VIX Sound+Light+Motion

Music and Spoken Word – Improvised, Intense and Infused with fun!

A variety of spoken word artistry provided by:
Max Kala
France Perras
Alice Hamilton
Eric Wyness
T Crane
Music provided by Paul Plimley, piano+guitar; Tommy Babin, upright bass; Phil Emerson, guitar and Victoria Gibson, notebook+vocals.

This event is part of a new summer festival presented by Visions Ouest Productions:
Un nouveau Rendez-vous d’été / A new Summer Rendez-vous
L’ÉTHÉÂTRE 2010

Jeudi 12 Août / Thurs. August 12, 2010

à/at
Auditorium Jules-Verne, Vancouver
5445 Baillie Street, Vancouver (at 37th Avenue, between Oak & Cambie,
close to Van Dusen Botanical Gardens). Skytrain Station 41st. Free parking.

20h00

Tickets : $16 presale online until 6 pm/ Prévente jusqu’à 18h00 ce soir
www.rendez-vousvancouver.com
or $18 at the door

There are two more nights of the festival featuring:
Friday August 13, 8 pm:
Screening of (English subt.) – L’ENFANT PRODIGE / THE CHILD PRODIGY Luc Dionne
Admission: $10 Tickets sold online
Bande-annonce / trailer <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3a3UkDD5gs>

Saturday August 14 – THE CLOSING NIGHT
Screening of PICHÉ, ENTRE CIEL ET TERRE / PICHÉ: THE LANDING OF A MAN
(English subt.) – Sylvain Archambeault
Admission: $10 Tickets sold online
Bande-annonce/ <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAPUeWCaS38&feature=related>
trailer

Followed at 10 pm by L’ÉTHÉÂTROPICAL with DJ Marc Fournier
Une célébration de l’été et un au-revoir à tous les artistes et bénévoles
qui ont participé à L’ÉTHÉÂTRE.

I will miss the extremely fun after party because I will be in New York city.

So you have to come to my show if you want to see me before I go.

Share on Facebook

The piano trio is where my friend Paul Plimley really lives. Yes, I can interest him in electronics; and he does play guitar, vibes and percussion — but he really lives his most joyous moments with bass and drums.

The trio with Barry Guy, Paul Plimley and Lucas Niggli was one of my personal highlights from the 2010 Vancouver International Jazz Festival. They reached the highest levels of improvisation in ensemble performance where they meshed into a texture of beauty and complexity that shone with emotion.

Lucas Niggli is a Swiss drummer who plays with style and delicate strength. He stretches the boundaries of percussion while playing in the pocket for the band. This balancing act displays the greatness of a drummer; too much steady time keeping and the innovative spark fades, too much of stretching one’s own personal boundaries and the connection with the ensemble is lost.

The photos show the level of communication and emotion present in the Ironworks as each of these expert musicians wholeheartedly joined their considerable individual talents into a cohesive whole.

Barry Guy (below) is a bass player living in Switzerland, who plays with Lucas often. This evening of music allowed him to display many extended techniques and timbres. He played with intelligence, skill and unrepentant emotion. His composition, Fixed, Fragmented, Fluid; had been played as one of the festival opening works in a larger ensemble that included this trio. That was structured improv, but this was free and he was able to fly with his fingers and bow with authority.

There was a Canadian pianist who completed the trio named Paul Plimley. I must admit to being biased when I write about Paul, but I have seen him play in Vancouver many times, and grace the stage of the Ironworks with other trios. This was one of the best performances I have ever witnessed from the maestro. The combination of Barry Guy and Lucas Niggli challenged, supported, encouraged and battled with Paul in the most delightful way possible. There was always a spirit of fun and several times the joy crackled in the air like electricity.

I was a photographer that evening, soundless and motionless focusing on the light and motion as I was transported by the music.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

There are other photos of a larger ensemble concert featuring these three musicians taken by Chris Cameron posted on the Coastal Jazz website here.

Share on Facebook

My last shift as Crew Chief for the Ironworks is this Saturday, July 3 — come down and see two great shows: The Brad Turner Quartet at 8pm and The Michael Zilber  Group at 11pm.

