The above application is for electric guitarists, electric bassists, percussionists and support crew to be a part of Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars‘ appearances at Metro Detroit’s 27th Annual Concert of Colors on July 12 and July 13.
On July 12th Tilted Axes performance highlight will be a musical procession around the cultural campus of The Michigan Science Center, The Charles H Wright Museum of African American History, The Detroit Institute of the Arts, and the Detroit Historical Society. The procession will take place approximately between 5:00-8:00pm
On July 13th Tilted Axes performance highlight will be two musical performances of “MOONWALK,” new music created for the 50th anniversary of the first crewed lunar landing along with other Tilted Axes repertoire. The performances will take place at 1:00pm and 3:00pm and encompass various points inside the museum with a visit to the planetarium as its centerpiece.
Participants are not required to be a part of the TILTED AXES: SPACE CAMPJune 8-9 FREE workshops, but if you are new to the ensemble or wish to re-enforce your knowledge of the core repertoire and tilted techniques, it is not a bad to be a part of it if you are able. To apply, please go to this Google Form here: https://forms.gle/WaaFwJZthGFyqTFK7
Meanwhile, in New York City: Tilted Axes NYC has two peformances coming up in June:
Tilted Axes: Make Music Harlem (June 21) – This event is part of a block party on W 119 Street that’s being produced by Milica Paranosic’s organization Paracademia LLC. The event page is HERE. At 5:00pm we’ll be performing a procession to The Apollo Theater and back and will take the stage for a short set at 6:30pm.
Tilted Axes: Rubulad (June 29) – Rubulad is a community of artists, performers and entertainers based in Brooklyn, NY located at 389 Melrose Street. We begin ca. 9:00pm and will perform (perhaps) a foray into the nearby neighborhood, a procession through their garden, and a performance on and around their stage. Many other acts will be a part. It will be Pride Weekend all around, so expect a joyful scene.
For more details, maps, and information on how you can be a part of any these events, please go to our web page: http://tiltedaxes.com/tiltedaxes.html
All of our performances are given free to the public. These events would not be possible without our numerous co-producers and project donors. Won’t you consider making a tax deductible gift through our sponsor Fractured Atlas? Go to:
Tilted Axes thanks the organizations, collaborators, and sponsors that hold everything together: Vox Amps, KORG USA, Midtown Detroit, Alchemical Studios NYC, Brooklyn Battery Works, DIME (Detroit Institute of Music Education), The Concert of Colors, The Michigan Science Center, Paracademia Inc. and Peppergreen Media.
Thank you all, Patrick Grant & Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars
Left to right, top to bottom: Gene Ardor, Angela Babin, Aileen Bunch, Jon Clancy, Dan Cooper, David Demnitz, David Tamura, Patrick Grant, John Ferrari, John Halo, John Lovaas, Sarah Metivier Schadt, Jeremy Nesse, Chad Ossman, Kevin Pfieffer, Sean Satin, Harry Scott, Jocelyn Gonzales
The podcast goes unplugged this week! Our host, Patrick Grant is in the front parlor with James Moore of the Dither Guitar Quartet. We’ll find out how James made it from the San Francisco Bay Area to the new music scene here in New York. He’ll tell us about the strange playing techniques he uses on his recent album of solo guitar music by John Zorn, and we’ll hear an exclusive rendition of a Chet Atkins ballad.
Dither is an electric guitar quartet that includes James, Taylor Levine, Joshua Lopes, and Gyan Riley. They specialize in an experimental mix of “composed music, improvisation, and electronic manipulation.” They’ve performed across the United States and overseas since forming in 2007, and produce a yearly festival of music and art called Extravaganza!.
As a multi-instrumentalist and composer, James juggles a number of musical projects aside from Dither, such as The Hands Free, an acoustic quartet, and a rock band called Forever House. He recently put out another album of violin and steel-string resonator guitar called Gertrudes, with Andie Springer. The pair formed their duo when they were on tour with playwright Richard Maxwell’s “Neutral Hero”.
