2022 DMA Nominee Outstanding Classical Composer — Patrick Grant
My first publicly performed piece was “Cantata for the Easter Mass” when I was 15 years old at the Our Lady of Victory Church in Northville, MI. It was written for soloists, choir, strings and organ. While I’m not a traditionally religious person at all, I have retained this sense of ceremony in all my work ever since. It seeks to find a place in the world. And there is always a feeling of a larger narrative. My work with the Tilted Axes mobile electric guitars project is another branch of this same aesthetic. Some times it asks: What is classical music? Is it an instrumentation or an intention? Is it as the venue it’s performed in or can it be found anywhere? Is it solely a technique or is it what we find beyond it if we know where to look? And yet other times the music aims to say as little as possible. It only asks you to listen with prejudice. One thing I have found to be common to all things “classical”, whether it’s traditional or it’s pushing the envelopes of genres: It seeks to elevate us all by pulling us into the present. Together. And if the composer is from Detroit, it’s also not unusual if it has a mean groove. — Patrick Grant Final Phase DMA Voting closes on March 6th at 11:59pm.
Top row: Patrick Grant, Jeremy Nesse, Surar Al-Gaylani, Noel Marie Rivard 2nd row: Marco Delicato, Jeff Adams, Gael Grant, Dean Western 3rd row: Bob Kaufman, Sean Biggs, Manny Falcon, Alex Lahoski 4th row: Chris Simpson, Sarah Metivier Schadt, Rob Knevels, Mike Balavitch Bottom row: Maggie McCabe, John Lovaas, Jocelyn Gonzales, Chris McGorey
Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars is commissioned to create
“REEL TO REAL,” a series of three musical processions celebrating
The 60th Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival
DEARBORN: The Henry Ford, 20900 Oakwood Blvd., Saturday, March 19, 12 noon – 2pm
DETROIT: The Marche Du Nain Rouge, Cass Corridor, Sunday, March 20, beginning at 1pm
ANN ARBOR: Opening Night of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Tuesday, March 22 at 6pm, Michigan Theater
To mark the opening of the 60th Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival, the festival has commissioned a series of musical processions from Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars.Tilted Axes: Reel To Real is named to mark our return to live events in 2022. The first event is a procession at The Henry Ford in conjunction with their current exhibit Apollo: When We Went To The Moon. The second is an appearance at The Marche Du Nain Rouge. The third event is the main attraction, the opening night of The Ann Arbor Film Festival. The performance will be based at The Michigan Theater and will travel around downtown as a prelude to the evening’s screenings.
Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars is a group of guitarists and percussionists led by post-rock composer/performer Patrick Grant. They perform original music untethered via mini-amps strapped over their shoulders. Since their inception 10 years ago, they have created and performed numerous new music events in the USA, Europe, and Brazil.
Tilted Axes can perform anywhere there are people, excelling in untraditional venues. Its roster of musicians can change from performance to performance, city to city. The musicians learn a common repertoire created by diverse composers and rehearse it in workshops. Its performances are free to the public and are supported through institutional and/or private donations.
The project takes on aspects of spectacle informed by municipal band tradition, avant-garde theater, and world music. It takes music out into the world and seeks transformative situations meant to change community conversation. It is an apolitical organization, but it does support science, arts programs, and renewable energy whenever possible. Tilted Axes works best when it is part of something bigger than itself i.e. festivals, exhibitions, community initiatives, astronomical events.
