Big & Little

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. Titled la brume jaune, the piece explores alternating experiences of gradual movement and stasis. The interplay between the organ (played by Davachi) and the two amplified horns (played by Liz Deitemyer and Matthew Oliphant), provides another layer of acoustic counterpoint, reflecting the Canadian composer’s more recent writing for unconventional chamber ensembles.

Lampo brought Sarah here this past June to work with the Skinner Organ. What an incredible day that was, to hang out and listen as she worked out ideas. This is our third project with her, our second in Rockefeller, and our umpteenth with our friends at the Renaissance Society.

Things scale down considerably, but only in room size, when we bring California artist and performer Laura Steenberge to premiere a solo performance, designed for the close quarters of the 10 x 20 foot Lampo office. In this new work, To the Winds, From the Machine, she uses harmonicas, air horns, voice, paper and electric fans, to present a sequence of gradually shifting sound textures. The California artist’s aspirations may be as big as her means are small—to create the ineffable with humble items, in a confined space and little time. Attendance is limited to four people in each 20-minute performance, offered twice per hour, from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. (October 19, Lampo Annex).

Next up is a direct homage to the history of early Chicago house, performed in an early Chicago house. Roc Jiménez de Cisneros is part of the Barcelona-based computer music group EVOL. In November, we bring Roc here to present a new audiovisual piece. Six Hexaflexagons for Chicago is his weird love letter to the tracks, producers and sounds that shaped dance music, turned into a stream of awkward locked grooves and algorithmically-churned acid motifs (November 9, Graham Foundation).

On November 18, Italian-born, Berlin-based composer Caterina Barbieri premieres new music for Lampo and the Chicago Architecture Biennial—in a special multi-channel performance and her local debut.

Here, she plays pattern-based synthesizer music amid the epic, ornately patterned Preston Bradley Hall. Barbieri uses repetition to trigger spatial and temporal hallucinations, where the perception of the present is constantly refreshed, in an endless sense of loss, re-discovery and the search for self-orientation. One can only speculate these notions are enhanced by the ample hang-time in tonight’s venue. Presented in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Biennial; support provided by the Graham Foundation and the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago (Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center).

As the year comes to a close, composer Catherine Lamb (viola/voice) and frequent collaborator Rebecca Lane (microtonal bass flute/voice) join us to perform new and recent compositions at the Graham Foundation.

Cat blends West Coast experimentalism with the structures and intonations of ancient Hindustani music. Her music reveals a slow-changing spectrum of microtonal colors and temporal effects, in stunning works that explore the interaction of sounds in specific physical spaces or rooms (December 14, Graham Foundation).

Ahead of her performance, on Friday, December 13, Cat will present a new performative lecture. In The Form of the Spiral, she draws something other than a straight line from artists like James Tenney and Maryanne Amacher, to things she has learned from Dhrupad, an ancient style of Hindustani classical music, making connections with her own recent work (Lampo Annex).