Works on Paper #2: Matt Hannafin: Table, Paper, Cymbal & Voice

For Works on Paper #2, Portland-based improviser and percussionist, Matt Hannafin, will perform four solo works (by Stephanie Lavon Trotter, Philip Glass, John Cage, and Antoine Beuger) exploring materials intrinsic to the experience of books and reading: paper, a table, the written and spoken word, and the ambience of the room in which you sit. With a single exception, all sounds in the performance will derive from just those simple elements. Tonight’s performance continues Matt Hannafin’s years-long obsession with reducing, simplifying, and clarifying both his musical approach and his instrumentation, extracting maximal effect from minimal means.

Artist’s Bio 

Matt Hannafin (percussion, voice, electronics) is a New York–born, Portland-based percussionist active in experimental music, improvisation, and Iranian classical and traditional music. His teachers included composer La Monte Young, Indian vocal master Pandit Pran Nath, Persian tar and tombak master Kavous Shirzadian, and percussionists Jamey Haddad, Glen Velez, Layne Redmond, John Amira, and Magette Fall. Active as a solo performer, he’s also collaborated with artists such as trumpeter Nate Wooley, oboist Catherine Lee, experimental turntablist Maria Chavez, shakuhachi player Jeffrey Lependorf, sound artists Loren Chasse and Branic Howard, Sun Ra altoist Marshall Allen, multi-instrumentalist Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Borbetomagus guitarist Donald Miller, and electro-acoustic duo Golden Retriever – as well as chamber groups, Zen flower arrangers, and Persian, Sephardic, and Ukrainian ensembles. He is the curator and director of the Extradition Series, which presents concerts and recitals that exist at the intersection of composition and improvisation, intentionality and chance, clarity and silence. www.matthannafin.com/music / www.extradition-series.com

The compositions

> Stephanie Lavon Trotter’s Score (and instrument!) for Disruption & Paper (2013) is a single sheet of 8½ x 11 paper bearing instructions to use the sheet as an instrument, exploring its qualities in any way the player’s imagination discovers. The instructions also urge the performer to utilize the paper for disruption, with several examples of how that could be accomplished.

> Philip Glass’s 1 + 1 (1968) dates from the first phase of the composer’s New York career, following his studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Scored for soloist and amplified tabletop, the work comprises just two simple rhythmic units, which the performer is instructed to play “in continuous, regular arithmetic progressions” of varying combinations. Designed as a piece that can be played with materials found at practically any venue, the piece echoes several 1940s works by John Cage for voice and closed piano, in which the piano – a reliably ubiquitous presence in the era’s performance spaces – is struck as a non-tonal percussion instrument, rather than played traditionally.

> John Cage’s Mureau (1970) is a piece Cage created by extracting all references to music, sound, and silence from Henry David Thoreau’s Journal and then deconstructing and reordering those texts based on chance operations derived from the I Ching. Released from the strictures of syntax through these chance procedures, Thoreau’s letters, syllables, words, and phrases become a free poetry of pure sound and music. Tonight’s performance will present most (though not all) of the dense, 21-page work, mixing passages of live reading with passages in which pre-recorded readings are layered atop one another, with all decisions regarding page selection, layering order, and timing derived from chance procedures.

> Antoine Beuger’s Some Sounds (2017) is an extremely sparse text score that asks for “some sounds” (as well as “some more sounds” and “just a few more”) to be interacted with in four different ways: imagined, listened to, remembered, or played. Various permutations of those four tactics create movement and meaning in the piece. For tonight’s performance, all sounds will be derived from the aural ambience of Passages Bookshop, plus a single ride cymbal.

After the performances there will be a small reception. Hope you’ll join us!

Saturday, June 29th

7:00 pm

at Passages Bookshop

1223 NE ML King, Jr. Blvd

 Portland OR 97232

$5-15 suggested donation, no one turned away

http://www.passagesbookshop.com

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