Today Lampo announces its WS20 season, which begins in late February with new work from Chicago artist Whitney Johnson (aka Matchess) and concludes in June with a special performance by the Jessica Pavone String Ensemble, as we also celebrate 10 years of Lampo at the Graham Foundation. In between, we bring you new projects from … Continued
Lampo director Andrew Fenchel and musician Steve Hauschildt will talk about experimental music and conduct a hands-on workshop at Apple Michigan Avenue on Saturday, January 25 at 2:00 p.m. Steve also will perform a short set. Music Lab: Sonic Landscapes with Lampo and Steve Hauschildt. Details here.
Lampo is very pleased to announce its FW19 season of programs—with special new projects from artists Sarah Davachi, Laura Steenberge, Roc Jiménez de Cisneros, Caterina Barbieri, Catherine Lamb and Rebecca Lane. On October 5, Sarah Davachi premieres a new long-form composition for pipe organ and two French horns, in the soaring interior of Rockefeller Chapel. … Continued
Lampo director Andrew Fenchel looks back at Resonance: A Sound Art Marathon at the Walker Art Center, in this review for the Walker Reader. The May 2019 festival, organized by Pavel Pyś and Doug Benidt, included artists Philip Blackburn, Christine Sun Kim, Walter Kitundu, … Continued
Today Lampo announces its WS19 season, featuring projects by artists Florian Hecker, Peter Rehberg, James Hoff, Jon Davies and DeForrest Brown Jr., and Anthony Pateras—with five special performances across Chicago, at the Poetry Foundation, the Graham Foundation, and the new Green Line Performing Arts Center in the city’s Washington Park neighborhood. Lampo WS19 begins in … Continued
Jeff Witscher aka Rene Hell premieres new music for Lampo—and for a small number of people.
Variations in Pathological Sound Music is a two-day, multi-part live computer work, with elements for piano, radio, computer synthesis and rewired text-to-speech software. In this weekend matinee, Witscher performs for four hours both Saturday and Sunday. Each of 16 different 25-minute sets is a variation on a theme and a mere segment of the entire work, and is offered for one person at a time, listening on headphones.
Witscher’s composition is one of hybrid styles and reworked sounds. Sound music is his term for the overlap between electronic composition, computer music, and sound art. He also closely identifies with radio art, for the way it “raids all genres” and for its techniques, using music, sound and voice to tell a story.
Here, the tale is told twice daily, in four episodes—”Sound Music,” “Tiling & Sound Music,” “Minor Calamities” and “Cob Music”—to create a sort of unhinged, serial narrative. Witscher touches on conventional human themes like work and futility as well as more instinctual arrangements. The goal, he says, is to make music that fluidly communicates corporeal ideas and abstract disorientation together.
Jeff Witscher (b.1983, Long Beach, Calif.) manages his own custodial and maintenance company, Vincent’s Expert Cleaners in Portland, Ore. He has recorded under many different names, Rene Hell perhaps being the most known. He makes sound compositions with his computer, primarily using field recordings, the internet, text-to-speech software, and computer-generated synthesis. He is currently working on a record for Alter. Recent solo recordings include Approximately 1,000 Beers (2018), Fly Monkey Sisaj Kura (2017), Cob Music (2016), Bifurcating a Resounding No! (2014), Meclu (2013) and Vanilla Call Option (2013).
In October 2014 Jeff Witscher premiered Bifurcating a Resounding No! for Lampo.
Variations in Pathological Sound Music is part of an occasional series of commissioned works, where artists offer short, serial, person-to-person performances, created for the 10 x 20-foot dimensions of the Lampo office. Attendance is limited to 8 people per day and 16 people overall.