Come join Andrea Parkins and Matthew Ostrowski, with special guests Brian Chase and Matteo Liberatore, to celebrate the release of their first duo CD, 'Elective Affinities,' on Infrequent Seams.
Electronic accordionist and sound artist Parkins and digital musician Ostrowski explore, through a series of bristling exchanges and dynamic interactions, the enabling chemistry of their creative relationship which, although until now undocumented, has extended across nearly two decades. Both are assertive characters musically, conceptually bold and gesturally flamboyant, embracing wild notions and turbulent activity. Their real-time assemblages are texturally variegated, volatile, concentrated, busy, gritty, vividly colorful and sometimes brash. Samples from a range of sources, instrumental, vocal and synthesized sounds are kneaded and churned, they coalesce, dissolve, run and spill producing.
After nearly two decades of collaboration, both in live performance and installation projects, Elective Affinities marks the first recording project from Andrea Parkins and Matthew Ostrowski. These eight works represent the current state of their shared sonic explorations, which have been driven by their philosophical as much as their musical interchanges over the years. A shared fascination with physical and musical gestures, densely interwoven meshes of events, and the aesthetics of interruption and breakage lay the groundwork for this album of intricate assemblages, recorded in real-time. Incorporating concrete sounds, both live and sampled, cutting-edge synthesis techniques, live processing, and instrumental and acoustic feedback, Elective Affinities is a study of valences, of molecular combinations and recombinations, of forms in states of development, flux, and collapse.
Andrea Parkins:
Andrea Parkins is a sound artist, composer, and electroacoustic improviser known for her pioneering approach on her electronically processed accordion and investigation of embodiment and chance with her custom-designed virtual sound-processing instruments. Described as a “sound-ist,” of “protean,” talent by critic Steve Smith, Parkins’ laptop electronics, amplified objects, and Fender-amped accordion create sonic fields of lush harmonics and sculpted electronic feedback, punctuated by moments of gap and rift. Parkinsʼ work has been presented at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Experimental Intermedia, and Kunsthalle Basel; and festivals such as NEXT (Bratislava), Cyberfest (St. Petersburg), All Ears (Oslo), and many more. She has collaborated in performance or on recordings with artists such as Ute Wassermann, Lotte Anker, Magda Mayas, Tony Buck, Nels Cline, Matthew Ostrowski, George E. Lewis, and others. Parkinsʼ recent notable projects include her amplified performance drawing series, which she developed as an invited resident artist at the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida; and Two Rooms (Variation 1), for solo performer and 40 loudspeakers, which premiered in 2016 at the Akousma Festival in Montreal. Parkins’ recordings have been published by Important Records, Confront Recordings, Infrequent Seams, Confront Recordings, Atavistic, Creative Sources, Henceforth Records, and Victo; and she can be heard as a contributor on numerous other labels.
www.andreaparkins.com
Matthew Ostrowski:
A New York City native, Matthew Ostrowski is a pioneer in the field of electronic music, having worked intensively for over two decades with custom-designed gestural control systems for live performance. Using digital tools and formalist techniques to engage with quotidian materials -- sonic, physical, and cultural – Ostrowski's work explores the liminal space between the virtual and phenomenological worlds. His work, which has been seen on six continents, ranges from live electronic performance to installations incorporating video, multichannel sound, and computer-controlled objects. Ostrowski has collaborated with a large number of artists in the US and abroad, including David Behrman, John Butcher, Diamanda Galás, Nicolas Collins, Anne LaBerge, Andrea Parkins, The Flying Karamazov Brothers, and many others. He regularly performs in the duo KRK, with Prague-based contrabassist George Cremaschi, and with R. Luke Dubois in the multimedia duo Fair Use.
Matteo Liberatore:
Matteo Liberatore is a boundary-pushing guitarist and composer working at the intersection of free, contemporary classical, and noise music. Based in Brooklyn, Liberatore spent much of his life in the medieval region of Abruzzo, Italy, amidst dramatic landscapes reflected in a playing style of “unsettling beauty” and “striking physicality” (The New York City Jazz Record). At the heart of Liberatore's work is a mode of free improvisation guided by a compositional sensibility, one informed by his experience and training in a multiplicity of genres. Matteo Liberatore is known for his nuanced treatment of timbre, texture, gestures, and rhythms, often using extended techniques, electronics, and various preparations. This approach can be heard in his first solo album––aptly titled Solos––which was released by Innova Records in 2018: “This is not just sonic novelty or gratuitous use of extended techniques; each of the pieces, while largely improvised, [has] clarity and purpose” (Avant Music News). Solos was included in Ted Gioia’s best albums of 2018.
Brian Chase:
Brian Chase is a drummer and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. His diverse range of work includes that with Grammy-nominated rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the NYC experimental music community, and Drums and Drones, a project focusing on the application of harmonic tuning to drums and percussion. In 2018, Brian started his record label, Chaikin Records, at the suggestion of John Zorn.
www.chaikinrecords.com
Chase/Liberatore Duo video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD2RL1XzHtg