PZ
gazzetta
(all the gnus)
January 2013 [pz gazzetta xiv] (view online)  


event highlights | news travels goings-on | event details | past gazzetti | pamelaz.com


event highlights:

January 22 - 24, 2013
Viva Voce Media installation
Los Angeles, CA USA

Thursday, January 24, 2013
PZ solo on Iridian Series
Los Angeles, CA USA

Friday, January 25, 2013
Z's work at SF Tape Music Festival
San Francisco, CA USA

Thursday & Friday, February 21 & 22, 2013
KRONOS QUARTET prermieres PZ work
San Francisco, CA USA

Saturday, March 2, 2013
Other Minds Festival Pamela Z solo & duo
San Francisco, CA USA

Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Vital Vox Festival
Pamela Z at Roulette
New York, NY USA

Friday, April 5, 2013
MIT Marathon

Cambridge, MA USA

Friday, April 12, 2013
Carbon Song Cycle
at BAM/PFA
Berkeley, CA USA

Monday, May 27, 2013
Spoleto Festival USA

Charlston, SC USA



Pamela Z / Kronos Quartet
Above: PZ in Katharina Rosenberger's "Viva Voce"
Below: Kronos Quartet


Kronos Commission, Carbon Song Cycle, Viva Voce, up to my ears in premieres...

Dear Friends and Audients,

Hey, it’s 2013! It’s time to cast aside all triskaidekaphobia and embrace the new year! I, for one, have always considered thirteen to be a lucky number. After all, I was born on Friday the 13th. And, I must say, thirteen is shaping up to be a busy one for me! I’m up to my ears in premieres, concerts, festivals, and visiting artist gigs. My dance card is filled with more Bay Area events than is typical, but is also peppered with just a few So-Cal and East Coast engagements to keep me on the move geographically.

Busy Spring
I’ve got my Kronos Quartet commission premiering at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center next month, and although the ink is still wet on that score, I need to start composing the music for Carbon Song Cycle, my collaboration with video artist Christina McPhee, which premieres at the Berkeley Art Museum in April. Meanwhile, before even the first month of the year is through, I had a bit of music in Mary Armentrout’s site-specific dance theater work, and I have a fixed media piece coming up in the San Francisco Tape Music Festival. In between those two events I’m hopping down to LA for the opening of Katharina Rosenberger’s VIVA VOCE – an interactive installation featuring footage of me, Shelley Hirsch, and Julianna Snapper, and I’m giving a solo concert on the Iridian Arts series while I’m down there.

And then, my Spring 2013 continues at that same kind of clip with one engagement after another–not the least of which is the Other Minds Festival (my first OM appearance since the 1990s) where I’ll be performing my arrangement of Meredith Monk’s Scared Song. And the list goes on from there, but I won’t bore you with more details, since you can easily scroll down to the "event details” section if you want to get the specifics.

Fruitful Fall
I had a wonderful Fall. I spent most of it doing an artist residency at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte NC, where I had my virtual nose to the digital grindstone for two and a half months composing a new work for Kronos Quartet. It’s scored for string quartet and “tape”, and it explores the rich variety of speaking accents that can be heard in the Bay Area and beyond. I can’t wait to hear the piece played by Kronos at Yerba Buena Center next month!

I did manage to take a few breaks from my residency to go play a gig at Salisbury University's Sonic Arts Series in Maryland, and to come back to San Francisco to celebrate my building’s 40th anniversary as an artist live-work community. During that brief Bay Area visit, I also managed to get to Berkeley to see Einstein on the Beach at Zellerbach Hall. I had heard recordings, and I had seen smaller productions of just the “Knee Plays” from it, but this was my first (and possibly last) chance to see the entire four-hour production. I was awed. I was also supposed to play at a festival in New York in the fall, but Hurricane Sandy made short work of that. The festival has been rescheduled for March, so I’ll be back in NYC then.

Charlotte Friends
I made some new friends–which I consider to be one of the most important perks of any artist residency. I had the pleasure of sharing the residency with conceptual artist Mel Chin, photographer JoAnn Sieburg-Baker, architect Manoj Kesavan, environmental artist Michael Haag, ceramic artist Tomoo Kitamura, sculptor Susannah Mira, print-maker Ibrahim Miranda, and actor/writer John Love. It seemed like it took us a good part of the residency period before we started interacting socially, but toward the end, a van-load of us drove to Asheville together to see a solo exhibition of Mel’s work at the Contemporary Museum there. And I also started having the artists over to my studio to laugh and drink wine together. Now I miss them all!

I was fortunate to be surrounded by the work of all of those artists. The hallways of the center served as exhibition space so we all showed work during our residency period. I actually purchased a sculpture from one artist, so I'm now the proud owner of a small, solar tree.

Although I did not find much in the way of a contemporary music scene in Charlotte, I did make friends with some interesting musicians. Two cellists – David Meyer (who plays with the Charlotte Symphony) and Tanja Bechtler – both came to my studio at various times to improvise with me and have a look at what I was composing.