The CD for James’ version of the guitar etudes by John Zorn called “Book of Heads” includes a film featuring the crazy techniques involved in the making of the album. Here’s a sample of what you’ll see on the DVD:
On this second episode of Strings and Things, the eclectic guitarist and singer/songwriter Ann Klein re-strings her Telecaster, while our host Patrick Grant works on his surf green Jaguar.
As the old guitar strings get replaced, Ann runs down the pros and cons of performing for live theatre, and describes a couple of hairy moments onstage. We’ll hear about her dog’s hidden talents, and then plug in the Vox amps for a live rendition of her song “Chocolate Pie”.
photo by Sandrine Lee
Ann plays guitar, mandolin, dobro and lap steel. As a composer/songwriter, she’s toured in Europe and the US and composed music for documentary films, non-profit organizations, and television shows. As a guitarist, she’s worked with artists such as Ani DiFranco, Kate Pierson (of the B-52s), Joan Osborne, PM Dawn, Jon King (of the Gang of Four), the American Composers Orchestra, and many others. Ann was the lead guitarist for an all female band sent to Saudi Arabia as cultural diplomats by the U.S. State Department in 2013. She has performed on Broadway in Grease, 9 to 5, Everyday Rapture, Baby It’s You, and Kinky Boots.
Ann’s latest release is Tumbleweed Symphony. To find out more about her and hear tracks from all her albums, visit her webpage at annkleinmusic.com.
New York’s Village Halloween Parade is an annual holiday parade and street pageant presented on the night of every Halloween in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Stretching more than a mile, this cultural event draws two million in-person spectators, more than sixty thousand costumed participants, dancers, artists and circus performers, dozens of floats bearing live bands and other musical and performing acts, and a world-wide television audience of one hundred million. The Village Halloween Parade, initiated in 1974 by Greenwich Village puppeteer and mask maker Ralph Lee, is the world’s largest Halloween parade and the only major nighttime parade in the United States.
Among the parade’s signature features are its pageant sized puppets — giant rod puppets “articulated” by teams of puppeteers — and its open participation to anyone in a costume who wishes to march. It has been called “New York’s Carnival.” Although the parade is currently not as informal and wild as it was in its earliest years, it is in effect still an alternative festival.
The parade has been featured in many national magazines and travel guides, and has been a subject of study by leading cultural anthropologists. According to The New York Times, “the Halloween Parade is the best entertainment the people of this City ever give the people of this City.” “Absolutely anything goes,” says USA Today. “Be prepared to drop your jaw.”
TILTED AXES: SÃO PAULO – Now it’s official and can be announced:The 3rd Música Estranha – International Exploratory Music Festival, to be held in São Paulo, Brazil, from 25th to 29th of November 2015, has invited Tilted Axes to create a series of events for their city. Exactly how it will manifest itself is still in development (there’s much work to do) but, it’s very exciting to think of how things will sound with Brazilian musicians added to the post-progressive mix. Very.
Various locations in Midtown, Detroit
Saturday & Sunday Afternoon
The Concert of Colors is metro Detroit’s free annual diversity music festival. It is produced by the Arab American National Museum with partners Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Institute of Arts, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, ACCESS, Midtown Detroit Inc. and University of Michigan – Detroit Center. The goal of this five-day festival is uniting metro Detroit’s diverse communities and ethnic groups by presenting musical acts from around the world. Over its 23-year history, the festival has become a artistic highlight of metro Detroit’s summer festival season, and one of the few free-admission music festivals remaining locally.
World music, including the indigenous music of the Motor City, is the major focus of the Concert of Colors, but not the only focus. The festival also offers ethnic food and merchandise vendors and an annual Forum on Community, Culture and Race, which examines the role of arts and culture in overcoming racial and ethnic barriers.
The Concert of Colors was established by Ismael Ahmed – then head of the Dearborn, Michigan-based human services organization ACCESS – and New Detroit in 1993 as a one-day event at Chene Park on Detroit’s riverfront. The inaugural event drew a modest crowd to Chene Park, but by 1999, some 10,000 music lovers were coming out each year. The festival expanded to three days in 2001, when it was part of the official festivities for Detroit’s 300th birthday, drawing an audience of 100,000. In recent years, annual attendance at the Concert of Colors has been about 80,000.
