curated by Katherine Liberovskaya Monday March 25th, 2024 @ ISSUE Project Room: 22 Boerum Pl, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Nine Movements, Barbara Held and Richard Garet
Very happy to present a fragment of Nine Movements, the first performance a new collaborative piece with Richard Garet, soon to be published on Contour Editions.
This year Screen Compositions celebrates its 20th anniversary! Our jubilee edition brings you, as ever, a collection of always captivating and inspired intersections of moving image with sonic art; a program of screen works representing dynamic two-way collaborations between video/film artists and sound/music artists specifically intended for single-channel projection with no live or performance component; featuring collaborations by: Debora Bernagozzi / Jason Bernagozzi; Patrick Bokanowski / Michele Bokanowski; Navel Cassidy / Michael Evans; Holly Fisher / Lois V Vierk; Gisela Gamper / Pauline Oliveros+Zach Layton+Jonas Braasch; Richard Garet / Barbara Held; Katherine Liberovskaya / Phill Niblock+Francisco Janes; Ursula Scherrer / Marcia Bassett; Claudia Schmitz / Ute Wassermann; Sara C. Sun / Michael Vincent Waller
La nit americana. Pausa. Nit. Barbara Held 2021, loop amb flauta travessera (Barbara Held), piano (Carles Santos) Custom software i mix binaural de Josep Aymí, imatge de Nil Tous i Javier Rojas.
“La nostra música està entrellaçada amb la gent que estimem. Vaig fer aquesta peça fa uns anys per a una trobada molt emocionant a Vinaròs, davant del piano magnífic del Carles. Vaig utilitzar Pausa, un instrument digital capaç de reaccionar, a través de sons, a les meves accions amb la flauta travessera. Per a aquesta obra, l’instrument digital evoca fragments de piano interpretats pel Carles que queden suspesos en l’espai i creen un pla sonor que vibra infinitament, a la manera dels darrers acords de La Nit Americana de Santos, en què les notes s’aguanten amb el pedal perquè quedin sostingudes dins de la caixa de ressonància del piano. La Nit Americana fa referència a la tècnica lumínica emprada en les pel·lícules per aparentar una atmosfera de nit real. Però en aquest cas, la filmació nocturna d’un llac està controlada pel so de la flauta, que crea una barreja entre la imatge real i els sons virtuals” Barbara Held
Concert January 19, 2023, 8pm Artists Space, New York City
As part of the retrospective Yasunao Tone: Region of Paramedia, Artists Space is pleased to present a special concert with legendary sound artist Yasunao Tone and flutist Barbara Held. For this rare performance, the pair will perform four pieces Tone originally composed for Held—Trio for a Flute Player (1985), Aletheia (1987), Lyrictron for Flute (1988), and Zen and Music (1990).
Yasunao Tone, Page from score for Trio for a Flute Player with typographical annotations by Barbara Held, 1985.
Throughout the 1980s, Tone and Held performed several pieces that challenge traditional notions of composition; namely, the role of composer and performer, the legibility of a score, and the perception of sound as “music.” The point of departure for each of those featured in this performance is a found text—the seventh-century Man’yoshu anthology of poems (Trio for Flute Player), an ancient Chinese dance score (Aletheia), Tang dynasty flute tablatures (Lyrictron for Flute), and ancient Japanese shakuhachi flute music (Zen and Music). From these sources, Tone’s scores embark on an open-ended translation across media, technology, and writing systems. In Trio for a Flute Player, for example, musical staves printed on transparencies are superimposed atop calligraphic renderings of poems in Classical Japanese, with twentieth-century English translations included on each sheet. Transforming the written notation into sound, Held reads the poems in English through the mouthpiece of her flute while fingering the keys of her instrument, their position determined by a reading of the Japanese characters as they appear on the staves as tablature. Her instrument, which she calls her “Tone hacked flute,” is modified with foam pads placed on the keys that, when pressed, alter the strength of an electric current running through an oscillator and cause unpredictable variation in the pitch and intensity of the sound.
In performing these pieces, Held reads each text-based score faithfully and without interpretation. Focusing on a literal translation of the score’s instructions, the performer loses any sense of the text’s original meaning and the impulse to play according to her own classical training. What follows is undirected and uncontrolled sound modulated by the vacillating noise of Tone’s technical interventions.
On the occasion of this exhibition and performance, the audio engineer David Meschter has restored the Lyrictron system he created for Tone in 1988, which will be used in the eponymous performance. Lyrictron consists of a computer program that converts flute pitches into words recited by a computerized voice and expressed as impromptu haikus on a monitor.
Yasunao Tone: Region of Paramedia. Installation view, Artists Space, January 13, 2023 – March 18, 2023. Image courtesy Artists Space, New York. Photo: Filip Wolak
Yasunao Tone in Concert with Barbara Held. Performance documentation, January 19, 2023, Artists Space. Photo: Destiny Mata
Previous Performances
Yasunao Tone, Carles Hac Mor, and Barbara Held performing Música desterritorialitzada at Metronom, Barcelona, Spain, 1997.
Trio for Flute Player uses three sound components, sound from the flute itself, the flutist’s voice and electronic sounds, all to be performed by the solo flutist. These components are based on a single source, poems from the 8th Century Japanese anthology, the Manyoshu.
The curvy line of calligraphy of the poem, overlaid by a musical staff, does not correspond with pitches or any tonalities but with the player’s finger placements. (Note that a flute player uses nine fingers, coinciding with the number of lines and spaces of the staff — five lines and four spaces.)
Fingering, with its movement and pressure, triggers an electronic sound, varying in pitch and intensity, which is generated by an oscillator with a capacitor. The poems, translated by Sid Corman in “The Peerless Mirror”, are read through the flute mouthpiece.
The sound of the original Manyoshu poems, the other part of the “signifier” of the poem, serves as the substructure for the rhythm and intensity of performance. The poems are not interpreted but transformed into sound. The electronic system was designed by Yoshi Saito and slightly revised by David Meschter. The piece was commissioned by Barbara Held and was made possible by funding from the New York State Council on the Arts’ Commissioning Program.
Barbara Held and Benton C Bainbridge Performed at FLUX Festival, Barcelona
Benton C Bainbridge / Barbara Held: Tearing Through, 2018
Digital Media/UHD video with stereo sound, color, 10 minutes Bainbridge / Held’s Tearing Through is a singular edition digital media artwork which began as a live audiovisual performance in Barcelona’s Old Town in the Fall of 2018. Benton C Bainbridge / Barbara Held in Flux Festival Monday | 22 October 2018 | 9 PM Antic Teatre Verdaguer i Callís, 12. 08003 Barcelona
Barbara Held, flautista y compositor, y Benton C Bainbridge, pionero de la creación del video analógico en tiempo real, interpretan su proyecto colaborativo. Los artistas han creado un sistema personalizado de hardware y software de síntesis audiovisual que interconecta sonido acústico y electrónico con imágenes procesadas en tiempo real. Su trabajo explora los límites de procesos generativos y el performance duracional extendido. La actividad sísmica solar, la respiración humano y otras mediciones periódicas inspiran sus estrategias estructurales.
Artists Space is pleased to present Region of Paramedia, the first retrospective dedicated to the work of Japanese American conceptual artist, composer, and theorist Yasunao Tone, whose deep investigation of the potential uses and misuses of emerging technology has made him a pioneer in performance, sound, and digital composition. This landmark exhibition and event series encompasses a comprehensive range of mediums and materials, from graphic scores to manipulated sound objects to documentation of performative actions and rare ephemera, and includes live events as well as first-time restagings that cover both Tone’s frequent, wide-ranging collaborations and his individually authored works.
