nouvelles & work

“3 bagatelles,” march 21st, 2009 in los angeles

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Saturday March 21st 8:30PM
The California E.A.R. Unit presents a concert of young American-based composers

REDCAT-Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater
CalArts’ downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts, 631 W. 2nd St. Los Angeles, CA. 90012

Saturday March 21, 2009 – 8:30 PM

YOUNG AMERICANS

“Triumphantly out there… The California E.A.R. Unit is known for taking left turns away from convention.” Los Angeles Times
Inspired by the classic David Bowie pop hit, The E.A.R. Unit surveys fresh new works by young mavericks. The ensemble plays Daniel Wohl’s driving yet oddly sentimental +ou-, Oscar Bettison’s haunting Gauze Vespers veiled with simmering sonorities from dual toy pianos and other innovative orchestrations, Ryan Brown’s Our Friend Adam a verbal play on “Our Friend Atom” a short film that introduced the atom bomb to Ryan as a child who mistook atom to be Adam, Jamu for ensemble and electronics by Christine Southworth drawing from Gamelan melodies, Clay Chaplin’s Rememories, a structured improvisation using 3-D video as a meta-structure for the ensemble based on the relationship of time and memory, Harris Wulfson’s eclectic simplified violin solo 3 Bagatelles, and an exciting new work from the Carlsbad Music Festival Tsar, Matt McBane.

$20 [students $16, CalArts $10] http://www.redcat.org Box Office: 213.237.2800

These performances are funded in part by grants from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The James Irvine Foundation, LA County Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, BMI Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, the Amphion Foundation and other generous supporters.

Note: Harris’ work will be performed by Eric km Clark

radu

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In the spring of 2006, Adam Fong, Lewis Keller, Cat Lamb and Harris formed a group at CalArts Called RADU. I know very little about this group but here are some recordings from it. Perhaps the group members can fill me in, and also let me know if any of these pieces have names. The .mp3 titles have some reference notes I added to them to try and figure them out.

The first set is from the CD that Harris compiled and titled CalArts Spring 2006. The second two sets are additional recordings from March 10th, and April 21st 2006. At least 2 of the tracks on the compilation CD came from these recordings but I haven’t yet ascertained if there are any other duplicates.

Adam Fong
Lewis Keller
Cat Lamb

 

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RADU: CalArts Spring 2006

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“3 bagatelles,” february 21st, 2009 in new york

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From Eric km Clark:
I’m coming back to NYC to do this joint solo show with Mr. James Moore, and it will be an oddly good time.

Also, some of you may find it of interest that I’ll be doing the first NYC performance of Harris’ piece “3 Bagatelles”. It’s beautiful.

Details:
Event: February 21, 2009: James Moore (New York)/Eric km Clark (Los Angeles)
What: Performance
Host: Experimental Music at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater
Start Time:Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 10:00pm
End Time: Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 12:00am
Where: Ontological-Hysteric Theater at St. Mark’s Church, 131 east 10th street and 2nd ave, new york city, 10003

sketches from high school 3: never before heard

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Dave and I put 2 and 2 together on this one this past weekend (Literally. We overlaid 2 vocal tracks to 2 music tracks in Audacity) and came up with a song neither of us had ever heard before. Dave thinks Harris may have written this for a particular musician from the All State Jazz Band sometime around 1990? I think you can hear some Paul Simon influence in it. We’re 100% certain it’s an original and for now have called it “For Her.”
 

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Sketches From High School 3: Never Before Heard

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world on a string band

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wosb
Harris Wulfson with the World on a String Band at the Ukrainian National Home restaurant, December 6, 2007, New York City. I love this photo and these amazingly talented people!

left to right: Sarah Alden, Patrick Farrell, Benjy Fox-Rosen, Ljova, Harris Wulfson, Photographed by Anna Rozenblat.