TILTED AXES DETROIT members Eric Iverson, Patrick Grant, Jude Closson, & Dean Western reform the original WALK THRU WALLS new wave band as part of the DON WAS DETROIT ALL-STAR REVUE 2015 CONCERT on July 12th.
This year’s revue honors 80s Detroit radio personality THE ELECTRIFYING MOJOwhose on-air journey of musical and social development shaped a generation of music-lovers in Detroit and throughout southeastern Michigan and Canada and was of importance to the development of Detroit techno.
Presented by
The Concert of Colors
Max M. Fisher Music Center 3711 Woodward Ave.
Detroit, MI
8 PM
WALK THRU WALLS was a new wave band on the Detroit scene from 1981-1984. The nucleus of the group was songwriters Patrick Grant (synthesizers & vocals) and Eric Iverson (guitar & vocals). Grant is a composer and performer living in NYC since 1985 and is the creator of Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars. His work history includes John Cage, the Philip Glass studio, Billy Joel & Quincy Jones, avant-garde theatre visionaries Robert Wilson, The Living Theatre, and he is currently an active member in The Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists lead by Robert Fripp. Iverson is an artist, musician, and programmer from Detroit. His other musical collaborations over the years include creating techno music with Ex Machina, making effects pedals with Red Panda, and he is also a founding member and regular performer with the Detroit branch of Tilted Axes. Dean Western (electric bass) has been playing in Detroit bands for over thirty years. He has had the pleasure of working with many creative and dedicated people during this time and is pleased to be a part of this event. Jude Closson (percussion) has played drums and guitar with rock/alternative bands in the Detroit area since the 80s. He started out on drums with new wave group Walk Thru Walls and moved on to many other punk/rock groups and into the present day with Celtic Rock group Bill Grogan’s Goat. WTW thanks everybody involved.
The Zero Method by Hanon Reznikov (1991) based on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Peformed by Judith Malina & Hanon Reznikov. Directed by Judith Malina. Original score & live soundscapes by Patrick Grant.
Get Ready to Rock at ‘Bestest’ Concert The Observer & Eccentric Newspapers by Diana Wing, Guest Columnist
This year’s fourth annual “Bestest Concert Ever” at the Royal Oak Farmers Market is sure to be the “bestest” by far. Royal Oaker Paula Messner, guitarist and songwriter for Candy Band, has a great eclectic lineup of live music, plus kids’ activities, and food and beverages for this family-friendly event that runs, 5-8 p.m. Saturday, March 21.
“It’s going to be so fun this year,” she said.
Rockin’ the Red Carpet photos, a Crazy Hair Salon, Zany Face Painting and a haute couture dress-up station will get the fun started. Kids can make a wax replica of their hand with Creative Arts Studio, try out a range of instruments at the McCourts Musical Petting Zoo, go gem mining with the Miners Den, and play games with the Royal Oak High School Drama Club and the Band Boosters.
Messner has planned an eclectic lineup of performances for the night. Of course, the Candy Band moms will be playing children’s favorites, along with original songs. Their music is a blast for adults, too. The intensity will grow with Horse Cave Trio, known for their high energy roots rock, also characterized as high-octane roadhouse blues or outlaw country rock ‘n roll. Motor Honey is a five-piece band fronted by Sara Covatta whom Messner describes as having a “beautiful voice.” The group performs a mix of rock, soul and funky grooves – American Soul.
Messner also invited Evenin’ Gentlemen who have a collective 100-plus years as active members of the International Barber Shop Harmony Society. They currently sing with the Detroit Oakland Gentlemen songsters and provide “wholesome and pleasing entertainment across a range of genres in the barbershop style.”
Guitar procession
No doubt the headliner for this year’s “Bestest Concert Ever” will be Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars. Founded in 2011 by composer/performer and Detroit native Patrick Grant, Tilted Axes is an electric guitar procession of upwards of 30 performers who wear portable amps strapped on their sides or backs. It has the energy of rock and it’s part street theater as guitarists walk through the downtown New York City art scene and other communities.
