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Rachel Gawell

Two Shows in Boston

150225_lovefornow

I’m braving the weather and heading up to Boston for two cool shows:

New Thread Quartet premiere’s Kathryn Salfelder’s “Stolen From Above” on her DMA recital.
FREE
Sat, Feb 28 @ 8pm
New England Conservatory, Brown Hall
290 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA

Ok, this one’s just outside of Boston:
RESCHEDULED TO MARCH 8
“Love, For Now”, a recital exploring love (and madness) in modern times with soprano Elisabeth Halliday and cellist Rachel Gawell. A reception will follow the concert.
$20 suggested donation
Sun, Mar 8 @ 2pm
Follen Church Sanctuary
755 Massachusetts Avenue, Lexington, MA

Program:
Amy Beth Kirsten: Fire Balloon
Ryan Jesperson: Ephemeral Moments
Richard Cameron-Wolfe: MeMarie
Juan María Solare: three duets from the cycle Railway
Adam Knauss: A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day: History of a Date (premier)

Ruckus Amongstus!

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:

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

Seafarer

Wow, it has been far too long since posting. I’ve been busy moving to a new apartment, making DVDs of Spring concerts for a few schools, performing at Spectral Summer in Boston, and (currently at) SICPP in Boston!

Now, more about the video above. The Seafarer is a composition by my good friend Kevin Clark. During the past 3 years we and many talented people slowly produced a video for his piece. Everything was done in free time every now and then, but we’ve finally got it done and I love the result! This project is actually my first sound design work and was a ton of fun to do.

You can check out Kevin’s site for all the details, including this snippet:

The Seafarer adapts an Old English poem about the suffering and joy of the sea. It began as a concert piece for acting cellist, and grew into a film. The translation into modern English was made by Burton Raffel, and is used by kind permission of the Yale University Press, as printed in Poems and Prose from the Old English.

Cast:
Cello and Performance – Rachel Gawell
Voice Performance – Claire Buckingham

Crew:
Director and Co-Editor – Michael Feldman
Composer andProducer – Kevin Clark
Sound Recording/Design – Zach Herchen
Visual Effects – Victoria Nece
Editor and Assistant Director – Brian Hedden
Cinematographer – Antonio Cisneros
Sound Operator – Gillian Arthur
Production Assistants – Josh Feldman, Ben Johnson

Video from YouTube.