update: seeking performances (Europe, 2012)

Some dates confirmed, some TBC, but some dates still open: I am seeking performances in Europe, between April 26 to May 11, 2012. In addition to solo or (ad-hoc) ensemble contexts, pending logistics and dates, the following ensembles may be available:

Interested promoters, venues and sponsors, please get in touch!

Contact me for further information, audio recordings, etc. (some material only available to promoters).

thanks: McMullen-Park (DMG) and Park-Sikora (Brecht Forum), New York

Han-earl Park and Catherine Sikora (Brecht Forum, NYC, 01-08-12) photo copyright 2012 Melanie L. Marshall
Han-earl Park and Catherine Sikora (Brecht Forum, NYC, 01-08-12) photo © 2012 Melanie L. Marshall

A quick note of thanks to all involved in the first two performances of 2012. Thanks to Bruce Lee Gallanter and Manny ‘Lunch’ Maris at the Downtown Music Gallery for the open invite, for hosting the performance, and for their support over the years. Seriously, go to the DMG and get yourself a record (maybe one of mine 😉 Thanks to Ras Moshe for organizing the performance at The Brecht Forum and for welcoming this newcomer to NYC. Thanks also to the other performers of the evening including G. L. Diana and Kyoko Kitamura [Kyoko’s take on the gig…] who brought Cardew to life in a way different from all the Cardews I’ve heard in the past—I’m very interested to hear how this project might continue to evolve—and Ras’ powerful and playful quartet (sorry, don’t have the full lineup details of the quartet—contact me, and I will update).

A big, big, big thanks to the two saxophonists who generously shared the stage with me: Tracy McMullen for her wit and imagination, pushing the music to unexpected places, and to Catherine Sikora for her big, beautiful sound and sense of space and drama.

And, as always, thanks to all who came to listen and watch.

tonight: McMullen-Park (DMG) and Park-Sikora (Brecht Forum), New York

Tracy McMullen, Han-earl Park, Catherine Sikora

Tonight (January 8, 2012) in New York City, performances with Tracy McMullen and with Catherine Sikora:

See the performance diary for up-to-date info.

performance: Han-earl Park and Catherine Sikora at The Brecht Forum, New York

Tracy McMullen, Han-earl Park, Catherine Sikora

Sunday, January 8, 2012, at 9:00pm: performances by Han-earl Park (guitar) and Catherine Sikora (saxophones), plus others, takes place at The Brecht Forum (451 West Street, New York, NY 10014) [map and directions…]. Admission: $10. See the performance diary for up-to-date info.

…And, no, the date is not a typo: this performance is in addition to the earlier performance on the same evening with Tracy McMullen at the Downtown Music Gallery [details…].

Happy New Year from io 0.0.1 beta++… kind of…

If io 0.0.1 beta++ could want, or express a desire, I imagine that it would want to wish all of you a happy arbitrary demarcation of time:

4G alt. (audio salutations from Han-earl Park and io 0.0.1 beta++) [mp3 audio]

io, however, cannot want, or express, anything…
io, however, cannot want, or express, anything…but Happy New Year from me!

about the audio recording:

Alternate take of track ‘4G’ from ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531). See below for actual excerpts from the CD.

io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself) and Han-earl Park (guitar).

Recorded on recorded August 19 2010 at C-ALTO Labs, Cork. Recorded and mixed by Han-earl Park. (Note that the track above is taken from an earlier, rough mix than the final CD tracks.)

//www.io001b.com/

Above recording (4G alt. (alternate take: “io 0.0.1 beta++” (SLAMCD 531))) released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License. Please attribute the recordings to Han-earl Park.

audio excerpts from SLAMCD 531:

Baroque and Renaissance (audio clip: io 0.0.1 beta++)
impressive synergy (audio clip: io 0.0.1 beta++)
standing alone (audio clip: io 0.0.1 beta++)

‘io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) CD cover (copyright 2011, Han-earl Park)

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) is available from SLAM Productions. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.

arts council logo

The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.

performance: Tracy McMullen and Han-earl Park at the Downtown Music Gallery, New York

Tracy McMullen and Han-earl Park

Sunday, January 8, 2012, at 6:00pm: performances by, starting at 7:00pm, Tracy McMullen (saxophone) and Han-earl Park (guitar), plus, at 6:00pm, G. L. Diana (electronics) and Kyoko Kitamura (voice) takes place at the Downtown Music Gallery (13 Monroe Street, New York, NY 10002-7351) [map…]. Free admission.