“We have a bit of a guerrilla esthetic,” said Grant in a highly entertaining promotional video. “We’re able to go where the public is. That is the beauty of being mobile.”
Messner invited Grant to perform at the “Bestest Concert Ever” because she had taken part in a Tilted Axes procession last summer in Detroit.
“We started outside the Detroit Historical Museum and we did a song. We marched up Woodward. We went outside of the library and the DIA and around the Wayne State campus,” she described. “We went into a restaurant where people were having lunch and drinking a beer … and we just filled the place. We all stood there and played a song and everybody (at the restaurant) their jaw hit the floor, and then we left. They never knew what hit them!”
One bass player and a snare drum player usually perform with the group. Grant writes the original music for guitar. There are four-six parts, so not everyone plays the same thing.
“One guitar might be playing chords, one might be playing notes. They all go together,” Messner said. “There are certain songs where I break out in a lead and it will be my solo, and I can do whatever I want and everybody backs me up. Then somebody else will come out and do a solo.
“Some of the songs are complex and everybody’s got notes taped to their guitar and clipped on, so it’s a little crazy. But it’s a lot of fun and I was really glad to be a part of it last year.”
Messner expects about 15 performers in the Tilted Axes Detroit crew will play at the “Bestest Concert Ever.” She and fellow guitarists will rehearse the week before when Grant come into town. If the weather is permitting the mobile electric guitarists might wander around downtown Royal Oak the night before the concert, Messner said. Spring, and possibly an equinox procession, is just around the corner.
Admission to the “Bestest Concert Ever” is only $5 (children 3 and younger are free), with 100 percent of profits going to the Royal Oak Optimist Club which organizes and helps to support numerous youth activities. The Royal Oak Farmers Market is located at 316 E. 11 Mile. Call 248-246-3276. Visit http://www.tiltedaxes.com/tiltedaxes.html to watch a video of Titled Axes in action.
International sTRANGE mUSIC Day 2014 Performance Soiree Sunday, August 24th @ SPECTRUM, 121 Ludlow St., NYC Tickets $15 – Doors open at 6:30 pm with trouble to begin at 7:00 pm
PDF Press Release NEWSFLASH: All attendees of the INTERNATIONAL STRANGE MUSIC DAY performance at Spectrum NYC on Aug. 24th are eligible to enter our FREE raffle. The Grand Prize? A single ticket to the KING CRIMSON concert on Sept. 21st in NYC, Orchestra Center, Row GG, Seat 101. Why only one ticket? Out of sympathy for the poor date that always gets dragged along. We’re showing some mercy.
AUGUST 24th is International sTRANGE mUSIC Day. It’s a real holiday, yes it is. To celebrate, some of the NYC area’s best and brightest composers and performers are getting together to have a very unserious session of music making. This as an opportunity to for them to share unusual sounds, unusual instrumentation, and unusual compositions rarely heard or new ones that will never be heard from again.
For the 2014 celebration, creator Patrick Grant/Peppergreen Media partners up once again with NYC’s Lower East Side high-tech chamber-salon Spectrum NYC where the 2012 event was held. This is the perfect venue for such an event since its capabilities will enable strange musicians and performers of all stripes to push the envelope into uncharted territory.
Celebration in São Paulo: Making this a truly international event, there will be a Strange Music Day sister spectacle taking place at exactly the same time at the Paco Das Artes in São Paulo, Brazil presented by the Orchestra Descarrego. More iNFO via their Facebook event page HERE.
A SPLENDID ORCHESTRA
is in town, but has not been engaged
MAGNIFICENT FIREWORKS
were in contemplation for this occasion, but the idea has been abandoned
A GRAND TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION
may be expected; in fact, the public are privileged to expect whatever they please.
