This Friday-Sunday at 6pm, thingNY is very excited to present SubtracTTTTTTTTT, a new live-streaming performance we’ve created in the weeks since the quarantine began. Read a preview of the piece in The New Yorker, then watch us perform free of charge at http://thingNY.com or on thingNY’s Facebook page or YouTube channel. Scroll down for details, and I hope you’re doing ok out there!
| First, a recap since my last update: I toured the West Coast for nearly two weeks in early February with the World/Inferno Friendship Society alongside tour mates Bridge City Sinners. We stopped by the Oakland headquarters of our label Alternative Tentacles, where we were interviewed on their bATcast podcast – listen here. Back home in Philly, my partner Evie and I performed as a music and storytelling duo for the second time, on Andrea Clearfield’s long-running salon series. Then I embarked on the five-city debut tour of my free improv duo Marbleous with Austrian bassist Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka – watch part of our final tour show on YouTube. In the middle of that tour, I stopped by WNYC Studios with World/Inferno to record on John Schaefer’s Soundcheck podcast – listen here. Since the end of the Marbleous tour on March 1, there’s little to report, except that HERE Arts Center made public the full video of Paul Pinto’s Thomas Paine in Violence from our premiere run a few years ago – watch here. Now to this weekend’s premiere: SubtracTTTTTTTTT is a live-streamed series of isolation etudes, songs, scenes, and scenarios reflecting on how a process of subtraction is redefining our mundane. We were scheduled to be performing the tenth-anniversary revival of our experimental opera ADDDDDDDDD at Spectrum in Brooklyn this week, but when that was canceled, we decided to make a brand new online piece instead. I feel very lucky to have had an engaging, collaborative project to work on during this isolated time. Our new audio-visual work is designed to explore the strengths of live streaming as a distinct art medium, toying with the abilities, shortfalls, and comical inconsistencies of bandwidth broadcast. With me on the project are Gelsey Bell, Isabel Castellvi, Dave Ruder, Paul Pinto, and Erin Rogers, with video design by Eamonn Farrell. We’re excited that Isabel, a former stalwart member of thingNY, has rejoined the crew from her home in North Carolina – there’s no reason distance should be an obstacle in our online world! The piece is presented by Music at the Anthology (MATA), the new music organization that was to have co-presented ADDDDDDDDD. As for what’s next, I’m working on music for a podcast, and I’m planning to get back to developing some solo music too. I’m expecting World/Inferno’s July-August European tour to be canceled, but officially it hasn’t been yet, so…fingers crossed? And if any of you want me to record a little violin on my home recording setup, get in touch! Artist relief, Jeff |