Monday, May 7, 2012, at 9:00pm (doors: 8:30pm): a performance by Mark Hanslip (saxophone), Dominic Lash (double bass), Phillip Marks (drums) and Han-earl Park (guitar) presented by Jazz @ The Oxford takes place at The Oxford (256 Kentish Town Road, London, England). Admission: £5.
See the performance diary for up-to-date info. [Jazz @ The Oxford listings page…] [facebook event…]
04–30–12: add facebook event page.
Thursday, May 3, 2012, at 7:30pm: a performance by Numbers (Richard Barrett: electronics; and Han-earl Park: guitar) takes place at Performance Space 2 (University of Hull: Scarborough Campus, Filey Road, Scarborough, England). Admission is £4 (£3).
See the performance diary for up-to-date info. [facebook event…]
Numbers is a high-energy, quick-footed, scatter-brained two hander—a looping, convoluted, interactive dance made audible—a musical fender bender involving electroacoustic complexities and (physio)logical splutter-cuts, jump-cuts and match-cuts—an intense white-knuckle extemporization unit—the duo of composer, performer and electronic musician Richard Barrett and guitarist, improviser and constructor Han-earl Park.
Celebrated for his dense, complex, intricate music, Richard Barrett is perhaps best known for his work with Paul Obermayer as part of FURT, as part of the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, and his close collaborations with the Elision Ensemble. At home in both composition and improvisation, Barrett’s music increasingly problematizes the distinction between them. Described by Brian Morton as “a musical philosopher… a delightful shape-shifter”, Han-earl Park is drawn to real-time cyborg configurations in which artifacts and bodies collide. He has performed with some of the finest practitioners of improvised music, and is part of Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith. First performing together as duo in at AUXXX, Berlin, October 2010, Barrett and Park engage in a continuing improvisative conversation; alternately claiming autonomy and independence, and group action and solidarity.
Their first CD, ‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd), recorded at the Institute of Sonology (The Hague), was released by Creative Sources Recordings in February 2012. [Details…]
Richard Barrett is internationally active as both composer and improvising performer, and has collaborated with many leading performers in both areas, while developing works and ideas which increasingly leave behind the distinctions between them. His long-term collaborations include the electronic duo FURT which he formed with Paul Obermayer in 1986 (and its more recent octet version fORCH), composing for and performing with the Elision contemporary music group since 1990, and regular appearances with the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble since 2003. Recent projects include “CONSTRUCTION”, a two-hour work for twenty performers and three-dimensional sound system, premiered by Elision in November 2011. He is based in Berlin and currently teaches at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague. His work as composer and performer is documented on over 20 CDs, including five discs devoted to his compositions and seven by FURT.
Improviser, guitarist and constructor Han-earl Park works within/from/around traditions of fuzzily idiomatic, on occasion experimental, mostly open improvised musics, sometimes engineering theater, sometimes inventing ritual. He feels the gravitational pull of collaborative, multi-authored contexts, and has performed in clubs, theaters, art galleries and concert halls in Austria, Denmark, Germany, England, Ireland, The Netherlands, Scotland and the USA.
He is part of Mathilde 253 with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith, and is involved in ongoing collaborations with Bruce Coates, Franziska Schroeder, Alex Fiennes and Murray Campbell. He has recently performed with Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Lol Coxhill, Pat Thomas, Paul Dunmall, Mark Sanders, Matana Roberts, Richard Barrett, Pauline Oliveros, Thomas Buckner and Kato Hideki. Festival appearances include Sonorities (Belfast), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), dialogues festival (Edinburgh), and CEAIT Festival (California). His recordings have been released by labels including Slam Productions and DUNS Limited Edition.
‘Numbers’ (CS 201 cd) is available from Creative Sources Recordings [details…]
Performers: Richard Barrett (electronics) and Han-earl Park (guitar).
© + ℗ 2012 Creative Sources Recordings.
04–30–12: add facebook event page.
Had a lot of fun being part of Gowanus Company IV at the Douglass Street Music Collective on Sunday (April 8, 2012). Here is, as best as I can recall, the performers who participated at this DB inspired event:
Michael Bates (double bass), Matt Bauder (saxophone and clarinet), Sarah Bernstein (violin), Ken Filiano (double bass), Brad Henkel (trumpet), Ingrid Laubrock (saxophones), Weston Minissali (synthesizer), Han-earl Park (guitar), ‘secret special guest’ (trumpet), Josh Sinton (saxophone and clarinet), Vinnie Sperrazza (drums), Jesse Stacken (piano) and Booker Stardrum (drums).