This was one of the last bands Harris played with. The last time I saw him, he told me he couldn’t wait for Sarah to get back from tour so they could all get together and play! I took the audio clips from Flickr and added the fades to make the clips less choppy. If anyone has any recordings, let me know. They may not exist.

I’ve included the links to the Flickr movie clips below as well as the mp3 clip I made of their audio.

01.flikr clip 1
Freddy’s Backroom, 2007. Here is the moment during the jam where they played “world on a string” ! Harris played the ukulele for this one.

02.flikr clip 2
Freddy’s Backroom, 2007. World on a String played and then there was this fantastic jam. Pure joy. A magical night. The movie is really dark but we can see (and hear!) Harris behind Patrick.

03.flikr clip 3
At Banjo Jim’s, June 08, 2007.

04.flikr clip 4
At Banjo Jim’s, June 08, 2007.

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projects with astrograss

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I came across this email from Harris in my email archives:

Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 18:11:20 -0400
Subject: astrograss session
From: “harris wulfson”
To: “Javier Garcia”, “Juliana Trivers”, “Matt Donahue”, “Ben Herzog”, “Emily Gardiner”, “David M Sollors”, “Mark Yokoyama”, “Michelle Wulfson”

this actually came out all right. just for fun i went into the studio with astrograss (not really a traditional recording studio, but rather a special reverberant room designed for practice and recitals). it’s the five tracks at the bottom. i’m only really on 1,2, and 5.

astrograss plays straight up “newgrass” music (sam bush is their hero).

-h.

I forwarded it to Jordan who sent me back the mp3 tracks as they are no longer on the Astrograss website. The following note is snipped from his email:

So, we had those files on our website for maybe a year or so, but they were taken down a while ago. Anyhow, I just found them on my computer and yes, that’s Harris’ amazing fiddle all over it. So the tracks are:

“Jerusalem Ridge” (Bill Monroe)
“Cherokee Shuffle” (trad.)
“Dirtiest Man in the World” (w: Shel Silverstein, m: Jordan Shapiro)

The musicians are myself on guitar/vocals, Dennis Lichtman on mandolin, Tim Kiah and bass/vocals and Harris on fiddle.

From the looks of Harris’ email it was July 2004, which seems accurate in my mind. We went into that weird recording/per space a couple times, although I don’t remember it ever being in the summer, but I know we did a festival gig in upstate NY with Harris on June 19, 2004, so it seems like we were doing some playing with Harris in summer 2004.

http://www.astrograssmusic.com
 

Update: I found the full CD the other day and asked Jordan, again, to fill in the blanks. Here is his response and 7 additional tracks:

So the deal with this room was this: It was a ‘demo’/showroom for this Concertinio product in midtown NYC.
The product was a complete installation of a high-end music performance system installed into wealthy people’s homes. The walls of the room get completely covered in speakers and there are small microphones all over the ceiling. When you play music with the system on, it suddenly sounds like you’re playing in a huge auditorium, rather than a small room. It was pretty amazing. There were different settings to use with the system, hence the ‘introductions’ by the technician at the beginning of each track. I think Dennis went to college with the guy who was working for the inventor. They hired us to demo the room throughout the day while interested people checked it out. It was very interesting to play there.

 

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Projects With Astrograss 2004

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harris ‘n’ dave at levels, june 19th, 1993

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I wonder if anyone still has a poster from this event? If I’ve left anyone off the performer list, please let me know!

