The Red Room presents TOPOGRAPHIES, an evening of music by exceptional artists whose work traverses and transgresses digital, acoustic, and environmental sonic landscapes.

Featuring:

Tim Barnes + Jeph Jerman
Chris Pitsiokos + Philip White
Marko Timlin

Barnes/Jerman’s new album Matterings has just been released on Erstwhile.

Saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos and electronic musician Philip White’s music draws from equal parts David Tudor, Roscoe Mitchell, Eliane Radigue and Merzbow. Their album Paroxysm was released on Carrier Records in 2015.

“It’s very difficult to do justice, using words, to how enervating and annihilating [this duo] was” — Village Voice review of Pitsiokos and White

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Jeph Jerman, Agana Guam 1959 I grew up in a military family, so we moved around a lot, a different place every two years until my father retired in Colorado. I started playing music in a number of bar bands, whilst also experimenting with other forms- playing around with tape recorders and trying to find people to improvise with. Formed a few long lasting bands (Big Joey, City Of Worms, Blowhole) and began recording and playing solo as hands to. Ran a cassette label during the ’80’s cassette culture explosion.

Eventually ended up in Seattle, where I fell in with the local musical community. Two years of near-constant playing with people like Paul Hoskin, Doug Theriault, Dave Knott, Angelina Baldoz, Lori Goldston, Mike Shannon and Wally Shoup. One memorable concert with John Butcher. Continued to develop my solo work, and began improvising with natural sound makers (stones, shells, pine cones) around 1996. Formed the first animist orchestra in 1999, to perform works for same.

Moved to Arizona and have since done tours with Tim Barnes, Sean Meehan and David Daniell, Paul Hoskin, and toured Australia and New Zealand with Greg Davis. In 2001 I made recordings of the desert and it’s interaction with man made structures and released a new cassette every month for a year. I continue to investigate the desert, build crude sound making devices and play and record whenever the opportunity arises.

In 2014 I received an Artist Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Art.

Tim Barnes, Los Angeles 1967, Since 2001, Tim Barnes has been a globally recognized percussionist, composer, sound designer, and audio archivist. He has performed at the Guggenheim, Whitney, and Pompidou museums, as well as in galleries and performance halls in Tokyo, Berlin, Rome, Belgium, Stockholm, Mexico City, and Melbourne. He has been recruited to perform with some of experimental music’s most accomplished players – John Zorn, Kim Gordon, Ikue Mori, Jim O’Rourke, Lee Ranaldo, and Jeph Jerman. American corporations such as Starbucks, Nike, Cadillac, and Merrill Lynch have hired Tim to create sound collages for their television advertisements. He has also worked closely with Fluxus artists La Monte Young and Henry Flynt with archival restoration of recorded works, and in 2005, Tim performed and recorded Alison Knowles’ composition “Onion Skin Song”. Currently, he is working with Vito Acconci and the publisher Primary Information on presenting Mr. Acconci’s complete recorded works. Tim lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he is the Artistic Director of the performing and visual art space Dreamland.

Chris Pitsiokos + Philip White: Saxophone and Electronics violently collide and seamlessly meld, explode and cauterize with vehement immediacy into a set of six real time compositions. With a common ear towards clear, powerful, and assertive statements Chris Pitsiokos and Philip White draw from equal parts David Tudor, Roscoe Mitchell, Eliane Radigue and Merzbow. The duo press themselves into the listener with unerring decisiveness and complete aural honesty.

Composer, performer and improviser Philip White works with electronics at the intersection of noise, jazz and contemporary concert music. Current projects include R WE WHO R WE (with Ted Hearne), Colonic Youth (with James Ilgenfritz, Kevin Shea and Dan Blake) and duos with Chris Pitsiokos, Bob Bellerue and Taylor Levine. His music has been released on New Focus Recordings, Infrequent Seams and Tape Drift Records. It has been described as “utterly gripping” (Time Out Chicago), “bona fide evocative music” (Brooklyn Rail), and a “vibrant textural tapestry” (Wall Street Journal).

Chris Pitsiokos is a saxophonist, composer, and improviser. His music combines the intensity and immediacy of no wave and noise with the lyricism and forward propulsion of jazz and the abstract detail of contemporary classical composers Iannis Xenakis, Briany Ferneyhough, and Helmut Lachenmann. Recent/current collaborators include Lydia Lunch, Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Evans, Kevin Shea, Brian Chase, Elliott Sharp, Mick Barr, Marc Edwards, Philip White, and Weasel Walter. Chris has performed throughout Europe, Japan, Australia, and the US. In addition to performing and composing music, Chris runs his own record label, Eleatic records, curates the Gadfly Series at New York venue Spectrum, and programs a radio show at WKCR-FM.

Marko Timlin’s works are characterized by the imaginative, and often entirely alienated and distorted use of technology. In this way he reveals beautiful and lyrical aspects of technology that people usually don’t associated with it. Many of his sound installations and musical instruments consist of components not originally conceived for musical use or are made out of discarded elements, which he fished out of trash cans resurrecting them to a new artistic life. Timlin is convinced that the artistic application of technology is socially highly significant, as it may be exemplary for a peaceful and enriching coexistence between man and machine, rather than a dystopian, oppressive and dehumanizing relationship.

Event location:

425 E. 31st Street Baltimore, MD 21218