Untoward: A Benefit for the CMG Archive of Events
Untoward is an annual benefit for the Creative Music Guild. An amazing group of musicians and dancers come to together for one night every year in order to help strengthen Portland’s experimental music and performance scene. Proceeds from the night support the Improvisation Summit of Portland, a three-day festival of experimental film, music and performance taking place this June. Featuring musical sets by Marcus Fischer, Reed Wallsmith & Joe Cunningham of Blue Cranes and movement by Allie Hankins and Taka Yamamoto. Hosted by Keyon Gaskin. DJ set by Beacon Sound. Drinks courtesy of Migration Brewery. Untoward is sponsored in part by 90.7 KBOO Community Radio. This is an all ages event.
Auction gifts graciously provided by:
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Craft, McMenamins, PerformanceWorks NW, Whitebird, Beacon Sound, POWFest, PJCE Records, Notice Recordings, Amiga/Amigo Records, deepwhitesound, Doug Detrick, Senses Sharpened, Demolition Duo, John Savage, Cin Shepard, Rachel Austin, Amy Conway, Rain Barrel Acres Goat Farm
Artist Bios:
Marcus Fischer
Marcus Fischer (b.1977) is a musician & multimedia artist currently based in Portland, Oregon. Field recordings, chance, and DIY instruments, coupled with acoustic instrumentation and visual art, define what has become Marcus’s minimal signature. In recent years he has also been involved with projects and performances for Art organizations such as the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, SASSAS, Dublab and Berklee College of Music.Past musical releases include “Monocoastal” (12k, 2010), “Arctic/Antarctic” (Luxus-Arctica, 2010), contributions and remixes to various compilations + net labels as map~map, “For Friends This Winter” (dustbreeding.com, 2009), various untitled ltd 3” CDRs, and two CDs as part of the duo Unrecognizable Now. Marcus’ music + visual art has found it’s way onto sites such as MAKE, create digital music, Swiss Miss +Apartment Therapy and the public radio show Radio Lab. (http://www.mapmap.ch)
Allie Hankins
Allie Hankins is a choreographer, performer, teacher, and researcher. A resident of the Pacific Northwest since 2008, Hankins has presented her works in Seattle at On the Boards and Velocity Dance Center, in Portland at Conduit Dance and PICA’s TBA Festival, Patrick’s Cabaret in Minneapolis (as part of the SCUBA National Touring Network for Dance), and The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s 19th Street Project Space in New York. As a collaborator, Hankins performs as part of Seattle-based dance/sound performance company Salt Horse, and has designed movement for experimental theater ensemble Implied Violence (now Saint Genet), with which she toured to New York’s New Island Festival and Austria’s DonauFestival, under the tutelage of Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. Hankins was recently an Artist in Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, FL, and she was awarded Artist Trust’s Grant for Artist Projects (GAP grant) for the development of her solo Like a Sun That Pours Forth Light but Never Warmth. (http://www.alliehankins.com)
Reed Wallsmith and Joe Cunningham
Reed Wallsmith (alto saxophone) and Joe Cunningham (tenor saxophone) perform with Blue Cranes and Battle Hymns and Gardens. In addition to composing and improvising in these groups, they have scored music for film and dance. Wallsmith and Cunningham have collaborated together and separately with AU, Wayne Horvitz, Laura Gibson, Eyvind Kang, Ethan Rose, and Laura Veirs. Their fourth full length album with Blue Cranes, Swim, produced by The Decemberists’ Nate Query, is available on colored vinyl and CD through the Washington, D.C.-based Cuneiform Records.
Taka Yamamoto
Originally from Shizuoka Japan, Takahiro Yamamoto is an artist and a performer based in Portland, Oregon. As a recent graduate from MFA in Visual Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art, his sculptural and photographic works have been exhibited at Rowan Gallery (Los Angeles), 937 Gallery (Portland), PLACE gallery, and Disjecta (Portland.) Theatre and dance practitioners and companies he has performed and studied with include Xavier Le Roy (Montpellier), Opiyo Okach (Kenya), Keith Hennessy (San Francisco), Linda k. Johnson (Portland), Jmy James (Los Angeles), Mary Overlie (New York), Anne Bogart and SITI Company (New York), Goat Island Performance Company (Chicago), Perseverance Theatre Company(Alaska) and Independent Shakespeare Company (Los Angeles). Yamamoto is also a co-founder of an interdisciplinary performance company, madhause. (http://www.takahiroyamamoto.com)
The Creative Music Guild is a Portland, Oregon all-volunteer, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote experimental, improvised music by presenting concerts, workshops and other events that bring together internationally recognized musicians with local performers, audiences and music students of all ages. For over twenty years, the CMG has been a leader in cultivating Portland’s experimental and improvised music.
