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:

www.creativemusicguild.org

www.facebook.com/creativemusicguild

http://twitter.com/pdxcmg