NYC PERFORMERS TO INCLUDE…
Cristian Amigo & Angela Babin
Guitarists Angela Babin and Cristian Amigo perform Empty Form Duo #5, a piece based on the non-dualistic idea of form/emptiness. Babin was a founding mother of the band The Ordinaires who received critical acclaim in the 80s in the Downtown NY music scene. She met Amigo (Guggenheim Fellow, guitarist, and songwriter) while playing Elliott Sharp’s Syndakit. During an extended wait for the subway they formed their collaboration for the Gotham Roots Orchestra via a mutual appreciation for the blues. They will keep it sTRANGE.
Lynn Bechtold
Violinist/composer Lynn Bechtold has appeared in recital throughout NA and Europe, and has premiered works by composers including Gloria Coates, George Crumb, John Harbison, Alvin Lucier, and Morton Subotnick. She is a member of groups including Zentripetal Duo, Bleecker StQ, Miolina, and SEM, and her performances have been broadcast on various TV/radio, including WNYC, 30 Rock, CBS Morning Show, and Good Day NY. She has appeared at venues from Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall to LPR and Joe’s Pub. Her electroacoustic compositions have been performed on festivals such as the Composers Concordance Festival and Kathleen Supove’s Music With A View.
Jason Belcher Jason Belcher is a composer & multi-instrumentalist who studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston. He led several performance projects as a student, including a revival of music by Burr Van Nostrand, a composer whose most adventurous scores went unheard for 42 years. As a result of this project, a disc of Burr’s work was released by New World Records in 2013. Belcher currently lives and works in New York, where he is active in projects with other young improvisers.
Tom Burnett
Chime’s Swing Number 89, inspired by a set of chimes given to Tom Burnett in 1989 by the late performer and artist Winchester Chimes, is part of a continuing series of performances dating back to 1989. This performance is coincidentally the eight-ninth. Other venues have included the Bardavon Theatre, Joe’s Pub, the Kitchen, the occasional rock quarry, church, and the Canal Street subway station.
Ken Butler
Ken Butler is an artist and musician whose Hybrid musical instruments, performances, and installations explore the interaction and transformation of common and uncommon objects, altered images, sounds and silence. He has performed and exhibited throughout the USA, Canada, and Europe including The Stedelijk Museum, The Prada Foundation in Venice, Mass MoCA, The Kitchen, The Brooklyn Museum, The Queens Museum, Lincoln Center, and The Metropolitan Museum as well as in South America and Asia. Butler has been reviewed in The NY Times, The Village Voice, Artforum, Smithsonian, and Sculpture Magazine and has been featured on PBS, CNN, MTV, and NBC’s The Tonight Show.
Constance Cooper
Constance Cooper improvises instrumentally and vocally, in concert —today, Solo With Stadium Blanket — and for theater, using two keyboards tuned a quartertone apart. She belongs to ArtStar, which includes live painting and audience drawing, and to the women’s a cappella acoustic trio Arc Welding. Some years ago she designed an improvisation work for the cellist Ernst Reijseger, who began the performance, then stood up, walked around while playing, and then deliberately got entangled with the branches of a large potted plant. He later said that he had always wanted to be a tree.
Glenn Cornett
Glenn Cornett runs Spectrum NYC, the performance venue/gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side that supports innovation and virtuosity in the arts. He is a composer/performer, playing guitar, keyboards, electronics, etc. Founder of two biotechnology companies – Pastorus (autism, other CNS disorders) and Navitas (cardiovascular, metabolic diseases). He has worked at McKinsey and Eli Lilly. Education: MD with Distinction in Research from the University of Michigan; PhD in neuroscience from UCLA, dissertation on human deep-brain responses to musical stimuli. He has a black belt in karate and has run nine marathons, including Istanbul in November 2013.
GangBhang
GangBhang is a collective of inattentive plus ultra performers from different “walks” of life that include secular and non-secular attitudes and fashions. This time presents a very exciting, but hopefully boring, performance with the very devices that (usually) break our connection with the real world. The performers are Balldie on iPhone, Mojas on Maschine, and Preachermac on iPad.
portrait by Ted Berkowitz
Patrick Grant Patrick Grant creates musical works that are a synthesis of classical, popular, and world musical styles that have found place in concert halls, film, theater, dance, and visual media. Over the last three decades, his music has moved from post-punk and classically bent post-minimal styles, through Balinese-inspired gamelan and microtonality, to ambient, electronic soundscapes involving many layers of acoustic and amplified instruments. He is the creator of International Strange Music Day (August 24) and the creator/pioneer of the electric guitar procession Tilted Axes.
