November 2

8:30 pm

OptoSonic Tea

Live sets by:

Ikue Mori (live visuals) with Jim Staley (music)
Gisela Gamper (live visuals) and David Gamper (music)

Invited artist:
Alan Licht

Suggested donation: $ 7

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Ikue Mori started playing drums and formed No Wave band DNA, working mainly in the rock world but having a much wider influence in the hybrid crossroads of new music. In the mid 80's Ikue started using drum machines in the unlikely context of improvised music. Through out in 90's She has subsequently collaborated with numerous improvisors throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music. In 1998 Roulette/ Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust commissioned "One hundred aspects of the Moon" and in 1999 won Distinctive Award for Prix Ars Electronica digital music category. In 2000 Ikue started using the laptop computer to expand on her already signature sound, thus broadening her scope of musical expression and recently incorporating live visual manipulation. 2003 commissioned by RELACHE Ensemble to write music for silent film by Helen LevittÊ "In the Street". Awarded grant from Foundation for Contemporary Arts for 2005-6. Current working groups include 'Mephista' with Sylvie Courvoisier and Susie Ibarra, projects with Kim Gordon, duo project with Zeena Parkins, various projects with John Zorn.

Jim Staley, trombonist/composer moved to New York and has resided in lower Manhattan since 1978. His work has been primarily working with improvisation, crossing genres freely between post-modern classical music and avant-garde jazz. He has worked for many years with other highly experienced improvisers, both dancers and musicians, including Sally Silvers, Pooh Kaye, Simone Forti, Ikue Mori, Davey Williams, Shelley Hirsch, Zeena Parkins, John Zorn and many others. Staley's recording projects include Blind Pursuits with Phoebe Legere and Borah Bergman; Mumbo Jumbo-different trio combinations with Wayne Horvitz, Elliott Sharp, Shelley Hirsch, Samm Bennett, Ikue Mori, Bill Frisell, Fred Frith and John Zorn; Jim Staley's Don Giovanni, with Mori, Davey Williams, Zeena Parkins and Tenko, plus several more. Staley has recorded with Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp's ensemble Carbon, and for John Zorn on several records including, Spillane, The Big Gundown, Cobra, The Little Lieutenant of the Living God (Weill/Zorn) and several others.Ê Staley also performs and records with the Tone Road Ramblers, a collaborative chamber-improv ensemble, together since 1981.

See Hear Now
Gisela Gamper - live video mixing & multi-stream video projections
David Gamper - multi-instrument acoustic music with live digital transformation
See Hear Now: Visible Music premiered in upstate New York in 1999 and over the following year performed around the eastern US, including the Knitting Factory and Roulette in New York City. In a series of loft installations, the Gampers have explored alternative ways of immersing both audience and performers. Many of these performances included guest artists and in 2001, joined by sound artist Stuart Dempster, See Hear Now brought this intimate format to a two week residency at the Jack Straw Media Gallery in Seattle. RouletteTV produced a performance which was first broadcast in 2003. The duo was featured in Brooklyn CollegeÕs Electroacoustic Music Festival in 2003, the 2004 SOUNDPlay festival in Toronto and in JuilliardÕs 2005 Beyond the Machine festival in New York City. They released their DVD See Hear Now: Visible Music in 2005. This yearÕs installations include a lecture and performance at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois in Champaign and a performance in Roulette's Festival of Mixology.
http://www.seehearnow.org

David Gamper moves freely among the worlds of music performance, improvisation, and electronic instrument design. These passions merge in the performer controlled sound processing environments he has created for acoustic improvising musicians. A member of Deep Listening Band (with Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster) since 1990, he developed a major redesign of the Expanded Instrument System for DLB and others. In addition to his other ensemble and solo work, Gamper has performed frequently as a duo with Oliveros. The recording of their concert at the IJsbreker in Amsterdam has been described as Òthe pinnacle of the Oliveros-Gamper collaborations, music that through its depth, reveals ever more profound expression.Ó GamperÕs solo piece Conch was in the Whitney Museum of American ArtÕs BitStreams exhibition and is on the CD of sound art from that show.

Gisela Gamper has been photographing and exhibiting for over 30 years. For See Hear Now she expanded her fascination with textures and collage into the realms of movement and created video imagery for live mixing in improvised performance. Her video captures the rhythms and colors that create our world. Gamper exhibited her photographs widely and in 1997 Fabrications, a catalogue of her photographs, was published by the Contemporary Artists Collection of Station Hill Arts of Barrytown NY, Ltd. Among her grants and numerous awards are two fellowship grants from the Vermont Council on the Arts and the Hasselblad Cover Award in 1991. Gamper's photographs are in the collection of the Albany Institute of History & Art in Albany, NY, and in many private collections.

Alan Licht: A New York based musician and writer, Alan Licht has released four albums of pieces for solo and multiple guitars, the latest being A New York Minute (XI). He currently co-directs Text of Light with Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, a music group in which they and others improvise with experimental films screening behind them, and is a member of Rob Mazurek's group Mandarin Movie. He's also recorded and performed as an improvisor with: Rashied Ali, Jim O'Rourke, Christian Marclay, Thurston Moore, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori, Derek Bailey, Charles Curtis, Loren Mazzacane Connors, Nihilist Spasm Band, Oren Ambarchi, Ken Vandermark, Peter Brotzmann, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld, Raz Mesinai, Tetuzi Akiyama, Aki Onda, Jandek, Michael Snow, Keiji Haino, DJ Olive, Fennesz, and DJ Spooky. A founding member of the indie rock bands Love Child & Run On, he's also performed with Tom Verlaine, Brokeback, Papa M, the Styrenes, Royal Trux & Plush. Sound installations include "Today I Am A Fountain Pen", Studio Five Beekman, NYC (1998), "Country Geese, City Geese" and "Twilight of the Idols" Diapason, NYC (2003)Ê and "The Downsizing of Don Dokken", part of 'Constrictions' exhibition at Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn (1996). A frequent contributor to the WIRE, Modern Painters, Time Out NY, Art Review, Premiere, and Film Comment, his first book, An Emotional Memoir of Martha Quinn, was published by Drag City Press in 2001.

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