See the performance diary for up-to-date info. [DMG page…]

about the performers

Beginning in Fall 2011, Tracy McMullen has been a Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Humanities at the University of Southern California. In 2007–2008 she was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the seven-year “Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice” (ICASP) research initiative at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. She received her Ph.D. in Music from UC San Diego in 2007 and was a faculty member in the Music and the Gender & Women’s Studies departments at UC Berkeley from 2009 to 2011. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Current Musicology; Critical Studies in Improvisation; Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies; People Get Ready: The Future of Jazz is Now; Sounding the Body: Improvisation, Representation and Subjectivity; The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies; The Dictionary of African American Music; and The Grove Dictionary of American Music. As a saxophonist in the jazz and improvised music traditions she has recorded on Cadence Jazz and numerous other independent labels and maintains an active performance schedule.

McMullen received an M.A. in Music Composition and an M.M. in Jazz Studies (with an emphasis on saxophone performance) from the University of North Texas. As a jazz/experimentalist saxophonist, she has performed or recorded with George Lewis, Anthony Davis, Dana Reason, Mark Dresser, Pauline Oliveros, and many others.

Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park has been working within/from/around traditions of fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, mostly open improvised musics for over fifteen years, sometimes engineering theater, sometimes inventing ritual. He feels the gravitational pull of collaborative, multi-authored contexts, and has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries, concert halls, and (ad-hoc) alternative spaces in Austria, Denmark, Germany, England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Scotland and the USA.

He is part of Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, is involved in collaborations with Bruce Coates, Franziska Schroeder, Alex Fiennes and Murray Campbell. Recent performances include Mathilde 253 with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith; duo concerts with Paul Dunmall, and with Richard Barrett; trios with Matana Roberts and Mark Sanders, with Catherine Sikora and Ian Smith, and with Jin Sangtae and Jeffrey Weeter; as part of the Evan Parker-led 20-piece improvising ensemble; and the performance of Pauline Oliveros’ ‘Droniphonia’ alongside the composer. Park has also recently performed with Lol Coxhill, Pat Thomas, Corey Mwamba, Mark Trayle, Pedro Rebelo, Alexander Hawkins, Mike Hurley, Chick Lyall, Thomas Buckner and Kato Hideki. Festival appearances include Sonorities (Belfast), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), dialogues festival (Edinburgh), VAIN Live Art (Oxford), and the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology Festival (California). His recordings have been released by labels including Slam Productions and DUNS Limited Edition.

Park founded Stet Lab, a monthly improvised music space in Cork, Ireland, and taught improvisation at the UCC Department of Music.

CD: io 0.0.1 beta++: audio clip #3

Bruce Coates, Franziska Schroeder and io 0.0.1 beta++, Ó Riada Hall, Cork, 05-25-2010  (photo copyright 2010, Han-earl Park)
Bruce Coates, Franziska Schroeder and io 0.0.1 beta++ (Ó Riada Hall, Cork, May 25, 2010)

As previously noted, I’ve been posting short audio clips from ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) at the io 0.0.1 beta++ ’site. The third and final clip in the series, taken from the track ‘Discovery: Decay’, features an improvised counterpoint between the interactive musical automaton io 0.0.1 beta++, and the human musicians, Franziska Schroeder and Han-earl Park. [More…]

‘io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) CD cover (copyright 2011, Han-earl Park)

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) is available from SLAM Productions. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.

arts council logo

The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.

more CD reviews: io 0.0.1 beta++

io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) CD cover (copyright 2011, Han-earl Park)
io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) © 2011 Han-earl Park

More reviews of ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) including Vittorio’s big thumbs-up at MusicZoom where he hails the recordings as a “total hymn to modernity”, in which the human musicians “throw themselves with passion on the ideas from the inanimate object”, and the listener will be “fully repaid by that which is a successful experiment”:

Il titolo da romanzo o di sigla di messaggio segreto è il nome della macchina sparamusica/rumori che fa bella mostra di sè sul palco e che senza alcun intervento dei musicisti intorno tira giù il suo catalogo di suoni con cui gli altri si trovano a confrontarsi. Un´idea che sarebbe piaciuta ai futuristi di omai un secolo fa, un inno totale alla modernità. Altro che strumenti acustici!

I tre musicisti coinvolti insieme alla macchina sono Han-earl Park alla chitarra, Bruce Coates al sax alto e sopranino e Franziska Schroeder al sax soprano. Non hanno nessuna paura per il confronto e così si avventano con passione sulla proposta dell´oggetto inanimato.

