Zach Herchen

Check my recent performance with 1st Construction of Evan Chamber’s Come Down Heavy! at Vaudeville Park. Above is the fourth (and final) movement.

1st Construction was co-founded by Danica Borisavljevic, Ela Polak, and myself last summer. We are currently hard at work commissioning pieces for piano/violin/sax and planning summer concerts. Stayed tuned!

Video from YouTube.

This past weekend I kicked off the new year with a 3+ hour variety show of great music, theater, and performers collectively called Ruckus Amongstus! Developed by past No Signal members, we applied our basic idea of “gather everything you are into right now and put it in one epic event”. We had a great turnout at Exapno (a new music community center in Brooklyn, NY) last Saturday Jan 14. Many thanks to the audience for there support and positive feedback. It looks like we’ll be doing this again!

I was very excited to have included the premiere of Strangeloop, written by Victoria Cheah for me. We had worked heavily on this piece in 2010, made a recording, but never got it onto a program. A strange loop is a system that cycles on itself, self-references, and is a paradox. The classic example is the popular drawings of M. C. Escher.

The event included a gesture piece, rock music, jazz, new opera works, a monologue, and improvisations. Plus we had Dennis Clark and Orlando Klass mixing unique cocktails. We videotaped the whole event and plan to get much of it up on YouTube soon! Check out the program:

Gestenstücke by Juan María Solare
Strangeloop by Victoria Cheah — WORLD PREMIERE
Giant by The Bad Plus
Khan Variations by Alejandro Vinao

***IMPROVISED YouTube Film Scores***

Physical Improv testing for Summer’s Twilight by Kevin Clark — WORK IN PROGRESS
We Two Boys by George Lam
Phthia

***IMPROVISED YouTube Film Scores***

Textual Healing
Monologue from “A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer”
The Seafarer by Kevin Clark, translation by Burton Raffel
My pain by Edward Thomas-Herrera

***IMPROVISED YouTube Film Scores***

Sylvana Joyce and The Moment

Our wonderful performers were:
Peter Bellomo, Sara Phillips Budde, Kevin Clark, Dennis Clark, Dave Cohen, Michael Compitello, Sean-David Cunningham, Matthew Dunnam, Lainie Fefferman, Michael Feldman, Rachel Gawell, Rose Ginsberg, Zach Herchen, Jaime de Jesus, Alan Jeffries, Sylvana Joyce, Emily Kadish, Orlando Klass, George Lam, Robert Maril, Casey Middaugh, James Moore, Domenica Romagni, Christopher Smith, Andie Springer

The University of Richmond’s Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival was a whole lot of fun! Many thanks go out to Benjamin Broening (founder and artistic director of 3P) and his staff. This was the festival’s 11th year and featured eighth blackbird (ensemble-in-residence), VERGE Ensemble (featured artists), and performers Elizabeth McNutt, Jason Price, Daivd Niethamer, Daniel Koppelman, Ruth Neville, and myself.

I was at Third Practice to perform Paul Leary’s Number Stations, which I commissioned and premiered in 2010, and to premiere Christopher Chandler’s latest work a thing of dream and mist. Both pieces consist of solo saxophone and playback. You can hear Number Stations in the media section. I plan to record a thing of dream and mist and can’t wait to upload it!

This year’s Third Practice consisted of 5 concerts spread over November 4th and 5th. Concert One featured young composers Joo Won Park, Lesley Hinger, Heather Stebbins, Matthew McCabe, David Malkiel, and Christopher Chandler. I particularly enjoyed Park’s Introvert (watch on Vimeo) and, of course, playing Chris’ music.

Concert Two featured eighth blackbird with several solo pieces. As they are known to do, 8bb was really great through. Here’s my favorite pieces: Anna Clines’ rapture uses clarinet with distortion and fixed media in a well-connected manner. Alvin Lucier’s Nothing is Real (Strawberry Fields) for piano, amplified teapot, and electronics manages to reimagine the famous Beatles tune in a singular way. Tristan Perich’s piccolo and 1-bit electronics piece, A/B/C/D, was retro-futuristic-ly awesome. Anna Clyne’s 1987 for quartet and fixed media was performed with impressive reserve. JacobTV’s The Body of Your Dreams for piano and fixed media critiques USA fitness culture with lots of humor.

To avoid excessive detail, I will just mention some of my favorites pieces from the second day of the festival. McGregor Boyle’s Midway Inlet is a very tasteful and peaceful piece for clarinet and electronics. David Little’s and the sky was still there (watch on Vimeo) was premiered in it’s cello version. Nathan Wolek shared his fixed media piece attack which is entirely composed of the start of music in his music library. Benjamin Broening’s gathering light for violin and electronics had an excellent performance by Lina Bahn. And finally, Lucky Leone and Butch Rovan performed their rather funny and entertaining piece Slim Jim Choker for speaker and interactive typewriter.

I had a great time attending the festival and send my thanks to Paul Leary and and Chris Chandler for inviting me to perform their pieces!

Above graphic designed by John Malinoski.

I’ve got a busy long weekend coming up! For those of you in Virginia, I’ll be performing at the Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival, hosted by the University of Richmond. This Friday, on the 2:30pm concert, I am playing the premiere of Chris Chandler’s soprano sax and playback piece a thing of dreams and mist. I’ve had fun recording samples and meeting with Chris over Skype during the last couple months. And a great big Thank You goes out to Cara Salveson for lending me her soprano.

