Composers in the Poet’s Cabinets: Works on Paper #1

Works on Paper #1:
CASPAR SONNET, ROBERT BLATT, & BEN GLAS
Three experimental compositions by local composers
$5-15 suggested donation, no one turned away

The first in an ongoing series of events that use concepts, characteristics, and histories of the book as a frame for exploratory practice across the arts, Works on Paper #1 presents compositions from three local composers. Caspar Sonnet’s “Choral for 5 Alpine Bells” recalls the story of Theseus and the Chair of Forgetfulness in the Almglocken’s haunting sound. Robert Blatt’s piece explores paper as a carrier for language, instruction, and music, and as a sensual object in itself. Ben Glas’s aleatoric “Score for Islands” uses a cocktail-party effect to draw semantic and semiotic connections among the many texts and voices of the Passages Bookshop collections.

Artist bios:
CASPAR SONNET (b. 1976 Los Angeles, California) is a composer/performer/multi-instrumentalist currently residing in Portland, Oregon. He has been composing and performing experimental/improvisational music since 1996. Sonnet’s multi-instrumentalist abilities include: lap steel dobro, harmonica, percussion & voice. His work mainly focuses on extended technique, just intonation, physical movement in affection to sound, dynamic/rhythmic juxtapositions and instrumental location. He has collaborated with talented musicians such as Jordan Dykstra, Kozue Matsumoto, Chris Cogburn, Linda Austin, Gabie Strong, Jonathan Sielaff and Jean-Paul Jenkins in recording, performing and improvising of music. He has also toured throughout Europe and the US. He has also held residencies with MOCA REDCAT Studio in Los Angeles, and CMG Improv Summit & TBA at Disjecta of Portland, OR.

“Choral for 5 Alpine Bells” – for five performers/duration 30 minutes.
“I’ve been interested in Alpine bells (Almglocken) for some time due to their haunting sound, tonality, frequency and history. Greek mythology also comes to mind when I think about this piece, mainly Theseus when he sat on the Chair of Forgetfulness while in Hades. The execution of this piece requires the audience to be in the center of the room while the performers surround them, moving slowing in a circle quietly striking their bells with their own independent sequence. A 30 minute hour glass will be used for durational boundary. ”

ROBERT BLATT (1984, USA) creates work rooted in explorations of expanded sonic situations through varying frames and gradations of environment, notation, object, performance, text and tone. Recent projects include: Experiments in the Periphery, a month-long project of scored activities realized in numerous open and private locations across South Florida, LIMINAL/ADRIFT, featuring five site-responsive performance-installations at outdoor sites in Miami, and his paperback book, Beach Bums, published by Much Too Much Noise, which became the focus of a recording project shown at Studio Loos (NL), Post-Paradise (UK) and Subtropics (FL, USA). His work has been presented in the context of performances, exhibitions, readings, publications and a variety of hard-to-pin-down situations, and he has been supported with residencies from Akademie Schloss Solitude (DE), Jack Straw Cultural Center (WA, USA), Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (CA, USA) and Vrije Akademie GEMAK (NL). He co founded/directed the Miami-based Inlets Foundation for Experimental Practices and regularly participated in the international experimental music/art collectives The New Fordist Organization and Acid Police Noise Ensemble. He holds degrees from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and the University of Washington.

“For the last few years, I have been engaging in a practice of creating work that functions at an ambiguous position between score, text and object. This has resulted in work of diverse material and ephemeral characteristics, but most frequently, and in focus for this performance, work which explores paper as both a carrier for language/instruction/music and as a sensual object in itself, its tactile and sonic characteristics for instance, as an instrument in the most general sense. This is work dissolving and blurring many preconceived divisions and obliged components of musical practice: music as sound, as a ritual of the concert, as strictly composed, performed or heard. This play of ambiguities will manifest itself in the performance in general, where there will be no stage per say, instead openly occupied spaces in (and perhaps outside) the bookshop with interconnected actions of reading, treatments with paper and related (sonic) occurrences, without a clear beginning or ending, of a simultaneous and not necessarily projected character, just different positions of encounter with the work.”

BEN GLAS (b. 1992) is an experiential sound artist and composer based in Portland, OR. Glas compositions question, explore and challenge a wide of topics including cognition, psychoacoustics, and socially focused sound. Glas holds a BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Arts. His compositions have been released by Blankstairs (NYC), Sounds Et Al (NYC), AMP.RECS (MEX), Linear Obsessional (UK), DeepWhiteSound (PDX) , The Periphery (PDX) and have been exhibited internationally. An ever growing archive of his work and practice can be found at https://www.thankyouforyourunderstanding.com/

“‘Score For Islands’ is an experimental social performance piece, that combines the “Cocktail Party Effect” with both relativity and audience participation. The score calls for individual audience members to locate a text of their choosing within Passages Bookstore and to it read out loud, while other audience members are doing the same. Both active and passive audience members are encouraged to walk through the space, making semantic and semiotic connections between the various texts and voices. What the individual participants read, and how they read it, is completely up to their own discretion, making this piece a highly subjective and aleatoric composition.

“There will be extra copies of the physical score for anyone who wishes to join the noise. “