Our yearly programming includes the Outset Series, a bi-weekly showcase of local experimental music and performance, the Confluence Visiting Artist Series, a presentation of 6-8 concerts a year by artists from all over the world at venues around Portland, and the Improvisation Summit of Portland, our annual festival of experimental and improvised music and movement. The ISP gathers some of the finest local and visiting contemporary artists working in sound and improvised performance today.
More information, videos, etc:
Sponsored by
Marisa Anderson
Marisa Anderson is a composer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist living in Portland Oregon. Anderson’s current and past projects include the Evolutionary Jass Band, the Dolly Ranchers, and the One Railroad Circus. She is KBOO Community Radio’s 2013 Artist in Residence and in 2012 Anderson was one of six artists selected for Signal Fire’s Afloat Residency. She releases records on the Mississippi Records label.
Keyon Gaskin
Keyon likes to move around and do things! Recently he has played with Linda Austin, Keith Hennessy, Tahni Holt, Future Death Toll, Lucy Yim, Imago Theater, and himself.
Noelle Stiles
As a dance artist, Noelle Stiles is interested in how and where experience is held in the body. This interest provides a framework for extracting the corporeal language that both intimately connects and individuates us. Stiles has a BFA in dance from Cornish College of the Arts and completed her graduate studies in dance at The Ohio State University. She has performed and presented work at venues such as the PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival, On The Boards, PWNW, Dance New Amsterdam, and Links Hall. Stiles’ interest in teaching has taken her to places such as The Ohio State University, the Governor’s School of North Carolina, Dance/USA’s Engaging Dance Audiences program and she co-founded the community focused dance class series Heavy Rotation with Kathleen Keogh of Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner. Her work has been supported by Caldera’s Artist Residency program, PICA’s Resource Room Residency, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the ACA Associate Artist Residency program and was selected by PICA and the NDP to travel to the Dublin Dance Festival as part of a pilot international exchange program. In 2010, Stiles merged her work as a graphic designer with her work in dance to co-create a dance publication entitled FRONT. Based out of Portland, Oregon, FRONT is Tahni Holt, Danielle Ross, Noelle Stiles, and Robert Tyree. FRONT utilizes the old-school tactics of the broadsheet newspaper to explore the new, current, future energy of dance theory and practices in the field.
Dragging an Ox through Water
Brian Mumford grew up throughout the Pacific Northwest and the Plains as a kid, where he developed an early love for classic A.M. country. His teenage years brought on the allure of punk and industrial. Now settled in Portland and performing under the name Dragging an Ox Through Water, he “marries the lyrical twang of country and folk to the broken textures of feedback, drones, tape hiss, and the howl of homemade oscillators.” (via Tommy E. at WMFU’s Beware of the Blog)
Eternal Tapestry
Tapping into the more experimental side of the European neo-psych/art rock of the 70’s, Eternal Tapestry broaden the psych palette. Theirs’ is an often droningly transcendental sound that’s not just a pastiche of old influences but a radical melting-down in which the music remains reminiscent of the hoary past but sounds strangely new as well.
Grammies
Grammies is the musical knitting circle formed by saxophonist Noah Bernstein (tUnE-yArDs) and drummer Dan Sutherland (Shy Girls, Capillary Action). Depending on the angle of approach, GRAMMIES’ music has been compared to the disparate artistry of D’Angelo, LTJ Bukem, Flying Lotus, Johns Coltrane and Zorn, The Notorious B.I.G., James Chance and RZA. Their debut album “Award Winning” was released in June 2013.
