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
Today Olivia Block speaks about 132 Ranks and her experience working with the Skinner Organ at Rockefeller Chapel, in an interview on Morning Shift WBEZ 91.5 FM.
Block discusses her early days in Texas, how she came to experimental music, and her current interests as an artist, including what makes this new work commissioned by Lampo and the Renaissance Society unique for her.
“I have never created a piece for one particular instrument in one particular place,” says Block. “[132 Ranks] is definitely about this particular organ and its capabilities and the space that it’s in.”
She has long been interested in the Skinner Organ and Rockefeller Chapel, and that fascination is what led her to this project with Lampo—a project that began almost a year and a half ago and that involved six sessions with the organ over several months.
Block has notions of an architectural sound. Through multiple speaker placement and decisions about what to play on the organ she will “shape the room out with sound.”
“Wherever you are in that space you’re going to have a different experience,” explains the Chicago composer. “It’s really about sounding out the architecture.”
“Basically, the chapel is the instrument,” she says. “You are inside the instrument when you’re listening to that pipe organ.”
Play the full interview here.
Olivia Block’s 132 Ranks premieres Friday, April 21 8pm at Rockefeller Chapel.