Zach Herchen

I "met" Mattias Sköld through email. He's a Swedish composer and sound artist who contacted me after talking with a mutual friend (and great percussionist), Mathias Reumert. We collaborated via email for months as he was working on Far North, a new piece for saxophone, electronics, and video. It was around the 5 month point that what was originally a slightly abstract collaboration over the internet turned into an opportunity for a face-to-face meeting (and actual music creation).

Mattias is part of the art group Raketa (who was creating the video for Far North) and they were also planning an art project in Venice. The project, There Is A Visitor, explored how our actions and interactions with the surrounding world are mediated through mental and physical tools such as art, media, culture, memories, dreams, and longing. When I was invited to take part in the project, I jumped at the chance. After 3 more months of planning and emails, everything was set and I traveled to Venice to perform with Mattias and discuss art with Raketa.

As the first day in Venice went by, it dawned on me: I traveled all this way to be with a group of people that I don't really know! Practically ever hour I met someone new who was participating in There Is A Visitor. The feeling went away as I interacted with everyone over the course of the week, but it was very interesting to have the harsh contrast of faceless emails and actual physical collaboration.

The original emails were a great example of the internet enabling connections around the world. Strangers can collaborate from different parts of the world without ever actually seeing each other (though this does require a certain amount of trust that the other person is actually real and isn't scamming you, haha). On the other hand, meeting in person is so much more engaging and full-fulling. The physical interaction allows for extra moments when conversation drifts to a random topic. You wind up with a relationship that includes not just the essentials, but also unscheduled activities and unexpected ideas. For me, its these extra moments that make all the difference.

Many thanks to everyone I met in Venice for a wonderful experience!

I'm back from my trip to Venice! It was an amazing city to visit: no cars, tons of water, narrow maze-like alleys, and tall buildings. You almost certainly get lost the first few times you walk around, but its really fun to explore. Mattias Sköld and I performed twice over the course of the week as part of There Is A Visitor, an art project by Raketa. I was also lucky enough to check out La Biennale while there. I just finished moving up to NYC, right after getting back from Europe, so things have been really busy. I'll post more info and pictures from the trip soon.

An amazingly cute music video by Kate Micucci.

AM/PM Sax Quartet had a great time at the Look & Listen Festival last week. We performed Paul Leary's "I Have A Past Life Memory From The War That Blew The Fifth Planet Into The Asteroid Belt" and other stories from AM Radio, for sax quartet and tape. The composition is based on clips from talk radio about bizarre and paranormal events. You can hear our live performance of this piece from a concert last year.

The Look & Listen Festival, directed by David Gordon, presents new music in art galleries, which creates a great atmosphere for the performances. The first night of the festival was at OK Harris and featured visual art by Marc Aronson and Robert Rohm. The second and third nights were at Project Space, featuring art by Leon Berkowitz. You can see two of his paintings behind us in the photo above. They were really amazing to look at in the gallery (the colors seemed to buzz as you stare at them).

The other performers at the Festival were So Percussion, Todd Reynolds, Chamber Players of the League of Composers/ISCM, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Jade Simmons, Marc Peloquin and David Del Tredici, Split Second, and Svet Stoyanov. Many thanks to Ron Gordon for the photographs.

There has been a stream of popular videos that take advantage of Auto-Tune (an audio processor that is used for pitch correction) to create songs out of nonmusical recordings. I think that they are particularly hilarious and love how they place focus on a modern wonder of audio production.

For more Auto-Tune craziness see:
Auto-Tune the News
Rap Chop
Martin Luther King Sings
Winston Churchill backed by band from the future

This video is made up of various YouTube videos edited into a massive jam session. It was created as part of a project titled "ThruYou" by Kutiman. His website contains several videos created in this way and some info about the project. I especially love the clip with a kid wailing on his trumpet.

Miguel (our tenor player) had to have his appendix removed and is not able to perform this weekend. After talking with the organizer for the Aesthetic Research Series, we decided to reschedule the concert. We will anounced the new date as soon as a decision is reached.

To pass the time until then, here's a dog singing the blues:

Video from YouTube

This is a rather awesome video of The Bad Plus playing Milton Babbitt's Semi-Simple Variations (I know its April Fools, but the video is actually real, haha). The Bad Plus has posted info about the video and the track off their upcoming CD on their blog. I have to give credit to Alex Ross, who's blog is where I first saw this video.

Update (4/7/09): I realized that the reason this video is interesting may be lost on some people. Semi-Simple Variations is a composition for solo piano that is considered to be very academic and not exactly for casual listening. The way that The Bad Plus turn this into a jam session with jazz dancers completely changes how the average listener reacts to the piece. You can listen to a sample of Babbitt's original piece here.

Thanks to everyone who came out to see Man Down! The crowd was amazing and I think it was a particularly memorable show. Someone took a video of us playing "Break in the Weather" (without me noticing, haha) and posted it on YouTube. Enjoy:

Video from YouTube

AM/PM's tour with Rhymes With Opera is done! We had a great time performing in Durham, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. It was really fun playing in four cities with such different personalities. The audience was truly amazing everywhere we played, even in the subway at Times Square, haha. AM/PM sends out a huge thank you to George Lam and Ruby Fulton for organizing the tour and composing Skeleton for us. Also, thanks to Thom Limbert for composing Numbers/Dates and for being such a generous host in Durham.

AM/PM is now shifting focus towards our performance at the Aesthetic Research Series on April 10th, featuring the premiere of Ying-Chen Kao's Frustration Factory, and at the Look & Listen Festival on May 2nd, performing Paul Leary's "I Have A Past Life Memory From The War That Blew The Fifth Planet Into The Asteroid Belt" and other stories from AM Radio.