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Press Releases
Jan. 7-8: Indexical Presents Yarn/Wire in the Premieres of Katherine Young’s Biomes 4.1 and Marcel Zaes’ Parallel Prints
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katy Salomon | Morahan Arts and Media
katy@morahanartsandmedia.com | 863.660.2214
Indexical Presents Yarn/Wire in the Premieres of
Katherine Young’s Biomes 4.1 and Marcel Zaes’ Parallel Prints
Reception and Concert at Indexical, January 7 and 8
“Sonic art that is clearly going places.” – Gramophone Magazine
Santa Cruz, CA (December 13, 2021) — Indexical presents experimental percussion and piano quartet Yarn/Wire in two events at the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz, CA. On Friday, January 7, 2022 from 5pm – 9pm PST, Yarn/Wire shares Katherine Young’s installation BIOMES 4.1 in a free opening reception. The installation will be activated by Yarn/Wire for a ticketed concert on Saturday, January 8, 2022 at 8pm PST, which will also include the world premiere of Marcel Zaes’ new work Parallel Prints.
BIOMES 4.1 was created for Yarn/Wire and is an interaction of their earlier work, BIOMES 4.0, which premiered at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY in September 2021. BIOMES 4.1 will run through the First Friday of January 2022, as well as during Indexical’s gallery hours of 12pm - 5pm on January 8 and 9, 2021.
Young’s original BIOMES is a flexible vehicle for group collaboration and improvisation for electronic and acoustic instruments, inviting different performers to use its materials to create new, personalized versions of the multimedia composition. Young assembles an archive of photographic documentation, video, and field recordings on a specific ecological biome—the desert, the marshlands, etc.—and works with artists to develop improvisational strategies and tools that respond to both the materials and the electroacoustic compositions that Young projects throughout the space.
Of the BIOMES series, composer Katherine Young says, “Each biome has its own characteristics that dictate processes, meaning, and interaction. Within these parameters, individual creatures or features exist with their own ways of navigating the rules of that biome. Many creatures and features are specific to a single biome. Some features exist in multiple biomes, or may travel from one to another. Biomes coexist and can be explored exclusively, simultaneously, or sequentially. Exploration happens in preparation for and during performance.”
With Parallel Prints, composer Marcel Zaes provides a loose collection of fragile rhythm fragments that are carefully re-enacted in performance by Yarn/Wire. Its instrumentation is open and remains subject to constant reinterpretation by the ensemble. The origin of the work is an algorithmic graphic score (generated with software) containing sets of shaded color bars which the musicians are asked to realize through dynamics and timbre on a single set of pitches. For the visual complement, Zaes has collaborated with artist Eli Backer who has crafted a durational video installation from footage that she shot across rural Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Indiana in the latter half of 2021. Zaes brings people together with a roadmap, knowing that his directions may not be followed precisely and that the end result will be better for it. Zaes’ composition is built on collaboration and conceptual soundwork, creating a work that is expansive and minute, focused and inclusive.
The production of Parallel Prints is supported by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council, and the Department of Music at Brown University.
Concert Information
Opening Reception: Yarn/Wire & Katherine Young, “BIOMES 4.1"
Friday, January 7, 2022 from 5pm – 9pm PST
Indexical at the Tannery Arts Center | 1050 River St., #119 | Santa Cruz, CA
Tickets: Free
Link: https://www.indexical.org/
KATHERINE YOUNG: BIOMES 4.1
Yarn/Wire
Sae Hashimoto, percussion
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Laura Barger, piano
Julia Den Boer, piano
Yarn/Wire: Works by Katherine Young & Marcel Zaes
Saturday, January 8, 2022 at 8pm PST
Indexical at the Tannery Arts Center | 1050 River St., #119 | Santa Cruz, CA
Tickets: $15
Link: https://www.indexical.org/
KATHERINE YOUNG: BIOMES 4.1
MARCEL ZAES: Parallel Prints [World Premiere]
Yarn/Wire
Sae Hashimoto, percussion
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Laura Barger, piano
Julia Den Boer, piano
Until further notice, all Indexical event attendees are required to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 for entry.
About Yarn/Wire
Yarn/Wire is a New York-based percussion and piano quartet (Sae Hashimoto and Russell Greenberg, percussion; Laura Barger and Ning Yu, pianos) dedicated to the promotion of creative, experimental new music. Pianist Julia Den Boer will join as guest artist for the 2021-2022 season. Described by The Brooklyn Rail as “fascinating and exciting, with playing that is precise and full of purpose,” the ensemble is admired globally for the energy and precision it brings to performances of today’s most adventurous compositions. Founded in 2005, the ensemble seeks to expand the representation of composers so that it might begin to better reflect our communities and experience new creative potential.
