“These days I seem to be attracted to the sounds of materials like hubcaps, broken glass, sheet metal falling awkwardly and crashing,” Chicago composer Olivia Block told The Wire last April. She added that she’s also been doing things with “broken glass pieces in a box on the low strings, a pan balancing on wooden beams, things like that. For the past five years, I’ve been developing a language of composition and improvisation using the inside of a piano.”
Block, a respected composer who’s performed all over the U.S., Europe, and Japan, headlines New Music Circle‘s season finale showcase tomorrow night at the William A. Kerr Foundation (21 O’Fallon, wakfoundation.org) and the show may or may not include the sound of a box of broken glass vibrating on piano strings; in a short squib on her website, Block merely wrote that she plans to perform “a live mix and processing of field material and electronics…The mix will be go through a four speaker system, so it should sound extra special.” (Listen to some samples of Block’s work here.)
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Filling out the rest of the showcase is a group of top-notch St. Louis experimental musicians, including Pat Boland of The Conformists (solo percussion); Joe Raglani and Kevin Harris (solo and collaborative pieces for modular synthesizer); and Jeremy Kannapell (who’ll be presenting 8mm films, rather than DJing or playing music).
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.; the show starts at 7 p.m. Tickets ar $15, $7 for students, with a $10 suggested donation for the afterparty, which includes beer, food, a soundtrack by Nathan Cook of Close/Far Recordings, visuals by Chad Eivins, and a raffle for prizes from local businesses like Apop Records, Local Harvest and Cyrano’s. Tickets can be purchased at the door (cash or check only) or via NMC’s website, newmusiccircle.org. You can also get more info via the Facebook event page.
