Category Archives: VU Symposium

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VU3 and after VU

We hosted another terrific VU Symposium for experimental, electronic and improvised music at the Park City Library.  It was really special, with over 40 musicians presenting their work over 3 days – here are some pictures.

Afterwards Devin and I (Red Desert) performed a little “gift” concert for everyone as the sun was setting at our cabin – very loud pieces, Phill Niblock Ottavio for amplified gong, Alvin Lucier Snare drum and pure wave oscillator, and very quiet pieces: Michael Pisaro Within 6, Lucie Vitkova FIVE and Daniel Goode Long Distance.   Here’s a photo of me playing Lucie’s piece under the moon, snapped by Martha Muehleisen.

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Interview in SLUG mag about VU3

Thank you SLUG for this great article on what we’re building with the VU Symposium!

“One definition of ‘symposium’ is simply a party with music and conversation. We like to think of the Vu Symposium in this sense of the word,” says Katie Porter, co-founder of the annual Vu Symposium, an open forum championing musicians who push the boundaries of sound and rhythm. “It’s not a conference and not a festival. It is about a free exchange of ideas between participants who engage in experimental, electronic or improvised music.” The third installment of the symposium, called Vu 3, takes place in Park City from July 10–12.

https://www.slugmag.com/music-features/pushing-the-envelope-vu-symposium-2019/

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Upcoming Summer 2019 Shows & Projects

June 9, 2019 8PM, Wild Beast, CalArts, Valencia, CA.  FREE! Our Listen/Space Commissions book release concert on the Dogstar Orchestra 15 Festival.  Over the past five summers, we’ve commissioned over 35 new works for experimental chamber ensemble and brought players and composers to our remote Utah cabin to rehearse and record.  This last year Andre Cormier and I compiled the scores into 3 volumes.  I’m thrilled to perform at Dog Star again and celebrate this whole project!  We’ll premiere a new work for bass clarinet, bass and piano by Quentin Tolimieri and play 8 other works we’ve commissioned!

July 10-12, 2019 VU Symposium for experimental, electronic & improvised music at the Park City Library, Park City, Utah, all day, FREE!  This is the 3rd (almost) annual symposium I’ve organized, and there will be over 40 participants presenting papers, ideas, playing concerts and sharing work from all over the country!  I will be playing some clarinet at the after-party July 12, but otherwise, I’ll be running around organizing the whole thing!  It’s free and open to the public and epic, please come if you’re in Utah!

Aug 1, 2019 ELMS (Experimental Listening & Music Sessions) in Boston, MA.  I’ll be playing solos and collaborations with composers Ian Power, Colin Tucker, Laura Cetilia, Jennie Gottschalk, Adam Tinkle, and Nomi Epstein.

Aug 22-31, 2019 Ostrava Days, Ostrava, Czech Republic.  I’m soooo excited to play clarinet & bass clarinet in the orchestras at Ostrava Days this year.  I’ll be premiering at least 10 new works including a Christian Wolff premiere with the Ostrava Banda on Aug 26.

 

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The thaw, closing loops, Red Desert at UMFA April 17! UPCOMING: Listen/Space Commissions Book Release Concert, DOGSTAR LA, June 9. VU Symposium Park City July 10-12

from my newsletter. would you like one? https://tinyletter.com/kpkatie
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!
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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
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Music into mountains, deserts, oceans

In 2019 I plan to send more music I love off mountains and into the desert and into the ocean. I spent some time in Madeira learning a Lois V Vierk piece, here’s a snip from my practice room!!! Happy New year all you inspiring people xo kp

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Curating & Chair of VU 2- All Day Electronic Music. July 18, 2017 Park City, Utah

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I’m excited to chair this year’s VU!  On July 18 I am curating an entire day-long concert of electronic music, some historic, some premiers, some hours for the color blue, some hours for critical and protest music, some hours of pieces specifically designed for the acoustics of the Jim Santy Auditorium.  In addition to curated works, there is an open call for music: https://vusymposium.org/

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VU SYMPOSIUM on Experimental, Improvised and Electronic Music in Park City, Utah

July 5-7, 2016

VU Symposium, Park City, Utah

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We put together a symposium!!  THE VU SYMPOSIUM

This is our first annual symposium, graciously hosted by the Park City Library.  We are putting on 15 concerts in the Jim Santy Auditorium, and have performers and composers coming from all over the US, a few countries, but certainly very representative of the western half of the US and the Rocky Mountain region.

Learn more at www.vusymposium.org

The first annual Vu Symposium on experimental, electronic, and improvised music, will be held in Park City, Utah on July 5-7, 2016.
The theme for our first symposium is quite broad. We invite scholars, performers, ensembles, composers, critics, and anyone and everyone interested in experimental, improvised, and/or electronic music to present papers, pieces, curated concerts, ideas, half-ideas, lectures, performance pieces, improvisations, or installations that ask, answer, or critique the following question:
“What happened, what’s happening now, and what could happen?”
Our goal is to provide a forum in which any thinker and/or practitioner who is writing about, performing, presenting, or otherwise championingexperimental, improvised and electronic music can freely engage in discourse. The format of the symposium will vary each year based on the nature and the number of submissions but will include: concerts, roundtables, paper presentations, and longer lectures. This symposium does not focus on keynotes, featured ensembles, or featured composers, it is focused on the free exchange of ideas of its participants. Because of this, our symposium is free of charge. Participants are highly encouraged to attend all three days of the symposium.
The Vu Symposium is sponsored by Listen/Space, a 501(c)3 non-profit arts organization. Print and electronic conference proceedings will be published by Listen/Space, so any participant that would like to publish their paper, presentation, or performance may do so.
Park City, Utah is a small mountain town that also happens to host many conferences and festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival. Free public transportation, convenient accommodations, outdoor activities, and great restaurants are literally steps away from our symposium’s home base at the Park City Library.

Thank you to our committee:

Alex Waterman, Stephanie Richards, Greg Stuart, Brian Harnetty and G Douglas Barrett.  And our symposium chair, Devin Maxwell.

Thank you to our volunteers and organizers:

Kristin Olson, Jonathan Marmor, Andrew Munsey, Kevin Farrell

Thank you to the 40+ artists who came to Park City!!!!

Nathan Asman, Ted Apel, Lynn Baker, Scott Barton, Carey Campbell, Clay Chaplin, Daniel Corral, Ron Coulter, Antonio D’Amato, Miguel Chuaqui, Joseph Davancens, Carlo Dean, Kevin Farrell, Chris Foss, David Gedosh, Emily Hay, The Hay-Liebig Duo, Robert Jedrzewjewski, Steuart Liebig, Hannah Johnson McLaughlin, Noriko Kishi, Benjamin JM Klein, Amy Knoles, Thomas Levine, Ben Levinson, Christopher Mandel, ON STRUCTURE, Natacha Diels, Jessie Marino, Bryan Jacobs, Celeste Oram, Sean Peuquet, Jesse Quebbeman-Turley, Jacob Richards, Jake Rosenzweig, Morris Rosenzweig, Benjamin Safran, The Salt Lake Electric Ensemble, Ryan Seward, Matt Smiley, Sophia Shen, Emma Sherman, Andrew C. Smith, Dennis K. Sullivan, Pedro Vazquez, Byron Westbrook, Michael Winter, Zhaoyu Zhang