Demetrius Spaneas
CD Release Reception and Performance
ALL Gallery
Lowell, MA
February 21, 2010
4PM

It is with great happiness that I announce the releasing of my new CD Sfumato. This recording is a series of meditative duo improvisations with Russian Medieval/Byzantine-style vocalist Galina Parfenova. I will present a solo performance and reception on February 21 to mark the release. I am also happy that I am presenting this in my home town of Lowell, MA. Reception begins at 4PM, with the performance starting around 4:30.

Suggested donation to the ALL Gallery: $5
Sfumato will be sold at the event.
Sfumato will also be available through CD Baby, digstation, and iTunes; the official release will be that weekend. Links and details will be posted closer to the official release date.

Old and New

January 14 is my birthday–my 41rst, to be exact–so I feel the need to write something. Nothing overly erudite or philosophical; I just want to muse through some updates, some new projects, and a rediscovery.

I am very happy to say that my Tajikistan project is coming together nicely for May. I will be collaborating with the Bactria Cultural Centre and the US Embassy to bring jazz music to a festival in Dushanbe, surrounding urban and rural areas, and up to the villages in the Pamirs Mountains, one of the highest occupied areas on Earth. Both the BCC and the US Embassy are striving hard to make this happen, and I just today finished a grant proposal for funding. All I really need is a plane ticket, which, by the way, is ridiculously expensive since there is no easy way of actually getting to Tajikistan and getting around the country is downright treacherous. We’re hoping for the best!

It looks as if February 21 will be the date for the CD release party of Sfumato, my collaboration with vocalist Galina Parfenova. By party, I mean a reception and solo concert at the ALL Gallery in Lowell, MA. Times TBA. I will also probably have the international on-line release fall on the same weekend, possibly the 20th, which interestingly, coincides with the beginning of Pisces, which, if I’m not mistaken,  represents the final stage in spiritual evolution. Why, you may ask? I don’t know, the date felt right. Sometimes, you go with your gut.

I am starting a new collaboration with Boston-based sculptor Laura Evans to create an installation work for the Transcultural Exchange 2011 Conference (titled The Interconnected World). We met today face-to-face for the first time. I like her as a person even more than her work, which I think is fantastic. I feel that on one’s birthday, one should not only take measure of the past, but create something new. I believe the project will center around the concept of blending the mechanical and the biological and will incorporate evolving perception-based sound and visual elements; this is all that I’ll say for now.

On to rediscovery. So, I’m a tenor player…really a tenor player: sound, conception, improvisation…I do it like a tenor player. Before I went to Russia in 2007, I played tenor almost exclusively (as far as the saxes go). Because of the difficulties associated with traveling with instruments, I went small: I started traveling with instruments that I know could fit on almost any plane with no trouble (for saxes, I’m talking mostly alto, since the case is compact; even soprano can have issues because the case is long). Since I have been back, I have been rediscovering the joys of playing tenor; although many of the composers I work with still write for alto (which is the ‘standard‘ horn, or at least has been for most classically trained composers), I have been incorporating the tenor into my own projects as much as possible.

Now, before Russia, in 2006, I made a decision to get out of the rock life. I had been on the road for years as a rock/R&B tenor player, which gave me both some of my greatest and all of my absolute worst experiences; basically, it was a wash. Now, being a rock tenor player, I played on a certain piece of equipment that was–and let’s put it bluntly-unacceptable in any other genre. This mouthpiece, which I lovingly dubbed ‘The Canon’, was a metal Dukoff 10* that has a baffle that you could spelunk on (every classical and straight-ahead jazz saxophonist reading this just shuddered…audibly…). When I finished my stint with The Funk Brothers in 2006, I decided that I needed to sound a tad more, oh, tame to fit in with the scene in NYC. Musicians are very, very difficult when it comes to equipment. Not just mouthpieces, but even using certain brands of instruments can get you black-balled…were I to show up with that mouthpiece on even a progressive big band gig, I’d catch Hell for it from both the bandleader and the rest of the sax section. Forget playing a show or a pops orchestra gig. Understand, I’m a loud player with an extremely full sound to begin with; using The Canon, I could punch holes in brick walls at 100 paces (I’m only half kidding). It wasn’t built to blend with cellos or clarinets (although I can make it, and have), but to ‘edge through’ amplified rhythm sections.

So, The Canon went into the drawer and I pulled out a metal Otto Link to blend. It’s a nice mouthpiece, but I felt like a major league baseball player off the steroids cycle…I even went as so far last year to switch to hard rubber, still an Otto Link, an 8*, so nothing to sneeze at and still darn big, but I was starting to sound more and more like a 1950’s straight-ahead jazzer (which is what everyone wants) and not like, well, me.

This morning around midnight, I was listening to a live performance (1992) of Paul Simon singing Still Crazy After All These Years (one of my absolute favorite songs, and appropriate for my birthday, I think). I was loving the experience when all of  a sudden it went up another notch: the late, great Michael Brecker–who needless to say influenced all of us tenor players one way or another and who recorded the sax solo on the original–played. That sound! That is what a tenor sounds like…that’s what I sound like in my Platonic Ideal…what I used to sound like.

It was after midnight, I live in an apartment, I couldn’t break out the tenor then…I had to wait until this morning. I opened the equipment drawer in my studio and there it was, The Canon, like a re-found lover…it wasn’t a rekindling, but a roaring blaze of sonic ecstasy.

It hit me…I only do almost exclusively my own projects now. I’m not running to Broadway shows or big band gigs and hustling work. I’m a soloist, why do I care if I blend with anyone? My sound and my color palate have always been unique. Like any relationship, The Canon and I have to patch-up some things, and in some ways re-learn how to communicate; but I think we’re both in it for the long haul.

