Juanjosé Rivas
+Carmina Escobar
Micaela Tobin
Istwa

Visiting from Mexico City visual/sound artist Juanjosé Rivas presents his work Mumble (Mascullar) Serie Plexus. Sound action: horse's jaw, brackets, modified muzzles and electronics.

MUMBLE -The action to speak between teeth or to pronounce the words badly to say something dimly and quietly, making it difficult for others to hear.

Plexus is a series of sound actions based on different body movements which try to generate a symbolic dialogue between physical concepts throughout sound improvisation such as: error, randomness and the stochastic in order to describe some kind of body phenomena.

These natural actions comprising the series are determined by randomly choosing an alphabet letter, and then limiting and defining every composition by an infinitive verb beginning with the letter previously selected. The aesthetic elements, the technique and the technological tools used to represent the sounds are confined by the physical conditions of the previously selected verb, as well as by the physical limitations and logistical constraints of the venue where the composition is performed. This iteration is in collaboration with Carmina Escobar

Two more sets by local artist MICAELA TOBIN and ISTWA will preceede the piece.

Juanjosé Rivas* - www.juanjoserivas.info

Visual/sound artist specializing in electronic media, Juanjosé Rivas employs myriad techniques to give voice to the translation, error, obstruction, and interference inside artistic languages. Attempts to define the impossible, reveal the hidden, articulate the unspeakable, and evidence the truth as an instituted lie are some of the conceptual approaches used in his work.

Juanjosé Rivas made a sound residence in Centre for Contemporary Creation Matadero in Madrid, Spain (2013); he was Fellow Program Development Cultural Projects and Joint Ventures 2013; beneficiary of the Board of Contemporary Art PAC 2012; and has twice received the grant from the Young Artists Program specializing in Multimedia, FONCA-CONACULTA 2005 and 2011. He was a member of the Council of Planning and Evaluation for the Festival of Electronic Arts and Video Transitio_MX 2010-2014.

Juanjosé currently teaches at University Centro for Film, Design, and Television and is Artistic Director of VOLTA, a series of international concerts of sound art and experimental music in Mexico City.

 *Miembro del Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte.

Carmina Escobar

is a performer, improviser, sound and intermedia artist from Mexico City. Her work focuses primarily on sound, the voice, the body, and their interrelations to physical, social, memory and present spaces. She has extensively explored the capacities of her voice developing a wide range of vocal techniques that she applies not only to her performance and creative practice but also to investigate radical ideas and concepts regarding the voice. In her artwork the Voice is the phenomenon and conceptual trigger that links all the materials, analogue or digital, in order to create an experience that sets in motion the audience perception. Carmina has presented her own work in diverse festivals, biennials, experimental venues, formal concert halls and living rooms of the Mexican Republic, the USA, and Europe.

Micaela Tobin - www.micaelatobin.com

Soprano, sound artist, and teacher Micaela Tobin specializes in contemporary voice and experimental sound practice, performing her own hybrid of noise music and opera under the moniker, “White Boy Scream.” Currently, she is interested in dissecting the construct of her classical training through the genres of noise and drone. The recent premiere of her feminist, electroacoustic noise-opera, Unseal Unseam, at Highways Performance space in October 2017 was described as “paralyzingly beautiful (New Classic LA).” An active collaborator, Micaela has premiered new work at the 2016 NOW Fest at REDCAT, OutSider Fest in Austin, and internationally at the XIII Festival Internacional Musica Nueva in Monterrey, Mexico, the New Music Encounters Plus International Music Festival in Brno, Czech Republic, the 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the 2016 Vancouver New Music Festival. She is currently on faculty in the VoiceArts department at the California Institute for the Arts.

Istwa.

Terrible Records/B.U.R.N. LA

Morgan Evans-Weiler will perform a new work for solo violin titled 'General Motions in Relation'. He will be joined by local composer/performer Michael Pisaro for a performance of his work 'Concepts of Sustain', as well as violinist Sara Cubarsi.

