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Hi! Well, everything cycles, doesn’t it? We are back at our cabin and the snow is really melting now. The thaw: new rivers, new ponds, mud and water everywhere. I’m in a strange loop and suddenly it’s springtime! Also! Baseball started. I’m putting together some giant upcoming music projects, and closing some loops, and I would love to see you!

If you’re in Utah, please come hear Red Desert play at the UMFA on April 17. We are working with an Honors class at the University of Utah called Radical Quiet to perform Terry Riley’s IN C, and will be minimalisming-it-out for about an hour with a band of 20+ performers. Also on the program is Morton Feldman’s Bass Clarinet and Percussion, a new PH trio for marimba, bass clarinet and bass by Devin Maxwell and one of my favorite works of all time, Pauline Oliveros’ Bye Bye Butterfly.

April 17, 7PM, Free!! UMFA Main Gallery, 410 Campus Center Dr, SLC, UT

Red Desert & Radical Quiet

Morton Feldman Bass Clarinet and Percussion

Pauline Oliveros Bye Bye Butterfly

Devin Maxwell PH6

Terry Riley IN C

The next project I’m organizing is a release concert for our Listen/Space Books of Scores and Recordings in Los Angeles!!!!

We’ll be playing on June 9 at the WildBeast at Calarts, as part of my favorite festival: Dogstar Orchestra 15. In addition to playing 10 works from our commissions, we’ll be premiering a NEW piece by Quentin Tolimieri, an improvising piano and bass clarinet double-concerto (commissioned by our dear friend Bruce Abbott), with Quentin in from Berlin on the piano and me on bass clarinet!

This is the first time we’ll have played all of this music _not_ in our garage or cabin. We’re sending this music off the mountain! I’ll also have all 3 VOLUMES of our Listen/Space Books and Recordings, and almost the entire band will be there: Nate Herrera, Phil Rodriguez, Kevin Farrell, Quentin Tolimieri, Stephanie Steph Richards, Devin Maxwell, Kristin Olson, Andrew Munsey, Christine Tavolacci, Jonathan Marmor, Andre André Cormier, Eric KM Eric Kenneth Malcolm Clark and me! Thank you everyone for supporting our Kickstarter campaign, all 3 volumes are made, vol 3 is being printed, and if you want the books, you’ll have to get them from Frog Peak Music (or me!!).

Speaking of cycles, we are hosting the third VU Symposium this summer! VU 3: A symposium for experimental, improvised and electronic music at the Park City Library, July 10-12, 2019.

There is an OPEN CALL right now due April 15! Papers, presentations and music performances. We would love for you to come out! The topic is “Pushing the Envelope” and the call is here: www.vusymposium.org

What is Listen/Space now? What are these commissions? What is VU about? When we left Brooklyn, I was pretty brokenhearted about our space, about the scene, about not being able to create community with a space for experimental music. But I look back, and actually, we did! We inspired many people! People that went on to build their own spaces, curate their own series, make more music, and decide that this music should exist outside of institutions. I see folks carrying the torch for outsider music and spaces. Our community does exist, and now it’s all over the world. NYC is a time not a place. When we moved to Utah it took me a long time to process what I wanted to do next, how I wanted to bring everyone together. And my solution was the Listen/Space Commissions – bringing a group of players out to our cabin and making new works. It’s been an incredibly gratifying project, we have all sorts of music and times together, and the promise that there will be more. VU Symposium is similar, we are working in experimental music, art music, electronic music, improvised music, what is it all about, how do we share and not compete, how do we bring each other up and celebrate the process? Come to the mountains! Share your work! It’s important!

Otherwise,

I’m playing bass clarinet on this lovely recording of Shawnee, OH by Brian Harnetty just released on Karl Records (Berlin).

And I have been enjoying giving some talks and presentations. Last month I presented Active Listening, Colored Silence, Critical Music and Wandelweiser at Phillip Bimstein‘s Radical Quiet Honors College course at the University of Utah. I also performed four movements of Michael Pisaro‘s Within 6 for both sections of the class. And in February I presented and demonstrated Extreme Techniques for Clarinet & Bass Clarinet in Experimental Music for the Utah Clarinet Festival at BYU, where I sang into my clarinet and played spectral multiphonics and crazy sounds in the music of Susanna Gartmayer, Sarah Hennies, Lucie Lucie Vítková, Ruben Rúben Borges, Lois V Vierk, Daniel Goode and others. It was SUPER fun, and the young clarinetists were so enthusiastic!!

When do I head out next to the Sun Tunnels?? I’m hoping to get back out there and record for a few weekends this summer. And then I’ll be presenting the project East Coast and West Coast at several venues and colleges next year. Stay tuned!

So, what loop is closing? Well, perhaps this Utah one. We are very seriously considering moving! Perhaps closer to NYC, perhaps Austin, TX, perhaps somewhere else (suggestions and bidding wars welcome)? Devin is teaching his last few classes in Electroacoustic Music Composition, Sound, Music and Technology and Music Composition at the University of Utah and Westminster College this next month, and we are looking to move on in either Academia or elsewhere. We want to renew focus on our duo, Red Desert, commission some new pieces, finish our album(s) and tour! It’s time to see our people, whereever on earth they may be now. We miss you!

More to come! Life, life is happening. Hope you are all awesome.

xo

kp