* * * Go to Tilted Axes’ web site for procession details closer to the day of the events: www.tiltedaxes.com
TILTED AXES: REEL TO REAL performers — electric guitars: Jeff Adams, Mike Balavitch, Sean Biggs, Marco Delicato, Manny Falcon, Surar Al-Gaylani, Patrick Grant (music director), Bob Kaufman, Rob Knevels, Alex Lahoski, John Lovaas, Chris McGorey, Chris Simpson — bass instruments: Jeremy Nesse (chapman stick), Sarah Metivier Schadt, Dean Western (electric bass) — percussion: Noel Marie Rivard (snare leader), Maggie McCabe (high perc), Gael Grant (perc +) and more TBA — movement director: Christopher Caines — production: Jocelyn Gonzales, Melinda Faylor — performance support: Frank Pahl, Anthony Fremont, and others TBA
Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars is a project of Peppergreen Media and is powered by Vox Amplification courtesy of KORG USA. We thank our performance partners The Ann Arbor Film Festival, The Henry Ford, The Marche Du Nain Rouge, Eastern Michigan University and AMP!,Detroit Guitar in Birmingham, and Grove Studios in Ypsilanti.
Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars is one of the many spectacular bands that will be performing in the HONK NYC! 2021 Festival.
“For the Honk NYC procession, Tilted Axes is performing “Unlikely Characters,” a piece especially created for HONK NYC!. The title comes from the Robert Fripp quote: “Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls upon unlikely characters to give it voice and to give it ears.”
We hope you join us from October 18 to 24 to see all of the “Unlikely Characters” that will be performing all across New York City.
HONK NYC! is a donation based volunteer-run organization, and each dollar pledged helps to fund and organize incredible community events for all music lovers. Please go to our kickstarter link (in our bio and comments) to contribute now to our 2021 campaign to support incredible performances like these.”
Tilted Axes: Music for Mobile Electric Guitars will present a new performance procession entitled Fabrication in partnership with Theaterlab in NYC’s Garment District. Tilted Axes is a group of guitarists and percussionists lead by classically trained post-rocker Patrick Grant. They perform original music untethered via mini-amps strapped over their shoulders. This event is part of Tilted@10 celebrating Tilted Axes 10th anniversary season. The performance begins at Theaterlab, 357 W 36th in NYC, and will stop along the way at various landmarks to perform special compositions significant to that location. The performance is free to the public and can be joined at any point along the route. They will eventually bring the procession full circle, returning to Theaterlab to complete the performance. Afterward the public can join Tilted Axes for a meet and greet in Theaterlab’s performance space and find out more about their work. Procession route TBA.
By Bob Krasner — “For some, the sight of a marching band of electric guitars was just another day in New York City, for others, it’s what makes the city special (you can add us to that group).
Composer Patrick Grant took Tilted Axes, his core group of nine musicians — including himself — with their Vox amplifiers (a longtime sponsor) on a walking tour of the East Village, stopping to play in various spots but never stopping the music.
The music, all composed by Grant, consisted of some pieces that were played as composed and others that followed strict rhythmic or harmonic rules but gave the players leeway to improvise. Sponsored by Make Music New York and grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and The New York State Council on the Arts, the group can expand to 20 players…“
Tilted Axes is powered by Vox Amplification & Blackstar Amps courtesy of KORG USA. Our Tilted@10 anniversary season is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The ASCAP Plus+ Awards, the NYU Tisch Adjunct Development Fund, but mostly through the generous support of people like you. Thank you for helping us keep our performances and events free to the public whenever and wherever possible.
#NMG2021 “cloudy water conflux,” a recorded collaborative composition based on structures found in blockchain. Top row: Patti Kilroy, Kate von Bernthal, George Lam. 2nd row: Gregory Oakes, Gloria Damijan, Ryne Siesky, Ron Coulter. 3rd row: Michael Roth, Lucius Gregory Meredith, Daniel Reyes Llinas, Jair-Rohm Parker Wells. Bottom row: Patrick Grant, Ting Luo, John Ferrari.
BIG THANKS to Greg Meredith (RChain Cooperative) for his patience and wisdom in introducing us to Rho Calculus as it pertains to creating blockchain contracts. Included below is a deck he created for collaborative composition experiments, “A sketch of some thoughts about the transition from computational agency to biological agency,” a question of sustainable food sourcing, as but one model being adapted, from his document “Towards a Living World.”
The MMiXdown 