Back in Boulder
In December, right after my Charlotte residency, I did a very short visiting artist residency at my Alma Mater, the University of Colorado at Boulder, College of Music. I did some talks and lecture/demos in classes, and I gave a concert at their beautiful, relatively new Atlas Blackbox Theatre. I shared the evening with BLOrk (The Boulder Laptop Orchestra). Heirs to the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, they inherited a bank of small electronic interfaces each with its own hemispheric six-channel speaker array. They opened the concert with several short works, I played solo on the second half, and then we did a couple of pieces together to finish the evening. It was delightful being back in Boulder, interacting with the music students and faculty, and revisiting my old stomping grounds. By night, when I wasn’t burning the midnight oil polishing off my Kronos piece, I was having fun with my host, violinist Lina Bahn, who invited me and organized the visit. I also got the chance to reconnect with some old friends from my ancient Boulder past– Tommy Read & Paul Glessner from Medicine Bow Quartet! Later in the month, I visited family in Colorado for the holiday.

Home
All of this traveling and working away from home was exciting and rewarding, but I must say that I was very happy to be back in San Francisco to ring in the New Year. And I’m looking forward to spending some solid time here in my home studio for the spring. I'm keeping my travel somewhat at a minimum because, among my many local composing and performing projects, I'm also teaching a sound art course as a visiting lecturer at San Francisco Art Institute.

I hope to see you at some of my upcoming events if you happen to be in San Francisco (or Los Angeles, New York, or Cambridge) over the next several months. Read on if you’re curious about the details...

Je vous embrasse!

Pamela

BLOrk Speaker
A BLOrk hemisphere speaker


PZ Working in Studio
PZ working on Kronos piece in McColl Studio

Solar Tree
Michael Haag's Iterative Design #3
(my little solar bonsai)

Mel Rapping
Mel Chin rapping about "Fundred Dollar Bills"

Einstein
Einstein on the Beach at Zellerbach

Artists in Ashville Coffee Bar
Manoj, Suzannah, JoAnn, and PZ in Asheville

Basketball Vine
Mel Chin's basketballvine "Growth of the New Gods" on Asheville Museum exterior walls

PZ with Firebird
PZ reflected in the Firebird Sculpture outside the Bechtler Museum in downtown Charlotte

Giant Charlotte Ornament
Giant ornament in downtown Charlotte

PZ at Atlas Theater
PZ performing at the Atlas in Boulder

Alferd Packer Grill
CU Boulder's Student Union still has a cafeteria named after a famous canibal.

My Medicine Beaus
PZ with Tommy & Paul at a Boulder Izakaya

PZ & John Drumheller
PZ with John Drumheller @ Lina Bahn's Boulder home.

Denver's Demonic Horse
Passing by the "demonic horse" on the approach to Denver International Airport


Photos by:Heiko Kaimbach, Zoran Orlic, Pamela Z, Thomas Steenland, Ben Premeaux

gazzetta | event highlights | news travels goings-on | event details | past gazzetti | pamelaz.com


 


upcoming event details:


gazzetta | event highlights | news travels goings-on | event details | past gazzetti | pamelaz.com


Pamela Z, Shelley Hirsch, and Julianna Snapper in Viva Voce
Viva Voce
Human Resources Los Angeles (HRLA)
410 Cottage Home Street, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Opening: January 22, 2013, 7-9:30pm

Gallery Hours: 12pm-6pm January 22 -24, 2013

Katharina Rosenberger and Heiko Kalmbach's Interactive Sound and Video Installation Viva Voce is dedicated to vocal performance art, exploring voice and embodiment, identity and oral tradition. In the gallery space three singers are to be encountered via a life-size video projection. From an iPad station, the visitors can "play" the vocalists by means of tapping on an interactive 3D score interface. The compositional work for Viva Voce follows an open form, with detailed notated musical and text-based passages preformed along freer parts, where the vocalists are encouraged to improvise with sound and text following a narrative that is closely related to their personal interests and cultural background. With such a setup Rosenberger aims to address and emphasize (musically as well as dramatically) each vocalist's personality, as a performer on stage and as an individual of our times and how the latter feeds back again into his or her performance practice.
The installation features the three vocal artists Juliana Snapper (LA), Shelley Hirsch (NYC), and Pamela Z (SF), video artist Heiko Kalmbach (Berlin) and interaction designer Micha Schmitz (Cologne)

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Pamela Z Performs at the IRIDIAN ARTS Series in LA

ART SHARE LA
801 E 4th Place, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Thursday January 24 , 2013, 8pm

Pamela Z will give a solo performance featuring voice, live processing, samples and interactive video as the first concert on the 2013 IRIDIAN ARTS Series at ART SHARE LA, with a guest appearance by bass clarinetist Marty Walker.

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SAN FRANCISCO TAPE MUSIC FESTIVAL

ODC Theater
3153 17th Street, San Francisco, CA, USA

Friday, Saturday, & Sunday, January 25-27, 2013, 8 pm

Pamela Z's De-Spangled will be presented on the Friday evening concert of the 2013 San Francisco Tape Music Festival.

