring together, as is happening over the next couple months. I hope it is useful (and not annoying). Please say hello if you are in the neighborhood of one of these!

France/Belgium/England

Saturday, October 8, 7:30p.m. Sonorités, Montpellier, France

I will be giving the first performance of a new piece for solo electric guitar: melody, silence and playing fields have ears (4) with an ensemble assembled by Didier Aschour.

October 12–15, Field Fest, Q-02, Brussels, Belgium

Concerts, installations and talks, along with, among others, Manfred Werder, Annea Lockwood, Toshiya Tsunoda, Eric La Casa, Jason Kahn, Jez riley French and Emmanuel Holterbach.

Monday, October 17, 6 p.m., CRISAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice), London College of Communication

A field recording symposium along with Annea Lockwood and Emmanuel Holterbach (including a discussion of flussaufwärtstreiben).

The Carolinas, October 21th to the 26th

Friday, October 21, 9 p.m., Conundrum Music Hall, Columbia, South Carolina

Michael Pisaro / Greg Stuart, New Music Workshop

Transparent City (2.12)

fields have ears (4)

First performance of The Bell-Maker (performance version).

Saturday, October 22, 9:30 p.m., Nightlight, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

GregStuart/Michael Pisaro and Ryan Gustafson

A transparent gate (with ten panels) performed by Greg Stuart

Sunday,October 23, 2 p.m., WXYC Radio, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

The Beckett pieces (8a – 8e), from the harmony series (Michael Pisaro, Greg Stuart)

Tuesday, October 25, 7 p.m. Experimental Percussion with Greg Stuart and Michael Pisaro, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina

Selections from the harmony series (Greg Stuart, Michael Pisaro)

Hearing Metal 3 (New Music Workshop, Greg Stuart)

Wednesday, October 26, 8 p.m., Recital Hall, Simons Center for the Arts, Charleston, South Carolina, Pisaro, Stuart, members of the New Music Workshop (Columbia, SC), and New Music Collective (Charleston, SC)

The rain of alphabets [harmony series no. 19]

This is the longest (and largest) of the harmony series pieces: over two hours, with fourteen musicians.

A few other performances in October and November:

Haptic performs Concentric Rings in Magnetic Levitation, a new, hour-long piece written specifically for the talents of Adam Sonderberg, Joseph Clayton Mills and Steven Hess.

Friday, October 21, 8 p.m., Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago

Sunday, October 23, 7 p.m., Studio Z, St. Paul, Minnesota

Thursday, October 27, 8 p.m., The Wild Beast, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia

Guitar (+1), Charles Underriner, guitar

rapport abstrait (with Brendan Byrnes, guitar), é la fora (with Ingrid Lee, harmonium), black, white, red, green, blue (solo guitar)

Friday, October 28, 8 p.m. Rolf Julius Memorial Concert, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

Works by Julius, Hans Peter Kuhn, Bernhard Leitner, Miki Yui.

First performance of asleep, stream, rice, violin (a ten minute piece for 4-channel audio, including recordings of Johnny Chang, violin and Greg Stuart, rice percussion, and the Big Sur River)

Wednesday, November 2, 9 p.m., Concert Minimal, O Tannenbaum, Sonnenallee 27, Berlin Neukölln

Lucio Capece, bass clarinet, Johnny Chang, viola, Koen Nutters, bass, and Hannes Lingens, accordion, play Sometimes from the harmony series.

London/Wandelweiser

Wednesday, November 2, Poetry as Score, Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, 7:30pm (pre-concert discussion 6.30-7pm)

Jürg Frey- Landschaft mit Wörtern (selection) (2003)

Manfred Werder - 2009/4

Michael Pisaro - A single charm is doubtful [harmony series no.14] (2004-6)

Antoine Beuger - Confidential Letter #7 (2011)

Performers: Antoine Beuger, Angharad Davies, Sarah Hughes, Tim Parkinson, Michael Pisaro, David Stent, Carol Watts and Manfred Werder.

Grúndelweiser, November 3 to November 6, Cut & Splice, ICA, London

Members of Wandelweiser (Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey, Eva-Maria Houben, Marcus Kaiser, Radu Malfatti, Michael Pisaro, Burkhard Schlothauer, Manfred Werder) and Grúpat (Jennifer Walshe)

mind is moving IX (a short update)

Getting ready to head to New York tomorrow, for Amplify11 and the Gravity Wave mini-festival at The Stone.

On Wednesday (September 14), for the second set, instead of mind is moving I, I will be playing a new piece: mind is moving IX for electric guitar and other objects (composed just this year: this will be the premiere). I will still be joined by Dominic Lash (who will be playing a slightly altered version of mind is moving IV).

The first set on Wednesday will see the first performance of A cloud drifting over the plain with the new ad libitum parts (for percussion, electric guitar, contrabass and piano).

If you are in NY I hope to see you there!