Flame Keepers 130: Chris Pitsiokos

Flame Keepers 130: Chris Pitsiokos

 

Flame Keepers

Chris Pitsiokos

May 27th, 2024

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About the Artist

Chris Pitsiokos is a New York-born, Berlin-based saxophonist, improviser, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. He has performed extensively in North and South America, Europe and Japan. Chris has been praised by Rolling Stone for his “startlingly original vision” and “astonishingly fleet sax work.” Downbeat has identified his band CP Unit as “A persuasive combination of harmolodic jazz and contemporary noise rock.” As a soloist he has developed a unique voice on the alto saxophone: his expansion of the instrument’s vocabulary has served to multiply its emotive and formal possibilities. He has performed his own music at dozens of major festivals across the globe, including (but not limited to) Saalfelden Jazz Festival and Wels Unlimited Festival in Austria, Sapporo International Arts Festival in Japan, Moers Festival in Germany, Tempo Reale Festival in Italy, Rewire Festival in the Netherlands, Jazz Jantar Festival in Poland and Festival de Jazz Lima in Peru. In New York he has presented his work at Roulette Intermedium, ISSUE Project Room, and during a residency at John Zorn’s club the Stone. Lately, he has developed interactive, 4-channel electro-acoustic systems for saxophone and computer. He also composes music for film. His list of collaborators includes many of the leading lights of late-20th and 21st century improvised music, experimental music and free jazz: he has worked with Jaimie Branch, Luke Stewart, Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey, Lea Bertucci, Weasel Walter, Chris Corsano, Otomo Yoshihide, Nate Wooley, Axel Dörner, Julien Desprez, Sachiko M, and Paul Lytton to name a small few. His current focus is on solo performance, duos with Otomo Yoshihide and Tizia Zimmermann, his band CP Unit, and a collaborative band with Kalle Kalima, Ronny Graupe and Oliver Steidle called “ROKC Music.”

 
 
 

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Insiders Guide: Biophony Solstice

Insiders Guide: Biophony Solstice

Metropolis Ensemble founder and conductor Andrew Cyr discovered the piece through a feature in The New York Times that included Hall who had recently released Canto Ostinato via Austin record label Western Vinyl.

Flame Keepers 129: Abdul Sherzai

Flame Keepers 129: Abdul Sherzai

 

Flame Keepers

Abdul Sherzai

May 20th, 2024

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About the Artist

Abdul Sherzai is an experimental musician creating audio that is not for the faint of heart. While focusing on themes of isolation, anxiety and redemption, his music is designed for the hard of hearing. It's for those who embrace that sound can be a full body experience. He creates music for those who understand that there's a space between self-harm and self-improvement where the two are permanently fused.

 
 
 

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Flame Keepers 128: Pablo Picco

Flame Keepers 128: Pablo Picco

 

Flame Keepers

Pablo Picco

May 13th, 2024

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About the Artist

Pablo Picco records and makes music under the name of Bardo Todol. His music is a mix of various music concréte techniques that involves tapes, flutes, field recordings, noise and acoustic elements. Audio collages that are assembled through many years and many improvisations and put together on distant and lonely nights: all of them have this “natural” or “impressionistic” feeling. A new realm of sounds and colours that came out through the speakers with a ferric smell.

In all this distorted resonance, his children, Nico and Cina, have a strong presence making noises, shouting, singing and making non-child sounds.

He has released some tapes in different labels across U.S. and Europe such as Discrepant, Ikuisuus, Lal Lal Lal, Chocolate Monk, Magma Tones, Artsy Records, Dinzu Artefacts, Full Spectrum, Tsss Tapes, Falt, More Mars, Getrude Tapes and more.

He is also a visual artist that makes collage art that illustrates the front covers of his albums.

Currently Pablo is making an animation film grouping together all his music and these short stories. His filming process involves also various techniques such as stop motion, analog and digital collage, rotoscope, and more.

LINKS

MUSIC:
https://bardotodolmonofonia.bandcamp.com/

VISUAL ART:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl8xTEauL4a/
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch7UZ9Pu439/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CqvJnEwuc9E/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CkQrPt5uHoO/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTZw4rfriSq/
https://www.instagram.com/p/COna0nKA1vU/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2HPdxCgAiH/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxGRjVRAP-k/

ANIMATION VIDEOS:
https://youtu.be/uGZ_LRiArMw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnGpWCHld0Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v15BvxZ4Zds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK-MWPoKfbY

DOCUMENTAL FILM “Kalinga Utkal”:
https://youtu.be/Xc0sLYfpxTs

 
 
 

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Flame Keepers 127: Kelly Bray

Flame Keepers 127: Kelly Bray

 

Flame Keepers

Kelly Bray

May 6th, 2024

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About the Artist

Kelly Bray is a trumpet player, improviser, and composer. Her original compositions and improvisations explore the extremes in trumpet technique, often drawing from her relationship to perceptions of gender and femininity in the communities and aesthetics of improvisation, creative music, and trumpet playing. Her recorded electroacoustic works intuitively combine her live improvisational techniques with harsh and glitchy sounding sound manipulation.

