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Circuitous Body

a collaboration of music and dance
choreography: Chris Ferris
composer: Loren Kiyoshi Dempster
dancers: Melissa Brading, Grace DiLorenzo, Haley Hauglum, Kristen Mangione, and Alexandra Rose
musicians: Loren Kiyoshi Dempster (cello), Leanne Darling (viola), and Helen Yee (violin)

Chris Ferris & Dancers is known for its fearless action, physical indulgence, and elegant design. Loren Kiyoshi Dempster’s music for Circuitous Body will be created by musicians moving in the space much as the dancers do, yet covering with sound larger gaps in space than bodies physically can. Circuitous Body will begin with what could be the ending and end with a new beginning as the perception of the performance time line is dismantled. This piece will contrast highly set intricate work against structured improvisational textures exploring the thought and impulsive processes by which these sounds and actions are created. In Circuitous Body the audience’s focus will shift in a journey throughout the room as performers connect from the far corners to creating intimate dances and music just for you. Visit Chris Ferris & Dancers at www.chrisferrisdance.com

Chris Ferris is the artistic director of Chris Ferris & Dancers. Her work is based on an exploration of movement from a sculptural, dynamic and emotional point of view. Its focus is to bring you design in space and time with a human element. Chris Ferris & Dancers’ Nov. 2011 concert, Continental Drift, was presented at CPR-Center for Performance Research, Brooklyn NY. Proximity Of Clouds (2010 full evening work), premiered at Joyce SoHo NYC; incorporating sculptures that hang, swing, slash, glow, and illuminate creating ethereal forms, a forest of moving architecture, and corporeal presences. Ferris’ dances have been shown in New York at 3 season concerts at the Cunningham Studio Theater. Her work has also been presented at WestFest, Green Space Blooms, Amalgamate Artist Series, Performance Mix, Solar Powered Dance Festival, Dance Conversations at the Flea, WAXworks, d.u.m.b.o. Dance Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, University Settlement, the 92nd Street Y, and a variety of other venues. Chris was the curator of the SWEAT Modern Dance Series and SWEAT Outdoors from 2000 to 2007. In 2005 Chris Ferris & Dancers was awarded a Meet The Composer Grant for composer Loren Dempster.

Loren Kiyoshi Dempster, uses a combination of cello, electronics, improvisation, notated scores, and extended techniques to create and perform music. An active chamber musician and improviser, he might be found in the next while performing music for Trio Tritticali, and the Dan Joseph Ensemble among many others. His compositions for music and movement have been presented at The Stone, Roulette, Issue Project Room, North River Music, Weseleyn College, and at Chez Bushwick, a 2007 Bessie Award winning performance arts space in Brooklyn of which he was a founding member. For over 12 years he had many performances with Merce Cunningham mainly playing the music for Interscape and Biped. Dempster has also toured with the choreographer Jeremy Wade, performing Glory, utilizing a live musical score co-composed/performed with Michael Mihalchick. Ever interested in the relationships between movement, space, and sound, he may be found creating or performing music for many choreographers and collaborators this season, including Harrison Atelier, Chris Ferris, Jonah Bokaer, Project Limb, and Margaret Paek.

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The New York-based duo of Loren Dempster (cello) and Dan Joseph (hammer dulcimer) perform collaborative compositions and improvisations that incorporate a mix of world music traditions, contemporary avant-garde techniques, and pulse minimalism. Active on the east coast since 2002, their music also contains a strong west coast sensibility, drawing as it does on their shared history in California where they originally met. They have performed to enthusiastic audiences at Merkin Concert Hall, Deep Listening Space, Galapagos, Issue Project Room and others. Based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, cellist Loren Kiyoshi Dempster can be found playing music with New York Minaturist Ensemble, Bushwick String Quartet, Jessica Pavone Ensemble, Matt Bauder Ensemble, XYZ composer collective, Taylor Ho Bynum Quintet, and the Dan Joseph Ensemble. Ever interested in the relationship between movement and sound, he has created or performed music for many choreographers including Chris Ferris, Catherine Kerr, Lenora Lee, Elke Rindfleisch, Ted Thomas, and Jeremy Wade. Dempster also enjoys performing as a touring musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company starting with the premieres of Biped, with music by Gavin Byrars and Interscape, which uses John Cage's solo cello work One8. A native of Seattle, has Cello performance degrees from the University of Washington, where he studied cello with Raymond Davis (Autumn 96, BA/BM) and from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 1999 where he studied with Bonnie Hampton. Dan Joseph is a free-lance composer based in New York City. He began his career at 16 as a drummer in the explosive punk scene of his native Washington, DC. During the late 1980s, he was active in the experimental tape music underground producing works for independent labels in the U.S. and abroad. He moved to California in 1991 where he resided for 10 years, earning composition degrees from CalArts and Mills College. As an artist who embraces the musical multiplicity of our time, he works simultaneously in a variety of mediums and contexts, including traditional instrumental composition, free improvisation, sound art and popular electronica. Since the late 1990s, the hammer dulcimer has been the primary vehicle for his music and he is an active performer with his own ensemble, The Dan Joseph Ensemble, as well as in various improvisational collaborations with cellist Loren Dempster, saxophonist John Ingle and others, and as an occasional soloist. A new CD of his chamber music compositions entitled Archaea has just been released by Mutable Music. Check out: http://www.danjoseph.org.