Nice Birthday

More Info: Mike Frengel m.frengel@neu.edu

http://www.musictech.neu.edu/2010springconcerts

Electroacoustic Music Series
Sponsored by the Music Technology program at Northeastern University

Spring 2010: Concert 1 of 4
1/23/10 – 8pm

Gilles Gobeil, Featured Composer
After studies in music theory, Gilles Gobeil completed his Master’s in composition at Université de Montréal. Since 1985 he has concentrated on the creation of acousmatic and mixed works. His compositions approach what is known as “cinéma pour l’oreille” (cinema for the ear); many of them are inspired by literary works and seek to “visualize” them through the medium of sound.

Gobeil has been awarded more than twenty prizes in Canada and internationally, such as Black & White (Portugal, 2009), Ars Electronica (Austria, 2005, 1995), Bourges (France, 2009, 1999, 1989, 1988), Stockholm Electronic Arts Award (Sweden, 1997, 1994), CIMESP (Brazil, 2001, 1999, 1997), Métamorphoses (Belgium, 2002, 2000), British Design & Art Direction (2002), Ciber@rt (Spain, 1999), Luigi Russolo (Italy, 1989, 1988, 1987), Newcomp (USA, 1987), SOCAN (Canada, 1993), Conseil Canadien de la Musique (1985), Brock University (1985), SDE Canada (1984). He received the Prix Opus 2004–05 (Disc of the Year) from the Conseil québécois de la musique (CQM) for his disc Trilogie d’ondes; in 2003–04, Le contrat was a finalist in the same category.

He has received commissions from Codes d’Accès (Montréal), empreintes DIGITALes (Montréal), GMEB — Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges (France), Musiques & Recherches (Belgium), Réseaux des arts médiatiques (Montréal), Société Radio-Canada, ZKM — Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (Germany), Totem Contemporain (Montréal), Folkmar Hein, and from the performers Suzanne Binet-Audet, René Lussier, Arturo Parra and Rick Sacks.

He has also been Composer-in-Residence at The Banff Centre (Canada, 1995, 1993), Bourges (France, 1991), GRM — Groupe de recherches musicales (France, 1993), ZKM — Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (Germany, 2009, 2007, 2006, 2005) and was Guest Composer of the DAAD’s Artists-in-Berlin Programme (Germany) in 2008.

Gobeil is currently a professor of music technology at Drummondville CEGEP, where he has been teaching since 1992, and has been Guest Professor of electroacoustics at the Université de Montréal (2005–06) and at the Montréal Conservatory (2007). He is a member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC), Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre (CMC) and co-founder of Réseaux, an association dedicated to the production of Media Art events.

Edmund Campion, Composer
Edmund J. Campion received his Doctorate degree in composition at Columbia University and attended the Paris Conservatory where he worked with composer Gérard Grisey. Campion is currently Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as Co-Director at CNMAT (The Center for New Music and Audio Technologies). Prizes and honors include the Rome Prize, the Nadia Boulanger Award, the Paul Fromm Award at Tanglewood, a Charles Ives Award given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Fulbright scholarship for study in France. Recent projects include a Fromm Foundation commission for Outside Music, written for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and a French Ministry of Culture Commande d’etat for Ondoyants et Divers (Billaudot Editions, Paris), written for the Percussion de Strasbourg Ensemble.

Mike Frengel, Composer
Mike Frengel holds B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in electroacoustic music composition from San Jose State University, Dartmouth College and City University, London, respectively. He has had the great fortune to study with Jon Appleton, Charles Dodge, Larry Polansky, Denis Smalley, Allen Strange, and Christian Wolff. His works have won international prizes and have been included on the Sonic Circuits VII, ICMC’95, CDCM Vol.26, 2000 Luigi Russolo and ICMC 2009 compact discs. Mike serves on the faculty of the music departments at Northeastern University and Boston Conservatory, where he teaches courses in music technology and composition.

Elainie Lillios, Composer
Elainie Lillios’ music reflects her fascination with listening, sound, space, time, immersion and anecdote. Influential mentors include Jonty Harrison, Pauline Oliveros, Larry Austin and Jon Christopher Nelson. She has received grants/commissions from Rèseaux, International Computer Music Association, La Muse en Circuit, New Adventures in Sound Art, ASCAP/SEAMUS, LSU’s Center for Computation and Technology, Sonic Arts Research Centre, Ohio Arts Council, National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts and others. Her composition Veiled Resonance won First Prize in the 2009 Concours Internationale de Bourges, with other awards from the Concurso Internacional de Música Electroacústica de São Paulo, Concorso Internazionale Russolo, Pierre Schaeffer Competition and La Muse en Circuit Radiophonic Competition. Elainie’s music is available on the Empreintes DIGITALES, StudioPANaroma, La Muse en Circuit, New Adventures in Sound Art and SEAMUS labels.

Demetrius Spaneas, Saxophone
Multi-wind instrumentalist/composer/recording artist Demetrius Spaneas leads a varied international career and has worked with such diverse artists as John Cage, Ray Charles, and Kyrgyz traditional musicians. He has been featured soloist and composer at major concert venues and festivals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Through his work with the US Embassy system, he has presented concerts and lectures on American music and culture throughout the former Soviet Union. His current cultural initiatives focus on Central Asia, the Balkans, China, and Russia, where he is Music Director for the International Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Humanities “APXE” based in St. Petersburg. For details and upcoming events, please visit: http://www.dspaneas.com