Then Saturday, on the 10:30am concert, I am performing Paul Leary’s Number Stations. This is a piece I commissioned/premiered in 2010 and had the good fortune to perform at the SEAMUS 2011 conference. Check out my recording of the work in the media section. I’m also very excited to be sharing the program with Peabody faculty member McGregor Boyle!

After a quick train ride to Baltimore I’ll be performing with AM/PM on Monday at the Three Arts Club of Homeland in Baltimore. We’ve got a great program lined up including Piazzolla’s classic Histoire du Tango, our own Miguel Bolivar’s Saxophone Quartet #1, Kati Agócs’ Hymn, and the lengthy but amazing Recitation Book by David Maslanka.

And then I will be go home and rest…

Yup that’s right. This weekend I’m headed off to Baltimore for two concerts presenting the music of Matthew Burtner, composer, performer and metasaxophone inventor. Matthew is a pioneer in electronic and multimedia compositions for saxophone. These concerts will share his music ranging from metasaxophone (sax with oodles of custom electronics), experimental turntablism and film improvisations to performances of two unprecedented compositions for nine acoustic tenor saxophones.

I’ll be performing Matthew’s Incantation S4-X with AM/PM Quartet and joining for his tenor nonets Endprint and Portals of Distortion. All of his work is awesome and you should check this out.

1st Concert: Friday, Oct 14 @ noon – MICA
2nd Concert: Saturday, Oct 15 @ 8pm – Sonic Circuits at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center

Players: Matthew Burtner, Mike Straus, Andrew Landau, Rachel Winder, Sheri Oyan, Sean Dynan, Ian Richter, Jeremiah Baker, Cara Salveson, DJ Dubble8 (Erik Spangler)

Image (from concert poster) by Intangible Arts

Many thanks to everyone who came out for our CD release concerts in Lexington, MA and New York City! Elisabeth Halliday and I had a great time premiering music from our new CD Emerging Voices. We are currently booking more shows in Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, Providence, and Boston. Hopefully we’ll be able to perform for each of our awesome Kickstarter donors!

One more photo worth sharing, our NYC involved a pre-concert party and desert on the subway for our guests:

Photos were taken by Anthony Trujillo. Check out his portfolio and tumblr!

Elisabeth Halliday and I are finally going to launch our new CD Emerging Voices! We braved the recent earthquake and hurricane, and have rebooked our Lexington CD release for this Sunday. We are also pumped for our NYC CD release one week later! We owe the entire project to our fantastic Kickstarter donors who made it possible. We had fun sending signed, pre-release CDs to our donors. I’ve almost got a new store section ready for this site and we will starting making the CD available to anyone.
Read more…

My Emerging Voices CD release in Lexington, MA is cancelled due to Hurricane Irene.

We will try to reschedule for September. If you live in the area be safe through the next 2 days.

In the meantime, (starting soon) CDs will be on sale through this site! We have finished production and are really exciting to share our work.

I’ve been hard at work on my Emerging Voices Project these past few weeks! Elisabeth Halliday and I finished recording and editing our commissioned pieces by Kathleen Bader, Adam Knauss, and George Lam. The CD design is almost done. We’ve signed our license for Lori Laitman’s music. Oh, and I moved out of a sublet into an official apartment. Up next is mixing, mastering, and duplication.

All that means: the CD release is almost upon us! Join Elisabeth and I on Sunday, August 28th in Lexington, MA for the premiere performance of the new works and official CD release. The concert kicks off at 2pm at Follen Church (755 Massachusetts Avenue in Lexington, Massachusetts). Tickets are $10. There will be a reception in the Community Center afterward, and CDs will be available for purchase.

We are nailing down other performance dates around the east coast, including a big NYC CD release. Much thanks to all of our supporters and we can’t wait to celebrate with you!

The SICPP Iditarod is today! For the uninitiated, SICPP is New England Conservatory’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice and is lovingly called “Sick Puppy”. The Iditarod, aside from being a massive Alaskan dog sled race, is our 8+ hour marathon concert of the music prepare by participants. This year’s concert starts at 4pm today in Brown Hall at NEC and here’s the lengthy program:

HOUR ONE
James Tenney: Percussion Responses: Ergodan II
David Tarantino, Jeffrey Kolega, Cory Bracken, Gary Donald, percussion
Simon Hanes, electronics

Simon Hanes: TBD
Franziska Huhn, harp
Simon Hanes, electronics

Lee Weisert: New England Drift
Elzbieta Polak, violin
Kayleigh Miller, viola
Ben Schwartz, cello
Jessi Rosinski, flute
Rane Moore, clarinet
Barbara Lieurance, piano
Scott Deal, percussion
Julia Tai, conductor

Douglas Farrand: Untitled work for string trio
Elizabeth Barksdale, violin
Karina Fox, viola
Michael Unterman, cello

Ryo Nakayama: Xxxx xxx
Elizabeth Lee, cello
Zach Herchen, saxophone

George Crumb: Madrigals, Book III
Ceceilia Allwein, soprano
Adrienne Bassett, harp
Gary Robert Donald, percussion

* * * * * * * * * * * *

HOUR TWO
Tristan Murail: Éthers
Elizabeth Barksdale, violin
Kayleigh Miller, viola
Michael Unterman, cello
Kathryn Schulmeister, double bass
McMillan Gaither, trombone
Jessi Rosinski, flute
Jeffrey Means, conductor
Read more…