Amy & Alex Hamlin
Amy & Alex Hamlin are a husband and wife team who enjoy their cats, Walter & Boris, their garden, & traveling to exotic places. They are the founders of the 7-piece soul/rock band Amy Lynn & The Gunshow. The duo is enjoying experimenting more with voice and baritone sax with the music from The Gunshow. Together and apart they have played all over the country with acts such as Yo La Tengo, St. Vincent, Beth Hart, Duffy, The National, Spoon, and Red Barrat.
Niloufar Nourbakhsh Niloufar Nourbakhsh started learning piano at the age of nine at Sarang Institute of Music located in Karaj, Iran. At the age of fifteen, she won the 2nd Prize of Iran’s National Piano Biennale Competition and performed at Tehran’s Roudaki Concert Hall twice as a participant of The Music Festival from Classical to Modern. She is a music and math graduate of Goucher College and Oxford University. She has participated in numerous music festivals as a pianist and a composer such as New Paltz Piano Summer, Atlantic Music Festival, and the Rhymes with Opera Workshop. She is currently working at Brooklyn Music School Summer Institute as a teaching artist.
Lorin Roser
Lorin Roser is a multimedia artist fascinated with the expression of mathematics. He utilizes algorithms in his musical compositions and physical simulations in his 3D animations. Recent music is created with realtime manipulation of polynomials. This work began in the 80s and was ported to Reaktor in 2004. The realtime was not possible until recent advances in computing. As a musician, Roser has performed at CBGB’s, Bowery Poetry Club, the Emily Harvey Foundation with Larry Litt, White Box with Elliott Sharp, and events for curator/performance artist A. Schloss.
Zero Boy Zero Boy is an East Village icon who uses a unique blend of sound and mime, the results being something akin to a performed comic book. He can be seen on the upcoming Nickelodeon show Alien Dawn as the evil Dr. Drago. He appeared Off-Broadway in the Yllana Production of ‘666’, and has performed regularly on NPR’s The Next Big Thing in a special “Stump Zero Boy” segment. He has been seen on the Fox and Friends, Good Day New York and MTV.
“In 1999 I declared August 24th randomly as Strange Music Day. It gave me an opportunity to come up with a cool graphic and drive home a point that I still believe in to this day: it is always good to listen and play music that we are unfamiliar with. It keeps our ears and outlook fresh. Around 2002, I started noticing that various summer schools were picking up on it as an actual holiday….Once I started seeing postings coming from Europe, I changed the name to International Strange Music Day. It’s just been getting bigger every year….” – Patrick Grant
“Recently I’ve been taking it a step further and we had the first International Strange Music Day Performance Soiree in 2012. I asked the New York new music community to submit their ideas and apply for spots on the concert. I wanted to see a lot of new music notables perform music that they were not usually associated with, to be willing to explore uncomfortable places, to reveal their guilty pleasures and hidden parlor tricks to the public. It was a blast! It was just one those things that came together and happened so well. I and everybody involved are already looking forward to raising the bar for the next event. You have been warned!” – International sTRANGE mUSIC Day creator, Patrick Grant, Exploring the Metropolis
“International Strange Music Day was created by Patrick Grant, a New York City musician. The premise is simple: to get people to play and listen to types of music they have never experienced before. The ‘strange’ part can mean either unfamiliar or bizarre – the choice is entirely yours. Patrick believes broadening people’s musical spectrums can also change the way we look at other aspects of life – his mantra is ‘listening without prejudice’. This growing movement has concerts, a record label and strong support from summer schools, where it is appreciated as a great way to stimulate young minds. Have you ever wanted to combine a tight Wonder Woman costume, a frozen turkey drumstick and an inflatable wildebeest into a percussion concert? International Strange Music Day gives you the perfect excuse. What you do with these items once the music stops, of course, is your business… “ – Days of the Year
The MMiXdown 