Thanks to all the performers for allowing me to share the stage with them (next time, Matt, Ken and Ingrid), and big thanks, in particular, to Josh for the invite and putting the whole thing together.
This Sunday (April 8, 2012) at 8:30pm: Han-earl Park will be performing as part of Gowanus Company IV with Michael Bates, Matt Bauder, Ken Filiano, Brad Henkel, Ingrid Laubrock, Weston Minissali, Josh Sinton, Vinnie Sperrazza, Jesse Stacken, Booker Stardrum and “secret, special guests”:
In the spirit of Derek Bailey’s Company week, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to catch several creative musicians playing together who have never played together. [Read the rest…]
The event takes place at the Douglass Street Music Collective (295 Douglass Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY 11217) [map and directions…]. $10 suggested donation.
See the performance diary for up-to-date info. [DSMC page…]
This Sunday (April 1, 2012), at 7:00 pm: a solo set by Han-earl Park (“Solo Electric Guitar from World Traveling Improviser” according to Bruce Lee Gallanter), preceded at 6:00 pm by an ‘April Fool’s Day Mystery Set’ (“Mysterious UK Trumpeter & JOSH SINTON – Baritone Sax”), at the Downtown Music Gallery (13 Monroe Street, New York, NY 10002-7351) [map…]. Free admission. [Details…]
Seeking performance opportunities; particularly in Europe 2014: the cyborg ensemble of interactive, semi-autonomous, technological artifact and machine musician and improviser io 0.0.1 beta++ with human musicians Han-earl Park, Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder.
See performance proposal for further information (availability, technical requirements, performers’ biographies, etc.).
This quartet (or faux-quartet, if you prefer) performs demanding free improvisation calling on a range of extended techniques. Pieces of dismantled gestures, destabilizing timbres, and impressive synergy.
François Couture (Monsieur Délire)
An idea that would be pleasing to the Futurists of a century ago, a total hymn to modernity…. The completely improvised session requires a lot of attention from the listener, to be fully repaid by that which is a successful experiment.
Vittorio (MusicZoom)
We watch and listen carefully because we know we’re seeing a kind of manifesto in action. What is an automaton? A sketch, a material characterization of the ideas the inventor and the inventor’s culture have about some aspect of life, and how it could be. io and its kind are alternate beings born of ideas, decisions and choices. It is because io stands alone, an automaton, that the performance recorded on this CD not only is music, but is about music.
Sara Roberts (from the liner notes to SLAMCD 531)
An extraordinary meeting between human and machine improvisers. Featuring the machine musician io 0.0.1 beta++ with guitarist Han-earl Park and saxophonists Bruce Coates and Franziska Schroeder, the performance is part critique and part playful exploration, both a boundary-breaking demonstration of socio-musical technologies and an ironic sci-fi parody.
Constructed by Han-earl Park, io 0.0.1 beta++ is a modern-day musical automaton. It is not an instrument to be played but a non-human artificial musician that performs alongside its human counterparts. io 0.0.1 beta++ representing a personal-political investigation of technology, interaction, improvisation and musicality. It whimsically evokes a 1950s B-movie robot—seemingly jerry-rigged, constructed from ad-hoc components including plumbing, kitchenware, speakers and missile switches—celebrating the material and corporeal.
The performances with this artificial musician highlights society’s entanglement with technology, demonstrates alternative modes of interfacing the musical and the technological, and illuminates the creative and improvisative processes in music. The performance is a radical and playful engagement with powerful and problematic dreams (and nightmares) of the artificial; a dream as old as the anthropology of robots.
The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.
The CD ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) was released by SLAM Productions in August 2011.
Web: www.io001b.com
Contact: www.io001b.com/contact
Images: www.io001b.com/images*
Audio: www.io001b.com/samples*
* Additional audio recordings and documentation available on request.
[Full performance proposal…]
[Original post at www.io001b.com…]
11–08–12: change of availability from 2013 to 2014. [More info…]
Sunday, April 1, 2012, at 7:00 pm: a solo (or guitar-guitarist duet) set by Han-earl Park at the Downtown Music Gallery (13 Monroe Street, New York, NY 10002-7351) [map…]. (It’s probably about time: it’s been a year and a half since my last solo performance.) There’s also an ‘April Fool’s Day Mystery Set’ at 6:00pm. Free admission.