America's only festival devoted to the performance of audio works projected in three-dimensional space features three distinct evenings of classic audio art and new fixed media compositions by 20 local and international composers. Hear members of the SF Tape Music Collective, along with guest composers, shape the sound live over a pristine surround system consisting of 16+ high-end loudspeakers while the audience is seated in complete darkness. It's a unique opportunity to experience music forming - literally - around you.

SF Tape Music Festival

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KRONOS QUARTET premieres new work by PAMELA Z

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA USA

Thursday and Friday, February 21 & 22, 2013, 8 pm

In a 2 evening engagement February 21-22, 2012, Kronos Quartet will premiere And the Movement of the Tongue, a new commissioned work for string quartet and tape, composed for them by Pamela Z as part of their 2012-2013 Season at Yerba Buena Center For the Arts at 8pm in San Francisco, CA. The evening will also feature works by Nathaniel Stookey and Dan Becker.


Kronos Quartet

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Pamela Z Peforms Meredith Monk at OTHER MINDS

OTHER MINDS 18
Jewish Community Center, 3200 California Street, San Francisco, CA, USA

February 28 - March 2, 2013, 8pm (pre concert talks at 7pm)

On the closing night of Other Minds (March 2, 2013), Pamela Z will perform her voice and electronics arrangement of Meredith Monk's Scared Song. This arrangement, which will serve as the closing piece of Other Minds 2013, was spawned by a recorded version that Z created for Meredith Monk’s 2012 tribute CD "Monk Mix: Remixes & Interpretations of Music by Merediith Monk". Ms. Z will also perform an improvisation for voice and electronics with Paula Matthusen on the same evening.

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Pamela Z solo performance in
VITAL VOX Festival NYC

Roulette
509 Atlantic Ave (On the corner of Atlantic & 3rd Aves)
Brooklyn, NY

March 26, 2013, 8 pm

Pamela Z will give a solo peformance for voice, electronics, and video as part of the Vital Vox Festival at Roulette Intermedium at 8pm in Brooklyn, NY.

The festival runs March 25th and 26th. Pamela’s performance will be on the 26th in a shared evening with Lisa Karrer & David Simons, and Sasha Bagdonowitsch.

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MIT New Music Marathon

MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology | Kresge Auditorium
MIT Kresge Auditorium, Cambridge, MA, USA

Friday, April 5, 2013, 7pm

Pamela Z will perform both solo and collaborative works in a contemporary music marathon along with Gamelan Galak Tika, Hauschka, Joe Paradiso, RAMBAX, and more.

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CARBON SONG CYCLE
BAM/PFA L@te Friday Series

Berkeley Art Museum 2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA, USA

Friday, April 12, 2013, 7:30pm

Composer/performer Pamela Z & visual artist Christina McPhee join forces on a new work called CARBON SONG CYCLE for multiple channels of projected video and chamber ensemble with voice & electronics..

Carbon Song Cycle video Still

Carbon Song Cycle is a work in five movements (biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere) by composer/performer Pamela Z and media artist Christina McPhee. The work, composed for new music chamber ensemble with voice, electronics, and video, will take place within a spatialized environment of multichannel sound and multiple channels of live, interactive video.

Carbon Song Cycle is inspired, in part, by ongoing changes and upheavals in the earth's ecosystem, and a fascination with the carbon cycle—the process through which carbon is exchanged between all terrestrial life forms and domains. Texts, melodic motifs, and images will be inspired by and derived from scientific data concerning the carbon cycle, stories related to environmental balance and imbalance, and images abstracted from footage shot at natural and technological sites—including petroleum fields, natural gas sites, and geothermal sites around back-country California.

Carbon Song Cycle is made possible from grants from the MAP Fund and New Music USA.

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Spoleto Festival USA

Spoleto Festival, Charleston, MA, USA

Monday, May 27, 2013

Pamela Z will perform a solo concert of works for voice and electronics as part of Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC.

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gazzetta | event highlights | news travels goings-on | event details | past gazzetti | pamelaz.com


Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist whose solo works combine a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, video, and gesture activated MIDI controllers. Ms. Z has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She's created installation works and composed scores for dance, film, and new music chamber ensembles. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Creative Capital Fund, the CalArts Alpert Award, the ASCAP Award, an Ars Electronica honorable mention and the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship. www.pamelaz.com


Pamela Z is represented and fiscally sponsored by Circuit Network. If you wish to make a tax-deductible contribution to Pamela Z or Pamela Z Productions, you can make a donation via PayPal:


or you can write a check to Circuit Network with "Pamela Z Productions" in the notation and send it to:
Circuit Network, 499 Alabama Street, Suite 203, San Francisco, CA 94110

For booking inquiries contact Elisabeth Beiard at Circuit: 415 863 2441 or info@circuitnetwork.com


gazzetta | event highlights | news travels goings-on | event details | past gazzetti | pamelaz.com



Pamela Z Productions | 540 Alabama Street, Studio 213 | San Francisco, CA | 94110 | tel: 415 861 EARS

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