[Microsound-announce] Fri, 5/26 unusual electro-acoustic music in Oakland

[Matt Davignon]

Friday, May 26 2006 8:00 PM

21 Grand
416 25th St @Broadway
Oakland, California
$6-10 sliding scale

3 sets of unusual electroacoustic music by

---(most of) Mire

---Matt Davignon & David Michalak duo
(drum machine & lap steel guitar)

---Aram Shelton solo (electronics)


Mire is:
Elise Baldwin - laptop
Joel Pickard - pedal steel guitar
Seth Warren - percussion
(and usually William Fowler Collins, but he'll be out
of town this time)

Mire was formed in early 2004. Their music, at times,
is a cinematic blending of experimental, electronic,
psychedelic, country, noise, and free improvisational
qualities.

Raised on a farm in Idaho, Elise Baldwin now resides
in San Francisco, where she recently completed her MFA
in Electronic Music at Mills College. When not
indulging her interest in pyrokenesis or reading
compulsively in the bath, E can be found cooking up
aurally hazardous byproducts in her studio or building
software instruments for video manipulation. She has
whiled away much of the past decade as a sound
designer and recording engineer, composing for
theater, film, computer games, live performance, and
audio installations. Active in the Bay Area
experimental music scene, she focuses on solo and
collaborative intermedia performance, appearing
recently at the ARTSfest 2004, E.S.P. Media Lounge,
CalArts CEAIT Festival 2003, the Lab and the National
Queer Arts Festival. She is a recipient of the 2004
Frogs Peak Award for Experimental Music.

Joel Pickard has an MA in Composition from Mills
College in Oakland, CA where he studied with Fred
Frith, Alvin Curran, and Pauline Oliveros. He has a BA
in Music from Bethel College in St. Paul, MN where he
studied classical guitar. One of his most recent
interests has been developing a non-traditional
language on the pedal steel guitar, an instrument long
relegated to providing the weeping backdrop to
generations of country music ballads. In addition to
freelance work, Joel is active as a performer in both
solo and group settings.

Seth Warren grew up in New Hampshire, studied English
Literature and Religion at Lawrence University in
Wisconsin and began an MFA in Electronic Music and
Recording Media at Mills College in 2003. He creates
electro-acoustic music, sound sculptures and
installations, sound design for theater and film, and
performs as a drummer and percussionist in the bay
area and abroad.


Matt Davignon is an experimental musician living in
Oakland, California. Since 1993, he has developed his
own unique style of music, which focuses largely on
textures, arrhythmic patterns and musical
imperfections. Since 2004, he has been focusing
primarily on the drum machine. Instead of using it as
a rhythm device, he plays the pads manually while
processing the sounds through an array of effects
devices and samplers, improvising music made of
organic-sounding textures, hums, gurgles and crackles.

David Michalak frequently performs on lap steel guitar
and an assortment of odd percussion instruments. While
David is more commonly known as a filmmaker (50 films
with original soundtracks since 1971), the visual art
side of him seeps inherently into his solo
performances and group compositions, which are
characterized by shimmering passages, abstract
snapshots and haunting representations of natural
elements. David has founded the instrumental ensembles
Reel Change and Ghost In The House. He's also part of
the duo Dr. Bob. The latter 2 groups will have new cds
this year.

Aram Shelton will be creating music via sample based
computer improvisations, combining acoustic samples of
saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet and trumpet
originally played by Jonathan Crrawford, Steve Hess
and himself. Highly active in Chicago's creative music
scene, Shelton has recently moved to Oakland, where
he's studying at Mills College. His focus continues to
be on improvisation based music that combines
electronics and acoustics naturally in a live setting.