Dec 14th also marks the release of The Creative Music Guild’s e-book Unfinished. Born out of a conversation at the Improvisation Summit of Portland 2013, Unfinished is a collection of interviews from CMG-related musicians and dancers from diverse genres who share insight into their creative process and work. Unfinished includes interviews with Linda Austin, Nate Wooley, Buke and Gase, Ben Goldberg, John Butcher, Marisa Anderson, The Tenses and others. It’s available for any e-book reader for $5. Proceeds from the sales of Unfinished help the CMG do its work facilitating experimental and improvised performances in Portland. You can find Unfinished for sale December 14th at Smashwords : https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/386617 .
Untoward: a benefit for the CMG
Friday September 28th, 2012
Bamboo Grove
134 SE Taylor
all ages
6pm – 12am
sliding scale $8 -$800
6 pm Doors open
7:30 (Main) Richard Decker, John Savage, Ryan Stuewe & Lucy Yim
7:45 (Main) Concern
8:15 (Atrium) Medicine Cabinet (Dan Duval, Lee Elderton)
8:45 (Main) Joe Cunningham, Danielle Ross & Reed Wallsmith
9:00 (Main) Interiors
9:30 (Atrium) Like A Villain
10:00 (Main) David Krom & Doug Theriault
10:15 (Main) Jeff Brodsky, Ben Kates, & Sally Garrido Spencer
10:30 (Atrium) Mike Barber, Tracy Broyles & Ryan Miller
11:00 (Main) Allie Hankins & Zac Pennington
11:30 (Main) Wet Wool
installation by Alex Ian Smith
Half of the money raised will be used specifically to pay local creative musicians, dancers and other performance acts through the 2012-2013 season!
The Creative Music Guild is a Portland, Oregon all-volunteer, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote experimental, improvised music by presenting concerts, workshops and other events that bring together internationally recognized musicians with local performers, audiences and music students of all ages. For over twenty years, the CMG has been a leader in cultivating Portland’s experimental and improvised music.
There are currently four major components of the organization: The Outset Series, The Improvisation Summit of Portland, The Visiting Artist Series and The Benefit Show.
The organization is run by the board of directors as well as committee members made up of local performers, educators and music lovers. We also benefit from the excellent work of a group of committed volunteers and the advice of our advisory board.
7:30 DJ Jeffrey Jerusalem
8pm Daniel Menche – Live Noise Film Score
Interlude – DJ Jeffrey Jerusalem
9pm 1939 Ensemble
Interlude – Dancer/Musician Collaboration
9:40 Deep Fried Boogie Ensemble
Interlude – Dancer/Musician Collaboration
10:30 Better Homes and Gardens
Interlude – Matt Carlson/Dancer Collaboration
11:20 Why I Must Be Careful
Coda – Dancer/Musician Collaboration
Dancers: Philippe Bronchtein, Jin Camou, Richard Decker, Lucy Yim, Allie Hankins, Danielle Ross, and Shannon Stewart.
Collaborating musicians: Matt Carlson, Ryan Miller, Seth Brown, Ben Kates
Pete Swanson – Much anticipated solo performance by the sonic dervish formerly of Yellow Swans.
– Golden Retriever – Serious synth and effected bass clarinet tripscapes. Cinematic, strange, and smart. Jonathan Sielaff (bass clarinet) and Matt Carlson (synth).
– Thicket – Caustic, mercurial, and intuitive improvisations by members of Dragging an Ox through Water, Why I Must Be Careful, and Fly!Fly!Fly!Fly!Fly! Brian Mumford (guitar), Ben Kates (reed guitar), and John Niekrasz (drums).
– Rich Halley Trio – Tight, eloquent avant-jazz by Portland’s finest. Rich Halley (sax), Andre St.James (bass), Carson Halley (drums). Rich is a fantastic saxophonist and founded the Creative Music Guild in 1991. Andre and Carson make for a blistering rhythm section.
– The Creative Composers’ Collective of Portland will debut two new ecstatic compositions by Heather Vergotis and Ursula Morton. Performers include stalwarts of Portland’s avant music scene: Mark Kaylor, Gregg Skloff, JP Jenkins, Ryan Steuwe, Alyssa Reed, Todd Dickerson, Heather Vergotis, and Ursula Morton
.- Deep Leap Microcinema deftly combines live performance and contemporary video art.
