Free Music: NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, April 2-4

There'll be some heady electronic music being made at the 1st New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and Conference going down at the CUNY Graduate Center in Midtown next Thursday, Friday and Saturday April 2-4. People from all over the world will get together to talk, walk, and listen to electroacoustic music.

"What IS that?" you ask? Well, it can be lots of things, but I guess you can say that it's music that electronically explores "the art of sound." Here's Wikipedia's best shot at a definition.

Point being, the shows happening during the days of April 2-4 are FREE. Recommended for a stop-in if you're in the area, 365 Fifth Avenue @ 34th St., cuz you can check out -- at no cost -- the odd, wonderful sounds coming from a laptop, a shoe wired to a radio, or someone's live remix of a clarinet solo. Here's the full schedule.

-Kevin
the High 5 ticket guy

Toumani Diabate

Hey y'all. This is Kevin from High 5.
I'm the dude who gets arts organizations to donate tickets so that we can get YOU to the arts for cheap. Actually, for FREE (cuz if you're a member of TRaC you can get two free tickets for any event High 5 offers).

And I love hearing from you guys about shows you want to see and events you want to attend in NYC. Email me (kkilroy@high5tix.org) and I'll try to get you tickets for cheap. That's how we do it!

One of the best things about living in NYC is that musicians from all over the world come here to rock our ears. Toumani Diabate from Mali is one of the great musicians that grace our fair city from time-to-time. He's the world's leading player of the kora -- a harp-like instrument from Diabate's native country. He's performing at Le Poisson Rouge on Saturday, April 18th. Ears will rock.

Check him OUT.


High 5 doesn't YET have tickets for this show, but I'm gonna try my hardest to convince them to donate...

Give me a holler (kkilroy@high5tix.org) if there are any other shows you want to see. It could be anything: theater, dance, art exhibits, or Malian kora music.

in TRaC, we value safety FIRST!

Don't know what to do if there's a nuclear attack??

Well, in TRaC, we're always ready. In this important video, art and government came together to create a public service masterpiece. (We will, of course, be drilling in all the TRaC classes.)

Have a great day, and beware the flash!

Beethoven's "Fur Elise" - on two guitars at once

MEAT LOVE and other Jan Švankmajer shorts

Some of you asked where you could find the films we watched at the TRaC Kick Off. Ask and ye shall receive! Here are the two short films made by Czech filmaker Jan Švankmajer....

The first two YouTube videos I've posted are Dimensions of a Dialogue, Parts 1, 2 and 3 (1982):

this one is poor quality, but it's all I could find...


this is two-shorts-in-one - the 2nd and 3rd part of Dimensions of a Dialogue:


and everyone's favorite, Meat Love (1988):


Now those are different, eh?

We talked about what these experimental shorts are saying about communication. What happens when it breaks down? What happens when two sides say the same thing? (toothpaste is grinded by a pencil sharpener on a tongue, of course!) Even, what are the different meanings of the word 'communication'? The first two pieces are called "dimensions of a dialouge" so we are invited to interpret the work through that lens.

TRaC is all about communication: discussion, writing reviews and criticism, preparing questions for an artist.... what do these films say about us???

OR we could just think about the fact that those first videos were made start to finish by Švankmajer, by himself - all the filming, sculpting, editing, everything - and they took years to do. This 20 minutes of stop-motion was, yes, years in the making. Even the music of the films (he didn't write the scores) and sound effects (which he did) have their own strange dimension. (Fun fact: Švankmajer is known as the father of claymation. He's a god to all the Pixar guys). And though it's complex what he does, he deliberately uses household objects, showing them to us in new ways. We are disgusted sometimes and then find ourselves happy, for instance, when we see that Meat can turn on a radio and dance. Oh, happy Meat!

Many people consider Švankmajer do be a surrealist, his ideas stemming from the work of people like Salvador Dali, who painted The Persistence of Memory in 1931.

In case you want to dig deeper, here's Švankmajer's website: www.jansvankmajer.com ; his stats on the Internet Movie Database ; and his page on the New York Times, with a bio and several links to articles and REVIEWS!

Any other thoughts on these films or ideas?
Should we have more TRaC Meets and explore some other artists all together???
Feel free to leave a comment.

~eric

Spring TRaC has begun!

Check out the other TRaC blogs as we move along into the ten weeks to see what's going on.....

And just for fun,
for those who take issue with classical music,
check this out: