WASH Project presents adventurous new and old experimental music

Null Point, a local initiative for new music and sound art, presents margins, a program of experimental sound series curated by Colin Tucker at the WASH Project, 593 Grant Street in Buffalo on Sunday February 11. Entitled “margins,” the program features works that center elements ordinarily peripheral to music making: audience contributions (Fitzgibbon), architectural surfaces (So), ambient sound (Tucker), the bodies of instruments (Ono), and unstable, physically strenuous sounds (Hayden).

The event begins at 5pm with a participatory jam session where audience members, with any, or even no musical background, are welcome to make sounds on a harp connected to interactive electronics created by Arrow Fitzgibbon.

The concert by the professional musicians of the group begins at 6pm, with Violetear, a 2017 work for solo oboe by Ethan Hayden, performed by UB adjunct faculty member Megan Kyle, who effectively premiered this work at a solo recital at Slee Hall last fall. Megan has gained a reputation as one of the most inventive and innovative oboe and English horn players in Western New York, offering unique performances with musicians such as the multi-talented vocalist, Esin Gündüz, in the unique sonic atmosphere of the concrete caverns of Silo City, as one-half of the duo Senso di Voce. She is also an active member of the cutting-edge contemporary music collective, Wooden Cities. Violetear will be followed by a performance of Yoko Ono’s often overlooked 1962 work, Pieces for Orchestra, which treats conventional musical instruments as tactile sculptural objects, wrapping, unwrapping, rubbing, and deconstructing them, and more. Long overshadowed by her relationship with the John Lennon and the Beatles, Ono’s own experimental music has recently, and belatedly, been receiving recognition, for instance in a 2015 MOMA retrospective.

A work by Mark So, Part of the Moving Wall, from his 2010 John Ashbery series, for bodies and architectural surfaces, will be followed by the local premiere of a new composition by Null Point series curator Colin Tucker, for solo cellist with live ambient sounds. Lastly, the professional musicians will offer the world premiere of Wind Bleach and Angeldust, by Arrow Fitzgibbon, for human performers with any or no musical training, DIY harp, and live electronics. The formal portion of the program will be followed by another participatory jam session, at approximately 7pm, where audience members will be once again encouraged to make sounds on a harp connected to interactive electronics created by Arrow Fitzgibbon.

Participants include: Ethan Hayden: trombone, architecture, electronics, composition; Megan Kyle: oboe, architecture; Colin Tucker: cello, architecture, curation, composition; Arrow Fitzgibbon: electronics, composition. Attendees will be given to the option to participate (or not participate) in participatory activities during the performance. The venue has wheelchair accessible entrance, and is scent free.

A donation of $5 – $10 is suggested. Information: https://nullpointseries.wordpress.com/events/11-2/