Blank Forms RADIO

To conclude “Coming Together: Attica 50 Years On,” Blank Forms presented a day-long May Day radio show commemorating the 1971 Attica rebellion. Celebrating the 50th anniversaries of both Archie Shepp’s Attica Blues and Frederic Rzewski’s compositions “Attica” and “Coming Together,” the show featured key compositions and political recordings from the 1970s, including a rare concert of Rzewski’s Attica works with Julius Eastman, Sonia Sanchez reading at the prison accompanied by incarcerated poets and musicians, and a post-mortem from Bobby Seale about his participation in negotiations at the prison. Hosts Ciarán Finlayson and Lawrence Kumpf interviewed Renée Levine Packer, author of This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo (Oxford University Press, 2010); Glo Harris, wife of Beaver Harris; and Michael J. Hull, director of the film Betrayal at Attica (2021) and custodian of the digital archive of Elizabeth Fink's Attica Brothers Legal Defense evidence collection—writer Isaac Brosilow conducted an interview with Joshua Melville, son of Attica Brother Sam Melville. This event was produced in conjunction with the New York University Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions.

Coming Together: A Mayday Broadcast

The Public's Not Ready For You Yet: A Cricket Radio Show

Special guest shows from around the world.

https://www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/blank-forms-19th-may-2023

Blank Forms: Arbitrary Fun with Lawrence Kumpf and Lary 7 190523

The Warsaw-based club night Brutaż is helping to shape Poland's underground through thoughtfully curated parties and strong politics behind their grassroots ideals. Here's a new mix showcasing their style, to give a small taste of what to expect at the surprise room they will present at Unsound 2015.

In the words of Brutaż's founder: "There are many forms of dancing. Some of them are just a fad and a pose, others result from state-of-the-art entertainment. We're interested in neither. Rhythm results in movement. It's unavoidable, no matter how odd the tempo, context and environment. This mix is a tip of the hat to nobody, the nobody who dances. Nobody is the most outstanding dancer at Brutaż."

Unsound Podcast 24: Brutaż

Paonga Sea

Spice Village

Recorded in conjunction with Clocktower Radio (clocktower.org). 

This week Lawrence Kumpf is joined by alto saxophonist and sound experimentalist Matana Roberts for a conversation and overview of Roberts' work in anticipation of her weeklong public residency as part of Madison Square Park's Prismatic Park this September. They share a range of Roberts' music, both solo and collaborative, including her quartet, parts of her ambitious 12-record Coin Coin series, and odds and ends from her Soundcloud page. 

Chicago-born, NYC-based alto saxophonist Matana Roberts is an internationally renowned composer and bandleader whose work has forged new conceptual approaches to considering narrativity, history, community and political expression within improvisatory musical structures. A past member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and the Black Rock Coalition(BRC), she prefers the term “sound experimentalist” to the historically charged “jazz musician” to refer to her multidisciplinary work, which also encompasses theater, poetry, dance, and most recently visual art. Since 2006 Roberts has developed a visionary 12-chapter project called Coin Coin, inspired by the nickname of freed slave and businesswoman Marie Thérèse Metoyer, who established a well prospering Creole community in Louisiana. Drawing from the intertwining narratives of her own genealogical research and fragments of African-American history—from the slave trade through Reconstruction and the civil rights movement to the current climate of racial turmoil—Roberts offers a nearly anthropological examination of music, storytelling, and the long, diverse trajectories of the African diaspora in America. Her compositional approach, which she calls P.S.Q.: Panoramic Sound Quilting, employs collage-based paper and digital graphic scores as a basis for new music composition, improvisation and her bricolage of work songs, lullabies, spirituals, poetry, electronics, and primal screams. She has collaborated with Roscoe Mitchell, Jayne Cortez, Merce Cunningham, Jem Cohen,Rob Mazurek, Henry Grimes, Vijay Iyer, Nicole Mitchell and Pauline Oliveros to name but a few, and has been invited to lecture and teach extensively.

Blank Forms : : Clocktower.org

Blank Forms #15: Matana Roberts, Prismatic Park

A conversation between scholar and historian Amy Cimini, Yarn/Wire percussionist and Adjacencies interpreter Russell Greenberg, and Lawrence Kumpf situating Maryanne Amacher’s "Adjacencies" within the lineage of her larger body of work. They discuss the practical challenges surrounding the interpretation and re-staging of the piece 51 years after its last performance and play a variety of pertinent audio, including a rehearsal recording of "Adjacencies"’ original performance by Jan Williams and Edward Burnham, audio research material used as a model for its reinterpretation, and a selection from the later piece "City-Links..: Buffalo" demonstrating Amacher’s practice of recycling audio material from earlier work.