Yarn/Wire appears internationally at prominent festivals and venues including the Lincoln Center Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall, Rainy Days Festival (Luxembourg), Ultima Festival (Norway), Transit Festival (Belgium), Dublin SoundLab, Monday Evening Concerts (Los Angeles), Contempuls Festival (Prague), Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York’s Miller Theatre at Columbia University, River-to-River Festival, La MaMa Theatre, Festival of New American Music, and London’s Barbican Centre. Their numerous commissions include works from composers such as Enno Poppe, Michael Gordon, George Lewis, Ann Cleare, Raphaël Cendo, Peter Evans, Alex Mincek, Thomas Meadowcroft, Misato Mochizuki, Tristan Murail, Sam Pluta, Tyondai Braxton, Kate Soper, and Øyvind Torvund. The ensemble enjoys collaborations with genre-bending artists such as Tristan Perich, Ben Vida, Mark Fell, Sufjan Stevens, and Pete Swanson.
Through the Yarn/Wire International Institute and Festival and other educational residencies and outreach programs, Yarn/Wire works to promote not only the present but also the future of new music in the United States. Their ongoing commissioning series, Yarn/Wire/Currents, serves as an incubator for new experimental music.
Yarn/Wire has recorded for the WERGO, Northern Spy, Distributed Objects, Black Truffle, Populist, and Carrier record labels in addition to maintaining their own imprint. For more information, please visit: www.yarnwire.org.
About Katherine Young
The curious timbres, expressive noises, and kinetic structures of Katherine Young’s electroacoustic music explore the dramatic physicality of sound, shifting interpersonal dynamics, and associations with the familiar and the strange. Collaboration - and surprise! - are central to her practice. The LAPhil, Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Third Coast Percussion, Ensemble Dal Niente, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Spektral Quartet, Weston Olencki, Fonema Consort, and others have commissioned her music. She has also worked closely with Wet Ink, Ensemble Nikel, WasteLAnd and RAGE Thormbones, Distractfold Ensemble’s Linda Jankowska, Callithumpian Ensemble, Lucy Dehgrae, Yarn/Wire, and Till by Turning. Her 8-channel outdoor sound installation, Resonance and the Inhibition of, was exhibited as part of the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art’s Chicago Sound Show in fall 2019. She is thrilled to be a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition.
As a bassoonist and improviser, Young amplifies her instrument and employs a flexible electronics setup. She performs often as a soloist, and her debut solo album garnered praise in The Wire (“Bassoon colossus”) and Downbeat (“seriously bold leaps for the bassoon”). She also regularly performs in ad hoc improvised groups and with projects such as Beautifulish (duo with Sam Scranton) and Architeuthis Walks on Land (duo with Amy Cimini). She has documented her work on numerous recordings, including her quartet Pretty Monsters self-titled debut, a duo recording with Anthony Braxton, and the multi-movement work Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight (Parlour Tapes ), created with violinist Austin Wulliman of the JACK Quartet. As a scholar, Young researches the incorporation of idiosyncratic electronics and improvisation in contemporary notated music. She has written about Anthony Braxton’s operatic work, in particular.
Before joining the faculty of Emory University in 2020, Young taught composition, electronic music, and improvisation at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Berklee College of Music. She has deep ties to Chicago’s creative music communities, having lived and made music there for many significant years. She is now based in Atlanta. For more information, please visit: https://katherineyoung.info/.
About Macel Zaes
Marcel Zaes (b. 1984 in Bern, Switzerland), is a performer-composer, artist, and artistic researcher. He holds an M.A. in Music & Media Arts from Bern University of the Arts, an M.A. in Music Composition from Zurich University of the Arts and has additionally completed composition studies with Alvin Curran in Rome and with Peter Ablinger in Berlin. In 2021, he received his Ph.D. from Brown University and in early 2022 he is starting the position of Assistant Professor of Media Arts and Technology at SUSTech School of Design in Shenzhen, China.
Marcel explores rhythm in an interdisciplinary framework that encompasses its socio-cultural backgrounds, its politics and perception, and the use of mechanical rhythm machines in music making – such as metronomes, drum machines and step sequencers. Marcel creates textures and beats that emerge as installation pieces, sound performances, concert music for ensembles or as electronic solo performances.
For his work, Marcel Zaes has been awarded a number of grants and prizes, has played numerous concerts and taken part in group exhibitions internationally, has repeatedly been an artist in residence and has had his works performed by ensembles internationally. To date, he has published ten albums with Tonus Music Records, Dumpf Edition and Prefermusic, and his 2022 Yarn/Wire album is forthcoming with Editions Verde in New York. For more information, please visit: marcelzaes.com.
About Indexical
Indexical is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Santa Cruz, California, dedicated to experimentation in music. Founded in 2011 out of a converted chapel in Brooklyn, Indexical has presented over 120 performances in the last decade, ranging from avant-garde jazz, chamber music, and electronic music, to large-scale site-specific performances, to talks by artists and scholars. Since 2021, Indexical has operated a performance space and exhibition gallery at the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz, where it presents over 50 events annually. For more information, please visit: www.indexical.org.
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Photo Credit: Yarn/Wire by Bobby Fisher, Katherine Young by Deirdre Huckabay, Marcel Zaes by Karin Schmid.
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