Thursday, January 28, 2016, 8:00 pm, $10
Sarah Davachi & Paul ClipsonAshley Bellouin and Ben Bracken
Marielle Jakobsons
As a composer of electronic and electroacoustic music, Sarah Davachi engages in practices of analog synthesis and psychoacoustic manipulations. Her work focuses on the experience of enveloped sonic dwelling, often utilizing extended durations and drones, gradual transformations in texture, and simple harmonic structures that emphasize variations in overtone complexity and natural phasing patterns. She holds an MFA in electronic music and recording media from Mills College and, since 2007, has worked for the National Music Centre in Canada as an interpreter, researcher, and archivist of their collection of acoustic and electronic keyboard instruments. She has held artist residencies at The Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff, CA), STEIM (Amsterdam, NL), WORM (Rotterdam, NL), and EMS (Stockholm, SE) and has released recordings with Students of Decay, Important Records, Constellation Tatsu, Full Spectrum Records, and JAZ Records. Davachi currently resides in Vancouver, Canada. http://sarahdavachi.
Marielle V. Jakobsons is a composer and intermedia artist based in Oakland, CA. Her compositions evoke minimalism with melodic drone and enveloping polyrhythmic soundscapes of synthesizers and strings. She collaborates extensively in the experimental arts often composing or designing sound for visual elements such as film or interactive media. She builds installations and instruments which bring focus to visceral experience of sound and light, most recently in her series “Macro-Cymatic Studies.” As a solo artist, with her bands “Date Palms”, “Myrmyr”, and other collaborations, she has published recordings and toured internationally on Thrill Jockey, Mexican Summer, Digitalis, Students of Decay, Important Records, among others. Most recently a new choral work “The Threads Beneath” was premiered by The International Orange Chorale of SF, and a new solo album is due out in mid-2016. Marielle received her BA from Case Western and the Cleveland Institute of Music and a graduate certificate in computer music composition at the Center for Computer Composition of Iannis Xenakis (CCMIX). At Mills College, she was awarded her MFA in 2006, as well as the Elizabeth Mills Crawford Award in Composition. She has been awarded the Djerassi Artist Residency, Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency, Brush Creek Foundation Arts Residency, American Composer’s Forum Grant, NEXMAP Sounding Out California Composer’s Award, has exhibited installations at the LAB, San Francisco and California College of the Arts, among other distinctions. She has been a Visiting Professor at Mills College and San Francisco State University, and Visiting Artist at Eastern Washington University. http://www.Ashley Bellouin and Ben Bracken make music with both traditional and hand made instruments that exploit the natural overtones and sympathetic vibrations generated by highly redundant tuning systems. Minimal structures and simple harmonic relationships give rise to meditative washes of sound. Each composition is constructed by considering the personal experience of a physical site, the materials used in the construction of the instruments, and the interplay between the two. Their performances are a mixture of the imagined and real, of natural phenomena, and direct action. Ashley and Ben have been awarded collaborative residencies at the Paul Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency Center, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and EMS in Stockholm, Sweden.
Paul Clipson is a San Francisco-based filmmaker and experimental film artist whose work involves projected installation and live collaborative performances with sound artists and musicians. His largely improvised, in-camera-edited films bring to light subconscious preoccupations and unexpected visual forms. His works have been exhibited and performed both nationally and internationally at such festivals as the New York Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. http://www.