Evans-Weiler maintains a busy performance schedule and has performed throughout the United States. He has collaborated and performed with Seth Cluett, Sarah Hennies, Mike Bullock, Dave Gross, Ryoko Akama, Jed Speare, Antoine Beuger, Magnus Granberg, Christoph Schiller and many others. He is director of the New England based ensemble ‘Ordinary Affects’ whom have performed works by Eva-Maria Houben, Magnus Granberg and premiered works by Jürg Frey, Antoine Beuger and Michael Pisaro.

He has toured nationally and internationally. He recently presented his work in London, Berlin, Huddersfield, Nantes, Besancon and completed a ten day residency at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm. In 2014 he was invited to perform at the High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music. His album ‘Violin/Sine’ was called ‘transfixing’ by writer Steve Smith and included in the Boston Globe’s list of ‘Best Local Classical Albums of 2015’. Chicago writer, Peter Margasak, writes "the degree of focus and the richness of Evans-Weiler’s sound-worlds are nothing short of astonishing" about the recent recording 'Unfinished Variations (for Jed Speare)'. His music has been released on the ‘Suppedaneum’, 'Another Timbre' and Weigher' recording labels and he has forthcoming releases on ‘Rhizome’ and ‘ErstAEU’.

"Tofighi, Denney and Fink” (Guitar Trio)

Three composer/performers from somewhat diverse backgrounds come together to perform their adventurous and exploratory compositions for three electric guitars.

Alan S. Tofighi is an Interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Valencia CA. Alan's work deals with analyses of the dispersion, obfuscation, and deformation of information. As a performer/composer Alan’s music typically lies within free improvisation with occasions of written work. Synthesis, just intonation, acoustics, preparations, non-formulaic scordatura, extended techniques, and conceptual grounding are all central.
http://nouroboros.net/audio/

Maxwell Denney is a Los Angeles based composer and guitarist, a member of Soup New Music, a member of the Tofighi, Denney and Fink trio and a founding member of Washington D.C.’s Beat on the Bard Theatre Company, where he still serves as Music Director. His work primarily focuses on harmonic fields, and the slow shift of focus within those fields over time. He is currently completing his MFA at California Institute of the Arts, studying composition and performance.
www.maxwelldenney.com
https://soundcloud.com/axwellenney

Michael Jon Fink has been a composer/performer with experimental and new music groups that have included the Negative Band, Musica Veneris Nocturnus, Stillife and Ghost Duo; and currently plays electric guitar with the Feedback Wave Riders (Free Improv), Trio Through the Looking-Glass (Jazz-inflected) Spectral Dawn Spirits (hierophanic, somewhat metallic, post-psychedelic ambient instrumental) and the Tofighi, Denney and Fink trio. For over thirty years M.J.F. has served on the CalArts music faculty where he teaches composition, orchestration and analysis.
His music appears on the Cold Blue, Contagion, C.R.I., Trance Port, Raptoria Caam and Wire Tapper labels.
http://michaeljonfink.com/

YappiScope is Jaap Blonk's show with visual projections.
It is in ongoing develeopment, new inventions being added frequently. It contains short videos, scores he wanders through, interactive animations, live soundtracks to silent films and other new multi-media work.

Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, performer and poet. He went to university for mathematics and musicology but did not finish those studies.
In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music. A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions. For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds.

From around the year 2000 on Blonk started work with electronics, at first using samples of his own voice, then extending the field to include pure sound synthesis as well. He took a year off of performing in 2006. As a result, his renewed interest in mathematics made him start a research of the possibilities of algorithmic composition for the creation of music, visual work and poetry.

the wulf. presents new pieces by Luke Martin, Marta Tiesenga, Amy Golden, Tim Tsang & Parch Es, each performed by the group.

Hosted by Automata-LA (http://www.automata-la.org/).
The event is free.

