Monday, July 12, 2021 - 8:30pm
Welcome to Episode 9 of the 20th Anniversary Video Premieres. For this penultimate episode of the series, we start with a solo performance by Chris Corsano (approx 30 minutes), followed by the Amirtha Kidambi/Lea Bertucci duo (approx 20 minutes).
Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIHOGmD7GsY
bios:
Chris Corsano (b. 1975, USA) is an upstate NY-based drummer who has been active at the intersections of collective improvisation, free jazz, avant-rock, and noise music since the late 1990’s. He began a long-standing, high-energy musical partnership with saxophonist Paul Flaherty in 1998. Their style, which they occasionally refer to with (semi-)tongue-in-cheek humor as “The Hated Music”, combines modern free-jazz’s ecstatic collectivist spirit and the urgency and intensity of hardcore punk.
A move from western Massachusetts to the UK in 2005 led Corsano to develop his solo music–a dynamic, spontaneously-composed amalgam of extended techniques for drum set and non-percussive instruments of his own making: e.g. bowed violin strings stretched across drum heads, modified reed instruments, and stockpiles of resonant metal. In February 2006, Corsano released his first solo recording, The Young Cricketer, and toured extensively throughout Europe, USA, Australia, and Japan. He spent 2007 and ’08 as the drummer on Björk’s Volta world tour, all the while weaving in shows and recordings on his days off with the likes of Evan Parker, Virginia Genta, C. Spencer Yeh, and Jandek.
Moving back to the U.S. in 2009, Corsano returned focus to his own projects, including a duo with Michael Flower, Vampire Belt (with Bill Nace), Rangda (with Richard Bishop and Ben Chasny) and his solo work, further expanded in its use of contact microphones and synthesizers. In 2017, he received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artist Award.
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The duo of Amirtha Kidambi on vocals and Lea Bertucci on tapes and electronics finds new territory in extending the sonic possibilities of the human voice through electronic manipulation and improvised tactics. Taking a more integrated approach than simply filtering voice through electronic processing, Bertucci manipulates Kidambi’s voice through tactile methods with tape machine, including manual speed control, by physically touching the reels as Kidambi’s live voice is fed through the machine. Kidambi reacts in turn with a vocal arsenal of timbral techniques, creating a literal visceral feedback loop of noise, processed, and polyphonic voices.
Influenced equally by jazz, Carnatic, and western classical vocal techniques, the duo takes a thoroughly freely improvised approach. Their pieces command form through looped repetitions, stark dynamic and textural contrasts, slowly unfolding melodic motifs among harmonic beds and a formidable mind-meld in reactivity between Kidambi and Bertucci. For the astute listener, the explorations may conjure a real-time version of postwar musique concrete or the groundbreaking experiments of live electronics pioneer Pauline Oliveros’ tape improvisations.
Enjoy the show!
