Ed. note: Here’s hoping you all have a great time ringing in the New Year. Thanks to Guy (Vimeo / YouTube) from the Metro Gallery, you can also reflect back on a great night of live music from 2009: our fall showcase headlined by So Percussion this fall. Unfortunately, Microkingdom’s set was lost due to technical malfunction.

Gestures
Metro Gallery
Baltimore, MD
October 28, 2009

Band:
Bob Chapman-trombone
Jon Lebovitz-tuba
Rebecca Mills-clarinet
Mark Cisneros-drums
Jess Matthews-drums
Kriston Capps-sax

Source: Peluso CEMC6/ck4(card)>PS-2>AD-20>NJB3
Transfer: NJB3>PC>SF-7>Wav>FLAC
Taper: Jeff Mewbourn (jm292@yahoo.com)

Download the full set formatted as: MP3 or FLAC

Stream and download individual tracks after the jump

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Tonight will be an inspired night for music in Baltimore. Of course, that statement is a little biased since I’m putting it on.

Here’s some decidedly non-biased material suggesting you attend:

“Banging on Cans: And anything and everything else in So Percussion’s strange, not-just-percussion universe” (Baltimore City Paper)

“Roll Over, Beethoven: By Reimagining Format, Alt-Classical Musicians Are Going Mainstream” (Washington Post)

“Do You Hear That?” (Maryland Morning on WYPR 88.1FM)

Splice Today

and here’s what others are saying about So Percussion and their recent premiere of Imaginary City in Brooklyn:

“Drummers Map an Imaginary City” (New York Times)

“Yes In My Backyard: An Exclusive First Listen To So Percussion’s BAM Next Wave Piece Imaginary City” (Village Voice Music Blog)

“Top Live Show: So Percussion @ BAM Harvey Theater” (Time Out New York)

“So Percussion – playing ‘Imaginary City’ @ BAM” (BrooklynVegan)

Here’s some video we shot with Polygon Tree Productions of So performing Steve Reich’s Drumming Part 1:

It also bears mentioning that the line-up has expanded since our initial announcement to include two more sets. One features the premiere of a piece by local composers Adam Holofcener and Jeff Zeiders. The other is a True Vine power trio of sorts featuring Jason Willett (Leprechaun Catering, Pleasant Livers, Half Japanese), Martin Schmidt (Matmos), and Owen Gardner (Black Vatican, Janitor, ex-Teeth Mountain). Some more, press-release-y details on them after the jump.

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For Immediate Release: All artists are open to press inquiries, interviews and more.  For more information regarding any of the artists or this show, please contact Greg Szeto at auralstates@gmail.com.

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01. MP3: So Percussion – Drumming, Pt. 4 (Steve Reich)
02. MP3: So Percussion – June
03. MP3: Microkingdom’s Pro Hour – Double Abacus from Wrenches:My Heart/Double Abacus (2008)
04. MP3: Gestures – Doritos from Nice EP (2009)

Aural States presents So Percussion, Microkingdom, Gestures, more TBA at the Metro Gallery on Wed Oct 28th

(BALTIMORE, MD — Sept 14 2009) — Defining the boundaries of what we know as music and classifying its endless offspring are both ever-evolving, vital enterprises.  In celebration of this constant growth, Aural States has brought together musicians who we feel excel at making music a malleable and dynamic entity through bold experimentation.  We are proud to present So Percussion, Microkingdom, and Gestures at the Metro Gallery on October 28^th 2009 in the Station North Arts District of Baltimore.

Brooklyn-based quartet So Percussion take up the cause of showing the world that percussion is much more than a primitive means to an end, expanding far beyond drums laying down beats.  Lauded as “revelatory” (David Lang), “brilliant” and “consistently impressive” (The New York Times), and “astonishing and entrancing” (Billboard Magazine), their genre-bending work has lead to collaborations with innovative musicians like Dan Deacon and Matmos, with whom years of work will bear fruit in a late Spring 2010 release on Cantaloupe Records.  They’ve prepared bracing performances of pieces from visionary composers such as David Lang, Steve Reich, John Cage and Iannis Xenakis, as well as crafting their own compositions.  Their music has taken them around the globe to stages and audiences of all shapes and sizes, from the Lincoln Center Festival to Carnege Hall, the Kennedy Center, and even Whartscape 2009 at the Baltimore Museum of Art where they performed excerpts from Steve Reich’s Drumming.  This summer, So created an annual summer institute at Princeton University consisting of an intensive two-week chamber music seminar for college percussionists.

In their only Baltimore/DC area performance, in an unusually intimate venue, So will perform works from Steve Reich, their 2006 album Amid the Noise, and their latest original work entitled Imaginary City, which has its world premiere just a few weeks before as a commission for the 2009 BAM Next Wave Festival.

http://www.sopercussion.com/ || http://www.myspace.com/sopercussion || http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1259

The trio known as Microkingdom’s Pro Hour is one of Baltimore’s avant-garde powerhouses.  Its members hold pedigree second to none: guitarist Marc Miller of math rock pranksters Oxes, percussion whiz and composer Will Redman, and the musically polyamorous John Dierker’s fierce reeds.  Playing “sinuous, powerfully dynamic improvisations” (The Wire) or self-described “No Jazz,” Microkingdom have been called “dynamic, challenging, confident” (Pitchfork).  Over the past couple of years Microkingdom has played shows with: Wzt Heart, Ecstatic Sunshine, Thank You, Singer, Food For Animals, Daniel Higgs, These Are Powers, Jack Wright, White Mice, Talibam!, Peter Brotzmann, Pontiak, Extra Life, The Homosexuals, and many others. They’ve also self released color vinyl Wrenches: My Heart/Double Abacus as well as putting out the CD-R EP Spectacular Edges on Human Conduct.  This fall will see them playing Brooklyn-based Death By Audio’s You Are Here: The Maze installation and performance festival in late September.

http://www.microkingdom.com/ || http://myspace.com/microkingdom || http://www.willredman.com/

Gestures’ “shambolic drums-n-brass band” was named D.C.’s “Second-Best Use of Air Pressure” by Washington City Paper’s Best of D.C. 2009.  A horn and drum collective consisting of tuba, trombone, saxophone, clarinet, and two drum kits, think manic marching band meets frantic free-jazz structures and you’ve got a pretty close approximation of their sound.  Fascinating and brazen blasts of dissonance test and probe the limits of your endurance while simultaneously forming vivid mental images and narratives like some crazed sonic bard, drunkenly dragging off-kilter harmonies out of entropy.  Gestures’ debut EP Nice will be out soon.

http://www.initiatedeyerecordings.com/gestures || http://www.myspace.com/gesturesdc

Venue Information

The Metro Gallery, 1700 N Charles St, Baltimore MD 21201

http://themetrogallery.net/ || http://www.myspace.com/metrogallery

Tickets $10 in advance.  $12 day of show.  21 and over only.