Bray is a sought after performer in the Northeast United States and Canada, frequenting venues in Boston, New Haven, New York City, Philadelphia, and Montreal. She regularly performs both solo and in groups, bringing an exciting, yet sensitive improvisational style to each performance.

An alumnus of the New England Conservatory of Music, Bray earned a Master of Music in Contemporary Improvisation, studying with Anthony Coleman and Joe Morris.

 
 
 

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Flame Keepers 126: Andrea Pensado

Flame Keepers 126: Andrea Pensado

 

Flame Keepers

Andrea Pensado

April 29th, 2024

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About the Artist

Based in the US since 2002, Pensado uses voice and electronics to make her music. She studied in Argentina and Poland where she graduated in Composition with honors at the Krakow Academy of Music. However, after extensive composition practice, her music started to gradually move away from conventional composition. Nowadays, she mainly uses digital media and live interactive systems to perform. Her voice is constantly interwoven in the performances.  The approach to both programming and performance is highly intuitive. The harsh cut up noise result, mixed with the strong emotional component of her music, generates a deeply personal sonic language. Occasionally, the combination of the performance situation, the often abrasive sounds, the irrational use of the voice and the inherent uncertainty of improvisations contributes to discoveries of unknown places in her mind. 

Pensado performs extensively in the US and abroad. She also produces Sonorium, a series of experimental music based in Salem, MA.

 
 
 

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Metropolis Ensemble to Perform ‘Canto Ostinato’ at Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Metropolis Ensemble to Perform ‘Canto Ostinato’ at Brooklyn Botanic Garden

This time Canto Ostinato’s palette comprises several keyboards, extensive mallet percussion, woodwinds, and strings, and rather than just fall straight into fanfare, we want to use these many tones to go deep into the inherent beauty of the piece.

WDET: In the Groove

WDET: In the Groove

“The music of Wye Oak with the gorgeous voice of Jenn Wasner... it’s a massive variation, a new symphonic retelling.”

Flame Keepers 125: Max Feldman

Flame Keepers 125: Max Feldman

 

Flame Keepers

Max Feldman

April 22nd, 2024

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About the Artist

Max Feldman is a Brooklyn musician and comedian. In 2021 he started his Spa Water project through which he has since released six albums, ranging in style from neoclassical compositions to vaporwave-metal remixes, on the online labels Slyme Records and Pedicure Records. In 2022, Max started performing live music at venues like Berlin, Pianos, Wonderville, and Trans-Pecos, where he uses his trusty SP-404 to turn sounds from his albums (and from elsewhere) into immersive and humorous collages. Also a visual artist, Max does all his own album artwork and often performs alongside his own live visuals.

Max does musical improv comedy, and has performed all around town with his indie team Hey, Handsome! which specializes in making up musical versions of popular TV shows. Max is also a company member of Eight is Never Enough, an interactive family comedy show at the Broadway Comedy Club. Often Max works as the piano accompanist for other musical improv comedy teams, which means he gets to make up the music while they make up the lyrics.

In January 2023, Max joined the bands Jenny Alien and Kiddo Pro, which have given him the chance to rock out on keys and SP-404 respectively. With these bands he has performed at venues like The Knitting Factory, Gold Sounds, and The Living Gallery.

Perhaps of greatest note is that Max once saw Chris Rock in line at a movie theater.

 
 
 

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Limelight: Cutting Edge Beautiful Dystopia

Limelight: Cutting Edge Beautiful Dystopia

William Brittelle’s mini-album is a shock to the system – a relentless flood of synths, strings and saxophone, with warped vocals complemented by an artificial choir, and reprieves of lush pads and soft melodic fragments.

Gramophone: The Blind Banister - Editor's Choice

Gramophone: The Blind Banister - Editor's Choice

Wonderfully controlled and poised performance by cellist Inbal Segev in Upstate Obscura, Metropolis Ensemble under conductor Andrew Cyr in full control throughout, and the irrepressible Andres on top of his game in The Blind Banister and the solo piano piece Colorful History, I cannot recommend this album highly enough.

Flame Keepers 124: Qiujiang Levi Lu

Flame Keepers 124: Qiujiang Levi Lu

 

Flame Keepers

Qiujiang Levi Lu

April 15th, 2024

Travel back in time to experience any Flame Keeper's work. The most recent artists are at the bottom of this page.

