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Mari Kimura & Kyoko Kitamura – Poly-Monologue (2013)
World Premiere of "Shin-rin Yoku" (Forest Bathing) by Michael Gatonska (2013)

Poly-Monologue is a part of a large-scale multimedia project “ONE” which will tour in Fall, 2013, written for a versatile experimental singer Kyoko Kitamura using trilingual (English, French, Japanese) text. Kitamura interacts with Kimura’s Augmented Violin, created by the Realtime Musical Interaction Team at IRCAM, as well as interactive graphics created by Japanese visual artist in new media, Tomoyuki Kato. Choreography by Mark Lamb.

Mari Kimura will also give the world premiere of "Shin-rin Yoku" (Forest Bathing) written for her by composer/painter Michael Gatonska.  "Shin Rin Yoku" is an interactive audio/visual work, also using Kimura's "Augmented Violin" system.  Both Kimura's "ONE" and Gatonska's "Shin Rin Yoku" are supported by the generous grant from the Composer Assistance Program from New Music USA.

Mari Kimura will also give the world premiere of "Shin-rin Yoku" (Forest Bathing) written for her by composer/painter Michael Gatonska. "Shin Rin Yoku" is an interactive audio/visual work, also using Kimura's "Augmented Violin" system. Both Kimura's "ONE" and Gatonska's "Shin Rin Yoku" are supported by the generous grant from the Composer Assistance Program from New Music USA.

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Mari Kimura is at the forefront of creative violinists, widely admired as the inventor of “Subharmonics” and works for interactive computer music, winning the Guggenheim Fellowship, Fromm Commission, and Residency at IRCAM in Paris in 2010.  She received numerous grants including NYFA, Arts International, Meet The Composer, Japan Foundation, and NYSCA. Mari’s CD, The World Below G and Beyond, features her “Subharmonics” and interactive compositions using IRCAM’s “Augmented Violin”.
www.marikimura.com

Kyoko Kitamura is a vocal improviser and composer who has performed and/or recorded with many distinguished musicians including Anthony Braxton, Reggie Workman, Jay Clayton, Steve Coleman, Jim Staley, and Taylor Ho Bynum. Mostly recently, she appears on two Anthony Braxton albums, the opera "Trillium E" (New Braxton House 2011) and the "Syntactical GTM Choir (NYC) 2011" (New Braxton House 2012). She also released her first solo album "Armadillo In Sunset Park" (KK 2011), a collection of songs written for Mark Lamb Dance. Her voice can be heard on Taylor Ho Bynum & SpiderMonkey Strings release "Madeleine Dreams" (Firehouse 12 Records 2009), Jamie Baum’s "Solace" (Sunnyside Records 2008) and Steve Coleman’s "Lucidarium" (Label Bleu 2004), among others. She currently works with Anthony Braxton as a vocalist in his Tri-Centric Orchestra and as a board member of his Tri-Centric Foundation. AllMusicGuide calls her “a major asset… Kitamura is an expressive vocalist who knows how to be quirky and eccentric but is also quite musical.”
www.kyokokitamura.com

Michael Gatonska has received numerous awards for his compositions, including the 2012 American Prize for his orchestral composition The Whispering Wind, and fellowship and grant awards from the Civitella Ranieri Center, the Kosciuszko Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, the Chicago Symphony First Hearing Award, three ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the American Music Center, Meet the Composer, the American Composers Forum, the Roberts Foundation, the Underwood/ACO Commission, a MATA Festival Commission, the Connecticut Commission on Art, the Field, the Mary Cary Flagler Charitable Trust, and he is a MacDowell Colony Fellow.  In 2009, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Field of Arts by the Connecticut Education Foundation.  His music has been performed around the world including at the Krakow International Composers Festival, the Teagu Festival of Contemporary Music (South Korea), the Festival Internacional de Musica Contemporanea (Bogota, Colombia), the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Tribeca New Music Festival, the MATA Festival, Piano Spheres—Exploring Music of Our Time, the CSN New Music Festival, the Kosciuszko Foundation Chamber Music Series, REAL Art Ways, and at the New Britain Museum of American Art.  Recently, his work has evolved to include capturing soundscapes in an effort to present audiences with a deep listening experience and to advance the development of a personal artistic vision which combines the two things in life that he is very passionate about – music composition and nature’s acoustics. In August of 2012, his soundscapes were broadcast on the “Gardens in the Air” Festival on Datscha Radio, Berlin, Germany.
www.michaelgatonska.com

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ImproTech is an event bringing together composers, performers and researchers coming from USA and France and specially interested by the use of technology for musical improvisation. Tonight's concert celebrates the begining of this festival which continues with conferences and workshops at NYU and Columbia University from May 17th to 19th.

