Darmstadt “Classics of the Avant Garde” in June

Darmstadt’s “Classics of the Avant Garde” will be featured at New York’s Issue Project Room in June.

A Month-Long Festival of Concerts, Workshops, Film Screenings, Conversations and World Premieres Featuring:

Susie Ibarra, Elliot Sharp, Tony Oursler, Anthony Coleman, Tony Conrad, David Grubbs, Joan La Barbara, Luke Dubois, Tom Hamilton, Ha-Yang Kim, Branden W. Joseph, Stephan Moore, John King, Dan Joseph, Ne(x)tworks, Matthew Welch, Elodie Lauten, Bing and Ruth, TILT, Either/Or, Pterodactyl, Christy & Emily, Connie Beckley, Ensemble Pamplemousse and much more!

Darmstadt “Classics of the Avant-Garde” music series is proud to announce its first ever Institute, a month-long festival at ISSUE Project Room dedicated to exploring the connection between live performance and pedagogical practice. This month of interdisciplinary programming includes concerts, lectures, workshops, film screenings, and talkbacks which celebrate and critically examine the continuum of the experimental tradition in music and related media. It is the hope of Darmstadt’s curators that its Institute will deepen the understanding and appreciation of experimental work, both within the New York music community and the general public.

This month of dynamic programming involves both established composers and performers, alongside emerging artists. In addition to countless concerts of premieres and cherished repertoire, highlights of the festival include workshops led by Joan LaBarbara and Susie Ibarra, conversations between David Grubbs and Branden W. Joseph and Tony Conrad and Luke Dubois, a lecture-performance by Merce Cunningham Music Committee members Stephan Moore and John King featuring a live rendering of John Cage‘s “Fontana Mix,” film presentations by Tony Oursler and Bradley Eros, in addition to “sectional” events—a program of guitar music with Dan Joseph and Elliot Sharp and an evening connecting the voice to visual art, with Connie Beckley and Lesley Flanigan. There will also be post-performance talkbacks with performers and composers.

The Institute kicks off Monday, June 1 with a FREE artist-in-attendance screening of Tony Oursler’s video project, Synesthesia, an oral history of New York’s downtown music and art scenes, and concludes on Sunday, June 28 with an outdoor concert featuring two of Brooklyn’s brightest young art rock ensembles, Pterodactyl and Christy & Emily.

Darmstadt is describing the artists participating in its June Institute as a “faculty” of sorts, enabling a non-institutional, publicly accessible forum. In the spirit of its namesake’s “holiday course,” Darmstadt aims to provide a vital resource, a venue to connect artists, performers, writers, and educators with each other and, in turn, with audiences…all towards the enrichment of New York’s vibrant new music scene.

Darmstadt “Classics of the Avant Garde” is the Brooklyn-based contemporary music series led by composer-musicians Zach Layton and Nick Hallett, which presents the best of New York City’s live experimental music, and relevant media. Darmstadt will celebrate its fifth anniversary this November with an annual performance of Terry Riley‘s In C, which Alan Kozinn described in the New York TImes as “the most vital, audacious and energizing performance of the score I’ve ever heard.” Darmstadt regularly hosts its concerts and DJ sets at ISSUE Project Room while its founders both create and curate work for such institutions as PS1 and The Kitchen. Darmstadt began as a “listening party” of avant-garde recordings at Galapagos Art Space before quickly evolving into a live performance series, and in 2007 was included in The New York Times ‘Best of New Music’ rundown. As DJ’s, Layton and Hallett have delivered memorable sets at Steve Reich 70th birthday celebration at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and at the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival, in collaboration with filmmakers Jonas Mekas, Virginie Marchand, and Butoh dance master Kazuo Ohno.

Darmstadt Institute is sponsored in part by funding from Meet the Composer Creative Connections, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Experimental Television Center (supported by the New York State Council on the Arts)

DARMSTADT INSTITUTE

June 2009

ISSUE Project Room

in the (OA) Can Factory

232 3rd Street (at 3rd Ave), Brooklyn

performances at 8pm unless noted otherwise