See the performance diary for up-to-date info. [DMG page…]
Two more reviews of ‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) with two contrasting takes on the meeting between human and machine musicians. Ken Waxman, on the one hand, juxtaposes the “unobtrusive and egoless” machine with the human improvisers who display, for example, “thoughtful pauses”:
…Han-earl Park personifying Dr. Frankenstein, has created a non-human artificial musician from ad-hoc components including speakers, kitchenware and missile switches. This CD is a literal record of how the non-human, prosaically named io 0. 0. 1 beta++, sounds in concert with flesh-and-blood counterparts….
io 0. 0. 1 beta++ is unobtrusive and egoless enough… to warble its staccato particle contributions without trying to engulf or show up the humans. Its contributions are unique enough on their own.
For instance on the initial ‘Pioneer: Variance’ and ‘Pioneer: Dance’ contrasting alto and soprano saxophone trills and squeaks are put into bolder relief as the otherworldly flutters, oscillated tones and flanged rotations of the machine are kept in a straight line by Park’s legato picking. The thoughtful pauses audible in the guitar playing confirms Park’s human-ness, especially when compared to the grainy whistles and juddering vibrations that arise from io 0. 0. 1 beta++….
Nonetheless the machine further demonstrates its versatility on the 59-second ‘4G’, with metallic muted trombone-like snores and even raises the question as to whether io 0. 0. 1 beta++ or extended saxophone techniques are creating the air pops and abrasive tongue flutters on subsequent tracks. In the main crackling reductionist resonations are attributed to its properties, while any legato or lyrical intermezzos are, more likely than not, propelled from the instruments and imaginations of full-fledged Homo sapiens.
Succinctly as the three demonstrate on ‘Return Trajectory’, during which io 0. 0. 1 beta++ appears to have taken five, an additional voice—human or otherwise—is necessary to create a pleasing sound picture. The guitarist’s connective down strokes plus the swelling layers of contrapuntal reed timbres are distinctive and solipsistic enough on their own. [Read the rest…]
— Ken Waxman (JazzWord)
Romualdo Del Noce at Jazz Convention, on the other hand, hears a “charmingly imperfect interplay” between human and machine musicians becomes a drama of the ‘human,’ the ‘other,’ and of cyborgs. An interplay in which Han-earl Park improvises a “rugged plateau” and “hyperacid notes”, and Franziska Schroeder enriches “the other half of the sax… with a naked and experimental voice, together in harmony and dissonance with parallel and converging streams of the thoroughbred free-player Bruce Coates”.
Le corde tese di Park imbastiscono un plateau scabro ma di lungo e persistente respiro, vivente nelle articolazioni e nella tessitura della sua fisica elettroacustica; mentre sul versante “meccanico” dell’instrumentarium i modi performanti di Franziska Schroeder arricchiscono l’altra metà del sax (a fianco delle Matana Roberts, Alexandra Grimal, Ingrid Laubrock etc.) di una voce sperimentante e nuda, in sintonia e insieme dissonanza con i flussi paralleli e convergenti del free-player purosangue Bruce Coates, e il tutto si dipana entro uno svolgimento a canovaccio libero e istantaneo, lungo il suo deviante svolgimento interrogandosi (senza eccessivo paradosso) se l’autentica “alienità” sia rispettivamente appannaggio della cosa o, piuttosto e viceversa, dell’ “umano”….
Insomma, l’avanguardia è tornata: non che fosse mai stata davvero latitante, ma gli interrogativi sonori, lacerati e critici, del trio pongono come oggetto radicale la disumanizzazione progressiva e le implicazioni del sempre più preponderante avvento della macchina, forse retrodatando le intenzioni alle prime decadi del secolo scorso e alle relative allarmistiche dottrine, ma riprendendole lungo le forme acutamente nervose e l’attenzione creativa dei medianici e cyborghiani performers e del loro interplay attrattivamente imperfetto. [Read the rest…] [English translation…]
— Romualdo Del Noce (Jazz Convention)
‘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…]
The construction of io 0.0.1 beta++ has been made possible by the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland.
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).
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 (January 8, 2012) in New York City, performances with Tracy McMullen and with Catherine Sikora:
See the performance diary for up-to-date info.
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…].