This time has been very busy for me and I have not been keeping up with my news posts. After the festival I will post photos, but as always, Chris Cameron documents the festival with precision and grace. His selected photos can be found on the Coastal Jazz website and the most current ones are here. This is the 25th anniversary of the festival and of Chris as the official photographer — his work has preserved “the decisive moment” (Henri Cartier-Bresson) of many festival performances. Cameron’s body of work is an enduring legacy that captures the emotions that resonate long after the vibrations in the air have stilled.

The highlights of the festival for me so far are: Fixed Fragmented Fluid, featuring a large ensemble under the direction of Barry Guy; Paul Plimley with Barry Guy and Lucas Niggli; The Mario Pavone Trio with Tony Malaby and Gerald Cleaver and the Unity Globe Orchestra.

I have heard and been inspired by many of these shows. I loved the energy of Hiromi and Stanley Clarke; John Scofield spoke to my blues heritage with his Piety Band; Mike Stern mellowed out and got ambient;  outstanding moments of great playing at each one of my Ironworks shifts will be discussed in future posts.

Today and Sunday the music is open to the public with free concerts at the Roundhouse Community Centre Complex. I don’t want to miss any more of the music. Later!

Share on Facebook

Vocals have always been a large part of my performance practice and I have been working on developing even more techniques in vocal improvisation. Every Saturday at 10am, I am now practicing with the Voxy Choir, directed by Kate Hammett-Vaughn and Carol Sawyer. This ensemble offers workshops every week to stretch our performance preconceptions by introducing us to teachers outside of the mainstream of music.

Kate and I have known each other since I used to write reviews and the Women In Music column for Nite Moves magazine in the late 1980′s. More recently, I recorded, mastered and co-produced her CD, So Lucky To Be Me. Kate is a great vocal teacher and very well connected in the Vancouver and Canadian jazz community. This enables her to bring in a variety of talent to lead workshops with Voxy Choir such as her long time musical collaborator, Ron Samworth.

I only met Carol Sawyer recently, but she impresses me with her diversity in artistic practice that encompasses video, photography and other fine arts as well as her imaginative performance art.

Workshop leaders outside of music have included Jay Hirabayashi, best known for his work with Kokoro Dance and  a young man from the theatre, who I was introduced to as Paul. This Saturday, May 8th;  the workshop was at The Western Front with NY performance artist/composer Shelley Hirsch.

Shelley Hirsch was in Vancouver to perform on the Friday evening as part of the Voice Over Mind Festival. Some members of the Voxy Choir, including me, had also participated in part of the festival at the Chan Centre on Wednesday evening under the direction of DB Boyco and Christine Duncan. Shelley will be continuing to perform locally in Seattle, WA and Victoria, BC.

The mixed choir was drawn from Voxy and DB’s students, including members of the Roundhouse Senior’s choir. We sang an adaptation of Songbird, written by Vancouver performer/composer Takeo Yamashiro for the Songbird Oratorio, a homage to the plight of birds surviving the encroachment of urban development. This composition was followed by a conducted improvisation led by both choir directors. I sang in the low section, as most of the choir could only sing in the upper range and I have worked hard to expand my range in the low part of my voice.

(continue reading…)

Share on Facebook

Photo Credit: Jimmy Katz

The evening of May 1st I experienced the Orchestrion Project, conceived and directed by Pat Metheny at The Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver. I obeyed the request not to take photos or make recordings, so I will offer the readily available ubiquitous You Tube examples and links to official sites where some images are available. Pat Metheny has provided some photos by Jimmy Katz on his site (left). The first part of this post is a comment on the memorable guitar collection and the second part on the automated Orchestrion. (continue reading…)

Share on Facebook

Now I have chosen to go with Photoshelter to host some of  my galleries, I will be uploading more events that I have photographed. Now I have completed the Canadian League of Composers event that occurred at the Western Front back in January. See my progress on my Photoshelter  homepage here.

Soon I will have other galleries hosted. I realized after I started this account that I could easily host this level of  photo storage and slideshow view on my own site. So here is a slide show of the Canadian Composers I photographed in January. If you are pictured and you would like a copy, please contact me. You are welcome to copy the image off the site but please credit me if you use it professionally. Most of these photos are untouched and would benefit from an application of graphic design skills. I am willing to trade or accept an honourarium for the work.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

12►

I attended several events during the Vancouver 2010 Cultrual Olympiad and my friend Paul played with Phil Emerson and Tommy Babin in the trio, “String Stories”. The light was very tricky and I am still getting used to my new 50mm 1.8 lens. My Nikon D50 did the best it could in my hands and this is the result. I learned a lot from taking these photos, but they still preserve some great moments.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

One of the other really cool shows was Umalali, a group I had connected with at the 2009 Folk Music Festival. I have yet to obtain permission to post images from this concert, but here are the pictorial  examples of Olympic Security – Belize style.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Have to get back to music now.

