EAR TO THE EARTH 2010
The 5th New York Festival of Sound, Music, and Ecology
“WATER AND THE WORLD”
October 27 – Nov. 1
Featuring R. Murray Schafer, Matthew Burtner, Yolande Harris, Bernie Krause, Charles Lindsay, Annea Lockwood, Phill Niblock, Kristin Norderval, David Monacchi, Maggi Payne, Andrea Polli, Liz Phillips, David Rothenberg, and many more
New York City—Water is essential to the support of all living organisms. Yet, we are headed to a crisis in managing it. For its fifth installment, Ear to the Earth 2010 – a unique festival of sound, music and ecology conceived and presented by Electronic Music Foundation – will turn its attention to the current states of water and our social and cultural attitudes towards it. For five days, from October 27 through November 1, eco-composers and sound artists will explore the topic of “Water and the World” through compositions, installations and presentations featuring the sound of water and bringing forth critical environmental issues – melting ice and rising sea levels, access and privatization, pollution, storm intensity, salinity, to name a few. The festival will take place at Frederick Loewe Theater, Greenwich House Music School, White Box, and Kleio Projects in New York City.
Ear to the Earth 2010 will kick off with a rare New York appearance by the acoustic ecology pioneer R. Murray Schafer (Oct. 27). Highlights include a presentation on how animals (including fish) taught us how to dance by bioacoustician Bernie Krause (Oct. 29); Kristin Norderval’s new vocal electronic work on a virtual polar icecap meltdown (Oct. 30); Michael Fahres’ video concert of dolphin sounds and Senegalese master drummers (Oct. 31); Phill Niblock and Katherine Liberovskaya’s live audio/video work on the sounds of the Rhine and Danube rivers (Oct. 31); Charles Lindsay and David Rothenberg’s new live performance work on water in western United States (Nov. 1); Andrea Polli and TJ Martinez’s documentary on surfing as a way to reflect on climate change (Nov. 1); as well as performances and presentations by Matthew Burtner and Scott Deal, Yolande Harris, David Monacchi, Maggi Payne, and Matt Rogalsky.
On Oct. 31, New York Soundscapes – an evening of premieres offering panoramic portrayals of the metropolis’s audio personality and urban ecology – will feature a team of up-and-coming sound artists focusing on NYC water-related issues such as consumption (Miguel Frasconi), the Gowanus Canal (Aleksei Stevens), and the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel (Paula Matthusen). In addition, this year’s festival will present Daniella Topol and Sheila Callaghan’s highly entertaining, yet disturbing, theatrical work on struggles around water, and sound installations by Annea Lockwood, Liz Phillips and Jennifer Stock.
EAR TO THE EARTH
SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES:
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 8 PM
> An Encounter with R. Murray Schafer
Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow St. (bwt. Bedford St. & 7th Ave. S), NYC
Canada’s most prominent composer R. Murray Schafer will make a rare New York appearance to talk about the origins of acoustic ecology and soundscapes and their evolution into today’s environmental sound art.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 8 PM
> Bernie Krause: Fish Rap: The Life-Affirming Soundscapes of Water
> Yolande Harris: Fishing for Sound (NY Premiere)
Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow St. (bwt. Bedford St. & 7th Ave. S), NYC
Noted composer and bioacoustician Bernie Krause addresses the question of how animals (including fish) taught us to dance and sing, drawing from his book, The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places, due for publication by Little Brown (Hachette) in 2011. Find out how the organizational forms we’ve emulated in music can be found in the biophonies of rainforests, deserts, mountains, and riparian habitats worldwide.
Amsterdam-based composer/sound artist Yolande Harris explores the sea of spatial connections between phenomena under water, in the mind, and from outer space. The performance weaves sounds culled from scientific analysis of marine environments, psychological treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, and sonified data from satellites orbiting the Earth. Listening in these spaces is like fishing for sounds.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29, 8 PM
> Kristin Norderval: Tattooed Ghosts (World Premiere)
> Matt Rogalsky: Memory Like Water
Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow St. (bwt. Bedford St. & 7th Ave. S), NYC
Composer/vocalist Kristin Norderval’s Tattooed Ghosts, for voice, interactive audio and live processing, draws from Dina Von Zweck’s monumental literary work, FLUDD—Virtual Polar Icecap Meltdown. Combining elements of poetry, fiction, memoir, scripts, and plays, FLUDD imagines the meltdown as a flood of waters that releases the Arctic’s profound secrets. Tattooed Ghosts uses poems and songs from FLUDD’s final three parts to trace the accumulation of ocean contaminants.