Luke Martin, 'dormant planes' 
www.lukecmartin.com
Mar Ta Tiesenga, (new work) 
www.martatiesenga.format.com
Amy Golden, (new work) 
www.amygolden.tumblr.com
Tim Tsang & Parch Es, '(presencia (o ausencia) según conveniencia)'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slf4mtW-B4M
https://www.parch.es/

Mendbayar is an award-winning musician, throat singer, and music educator from Mongolia. He has trained more than 100 students from around the world in the Mongolian art of khoomii throat singing. He is founder and assistant director of the International Khoomii School in Ulaanbaatar and directs summer throat singing workshops in the Mongolian grasslands. Mendbayar received his Bachelor’s degree in khoomii from the prestigious Mongolian Culture University in 2009. He went on to win first prize in the Isgeree Khoomii at the International Khoomii Competition in 2013 and won a gold medal in the World Championship of Folklore in Bulgaria in 2015. He is a charismatic performer and dedicated teacher, bringing extraordinary energy to his stage performances as well as to the throat singing classroom. He has been successful in assisting students of all ages, genders, and ethnic backgrounds to produce Mongolian khoomii. In this singing tradition the singer selectively amplifies overtones by changing the shape of the mouth cavity, larynx, and pharynx. This technique enables singers to create more than one pitch at the same time (the fundamental and an overtone) through a musical tradition that has been described as mind-boggling, meditative, ethereal, and marvelously evocative of the natural world.

Tamir Hargana received his M.A. in World Music Performance from Northern Illinois University in 2017 and received his undergraduate degree from Inner Mongolia University Arts College with a specialty in Mongolian and Tuvan throat singing (khoomii). He is an active performer of khoomii in the United States and accompanies his performances with skills on many traditional instruments from Mongolia and Tuva, such as the morin khuur (Mongolian horse-head fiddle), tovshuur (Mongolian lute instruments), doshpuluur (Tuvan lute instrument) and igil (Tuvan string instrument). Tamir has won many awards and prizes in throat singing competitions in Mongolia, Tuva, and in Shilingol, Inner Mongolia, and Manzhouli, China. He has performed in many concerts, presentations, and workshops in the U.S., Mongolia, Russia, Indonesia,Taiwan, and China. He was also featured in TV documentaries about throat singing and has taught throat singing at the Inner Mongolia University Arts College High School Preparatory Division from 2013-2014.

Laura Steenberge will be performing “Ritual for Harmonica”, a piece for voice, harmonicas and resonant containers. Steenberge is a performer and composer in Los Angeles who researches language, the voice, mythology and acoustics.

Erika Bell will be debuting “1–“, a companion piece to her former composition “2+”; each is comprised of: voice, electronics, guitar, cello, and contrabass. Bell is a Los Angeles based composer with a refreshing adherence to intuition, preference, and the personal; the result is often spacious, textural, and melancholy.

Iris Sidikman is an experimental musician and installation artist. Her works encompass everything from freely improvised cello playing to performance and installation art, and address issues of community, grief, trauma and personal narrative. She is currently an MFA student in Experimental Sound Practices at California Institute of the Arts.

Featuring works by:

• Erin Demastes
• Todd Lerew
• Liam Mooney
• Davy Sumner

Erin Demastes presents "Resonance," for tuning forks and resonant objects. Erin Demastes is an Experimental Sound Practices and Integrated Media M.F.A. candidate at Calarts. Her work deals with repurposed technology and everyday objects to explore sonic phenomena related to acoustics, resonance, electricity, and magnetism. 

Todd Lerew presents "Lexical Semantics." Two identical tuning forks are struck once in unison. One of the forks is then heated with a handheld blowtorch, thereby lowering its sounding pitch by 8-12 Hz. The forks are struck again and beating is heard, the frequency of which corresponding to the change in pitch of the heated fork. The two forks are struck simultaneously over and over again, and the beating slows down as the heated fork returns to room temperature and the pitches converge.

Liam Mooney presents a new and fairly quiet work for lightly prepared tuning forks. Mooney is a composer who makes music via the misuse of familiar objects and materials.

Davy Sumner presents a new work for the Fork Organ, an original electroacoustic instrument that uses electromagnets to vibrate tuning forks at their resonant frequency, among other things.