EAR to the EARTH - Sound and Music Festival - October 2006

The NYSAE co-hosted the Ear to the Earth opening with the Electronic Music Foundation at 3-Legged Dog Gallery in the Financial District that was webcast on free103point9. The idea of the festival was that as musicians and artists we can make a difference through our work for the environment. Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA spoke very engagingly about climate change with Andrea Polli's sonification work. Michelle Nagai discussed NYSAE and our group's mission, history, projects, and events. I spoke briefly about Giant Ear))) and the "social climate of sound and environment". I also DJ'd the opening with Giant Ear))) field-recording archives from the first show, playing works by Peter Cusak, Ben Owen, Edmund Mooney, United States of Belt, and others.

An odd thing happened...Laurie Spiegel arrived as I was setting up and said that she was told that she was to open with her Ferals piece of NYC pigeon photos and bird sounds. Wow, I finally got to meet her but an uncomfortable way to meet her as I was already listed as playing, I flew out from CA mostly for the festival, compiled an hour of material, and her piece was to be installed for the rest of the festival. Fortunately another NYSAEr showed her a program print-out with my name on it because I don't think I would have said anything. Well we listened to each others' sounds and we decided that my sounds would go with her projected bird photos in very Cagean way and Joel should announce that we were experimenting in a very New York kindof way. The photos were great and there were so many people there that it didn't really matter anyway. Though people came up to say nice comments on the sounds and one older woman came up and said that the sound with the visuals was great! hm, when I looked up I saw a photo pop up of R.I.P. on a tombstone while I was playing Children on Swings in Carroll Garden park and often there was a rollercoaster sound with close-ups of pigeons. um, yay!-Laurie said she liked it too. whew. and she said that we have the same minidisk recorder. (me-geek)

The performers included Michelle Nagai and Ben Owen with live performance/live mixed recordings/microtonalness; Ricardo Arias on balloons/field recordings; and Sean Meehan stamping a drum and the surrounding area and leaving it as an installation to be discovered by the audience. Great mixture of good sounds and strong performance aspects. not sure if it carried over to radio very well, but eh.
The rest of the festival sounded pretty wonderful! no time to write it all down!
Please check the Ear to the Earth website for new developments.

some PR about E2TE:

http://nymag.com/guides/fallpreview/2006/classicaldance/19745/

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/30/061030gore_GOAT_recordings3