Elliott Sharp • Lief Hall • Joe Lasqo at Toast Collective, Thu 19 Oct 2017
I’m keenly looking forward to join pioneering prepared guitar master Elliott Sharp & charismatic vocal+electronics diva Lief Hall in a 3-set show that will bring a kaleidoscope of avant sound to Vancouver.
Elliott Sharp ◉ Joe Lasqo ◉ Lief Hall @ The Toast Collective, 19 Oct 2017
The Toast Collective
The show will be Vancouver’s focal point for experimental art & music, The Toast (648 Kingsway, Vancouver, BC – map), 8:00pm, Thu 19 Oct (admission by donation).
Constantine Katsiris (Κωνσταντίνος Κατσιρης), Live performance for Miko Kuro’s Midnight Tea @ 45 West Studios, Vancouver, BC, CA (Photo by Dafang Jiang)
The venue, operated by Vancouver’s multi-faceted Toast Collective, will host us at Quiet City #37, in the indispensable Quiet City series of deep-listening concerts in Vancouver, focused on live performances of experimental, electronic and improvised music, organized by impresario and avant musical artist Constantine Katsiris (Κωνσταντίνος Κατσιρης), and presented under the auspices of Soundscape & Panospria (Πανοσπρία).
Elliott Sharp
◉ Elliott Sharp: prepared & augmented guitar
Elliott Sharp and friends
A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City for over 30 years, Elliott Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from orchestral music to blues, jazz, noise, no wave rock, and techno music. He leads the projects Carbon and Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction.
Elliott Sharp
His collaborators have included Radio-Sinfonie Frankfurt; pop singer Debbie Harry; Ensemble Modern; Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (نصرت فتح علي خان); Kronos String Quartet; Ensemble Resonanz; cello innovator Frances Marie Uitti; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; pipa virtuoso Min-Xiao Feng (闵小芬); jazz greats Jack DeJohnette, Oliver Lake, and Sonny Sharrock; multimedia artists Christian Marclay and Pierre Huyghe; and Bachir Attar (بشير العطار), leader of the Master Musicians Of Jajouka (رائد موسيقي جــاجـوكــا).
Joe Lasqo performing with Donald Robinson, 25 Aug 2013, SIMM Series, San Francisco (photo by Peter B. Kaars, www.peterbkaars.com)
◉ Joe Lasqo: laptop | harmonium | objects
Pianist / laptopist Joe Lasqo studied classical music in India; computer/electronic music at MIT, Columbia, Berkeley/CNMAT; has been a long-time performing modern & avant jazz musician; & has lived, played and listened in several Asian and European countries, the San Francisco Bay Area, and now, in the Vancouver area. He’s keen on the application of artificial intelligence techniques to improvisation and the meeting of traditional Asian musics with the 21st century, most recently in an AI + humans ensemble multimedia piece at SF’s Grace Cathedral for the Soundwave ((7)) Biennale.
Joe Lasqo and Morgana perform w Jim Ryan’s Green Alembic in the sfSoundSalonSeries at Center for New Music, San Francisco, 15 Apr 2014 (Photo by Carly Hoopes)
The light of Lakṣmī shines on Dīwālī (दीवाली)
Besides playing the traditional musics of Asia and elsewhere with some very non-traditional instrumentation, Joe also uses Asian tools to build music with the compositional advances and new concepts of jazz and 20th-century electroacoustic music — Stockhausen-type tone or timbre rows developed in Indian composition/improvisation structures, atonal and/or non-octave rāgas, stochastic tāla structures, and shakuhachi and gagaku pieces transmigrated into 21st-century bodies.
Bandī Chhōṛ Divas (ਬੰਦੀ ਛੋੜ ਦਿਵਸ) – Guru Hargobind Ji is released from Gwalior Fort by Jahangir’s order
As this show is on the auspicious night celebrated by Hindus as Dīwālī (दीवाली) and Sikhs as Bandī Chhōṛ Divas (ਬੰਦੀ ਛੋੜ ਦਿਵਸ), Joe will certainly draw on Indomodernist ideas such as these in the performance.
Joe had a weekly residency for 3½ years+ at legendary SF venue Viracocha, with additional residencies at San Francisco’s PianoFight. He’s appeared recently with Bruce Ackley and Steve Adams of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Aaron Bennett’s Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra, the London Improvisers Orchestra, Phillip Greenlief’s Orchesperry, his own Renga-kai (連歌会), Mukaiji-kai (霧海箎会), and Fushigi Kenkyūkai (不思議研究会) ensembles, synthesist Thomas Dimuzio, clarinetist/vocalist Beth Custer, pianist Thollem McDonas, percussionist Suki O’Kane, technodivas / electronic musicians Pamela Z & Viv Corringham (NYC/London), saxophonists Adrian Northover & Sue Lynch (London), and many others.
Joe Lasqo performing Vāstu Vidyā (वास्तु विद्या) 2.0 with Jorge Bachmann: electronics, Nan Busse: dancer/builder, David Hatt: cathedral organ, Maxxareddu: AI architect/musician, Bill Thibault: algorithmic light, 29 Jul 2016 at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
His recent album, Turquoise Sessions, is available on Edgetone Records; with new releases planned in 2016. au quotidien, a new album with German-Swedish saxist/flautist Biggi Vinkeloe, master drummer Donald Robinson, and cello madman Teddy Rankin-Parker is in production for release very soon in autumn 2017.
Lief Hall
◉ Lief Hall (FB link): voice | electronics | multimedia
Lief Hall in concert
Lief Hall (FB) is a multi-media artist and musician from Vancouver, Canada. Her solo music has developed out of a practice in audio- visual performance art and experimental vocal composition, which is clearly heard in her first solo release, Voices (2014). Made up of a series of compositions which transform the voice through looping and layering, the album evokes dreamlike sonic landscapes which explore harmony, dissonance, texture, tone and rhythm.
Lief Hall (photo by Steve Louie)
Lief has toured with Grimes in 2012 as one half of pop-noir duo MYTHS, a project for which she also wrote an electronic opera. Her latest solo work takes shape as a series of dark electronic pop songs that merge the experimental dance music sensibility of MYTHS with ethereal layered vocals, exploring themes of love, identity, and fear in a post-human world.
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From tomorrow’s guitars to the heights of expressive voice & the depths of electronic space… Why wait? Come vibrate with us at The Toast on Thu 19 Oct!
どうぞ。。。
Joe