michael snow/alan licht/aki onda October 11, 2006

ROUGHIDEA

Presents Synth When II

Michael Snow Alan Licht Aki Onda

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Goethe Institut Toronto

163 King Street West

: 6:00 PM discussion (free)

: 8:00 PM concert (ticketed)

Michael Snow (CA) – CAT Synthesizer

Alan Licht (US) – guitar, electronics

Aki Onda (JP) – cassette recorders, electronics, etc.



Sculptor, painter, film maker and musician Michael Snow initiated some lofty jazz ideals with the ESP classic free jazz soundtrack to his 1964 film New York Eye +Ear Control.



Cassette shape shifter, Aki Onda mixes audio like Snow cuts film. Guitar alchemist, writer, journalist Alan Licht triangulates a performing trio manifesting a mutual respect for sound and cinema.



Messrs Onda, Licht and Snow will engage in a panel discussion Synth When where they will address the post Moog status of electronic musical instrumentation and invention.

The initial SYNTH WHEN was display of analog/modular synths featuring a collection of Charles James’ during VTO4 festival at the Kinowelt Hall.

Koln based analogue synthesizer master Thomas Lehn conducted our first workshop/lecture based on the mechaniques and techniques of electronic keyboards, followed by a concert of Toronto players Tanya Gill, James Montgomery and London, UK based Kaffe Matthews.





$16 advance at Rotate This, SoundScapes
$22 door
ROUGHIDEA


Michael Snow/Alan Licht/Aki Onda trio

Starting as a professional jazz pianist in the 50s, Canadian Michael Snow has since achieved fame as a visual artist, creating the iconic "Walking Woman" image in the 60s as well as the genre-defining structural film Wavelength. He has continued to pursue music as a free improvisor, after arguably mid-wifing the form in the sessions for the soundtrack to his 1964 film New York Eye and Ear Control with Albert Ayler and others. Snow has performed with Evan Parker, Roswell Rudd, Derek Bailey and Tony Conrad as well as being a founding member of the CCMC (Snow, Paul Dutton and John Oswald) and playing frequent solo concerts. His photography, videos, films, paintings, and sculpture continue to be exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide.



Since he established himself as a producer in Audio Sports with Eye Yamatsuka (Boredoms) and Nobukazu Takemura, Japanese composer Aki Onda has released a string of exquisite solo albums featuring contributions from musicians as diverse as Blixa Bargeld and Linda Sharrock. These include 2003's Cassette Memories series and the highly acclaimed albums Ancient & Modern and Bon Voyage! on which Onda performs with multiple cassette recorders and electronics, using sounds he has field-recorded himself as a diary. Most recently, he started an audio-visual project, Cinemage, images for cinema or homage for cinema, which is consisted of slide projections of still photograhs and improvised music.



Guitarist and improvisor Alan Licht has performed with legends of underground rock (Arthur Lee, Tom Verlaine, Royal Trux, Arto Lindsay, Jandek, Mandarin Movie@NOW Lounge May 2006) as well as some of the foremost jazz and experimental musicians (Rashied Ali, Peter Brotzmann, Keith Rowe, Christian Marclay, Ken Vandermark, Phill Niblock, Rhys Chatham),. He currently co-leads Text of Light with Lee Ranaldo, in which they and other musicians improvise concerts as classic experimental films screen behind them. A long-time fan of Michael Snow's, he interviewed him in the late 90s and subsequently performed with him at festivals in Canada and Chicago . He has been performing duos with Aki Onda for the past five years, and was reminded of Snow's filmmaking when he heard Onda's album Bon Voyage!



Thus, a trio was formed which achieves the all-too-rare alchemy of strong separate identities and shared aesthetics into a holistic unit. It made its debut at Tonic in New York in December 2005.

Official Website: http://www.roughidea.ca