February at the Stone

February highlights fro, New York’s The Stone:

February 2010 at the Stone
curated by Toby Driver

MONDAY FEBRUARY 2—STONE SEMINAR 5
BUTCH MORRIS: The Principles of Conduction®
7PM to 10PM—TWENTY DOLLARS: Open to all
For the 25th Anniversary of Conduction, Butch Morris presents a special lecture/ demonstration, a concert featuring a string octet and a Q&A on the methods and principles of Conduction.

(KR)

2/4 Thursday (NY)
8 pm
Larval
Bill Brovold (guitar) plus guests
Bill reunites with the original lineup of Larval

10 pm
Stern
Chuck Stern (vocals)
Stern is Chuck Stern, formerly of New York art/prog abstractionists Time of Orchids. The music is dense and cinematic, occupying its own late-night vacuum – a haze of brooding, Shostakovian synth and angular guitar work, laced with trumpet, industrial noise and Chuck’s unique, haunting vocals.

2/5 Friday (AV)
8 pm
Baby Dee
Baby Dee (piano, vocals) Matthew Robinson (cello)
Baby Dee will sing about slugs and play classical music for cowboys with cowboy hat-hair.

10 pm
Sword of Exactly
Evelyn Davis (piano, vocals) Joe Kiplinger (guitar), Joey Molinaro (violin), Rob Funkhouser (percussion, mixing bowls), plus guests
New music composer Evelyn Davis conflates influences of art rock, metal, prog, and opera to create extremely subtle, thoughtful, microtonally oriented works which are viscerally emotionally expressive. Her recent work includes a song cycle, “From the Bath”, for countertenor, alto, viola, and alto flute, which is based on her own text, and which expresses issues such as loss, bisexuality, masturbation, and abortion through the mouthpiece of effeminate masculinity.

2/6 Saturday (JM)
8 pm
Kayo Dot plays Choirs of the Eye
Toby Driver (guitar, vocals) Mia Matsumiya (violin, keyboards) Terran Olson (keyboards, woodwinds) Daniel Means (guitar, woodwinds, bass) David Bodie (percussion) and special guest Greg Massi (guitar)
Kayo Dot plays the entirety of their 2003 Tzadik debut, with special guest former KD guitarist Greg Massi joining for this performance only!

10 pm
Kayo Dot plays Coyote
Toby Driver (bass, vocals) Mia Matsumiya (violin, guitar) Terran Olson (keyboards, tenor sax) Daniel Means (alto sax) David Bodie (percussion) and special guest Tim Byrnes (trumpet)
Kayo Dot plays the entirety of their forthcoming Hydra Head release.

2/7 Sunday (JB)
8 pm
Tartar Lamb II
Toby Driver (bass guitar and vocals), Mia Matsumiya (violin and electric violin), Jeremiah Cymerman (clarinet), Dan Means (alto sax) plus guests
Modern-classical electroacoustic doom lattices and wall-melting balladry. Questionable tonality. Gradual development, immediate descent into hell.

10 pm
Bauder/Cymerman/Evans/Wooley AMPLIFIED QUARTET
Matt Bauder (amplified sax) Jeremiah Cymerman (amplified clarinet) Peter Evans (amplified trumpet) Nate Wooley (amplified trumpet)

MONDAY FEBRUARY 8—STONE SEMINAR 6
ELLIOTT SHARP—Music in the Post-Digital Era
7PM to 9PM—TWENTY DOLLARS: Open to all
Composer Elliott Sharp discusses and presents scores and audio examples of his work, past and current, in the context of biological and mathematical models of musical organization, an evaluation of computers and new media in performance, algorithmic composition vs improvisation, and the question of smell. Compositions to be discussed include the orchestral works “Larynx”, “Calling” and “On Corlear’s Hook”; selected string quartets including “Dispersion of Seeds”, “Tessalation Row”, and “Seize Seas Seeth Seen”; “SyndaKit”, “Polymerae” and other algorithmic works; electroacoustic works such as “Cryptid Fragments”; solo approaches including Tectonics and Velocity of Hue; and the music-theater works “innosense”, “EmPyre” and “Binibon”.

(MP)

2/9 Tuesday (NY)
8 pm
Jason Byron
Jason Byron (voice)
Modern mystic and former lyricist of Kayo Dot and maudlin of the Well gives a presentation. A once in a lifetime experience not to be missed!

10 pm
NYMPH
Matty McDermott (guitar, organ, voice, percussion) Eri Shoji (voice, percussion), Nickle Emmet (bass, percussion)

2/11 Thursday (AV)
8 pm
Maureen McElheron
Maureen McElheron (piano, vocals) plus guests
Maureen McElheron composes and sings the music for the super-bizarre animated films of Bill Plympton, whose cartoons have been featured on MTV, BRAVO and Cartoon Network.

10 pm
Jessica Pavone – Songs of Synastry and Solitude
Toomai String Quintet – John Popham (cello), Andrew Roitstein (bass), Emilie-Anne Gendron (violin), Erin Wight (viola)
Songs of Synastry and Solitude is a collection of songs for string quartet influenced by an interest in the simple beauty of folk songs, the ghosts of all things lost and Leonard Cohen‘s encouragement to live outside this world.

