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North Texas Feminist Improvising Group

Bitches Set Traps (or BST) started as a group in 2018 inspired by the Feminist Improvising Group, which was a 5-8 person ensemble founded in 1977 by Scottish vocalist Maggie Nicols and English bassoonist-composer Lindsay Cooper.  They were the first ensemble of female improvisers who performed publicly. Their initial intent was apolitical, the group developed an interest in exploring social commentary and political parody and farce, and in challenging taboos on-stage.  

Elizabeth McNutt, flutist, specializes in contemporary music, and has premiered hundreds of new compositions. She directs Sounds Modern as well as the University of North Texas new music ensemble, Nova. www.elizabethmcnutt.net; www.soundsmodern.org.

Jolene Masone is a unique artist specializing in Contemporary and Experimental music for bassoon. https://exmusens.com/home

Kourtney Newton is a professional cellist based in Denton, TX who specializes in contemporary and experimental music; she especially enjoys playing electroacoustic music as well as improvisation as a soloist or in an ensemble.  https://amorsima.com/

Sarah Ruth is a diverse musician and artist – a multi-instrumentalist, she employs hammered dulcimer, harmonium, electroacoustic sound art, and extended vocal techniques. https://www.sarahruthalexander.com/

Article From Theater Jones, http://www.theaterjones.com/ntx/reviews/20190120105431/2019-01-20/Sounds-Modern/Broken-Dolls

BST  “…used unconventional “instruments” such as kitchen bowls, a coffee grinder, hair dryers, and assorted other implements of traditional femininity. Both the written piece and the improvisatory one raise questions about gender roles and expectations. (Can a person play the cello and vacuum at the same time? Yes, apparently, cellist Kourtney [Newton] can. But can she do them simultaneously and well? Not really, unless all you want to hear are open strings—perhaps reinforcing that we can do it all, sure, but maybe not all at once.)”

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Emily Beanblossom

Emily Beanblossom is an artist and musician from Chicago Illinois.  Her live performances are structured around minimalist compositions using both analog and digital tools, including tape loops, live feedback, voice, and digital synthesis.  She is pursuing an MFA in Sound Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, studying composition processes (or methods/systems) for music and sound.  Rooted in DIY music culture, Beanblossom strives to make a lot with only a little.

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Transitory Sound and Movement Collective

TSMC performing

Founded by Artistic Director, Lynn Lane, Transitory Sound and Movement Collective (TSMC) collaboratively creates interdisciplinary and experiential works of sound, movement, and visual art. Each performance is a uniquely structured, conceptually connected, yet spontaneous composition, created through the process of consideration and response of each artist to the other artists, and of all of the artists to the concept. Through this process, TSMC creates an unspoken conversation with each other, the audience, and the visual/spatial environment.

Within the first two years of the collective, TSMC has created over 20 original  works for venues such as the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Asia Society Texas Center, the Rothko Chapel, the University of Texas at Dallas, Arts Mission Oak Cliff, the Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, the Rice University Gallery, the Rec Room and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.

Collaborating Artists:

Lynn Lane is the founder and artistic director of the Transitory Sound and Movement Collective. He comes from a very broad career base in the Arts most notably as a photographer in the performing arts arena. Prior to returning to Houston, his birth city, he spent almost two decades in NYC as an artist/filmmaker represented in London and NYC and designer with his furniture designs still being represented there. His work has been exhibited in galleries/museums internationally as well as published in many publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Elle Decor and others. He has written for International Documentary Magazine and is now solely focused on his work as a photographer and sound artist/artistic director.

Jennifer Mabus, hailed as “bold” by the NY Times, has performed as a soloist with Robert Battle’s Battle Works, Amy Marshall, Heidi Latsky, Takehiro Ueyama, Bruce Wood Dance, Noble Motion Dance, and Dark Circles Contemporary Dance. She has served on the faculties of Texas Christian University, Booker T. Washington HSPVA, Interlochen Arts Academy, Houston’s HSPVA, and Sam Houston State University. In addition to presenting work in regional and national festivals, Mabus has been Artist in Residence at Rice University, Texas Women’s University, the Univeristy of Texas at Dallas, Noble Motion Dance, and Dance Source Houston, among others. She has choreographed works for METdance, Pilot Dance Project, Contemporary Ballet Dallas, and Muscle Memory Dance Theater, as well as for the Foundation for Modern Music at the Miller Outdoor Theater. She is currently the founding dance program chair at the University of St. Thomas, and a founding member/core collaborator with the Transitory Sound and Movement Collective.

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Ben Aqua

Ben Aqua is a multidisciplinary artist based in Austin, Texas. Born in Brooklyn, New York, his visual work has been exhibited internationally and published in Rolling Stone, NPR, NYLON, SPIN, NME, Flaunt, Bloomberg Businessweek, OUT, ARKITIP, XLR8R, Beautiful/Decay, Rhizome, Hi-Fructose, JOGGING and Fecal Face. His music has been featured in Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign, Resident Advisor’s podcast series, Interview Magazine, The Creators Project, Mad Decent, DFA, VICE, Dummy Mag, FACT Mag, Modular, URB, BUTT and Opening Ceremony.

Ben Aqua’s Wireless Orchestra creates a multi-user, improvised mobile device soundscape based on a program of 4 systematic themes:

1. I’M RIGHT HERE WHY CAN’T ANYBODY HEAR ME
2. NOW I’M ANGRY F### THE WORLD
3. UGH NOW I FEEL GUILTY
4. ALL IS WELL, BUT I’LL BE WATCHING YOU

See and hear Ben Aqua perform in the courtyard outside of Dimension Gallery  at 8 PM on Saturday, July 21.