About the Artist

Qiujiang Levi Lu/卢秋江 (they/them) is a Beijing-born, NYC-based performance artist, improviser, composer, and educator. For their solo performance art practice, Lu designs Max/MSP-based electroacoustic feedback systems with cyborg-like body augmentations inspired by Objectophilia/animism, which include special microphones and speakers placed within bodily orifices and a custom-mapped flight joystick controller. Their resulting performances consist of choreographed, ritualistic improvisations that build on ancient Chinese drumming traditions and explore body dysmorphia, sexuality, spirituality, and mortality, linking together sound, movement, and violence in divine ceremony.

As a composer, Lu writes instructed improvisation pieces for acoustic and electronic performers and improvisers. Lu’s commissioned works often take a meta, unorthodox approach to music technology, exploring human-machine relationships, audio-visual interactivity, mind-body connection, and the phenomenology of musical performance. Previous commissions have included Popebama, Luke Helker, and Ensemble Decipher.

Lu’s works have been performed and featured at festivals, conferences, and venues such as High Zero Festival, MATA Festival, IRCAM forum, DiMenna Center, Jazz Showcase, SEAMUS conference, Elastic Arts, Spencer Museum of Art, NIME conference, NYCEMF, Oberlin MMG, Rhizome DC, and NowNet Arts conference. Lu currently works as a lecturer and recording engineer in the Department of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.

 
 
 

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Melodic Magazine: Caroline Rose brings a Symphony to Brooklyn

Melodic Magazine: Caroline Rose brings a Symphony to Brooklyn

The addition of the Metropolis Ensemble added an extra layer of depth and grandeur to Rose’s performance, elevating her already stellar songwriting to new heights.

I Care If You Listen: Vivian Fung on Music Videos

I Care If You Listen: Vivian Fung on Music Videos

Flame Keepers 123: Emiliano Lopez

Flame Keepers 123: Emiliano Lopez

 

Flame Keepers

Emiliano Lopez

April 8th, 2024

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About the Artist

Emiliano López (Ciudad de México, 1994) es un guitarrista y artista de noise mexicano radicado en Boston. Se graduó en la carrera de Improvisación Contemporánea en New England Conservatory. Su música combina sonidos electrónicos con el uso de objetos y esculturas sonoras- creando un puente entre la instalación, el performance y la música. Ha presentado su música en diversos espacios de Boston, como el Jordan Hall, The Lilypad, The Firehouse, SomArt Space y la serie de conciertos Find Out, entre otros. También, se ha presentado en espacios de la Ciudad de México como el Centro Multimedia del Centro Nacional de las Artes, el Centro Cultural Árbol que Nace Torcido y el Vernacular Institute.

Emiliano López (Mexico City, 1994) is a Mexican guitarist and noise artist from currently based in Boston. He graduated with a degree in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory. His music combines electronic sounds with the use of objects—sound sculptures—creating a fusion that bridges visual installation, performance art, and music. He has presented his music at various venues in the Boston area, including Jordan Hall, The Lilypad, The Firehouse, SomArt Space, and the concert series Find Out, among others. He has also performed at venues in Mexico City such as the Centro Multimedia del Centro Nacional de las Artes, Árbol que Nace Torcido, and Vernacular Institute.

 
 
 

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Caroline Rose In Photos

Caroline Rose In Photos

Here’s a few highlights from the project, including backstage and the performance at Brooklyn Steel on April 5.

Brooklyn Vegan: Caroline Rose w/ Metropolis Ensemble

Caroline Rose is on tour supporting last year’s The Art of Forgetting, and they just wrapped up a few of special shows where they were joined by players from Metropolis Ensemble for an orchestral set.

Brooklyn Magazine: Things to do this Weekend

Brooklyn Magazine: Things to do this Weekend

Caroline Rose is on tour in support of her GRAMMY-nominated, critically acclaimed album, “The Art of Forgetting” with Metropolis Ensemble.

Brooklyn Vegan: What's Going on Friday

Brooklyn Vegan: What's Going on Friday

Editors' Pick: Tonight in and around NYC: Caroline Rose, Metropolis Ensemble, La Force @ Brooklyn Steel.

Flame Keepers 122: Max Branigan

Flame Keepers 122: Max Branigan

 

Flame Keepers

Max Branigan

April 1st, 2024

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About the Artist

Max Branigan is a stop motion animator, photographer, and musician from Brooklyn. He currently is interested in digital puppetry, the tarot, and active imagination. A book of his images of performances will be released this summer. He is interested in collaboration and can be reached at maxbranigan@gmail.com or 9735085497

 
 
 

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