Featuring performances by:

Roscoe Mitchell, Saxophone, David Wessel, touch controller & computer , Improvisation

Robert Rowe : Cigar Smoke (2004) for clarinet and interactive music system –  Esther Lamneck, clarinette

George Lewis : Interactive Trio (2007) for trombone, two pianos and interactive music system – George Lewis, trombone,  Geri Allen, piano

Georges Bloch : Duck Laughs (world premiere) for percussions, Preceded by Canaries by Elliot Carter (performed by Laurent Mariusse or projected on-screen) –  Laurent Mariusse, percussions, Georges Bloch, OMax interaction

Raphael Imbert : OMax at Lomax – Nine Spirit Company : Raphael Imbert, sax,  Simon Sieger piano & trombone,  Benjamin Lévy,Omax interaction, Thomas Weirich, Guitar

Bernard Lubat, piano, Gerard Assayag, OMax interaction, Improvisation

Steve Lehman, sax, live electronics, Mari Kimura, violin, live electronics, Vijay Iyer, Piano, Improvisation

Jean-Baptiste Barrière : Crossing the Blind Forest (2011) for flute, live electronics and live video – Margaret Lancaster, flute

Steve Coleman, saxophone,  Gilbert Nouno, live electronics, Improvisation

For more info visit http://repmus.ircam.fr/improtechpny

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$15 General Admission
$10 Members/Students/Seniors

The New York Electronic Art Festival was created to provide a responsive public context for the appreciation of cutting-edge electronic artwork through concerts, panels, workshops, and exhibitions of the highest quality across the arts and technology spectrum. Tonights event highlights new work by violinist/composer Mari Kimura and media artist Angie Eng.

Media artist Angie Eng presents Liminal - a series of live video/music cinepoems based on the concept of liminality. Eng combines inventive new tools like the VideoBass, French avant-garde experimental cinema tricks and customized music/video software (Max, Jitter, VDMX and Module 8) for a genre-crossing collaboration which fuses experimental jazz, contemporary electronic music, neo-abstract expressionism, puppetry and live experimental cinema. Directed by Angie Eng with musicians: Audrey Chen, Shoko Nagai, Satoshi Takeshi and special guest on live video: Nancy Meli Walker.

Eng has directed and collaborated on numerous experimental video projects including current video/music collaborations with Rhys Chatham (Echodes), Pascal Battus (Tremorrag) and Sofi Hemon (The Lumiaks). Her work has been performed and exhibited at venues such as Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, Lincoln Center Video Festival, The Kitchen, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Anthology Film Archives and others and her videos have been exhibited in international digital art festivals from Cuba to Canada. Eng has also received grants and commissions from New Radio and Performing Arts, Harvestworks, Art In General, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and many more.

Hailed by The New York Times as "a virtuoso playing at the edge" , composer/violinist Mari Kimura is widely known as the inventor of "Subharmonics" and her works for interactive computer music.  Recently she won 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition and 2010 Composer in Residence at IRCAM in Paris.  Ms. Kimura's works have been supported by grants including NYFA, Jerome Foundation, Arts International, Japan Foundation, Meet the Composer, NYSCA and 2010 Fromm Award. Since 1998, Ms. Kimura has been teaching Interactive Computer Music Performance at The Juilliard School.  Her recent Mutable Music album "The World Below G and Beyond" features her works for Subharmonics.  http://www.marikimura.com

Tonight Mari Kimuara presents:
EIGENSPACE for Augmented Violin and Interactive Graphics (2011, world premiere commissioned by Harvestworks)
Graphics by Tomoyuki Kato
"Eigenspace" is commissioned by Harvestworks, which incorporates IRCAM's bowing motion sensor technology "Augmented Violin" and interactive graphics, created by Japan's leading visual artist in new media, Tomoyuki Kato who most recently exhibited at 2010 Shanghai Expo. Taken from "eigenvalue", a mathematical function used in analyzing the bowing movement, in "Eigenspace" Kimura's musical expression is extracted by the bowing motion sensor technology, interacting with image and sounds in realtime.

Other works include CANON ÉLASTIQUE for Augmented Violin (2009). This "elastic canon" is a 1-person canon with a simple delay, but to stretch and shorten using the bowing motion data and gesture. VOYAGE APOLLONIAN for Augmented Violin (2010), Graphics by Ken Perlin, was commissioned by the American Festival of Microtonal Music, "Voyage Apollonian" is an interactive audio visual work using the bowing motion sensor data. Ken Perlin, an Oscar-winning computer graphics artist and professor at NYU, designed this imaginative animation based on the fractal ideas called the "Apollonian Gasket" .

Also premiering tonight will be the first version of WRESTLING AN ANGEL - a work for violin and electronics, written for Kato by British composer Andrew Lovett. Andrew Lovett recently moved from the UK to live in Princeton, joining the department of music at Princeton University as a Professional Specialist. He is known for small-scale operas, chamber music and electoacoustic works, performed in Germany, France, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Japan, Canada, Cuba, the USA and throughout the UK.

Tomoyuki Kato is a renown Japanese visual artist/movie director, who works in wide range of projects including advertisements, commercials, museums exhibitions and theme-parks.

Kato's work is known for the superb quality, high-impact, originality and new technical methods. Recently, Kato has been active in creating corporate future vision, such as "concept car", incorporating live action, computer graphics and animation on project bases. His highly acclaimed "Grand Odyssey" created for 2005 Aichi Expo's Toshiba/Mitsui pavilion, is now displayed at Nagasaki's Huistenbosch theme-park. In 2010, Kato created "Better Life from Japan" exhibit for Otsuka Pharmaceutical company at Shanghai Expo, using 360-degree display. Kato has received and nominated for numerous awards at international and national festivals, including Japan Ministry of Culture Media Arts Festival, Los Angels International Short Film Festival, Montreal International Film Festival, and London International Advertising Festival.

Photo: Librado Romero/The New York Times