Soundwave ((5)) : Revelation Zen at the San Francisco Zen Center

Description

Co-presented by SF Zen Center featuring performances by En, Sean McCann (Los Angeles) and Marielle V. Jakobsons. Curated by Danny Paul Grody

Soundwave Humanities invites you to discover the power of Zen with collaborative Zen-inspired meditative electro acoustic performances and introductions to meditations and Zen practice in the beautiful Julia Morgan-designed settings of the San Francisco Zen Center. Sound artist and violinist Jakobsons begins with a haunting performance in the Buddha Hall using the contained energy of tranquility in music to create a performance that transforms into a strong meditational provocation. Musician McCann continues in the open-air courtyard gardens interlacing a richly textured ambience with blissful string and synthesizer arrangements, each piece balancing on a unique instrumental axis. West Coast dream-drone unit En ends the night in the Dining Room with acoustic koto used across the stereo spectrum and a looping guitar creating the haze of a beautiful, slowly shifting drone, creating an epic slow-burner that reaches heights both angelic and cacophonous.

Sponsored by San Francisco Zen Center and The Bold Italic
$12 students/seniors/
underemployed
$15 general
$25 true value/supporter
Buy Festival Passes
Infoline: 415.484.6278 or fest@projectsoundwave.com
Location: San Francisco Zen Center, 600 Page Street, San Francisco
Time: 6:00p-9:00p

ARTISTS:

En is the West Coast dream-drone unit made up of the duo of Maxwell August Croy and James Devane. Already Gone is the name of their second full-length album, and followed their well-received debut album The Absent Coast (released in 2010 on Root Strata, which Croy runs alongside Jefre Cantu-Ledesma). Already Gone finds Croy and Devane mining rich sonic climes and pulling pull back the curtain on some of their source material, a move that allows the diversity of their instrumentation to resonate. Croy’s acoustic koto pings across the stereo spectrum as a looping guitar figure from Devane apparates from the haze of a beautiful, slowly shifting drone. Ultimately, it is the harmonious marriage of the organic and the obscured that recurs throughout En’s music that proves to be their defining trait, and makes them stand out in the ever-growing field of contemporary drone/ambient music.

Sean McCann is a composer based in Los Angeles, California whose passion lies in creating beautiful and emotional sound structures. His technique is shaped by meticulous dedication to studio-based processing and mixing. Interlacing richly textured ambient drones with blissful string and synthesizer arrangements, each piece balances a unique instrumental axis. McCann’s orchestration has varied from banjo, violin, piano, alto-saxophone, electric guitar, to synthesizer. He makes the transition from field recording to his improvisation by fulfilling an amorphous shape to the loose fitting flow of his work. His interest in American minimalism and 16th century European choral music permeate his live performance routines, now exercising a unique interplay of vocal plunderphonics and academic tape manipulation. McCann established himself to a wider audience in 2011 with his most revered album The Capital, followed by the jazz-oriented LP Open Resolve, and lastly his ambient opus Sincere World. McCann is presently focusing on running Recital, his new modern classical and minimalist-inspired record label, while also working on his own purely classical compositions.

Marielle V. Jakobsons is a Sound Artist and violinist based in Oakland who releases recordings on Digitalis, Aphonia, Mexican Summer, and Root Strata, and performs across the Americas & Europe. Focusing on experiences that are at once “natural” and technologically-altered, she also creates interactive audio for games and installations. She is the creator of Two Violins and a Theatre: A Triptych of Resonances is an immersive performance environment utilizing water, light, custom electronics and interactive computer programming to deconstruct the violin as a sonic interface. She has been awarded NEXMAP Sounding Out California Composer’s Award, Elizabeth Mills Crawford Award in Composition, and the American Composers’s Forum Subito Grant, among other distinctions. Presently Jakobsons designs sounds and interactive music for video games and is also an educator of sound arts, from children’s workshops to Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University. She also represents Keith McMillan Instruments as a violinist, demonstrating and premiering performances with the K-Bow Bluetooth sensor bow and other new technologies.

Danny Paul Grody, Curator, is a founding member of San Francisco-based bands Tarentel and The Drift. A self-taught guitarist, the melodies at the core of Danny’s songwriting bring to mind his love of West African kora, Tacoma-style fingerpicking and all things minimal, repetitive & hypnotic. His debut solo album Fountain came out in January 2010 on Root Strata and was followed up by In Search of Light on the Students of Decay label in 2011. He is currently working on new material for his third solo album scheduled for release later this year.

More Info

Link

http://www.projectsoundwave.com

Call

415.484.6278 (Box Office)

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