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Multi-reedist and composer Matt Bauder has been creating inspired and imaginative music since his early days in Ann Arbor, MI in the mid nineties. Now based in NYC, he also has been an active member of the creative music scenes in Chicago and Berlin. Dusted Magazine calls his music "the ideal collaboration between Morton Feldman and Jimmy Guiffre - the intersection of the long form composition and jazz's improvisational technique." He has studied, performed, and recorded with some of the major figures in modern music including Anthony Braxton, Alvin Lucier, Ellery Eskelin, Ken Vandermark, Rob Mazurek, Warn Devever, and Neil Micheal Haggerty. PAPER GARDENS is an extended work stemming from the most basic of ideas. The unison and the cluster serve as springboards for compositional and improvisational expansion. Roles of the strings and reeds are swapped freely from foreground to background, creating mysterious textures that can as easily turn on a dime as they can morph subconsciously into the unexpected. Matana Roberts (alto saxophone, clarinet), Loren Dempster (cello) and Reuben Radding (bass), three singular voices in experimental music, have been performing Paper Gardens with Bauder for the past year, honing in on the delicate balance and interaction that the piece requires.

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THB (cornet, compositions,) Matt Bauder (tenor sax, clarinet,) Mary Halvorson (electric guitar,) Evan O’Reilly (electric guitar,) Jessica Pavone (viola, electric bass,) Loren Kiyoshi Dempster (cello,) Tomas Fujiwara (drums.)

The THB Ensemble is a small ensemble committed to the further exploration of the extensions of composition and improvisation pioneered by masters like Ellington, Ives and members of the AACM. Led by cornettist/composer Bynum (best known for his work with Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, and the Fully Celebrated Orchestra,) the group features some of New York’s most outstanding young musicians, all established as leaders and composers in their own right, with the skills to navigate through many styles and genres in the search for something else.

Taylor Ho Bynum is a performer on cornet and various brass instruments, composer and bandleader. Born in 1975, Bynum was raised in Boston and presently resides in Brooklyn. He has established a reputation as a unique musical voice willing to take chances in a wide variety of artistic contexts. His projects cover a diverse range of artistic expression — from ensembles in the jazz tradition, to work with DJs, contemporary classical composers and world music ensembles, to composing for film and theater, to collaborations with dancers and visual artists. He presently leads his Sextet and the nine-piece ensemble SpiderMonkey Strings, and works with many of the leading figures in creative music. Bynum’s work with Anthony Braxton has spanned ten years and projects ranging from duo to orchestra, most recently touring Europe with Braxton’s new Sextet and Trio, and co-conducting Braxton’s European Creative Orchestra. Their CD “Duets (Wesleyan) 2002″ has received wide critical acclaim. Bynum’s next CD as a leader, “Other Stories (Three Suites,)” with SpiderMonkey Strings, will be released on 482 Music this fall. Check out www.taylorhobynum.com for more info.

The Village Voice calls Bynum “one of the savviest trumpeters to come along in recent years, a growling sound-and-space man in the tradition of Lester Bowie” and Signal to Noise Magazine reports, “his command of color and nuance is supreme…I don’t know how he did any of this, but it’s wonderful…Sheer joy.”