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Event
J D Emmanuel / James Ferraro / Eve Essex
Thursday, September 5th, ISSUE Project Room's 2019 Fall season opens at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights with renowned Texan electronic minimalist composer J D Emmanuel giving what he has referred to as one of his final live performances. The evening also features composer and musician James Ferraro presenting selections from his Four Pieces For Mirai, a meditation on technological poiesis and its emergent conditions that spans across four different albums and live concerts. Multi-instrumentalist Eve Essex performs new and unrecorded works that extend the sonic landscape established in her recent debut LP Here Appear. Join as an ISSUE Project Room Member at any level and receive a free ticket to the performance.
Magician of an incredible variety of analog keyboards, J D Emmanuel conceives of sound as an organic, expanding flow of energy and dynamic translation of forces. Emmanuels cyclicity of patterns and phrases refers to minimalist traditions, but his music has little in common with something purely mathematical. Using an approach to improvisation influenced by his interests in jazz and the temporal expansion of rock jams, he charges harmony with an intimate spontaneity and freedom without boundaries. Minimalism and improvisation, then, became the foundations of his art, and the evocation of trance-like states his goal. Yet, his cyclic, analog synthesizer-based music is different from most of his contemporaries of that era. The "minimalism" in his music lies not in repetitive patterns that barely change -- the extreme end of classical minimalism -- but more in its spare arrangement, open optimism, melodic sensibility, and multi-textured atmospheres punctuated by minimal pulses. At ISSUE, Emmanuel is utilizing three Dave Smith Mono Evolver Keyboards and custom light projections.
James Ferraro presents work within his Four Pieces of Mirai cycle, an expansive project spanning multiple releases, including the Overture EP released in 2018, and, most recently, Requiem For a Recycled Earth (released earlier in 2019) -- the first of four main musical parts in the sequence. Exploring themes of ecocide and planetary divorce, the Mirai cycle is an epic work that broadly contemplates civilizational decline, a dystopian present, and a vision of society in servitude to its digital network in a feudal bondage. Throughout the work, Ferraro narrates a unique drama featuring Mirai, an actual malware computer virus that was responsible for some of the webs largest and most disruptive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Throughout, Mirais "denial of service" motive is characterized as the action of a savior, rather than a destructive force, that targets "Internet of Things" devices in order to disrupt the hold of the internet on humanity. From this drama, Ferraro weaves an allegory of technological plague, suburban decay, techno-feudalism, hyperconnectivity, social famine, and virtual exodus, translating the peculiar character of our historical times into precise musical expression.
Eve Essex returns to ISSUE in her first solo presentation, performing new and unrecorded works that extend the sonic landscape established in her recent debut LP Here Appear. Essex is a multi-instrumentalist whose detailed and controlled compositions explore a varied spectrum of acoustic and electronic timbres. Primarily a woodwind player, she employs wide instrumentation including alto saxophone, piccolo and voice, supported with live processing as well as beds of synthesizers, drum machine, samples, and other sounds. Her work operates in a space between song, composition, and instrumental improvisation, sliding easily between structured electronic pop and open-ended melodic explorations. Trained in both sculpture and classical music, her practice has spanned multiple media and genres over time, from installation and performance art to the prog, electronic, and electroacoustic ideas explored in her current collaborations, with MV Carbon and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix as HEVM, James K and Via App as Hesper, and with Craig Kalpakjian as Das Audit, among others. Her solo work places a special focus on live execution, retaining both the ardent focus and spirited unpredictability of her recordings -- an inspired outcome of her varied practices.
J D Emmanuel is a Texas-based electronic minimal pioneer who researches the relationship between music and the mind. He is perhaps best known for his influential album Wizards (1982), one of the most acclaimed private press electronic music albums of all time, reissued on LP by Lieven Martens (2007) and Important Records (2010). Emmanuels music is designed for deep meditative, or altered states, to enhance the ability of the mind and the spirit to go beyond what is considered the "normal" boundaries of the five senses into work with creativity, increased spiritual awareness, or mind expansion. He composes and performs electronic synthesizer music, which sometimes includes electronically enhanced acoustic and electric guitar, as well as environmental sounds: rain, wind, birds, oceans, etc. Emmanuels style creates a foundation using cyclic, polyrhythmic sounds, as well as drones, that build several layers of improvised leads and rhythms that allow a person to transcend time and space. Self-referred to as Electronic Minimal, Emmanuels approach is based on his deep jazz background influenced by studies in minimal music by such composers as Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, to name a few. He also has an extensive background in spiritual and metaphysical studies, another key influence to how he composes and performs his music. His leads and rhythms are developed as a kind of Electronic Meditation, musical contemplations in response to the foundation of a mantra in meditation. Emmanuel's career story is, in a way, a story about a gifted musician whose music may have been lost to the ages if not for the passion of fans. In 2005, record producer Douglas Mcgowan stumbled on several dusty boxes of two J D Emmanuel vinyl albums -- several hundred of them, all still sealed -- at a discount book and record store in North Dallas, Texas. Mcgowan purchased 50 copies and took them back to the west coast. This discovery set in motion a chain of events that led to a series of reissues and Emmanuel's return to recording and performing in 2010. The majority of Emmanuel's studio recordings date from the 1980s, when new age music in America was still a sparse and independent scene. The rediscovery of Emmanuel by critics and audiences in the early 2010s and Emmanuel's comeback to the underground scene were crucial in reweaving the development of electronic music in the early '80s.
James Ferraro is an American composer/musician from New York based in Germany. His music, primarily studio albums, is known for exploring a variety of subjects that can be grouped under the umbrella of post-9/11 world order theory. Ferraro began his career in the early 2000s as a member of the Californian drone/noise duo The Skaters with Spencer Clark, after which he began focusing on solo work under his name and a wide variety of aliases. Ferraro received wider recognition in 2011 when his polarizing dystopian classic Far Side Virtual was chosen as Album of the Year by The Wire. His music is known for uniquely expressing specific modern subjects, incorporating themes of 21st century consumerism, cybernetics, emaciation, social experience, hyperreality, ecological disaster, and the collapse of civilization.
Eve Essex is a Brooklyn-based musician who performs with alto saxophone, piccolo, voice and electronics, harnessing elements of classical, drone, free jazz, and distorted pop. Her debut solo album, Here Appear, was released by Soap Library (cassette) and Sky Walking (LP) in 2018. As a collaborator she performs regularly as Das Audit (with Craig Kalpakjian), Hesper (with James K and Via App), HEVM (with MV Carbon and Hunter Hunt-Hendrix), and with Dan Fox. Her recordings have appeared on compilations by Wild Flesh Productions, Untergang Institut, PAN (with James K), and Sky Walking (with Dan Fox). Select solo performances include Artists Space, e-flux Bar Laika, Fridman Gallery, Outpost Artists Resources, Safe Gallery, Signal, and Wendy's Subway in New York, Meakusma Festival, Eupen, Belgium, and ACUD Macht Neu, Berlin, Germany. She is host of the monthly series "How To Tell A Sound" for Cashmere Radio, Berlin.
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LocationFirst Unitarian Congregational Society (View)
116 Pierrepont Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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