Blank Forms #21: Maryanne Amacher's Adjacencies

Blank Forms' Lawrence Kumpf is joined by composer Tashi Wada for a show surveying Wada's work and methodology of the past decade. They discuss Wada's time and studies with James Tenney at CalArts, his early forays into just intonation, and his close collaborations with cellist Charles Curtis and his father Yoshi Wada.

Tashi Wada is a Los Angeles-based composer and performer whose works explore harmonic overtones, resonance, and dissonance through precise tuning and a gradual change in pitch. Grounded in a belief that “music should be as direct as possible,” his compositions use apparently simple structures to generate rich and unanticipated perceptual effects. Working in relation to American experimental music, microtonal music, and so-called drone music, Wada’s practice is also informed by interdisciplinary performance and Fluxus-affiliated artists. He studied composition at CalArts with James Tenney and for many years has performed alongside his father, composer Yoshi Wada.

Blank Forms Radio

Blank Forms #22: Tashi Wada

Lyrics:

There was a place beyond the pale,
Thousands of miles that a man would sail.
Busy streets all paved in gold.
Anyone can make it here, or so I’m told.

There she stands the light and the law in her hands.
Beautiful as can be, set my spirit free.

Chorus:
She’s got a lot of love to give,
That don’t make it for free.
She’ll have you spending all your money
From sea to shining sea.
I’ll cross any bridge to her,
I’ll ride any rail.
Cant keep a promise,
But she sure can tell a tale.

I saw your face bleak in the bay,
Eyes cold as stone as you were telling us please stay.
A cinderella story, bell of the ball.
Knocking on your door I’m at your beck and call.

Lady liberty looking right down on me.
Bureaucratic as can be living under a fee.

Chorus:
She’s got a lot of love to give,
That don’t make it for free.
She’ll have you spending all your money
From sea to shining sea.
I’ll cross any bridge to her,
I’ll ride any rail.
Cant keep a promise,
But she sure can tell a tale.

Tell Tale

Excerpt from side B of 'Gog Magog' on We Are One (WAO 001)

T.D. / S.S. "On The Rocks!" (excerpt)

Recorded in Chicago, Toronto, and Manhattan, 2019
Mastered by Mikey Young
John Daniel: Turntable (Debussy's La Mer), Signal Processing, iPhone
Photograph Taken By Ed Stuparitz

forestmanagementadr.bandcamp.com/album/after-dark

Forest Management - The Blue Light Blues

Dustywave

My Life Is Music

Dustywave Part 5: My Life Is Music

slipsilver

justin

Thirst idea fire company/SahelSounds of Sahara/Gordon Hempton Solitude/Genggong II David Attenborough/Ocigam Trazom Christina Kubisch/Pierre Mariétan Rose Des Vents IIB Camp 2 Gir Jenssen/ 3 Hour Delay Packed Inside the Plane (Shenzen/Hong Kong) Grzegorz Bojanek/Joe McPhee Graham Lambkin Chance Meeting /Voices From Possessed Children (1978) Okkulte Stimmen/ EX HK. Side B Hans Kruesi+Endless Humiliation The Gerogerigegege/Halim El-Dabh Leiyla Visitations 2/Desert Lizards & Insect Solo G Hempton/Mahalid Destin Manambitamby/Aaron dilloway mudwalk, more Thirst idea fire,K&K Shots/Jeph Jarman Recording of Hail/Arno Peeters Elements/Incident at Ras Oumlil Jos Smolders/ Jag en gök Hans Appelqvist/John Tilbury, Keith Rowe, Kjell Bjørgeengen Sissel/Tom Didn’t Get the Right Gift Mechanical Sterility/Sheep Wind Fence Flute recorded on Dartmoor 1971 David Toop/Tomoyuki Aoki, Harutaka Mochizuki, & Hasegawa-Shizuo Enka Moods/Jem Finer Water and Birds/Birds Pauline Oliveros + Andrew Deutsch/World Trade Center 1999: Processing Sound through a window on the 91st floor, facing North  - Stephen Vitiello

DISSOLVE IN THE PRESENT

Non-profit curatorial platform for ⏳-based art.

Blank Forms #15: Matana Roberts, Prismatic Park

Blank Forms

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