Share on Facebook

There are no words that can express the feeling of the concert that will be happening at The Roundhouse Community Center on Sunday, January 31, 2010 starting at noon — you will have to be there to hear the music. Money is no object, as it is a free 8 hour long concert that brings together Anthony Braxton’s 12+1 tet and an ensemble of approximately 50 of Vancouver’ improvising musicians.

With Anthony Braxton reeds/composition, Taylor Ho Bynum cornet/trumpet/flugelhorn/bass trumpet, Nicole Mitchell flutes, Andrew Raffo Dewar, James Fei reeds, Steve Lehman saxophones, Sara Schoenbeck bassoon, Jessica Pavone violin/alto viola, Mary Halvorson electric guitar, Reut Regev trombone, Jay Rozen tuba, Carl Testa double bass/bass clarinet, Aaron Siegel drums/percussion/vibes.

The concert is presented as part of the PuSH Festival in association with The Coastal Jazz and Blues Society. The Coastal website has a lot of information about the Genome Project world performance premiere on their site. The image that appears here is linked from the Coastal site as I have taken no photos yet. According to the press release, this piece was conceived as a recording project and this is the first live performance. A CD of the recorded Genome Project is already available.

I am excited and honoured to have been accepted into this ensemble and I will be playing with computer and vocals. There are already several guitar players, including my friend Paul Plimley, so I think this instrumentation will be more useful in creating unique textures.This is the largest instrumental ensemble I have ever been in, although I have sung with larger choirs, this will be a once in a lifetime experience. Please come down sometime during the 8 hours of music to enjoy the space and be part of the energy.

Share on Facebook

Charlie Haden is Paul’s friend, and I had the opportunity to meet him and listen to him play in Paul’s studio about three years ago. His wife, Ruth, is a wonderful singer and we chatted at the session. I was looking forward to seeing them again.

As Paul is my duo partner in You Are Here and I am his recording studio engineer of choice, we went to the film “Charlie Haden: Rambling Boy” together on Thu, Oct 15th 6:30pm.

Official image linked to the Vancouver Interntional Film Festival Site.

(continue reading…)

Share on Facebook

It is the time of year when all of Vancouver becomes culturally categorized by which films they have seen or are about to see at the Vancouver International Film Festival. For a list of where the cool kids are going, see my daughter’s blog, Dreampepper.

The big news for me was that the film about Trimpin was going to be screened and there was a talk with the artist and the film creator, Peter Esmonde on Friday at 5:00pm. The name of the film is “Trimpin, The Sound of Invention“, a very apt titleconsidering the wonderful sonic projects Trimpin has created over the years. I went to see my friend Trimpin and the director/producer of the film, Peter Esmonde,  at Pacific Cinematique.

The talk was really informative as I had no idea the Trimpin has collaborated so closely with Conlon Nancarrow, the master of player piano composition. When the film excerpt showed how Trimpin had saved Conlon’s work so it could be enjoyed by future generations I was amazed. I found this photo of Trimpin (foreground left)  and Conlon (right) and I linked to the Minnesota Public Radio site to show it to you.

Re-posted from Minnesota Public Radio Site

(continue reading…)

Share on Facebook

UniverCity Net – digital art by Victoria Gibson

As an Integrated Media Artist, I have many project ideas that I am constantly working on. My most recent project proposals have been seeking support to develop a new instrument for me to play in performance. My current goal is to develop a performance instrument that works using gesture control and sensors to create an alternative reality environment.

Although my core training is in music, I have studied dance and motion and have spent years of my life in on-stage performance as a musician. In my recent presentations, I have played computer based instruments and I realize that a lot of the impact of musical presentation is about the gesture of producing the sound.

If I am to continue to use the computer as a performance instrument, I need to develop a controller that responds to dance-like movements. The vision of being able to focus physical energy through dance and control audio and visual elements was crystallized into my need for an Immersive Environment Instrument (IEI). (continue reading…)

Share on Facebook