Doors 19:30 / Performance 20:00
2.500 Kr.
John McCowen's Mundanas VII-XI for 2 contrabass clarinets
performed by John McCowen & Madison Greenstone
In the late Winter of 2021, John McCowen was recording demos in his basement studio. He was aiming to record each part in one circular-breathed take. This turned out to be virtually impossible to achieve. This was due to a constant onslaught of earthquakes.These were earthquakes preceding the Fagradalsfjall volcanic eruption of March 2021 near his home in Reykjavík, Iceland. For weeks leading up to the eruption, there was a persistent pulse of earthquakes - sometimes only minutes apart. The sensation of these earthquakes were incredible. At first, from silence, there would appear an incredibly low, sine-like tone. As this tone began to crescendo, it would be accompanied by an ever-increasing vibration. These vibrations would then become visceral as the building shook (there are a slew of outtakes where this is audible as well as the accompanying “goddamnit”). With the epicenter located near to Reykjavík, one could visualize the initial grinding of tectonic plates and the subsequent, earth-rattling waves emanating from the volcanic center. For John, feeling these rolling vibrations unconsciously shaped the music of Mundanas VII-XI.
The parallels between this experience and the music are unambiguous - two contrabass clarinets emanating low, sine-like tones with shifting harmonics activated by these rumbling swells. When these two contrabass clarinets are combined, there emerges a wave of combinatorial frequencies - an acoustic stream of sound almost tactile. All this said, there exists an orchestra of sound waiting to be observed as the listener goes deeper.
This forty-five minute document exhibits John McCowen & Madison Greenstone at a height of ensemble entanglement - operating as a singular organism. The record has a unified aura from beginning to end - variations on a theme - silence to culmination and back. The music is more akin to the rolling waves of tectonic activity than to McCowen’s more strident works. This showcases the performers ability to remain placid with an ability to shimmer and sonically multiply at a moment’s notice.
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John McCowen’s musical life has become an obsession with discovering a polyphonic language on a historically monophonic instrument - the clarinet. This has led him to a unique acoustic vocabulary that is akin to a shifting soundscape of electronic feedback. John's multiphonic approach is based in drones, difference tones, and beating harmonics as a means to showcase the compositional potential within a single, acoustic sound source. His work has been described by The New Yorker as “the sonic equivalent of microscopic life viewed on a slide” and “an astonishing demonstration of pure sound and human will” by The Wire. He began playing in the American DIY circuit in a number of groups. These years led to international rock tours as a saxophone & flute player in his early 20’s. After burning out, he decided to pursue classical clarinet performance with contemporary clarinet pioneer, Eric P. Mandat. His first record of solo contrabass clarinet music, SOLO CONTRA, was released by International Anthem Recording Co. in 2017.
John has been artist-in-residence at Headlands Center for the Arts in 2024, ISSUE Project Room in 2020, and Lijiang Studio in 2017/19. He has released documents on International Anthem, Edition Wandelweiser, Sound American, Astral Spirits, Dinzu Artefacts, Superpang, and others. He has performed in spaces such as Borealis Festival, Jazzfestival Saalfelden, Cafe OTO, Edition Festival, Sequences Festival, Dark Music Days Festival, Roulette Intermedium, LAMPO, ISSUE Project Room, Q-O2 Oscillation Festival, and others. He currently resides in Reykjavík, Iceland where he teaches Music Improvisation at the Iceland University of the Arts.
John has collaborated extensively with the composer and instrumentalist, Roscoe Mitchell. He has orchestrated, arranged, and transcribed Mitchell’s works for orchestras and other ensembles as well as performing as a duo of bass saxophone and contrabass clarinet.
John remains stubbornly dedicated to acoustic phenomena. His works do not utilize amplifier feedback or electronically-generated sounds unless specified.
www.johnmccowen.com
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Madison Greenstone is a New York based clarinetist whose ‘beautiful and haunting’ playing ‘creeps noisily away from the void’ (Foxy Digitalis). They perform across a wide range of experimental music contexts as a soloist, improvisor, and chamber musician. Madison’s solo performance practice, exstatic resonances, pushes the limits of innate instrumental expressivities by treating the meeting of instrument and embodied technique as creative of a site of indeterminacy and generative instability. Their approach to the clarinet embraces and instigates chaotic timbral actions, difficult-to-reign sonorities, and the harmonically rich and noisy resonances that have a vivid inner life and movement. Their practice embraces responsive listening as a mediator between embodied technique and latent instrumental agency.
Madison is the clarinetist of TAK Ensemble, “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen), and a founding member of the [Switch~ Ensemble]. Madison performs as a guest with Alarm Will Sound, Nunc New Music, Either/Or, Argento New Music Project, Contemporaneous, Wavefield, amongst others in New York and abroad. They can be heard on labels such as Wandelweiser Editions, Another Timbre, TAK Editions, Unknown Tapes, New Focus Recordings, eë editions (AT), Impakt Collective (DE), and upcoming on Relative Pitch Records (solo) and Dinzu Artefacts (TAK ensemble).
As a soloist, Madison has been presented by the Vigeland Mausoleum (Oslo), ISSUE Project Room (NYC), Fire Over Heaven (NYC), Night of Surprise (DE), Silo City (Buffalo), Petersburg Art Space (DE). Other notable performances have been as a soloist in Brian Ferneyhough’s La Chute d’Icare (conducted by Steve Schick), as presented by the New York Philharmonic Kravis Nightcap Series with TAK Ensemble, as part of the Merce Cunningham Centennial in Los Angeles. Madison has performed in the KKL Luzern (CH), Elbphilharmonie (DE), and Walt Disney Concert Hall (LA).
Madison has been in residence as a guest artist and educator at Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, Bard, University of Chicago, University at Buffalo, Wesleyan and many others. Madison is currently a doctoral candidate at UC San Diego, where they learn greatly from the mentorship of Anthony Burr, Charles Curtis, and Amy Cimini. They hold a Bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music, where they studied with Jon Manasse and Kenneth Grant. Between 2012-2018, Madison pursued periodic studies with Ernesto Molinari in the context of the Lucerne Festival Academy and the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik.
As a writer, Madison has contributed a catalog essay for the Museum of Neuchâtel’s exhibit Sur Papier exploring surface, temporality, and material agency in the work of Sivan Eldar. Their writing also appears in Contemporary Music Review’s edition on Éliane Radigue in an essay co-authored with Charles Curtis and Anthony Vine titled Toward an Anti-Ideal: Radigue, Recording, and the Paradoxes of Representation.