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ecco screen

ecco screen is a San Francisco based experimental art practice created by American artist Jeffrey Bryant in 2015. ecco screen explores human emotion, interaction, and introspection through the use of light, sound, and technology. The works range from interactive installations, immersive experiences, to audiovisual performances, designed to invoke crowd participation. Resulting in a marriage between art, design, and interpersonal connection.

Since 2015 ecco screen has exhibited at world renowned festivals and galleries across the United States, Canada, and Europe including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Igloofest, ArtFutura Roma, Mutek, Stanford University. Collaborations with established brands and agencies include Dolby, NASA, Acura, Tool of NA, MullenLowe, Google, ASAP Rocky, A-Trak.

Check out ‘fade’ by eccoscreen at any time in the lobby of Ground Floor Theatre July 20, 21, 22 – no admission fee necessary to hang out in the lobby.

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Adelante Winds

Adelante Winds is a multicultural chamber ensemble based in San Antonio, Texas which focuses on educating and exposing audiences to a diverse range of composers and styles.  Current members include Ramona Douglas, Dawn Iglesias, Patrick Dolan, LaNetra Carther, and Sabrina Stovall.

Adelante, which means forward, is the ensemble’s mantra in exploring new sounds and imaginative ideas for the woodwind quintet.  The ensemble aspires to challenge itself and its audience to approach music in innovative ways.

Their NMASS2018 program features:

Bronwen McVeigh – Spring Songs
Arturo Marquez – Danza De Mediodia
Emily Sullivan  – Spirit Moves
Astor Piazzolla, arr. Fish – Libertango
& free improvisation

See and hear Adelante Winds at 5pm on Sunday, July 22 inside Ground Floor Theatre.

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Mélanie Genin

Hailed as “a globe-trotter” and “singular harp virtuoso” by L’Union France and the Epoch times of New York, Mélanie Genin is known for her “desire to re-shape and re-invent classical music” (Justine Philippe, L’Union, France).

For this set at NMASS2018 Mélanie will present pieces she has scored for strings and percussion in collaboration with players from Austin, TX.

A native of France, Ms. Genin received her Bachelor’s degree and Master’s from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, where she studied with Isabelle Moretti. She was then selected as one of only two recipients of a Bruni-Sarkosy Foundation scholarship to study at The Juilliard School in New York with Nancy Allen. She subsequently became the first harpist to ever be admitted into the Artist Diploma program at The Manhattan School of Music, where she studied under the guidance of the late Deborah Hoffman, Susan Jolles and Mariko Anraku. In 2014 she was named the only harpist finalist of the Concert Artist Guild competition and was also a semi-finalist of the Young Concert Artist series in New York.

Art is subjective. It can be empowering, it can be an escape, beauty, ugliness, everything, anything… in that sense it’s not so different from many of the things surrounding us in our society: politics, social media, health care, GMOs, smoothies…

One thing that art should always fulfill is to unite. I believe art is particularly empowering when it is abstract because you come and you connect. You receive what you’re given and you process it through your perception, shaped and chiseled by your personality, your story, your imagination. Because the point is to connect together, to listen, to sharpen our critical sense, to make art – the great gift of humanity – ours and to live in it. – Mélanie Genin

See and hear Mélanie Genin perform at Ground Floor Theatre at 10 PM on Saturday, July 20.
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Weather Machine

Weather Machine is a noise/experimental project that began in North Carolina in 2006 comprising of members Joe Hendrix and Bryce Eiman.  It eventually led to the formalization of the Noise Scene in Chapel Hill, NC – helped and driven with the help of Shaun Sandor (also in Bicameral Mind with Bryce).

In 2017 Weather Machine played in Austin, TX with visual expert/animator esq. Dax Norman while Bryce was on winter vacation. The shows during that period defined the future of Weather Machine – an improvised set consisting of waves of sound and visuals, in concert.  Since that time Joe Hendrix and Dax Norman have carried out that idea – attempting to push the boundaries of improvisation, blending Audio and Visual experimentation in a live environment.

See Weather Machine perform midnight at the Ground Floor Theatre Saturday the 21st.

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Iris Sidikman

Iris Sidikman is an experimental musician and installation artist currently located in Austin, TX. She recently completed her MFA in Experimental Sound Practices at California Institute of the Arts and received bachelor’s degrees in Cello Performance and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northern Illinois University in 2016. Her work grapples with sound as an object and stillness as a medium, often crossing borders between performance, installation and tableaux. Often understated and emotionally rooted, her works explore stasis and persistence as ways to transport audiences in another world. Much of her work also uses language as a way to both reveal and obscure meaning, as well as to create an accessible space for listeners of many backgrounds.

In addition to creation and performance, Iris is also a scholar well-versed in expressions of femininity and fat identity in experimental music and embodied performance. She will be presenting her paper “Feminized Anger in Avant Garde Music”at the 2018 New Music Gathering at Boston College in May 2018.

Education, community engagement and public art are all central to Iris’s practice. She currently works as an early education literacy tutor with Literacy First in Austin.

See and hear Iris perform in The Resonant Lung at 7pm on Saturday, 7/21/2018

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Victor Lovelorne

Victor Lovlorne, originally from East Texas and now living in Austin, is fascinated by the beauty that can be found in the dark: the slow speed of night, the long silences between sounds, the heightened loneliness, the sense of loss, the fear of unforeseen terrors that reminds us of the blood-and-flesh animals we are.

To Lovlorne, all the modernity we’ve built turns into a sparse repetitive landscape in the dark, and we return to being the beasts we’ve always been since humans existed, calling out for love as animals do, singing simple songs of inevitable despair.

See and hear Victor perform within Dimension Gallery at 10pm on Friday, July 20th