Drawing from his 2007 sound installation of the same title, Memory Like Water, media artist Mark Rogalsky presents a series of live performance pieces that explore the flow and malleability of memory and identity through the passage of time.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30
White Box, 329 Broome St., NYC
3 PM:
> Water (or the Secret Life of Objects) by Sheila Callaghan (playwright), Katie Down (Sound Artist), Leah Gelpe (video projections), Daniella Topol (Director)
Initiated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, this part science experiment, part media-bomb theater project illuminates struggles around water – access, purification and privatization – while exploring water as a life force and object of political debate.
8 PM:
> “NEW YORK SOUNDSCAPES”: Three World Premieres
Miguel Frasconi: Inside-Out
Aleksei Stevens: Standing Water: Sound Map of the Gowanus Canal, 2010
Paula Matthuson: Navigable
Miguel Frasconi transforms information on NYC water consumption – and the journey water takes from its source to the big metropolis – into a score for electronics and a menagerie of glass objects (struck, blown, stroked and otherwise coaxed into vibration).
Aleksei Stevens made recordings of the Gowanus Canal in order to isolate its sounds from the highly visible evidence of its pollution, only to find the resulting recordings eerily devoid of not only the typical sounds of wildlife (save the odd gull), but also indeed the very sounds of water itself.
Paula Matthusen presents a theme and variations based on the resonant frequencies of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel – a space not only renowned for its significance in the development of subways, but also as a site of cultural intrigue.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31
Frederick Loewe Theater, 35 West 4th Street, NYC
5 PM
> David Monacchi: Stati d’Acqua / States of Water
> Maggi Payne: Liquid Amber
> Matthew Burtner & Scott Deal: Auksalaq
David Monacchi’s Stati d’Acqua reflects the manifold mutations that water undergoes in its physical form as springs, streams, waterfalls, water dripping in caves, and ocean waves.
Composer Maggi Payne‘s videomusic Liquid Amber is about texture – “images that compel me to physically reach out and touch them in real life and on-screen.” Sounds produced by the touching of various objects (water, skin, fabric, wood, metal, etc) interact in unexpected ways with compelling images such as a sheet of copper and an old ship.
Matthew Burtner and Scott Deal’s Auksalaq (the Inupiaq Eskimo word for “melting snow”) explores global climate change as it is experienced in Alaska and the Arctic. Through telematic technology, live music, and images, the work integrates artistic expression, scientific information and social/political commentary to reveal conflicting perspectives. The interactive software NOMADS will enable personal computers to interact with the performance in real time. Bring your laptops or PDAs!
8 PM
> Phill Niblock & Katherine Liberovskaya: Sound Delta (NY Premiere)
> Michael Fahres: Cetacea
Phill Niblock and Katherine Liberovskaya’s Sound Delta is a live audio/video performance derived from work created during the 2008 European Sound Delta project – a traveling art residency in which thirty international sound artists navigated on the Rhine and Danube rivers.
Dolphins use sonar to communicate with each other. The Senegalese Sabar drummers converse over large distances by percussive patterns. Inspired by this acoustic connection, Michael Fahres’ Cetacea merges dolphin sounds (from the dolphinarium in Duisburg, Germany) with the rhythms of Senegalese Master drummer Doudou N’Diaye Rose’s percussion ensemble. The evening features a video performance of the concert in 5.1 surround sound.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 8 PM
> Charles Lindsay and David Rothenberg: Western Water (World Premiere)
> Andrea Polli and TJ Martinez: Dances with Waves (Documentary)
Frederick Loewe Theater, 35 West 4th Street, NYC
Charles Lindsay and David Rothenberg debut a live multimedia performance on the complex environmental, political and social issues involving water and the western United States. Western Water features video, stills and field recordings of the American West, including the Hoover Dam, Mono Lake, Yellowstone Park’s geysers, The Mermaid Bar in Great Falls, industrial irrigation, and water coolers. Rothenberg performs on clarinets and overtone flutes, with live explorations of found sounds, while Lindsay plays pristine and processed sounds of water, electric cello and Moog guitar.
Andrea Polli and TJ Martinez’s documentary Dances with Waves investigates the science of surfing as a way to reflect on global climate change. Surfing, in one respect, is simply a recreational sport. It is also a kinesthetic conversation between the living body of the surfer and the living body of the wave – shedding light on how our lives are tied to weather patterns and the delicate ecology of the ocean.
Tickets for all events at the Greenwich House Music School and White Box are $15 for general admission, $10 for EMF Subscribers and seniors, and $5 for students. Festival pass is $30.
Admission to all events at the Frederick Loewe Theater is free.
For more information on Ear to the Earth 2010, visit emfproductions.org or email events@emf.org or call (888) 749-9998.