Harris Wulfson – Violin, Mandolin, Guitar, Vocals
Dave Sollors – Guitar, Vocals
Jamie Forrest – bass
Russell Gellman – drums
Dan Horwitz – keyboards

The Brass Holes:
Alex Feinman
Ben Whitney
Mike Kohan
 

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Harris 'n' Dave at LEVELS, June 19th, 1993

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experimental music and george antheil’s ballet mecanique, May and June 2008

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May 7, 2008
Hi,
I’m playing in three concerts this weekend. These are the final shows this season in the Object Collection series. See me performing movement while being deprived of both vision and hearing in a premier by Eric Clark! Witness me wandering around the stage with a violin in Aaron Meicht’s incredible music-theater piece “Bermal”. Drumming with chopsticks on guitar in a piece by Travis Just? And more!
And next month, my piece Enumerated Types will be part of the “George Antheil‘s Legacy” concert on June 7th at 3-Legged Dog. Come and hear my music, along with George Antheil‘s Ballet Mechanique performed by the robot collective, Lemur.
For those not in New York, all performances will be streamed live by free103point9 (7pm New York time).
Get the stream here: http://www.free103point9.org/Programs:

May 8, 7pm:
Eric Clark (New York), Christoph Ogiermann (Bremen), Craig Shepard (New York)

May 9, 7pm:
Gisburg (New York), Paula Matthusen (New York), Aaron Meicht (New York)

May 10, 7pm:
Turf Boon (Dublin) [featuring Jennifer Walshe], Travis Just (New York), Quentin Tolimieri (New York)
performers:
Alex Barreto, Eric KM Clark, Kara Feely, Travis Just, Aaron Meicht, Seth Meicht James Moore, Quentin Tolimieri, Jennifer Walshe, Harris Wulfson

All performances at:
Ontological Theater
St. Mark’s Church
131 E. 10th St. at 2nd Ave.

tickets: $10, $20 gets you into all three concerts as well as all three NOISE! events
(The 3 performances in May are partnered with the annual NOISE! festival. NOISE! shows are 10pm-1am in the same theater.)
Experimental Music has received generous support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

regards,

-Harris

On WNYC Soundcheck

Soundcheck America’s show on Antheil was replayed tonight on NPR. This performance, Antheil’s Legacy (PDF), on Jun. 7 2008 was written up in the NY Times: link to NY Times or here (PDF).

The show is about the George Antheil’s Ballet Mecanique. At 17:40 minutes into the broadcast, Harris gets a mention as a composer who has written music in the tradition of Antheil though they don’t play any of his work.

“One of the great curiosities of 20th-century music is “Ballet Mécanique,” a 25-minute percussion-and-piano extravaganza featuring 16 player pianos, electric bells, airplane propellers, an alarm clock and a siren, by Trenton-born composer George Antheil. The groundbreaking work is now being staged in a performance…by robots. Charles Amirkhanian, the music executor of Antheil’s estate, and Eric Singer, the director of the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, join us with a preview.

“Ballet Mecanique” premieres with an automated orchestra as part of the performance Antheil’s Legacy on Jun. 7 2008 at 9:30pm at 3LD Art & Technology Center.”

“As a special kickoff for a three-week run, of the new 80-minute play based on Antheil and Lamarr called “Frequency Hopping,” its performance on Saturday night was followed by a 70-minute concert titled “Antheil’s Legacy,” conceived by the composer and producer Charles Amirkhanian…  In the concert, “Ballet Mécanique” was preceded by performances of recent works by Luke Thomas Taylor, Harris Wulfson and Lukas Ligeti that explore various uses of digital music-making.”

Click the link for an archive stream of the Soundcheck broadcast: Ballet Mecanique, Performed by…Robots

projects with rowland stebbins

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Harris played with Freyja Balmer Gallagher on Rowland Stebbins’ EP titled Hook, Line & Sinker, 2002. Rowland graciously allowed me to post all the tracks from the album as well as track 7 from Rowland’s album, All Over, which Harris played with Rowland at Merlefest in 2003.

https://rowlandstebbins.bandcamp.com/music
 

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With Rowland Stebbins

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sketches from high school 2: covers

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What did YOU do with your high school weekend afternoons? Harris played with his 4-track. And taught himself to play the accordion. His covers lend some insight to some of his musical influences.

Again, this post will be updated further as I discover more recordings. Or better/more complete versions.

 

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Sketches From High School 2: Covers

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