La session completamente improvvisata richiede molta attenzione da parte dell´ascoltatore, ripagata completamente da quello che è un esperimento riuscito. [Read the rest…] [English translation…]

Vittorio (MusicZoom)

Meanwhile, what to me is ‘playful’ may be ‘uncompromising’ to someone else:

Fra segmenti più atmosferico-minimali, e altri invece più frammentati e nervosi, si procede così, talora arrestandosi a una sorta di limbo emozionale, di quieta truculenza, peraltro sempre ammirevole per coerenza e rigore. [Read the rest…]

Alberto Bazzurro (All About Jazz Italia)

On the other hand, Ed Pinsent of The Sound Projector highlights the (fun, playful) material and interactive dimensions in the meeting between human and machine musicians:

The guitarist Park, sometime member of Mathilde 253 whose fine CD impressed us in March this year, is joined by two improvising saxophonists, Bruce Coates (from the Birmingham Improvisers’ Orchestra) and Franziska Schroeder (member of the trio FAINT), and the record documents the meeting of this trio with the “machine musician” io 0.0.1 beta++. This device is an automaton, a musical robot if you will, built by Mr Park; it’s not just another computer programme that plays random sounds or builds an “interactive” space for other laptop musicians, but actually occupies physical space and performs on the stage alongside its human counterparts. Shades of Pierre Bastien…. The multi-media artist Sara Roberts from California writes the liner notes and she does a much better job than I possibly could in articulating the cultural resonances of this man-meets-automaton event. [Read the rest…]

— Ed Pinsent (The Sound Projector)

And Rui Eduardo Paes hears a meeting in which the human musicians bring their varied experience, in avant-jazz and in the space between electroacoustics and contemporary music, and in which the automaton “interactively reacting to what they do and even giving them cues”:

Os músicos de carbono envolvidos ora trabalham na área do ‘avant-jazz’, ora na da electroacústica de fronteira com a música contemporânea: Park com Charles Hayward, Wadada Leo Smith e Paul Dunmall, Coates com Tony Oxley, Lol Coxhill e o compositor indeterminista Christian Wolff, e Schroeder ao lado do pianista português Pedro Rebelo e em colaborações com Pauline Oliveros e Evan Parker. Todas essas experiências se reflectem em temas como ‘Ground-Based Telemetry’ e ‘Laplace: Instability’, sempre com o io a reagir interactivamente ao que fazem e até a dar-lhes deixas. [Read the rest…] [English translation…]

Rui Eduardo Paes (jazz.pt)

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) with Han-earl Park, Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder is available from SLAM Productions. [More info…] [All reviews…] [Get the CD…]

arts council logo

The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.

CD: io 0.0.1 beta++: audio clip #2

Bruce Coates and io 0.0.1 beta++, Ó Riada Hall, Cork, 05-25-2010 (photo copyright 2010, Franziska Schroeder)
Bruce Coates and io 0.0.1 beta++ (Ó Riada Hall, Cork, May 25, 2010). Photo © 2010 Franziska Schroeder.

As previously noted, at the io 0.0.1 beta++ ’site, I’m posting short audio clips from ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531). The second clip, taken from the track ‘Discovery: Intermodulation’, features machine musician io 0.0.1 beta++ in real-time, interactive play with human saxophonist Bruce Coates. [More…]

‘io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) CD cover (copyright 2011, Han-earl Park)

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) is available from SLAM Productions. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.

arts council logo

The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.

thanks: Berkeley and the Ridge

Amber and Murray’s Bonfire (The Ridge) 11-10-11

Quick thanks to Gino Robair for the invite and putting the whole thing together; Tom Duff hosting the show (and providing somewhere for this itinerant musician to crash for the night), John Shiurba for providing the amp, the beer and being a very crafty and generous guitarist; Tim Perkis for the musicality and musings; and Matt Ingalls for injecting high and low frequency noises at exactly the right time. Thanks also to Murray Campbell, Amber Cone, Izzy Goldschneider and Randy McKean for providing one of the oddest quasi-gigs I’ve performed at.

Apologies for the brevity of the acknowledgement, but things are a little crazy right now with the upcoming move to New York… See you on the East Coast!

tonight: Robair-Shiurba-Perkis-Ingalls-Park at Tom’s Place, Berkeley

Gino Robair, John Shiurba, Tim Perkis, Matt Ingalls, Han-earl Park

Tonight (November 8, 2011), at 7:30pm: performances by Gino Robair, John Shiurba, Tim Perkis, Matt Ingalls and Han-earl Park, plus Terrence McManus takes place at Tuesdays at Tom’s Place (3111 Deakin Street, Berkeley, California 94705). Free, donations accepted. [Details…]

performance: Robair-Shiurba-Perkis-Ingalls-Park at Tom’s Place, Berkeley

Gino Robair, John Shiurba, Tim Perkis, Matt Ingalls, Han-earl Park

Tuesday, November 8, 2011, at 7:30pm: performances by Gino Robair (energized surfaces, voltage made audible), John Shiurba (guitar), Tim Perkis (electronics), Matt Ingalls (clarinet) and Han-earl Park (guitar), plus Terrence McManus (guitar) takes place at Tuesdays at Tom’s Place (3111 Deakin Street, Berkeley, California 94705). Free, donations accepted.

See the performance diary for up-to-date info. [Tom’s Place page…]