2/12 Friday
8 pm
Lavigna
Lavigna (voice, guitar) Alain “Astucieux Coquin” Halimi (saxophone, flute) Olivier Pelletier (clarinet) Antoni Cionci (balafon, guitar) Damien Girot (drums)
Lavigna is an intense free punk grind French band coming to The Stone all the way from Mediterranée. Absolutely mindblowing.

10 pm
Gnaw
Alan Dubin (voice) Carter Thornton (guitar, bass) Brian Beatrice (guitar, bass) Jun Mizumachi (laptop/fx/noise) Eric Neuser (drums)
Gnaw viciously assaults listeners with their unique brew of ultra-depressive, scathing, slug-paced extreme metal.

2/13 Saturday
8 pm
Steeve Hurdle and Craig Taborn
Steeve Hurdle (guitar) Craig Taborn (piano)
Hailing from Montreal, Steeve Hurdle is best known for his ingenious guitar playing on the greatest creative extreme metal album of all time, Obscura by Gorguts. Steeve currently plays in NEGATIVA.

10 pm
Steeve Hurdle solo
Steeve Hurdle (guitar)

2/14 Sunday (AV)
8 pm
JOHN ZORN IMPROV NIGHT—A Stone Benefit
John Zorn (sax) Toby Driver (bass) Steeve Hurdle (guitar) and many special guests
TWENTY DOLLARS

MONDAY FEBRUARY 15—STONE SEMINAR 7
ANTHONY COLEMAN
7PM to 9PM—TWENTY DOLLARS: Open to all.
Tortured Genius and downtown legend Anthony Coleman, who now teaches at New England Conservatory speaks about the nexus of composition and improvisation in contemporary music.

2/18 Thursday (NY)
8 pm
Dilly Dilly
Erin Davidson (multi-instruments and voice)
dilly dilly is Erin Olivia Davidson, a multi-instrumentalist from Portland, Maine, who performs arrangements for ukulele, banjo, guitar, sequencer, vocals, and musical saw. After years playing with Cerberus Shoal and a small stint in Sage Francis’s backing band, she’ll play solo tonight, with a selection of songs that are part-folk, part-electronic, and entirely other.

10 pm
Yellow Crystal Star
Mark Billings (electric guitar)
Austin-based, infinite drone activation of expanding dimensional perception. Progressive guitar trance, collaged tape prism of portals in/out/in neverending. A seemingly chaotic interpolation of chants, sources, samples, melodies, and lyrics, pieced together as a more complex vibrational language filtering down through the transforming dream

MONDAY FEBRUARY 22—STONE SEMINAR 8
Greg Cohen—Musicianship
NOTE EARLY START TIME! 5PM to 7PM—TWENTY DOLLARS: Open to all.
Renown Bassist with Bob Dylan, Ornette Coleman, Tom Waits, Woody Allen, John Zorn, Lou Reed, Maryanne Faithful, Lee Konitz and coutless others speaks about the art of playing bass, musicianship, and the role of the bass in music today.

2/23 Tuesday (NY)
8 pm
Matthew Welch’s Blarvuster
Matthew Welch (bagpipes, sax, voice) Leah Paul (flutes, sax) Max Mandel (viola) Mary Halvorson (el. guitar) Ian Riggs (el. bass) Tomas Fujiwara (drums)

10 pm
Golden
Kota Saito (vocal, guitar, mandolin) Tetsuyoshi Kojima (guitar, percussion) Ryosuke Tashiro (drums)
Golden is a must-see. Kota screams like a newly born wild horse and croons like an old man talking to the distant boat fading into the spring haze. The noise from Kojima’s guitar, so sensitive and disturbing, breaks your old dream-box into pieces and from behind, Ryosuke’s strict as well as emotional drums blow them up into the high air. This band from the Far East island will attack you like Tsunami and leave you in the shining debris of pure gold.

2/27 Saturday (DS)
8 pm
Andrea Centazzo & John Zorn
Andrea Centazzo (percussion) John Zorn (sax) and special guests
Here on a rare visit from Italy, Centazzo reunites with Zorn after over thirty years! TWENTY DOLLARS

10 pm
Matthew Bourne
Matthew Bourne (piano)
The virtuosic pianist from England. “…characterized by highly personal levels of emotional and physical intensity. Adjectives such as offensive, moving, banal, provocative and breathtaking are among those most commonly used.”

2/28 Sunday (AV)
8 pm
Broadcloth
Anne Rhodes (voice), Nathan Bontrager (cello), Adam Matlock (accordion, recorders)
from New Haven.

10 pm
Have a Nice Life
Dan Barrett (vocals, guitar, sampler), Tim Macuga (bass), M. Kestigian (guitar), Will Barrett (synthesizer)
Heavy, droning, and melodic combination of shoegaze, industrial, and new wave, in the vein of Sisters of Mercy, My Bloody Valentine, and Swans.