Saturday, May 12th, 7pm: Performers Forum presents Little Worlds & Tom Swafford

Performers Forum welcomes a Bartok-gone-jazz trio and composer-add-busker for its 10th installment at Exapno in Brooklyn

Visit the UPCOMING EVENTS page for details!

Saturday, April 14th, 3pm: Performers Forum presents – LISA DOWLING & JASON ANASTASOFF!

Performers Forum proudly invites two NYC bassist extraordinaries to expound on their recent musical output:

Lisa Dowling will discuss her latest experiments with string harmonics, alternate tunings, and the overtone series, and perform original works for solo bass that utilize her discoveries.

http://soundcloud.com/lmdowling

Jason Anastasoff will share his vision for creating “abstract” music and improvisation, including his ongoing project Obscure Directions, and ask the audience about the compositional process.

[please note the time change!!! this event was originally scheduled for 7pm, but is now 3pm]

For more information, visit our UPCOMING EVENTS page.

Hope to see you there!
- Cory

New Music Bake Sale 2012!

Thanks so much to everyone who stopped by our table at the New Music Bake Sale this weekend!

Performers Forum had a blast alongside Sweat Lodge and the Exapno New Music Community Center.  If you’re visiting for the first time, check out our “about” page for some info, look/listen to past events, and follow this link to join our mailing list for once-a-month email updates on our next event!

Sign up for our free newsletter

Don’t miss our upcoming event on Saturday, April 14th, featuring Lisa Dowling and Jason Anastasoff!

March 3rd: Dave Scanlon & Lawton Hall, 7pm

DAVE SCANLON, LAWTON HALL: EXAPNO NEW MUSIC COMMUNITY CENTER – Saturday, March 3rd, 7pm

We’re pumped.  You should be too.  Check the UPCOMING EVENTS page for all the juicy details.

Visit Lawton’s amazing and exciting blog post to engage in a pre-forum conversation that is sure to yield exciting discussion results.

Winter 2012

Here comes the dragon

Performers Forum was introduced to the music community of New York in August 2011, and has since enjoyed five incredible installments.  The objective is to provide an opportunity for creative musical minds to engage an audience in an environment that promotes a comfortable exchange of thoughts, ideas, anecdotes, and just about anything interesting.  What inspires you to create?  How do you define the success and failure of frontier electronic music improvisation?  What are you listening to these days?  How the hell did you make an instrument with hamsters?  These are just a few topics that have inspired the often funny, sometimes strange, always enlightening discourses of our forum events.

PERFORMERS FORUM:
WINTER 2012

January 8th, 3pm
Mitch Van Dusen

February 4th, 3pm
Shayna Dulberger & Ches Smith

March 3rd, 7pm
Lawton Hall & Dave Scanlon

April 14th, TBD
Lisa Dowling & Jason Anastasoff

In the beginning – There were rocks.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 4TH, 3PM

VARISPEED! Perfect Lives Manhattan Unfolds! Exapno! DIG IT!

Performers Forum draws 2011 to a close with an opportunity to pick the brains of the Varispeed Ensemble, comprised of members from Why Lie?, ThingNY and the Panoply Performance Laboratory: Aliza Simons, Dave Ruder, Paul Pinto, Gelsey Bell, and Brian McCorkle.

Formed in early 2011 with an interest in site-specific, long-form productions, Varispeed are the cats that brought you PERFECT LIVES BROOKLYN in June of 2011, paving the way for PERFECT LIVES MANHATTAN on November 6th.  Here’s what the New York Times had to say about it: oohhh wow I’m the New York Times and that thing was so cool

Visit the UPCOMING EVENTS page for all the details.

Varispeed says TALK TO US

Performers Forum says DRINK ALL THE BEERS (afternoon delight)

Suggested donation.  No particular amount, but we do prefer that you give us %%$ALL OF YOUR MONEY$%%.

GET AT IT!
- Cory

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5TH, 5PM – Performers Forum presents LEVY LORENZO & TRAVIS LAPLANTE

Yo.  Hold on to your musical universe… It’s about to get a serious fucking jolt.

Performers Forum proudly presents the results of two musical masterminds:

LEVY LORENZO

Electrical engineer, instrument inventor, composer, percussionist, mad musical scientist

TRAVIS LAPLANTE

Supernatural saxophonist, ensemble workhorse of Little Women – Extra Life – Skeletons – Anthony Braxton, solo saxophone composer and performer

Check the UPCOMING EVENTS tab for all the crucial info.

Insanely stoked.
- Cory

FORUM, IN RELIEF: Saturday, October 1st

Georges Aperghis: Le Corps a Corps

This Saturday, Dennis Sullivan will investigate this striking solo scored for zarb and “speaking percussionist”.  Here is a program note written by Samuel Z. Solomon:

Georges Aperghis’ Le Corps Á Corps (literally ‘body to body’ or also ‘neck and neck’) takes a race car track as its setting. The performer plays many different roles: the driver, the sports commentators, the audience, and even the car itself. Aperghis develops the material in an almost cinematic fashion, splicing the musical gestures and spoken text into smaller and smaller pieces and placing them closer and closer together as the drama unfolds and intensifies; these bit of material finally crash into one another as the piece hurtles towards its final bars. The music is periodically interrupted by long periods of silence which freeze frame the action and prolong the tension of a single moment. Scored for zarb (an small hand held Arabic drum) and spoken voice with numerous instructions for the performer’s physical movements, this, like many of Aperghis’ works, treads the thin line between music and theater.

Roger Reynolds: Watershed I

Sculpture and Sound Collide.
Rhythm and Gesture Interact.
Time Flows Between.

Ryan Nestor will explore “gesture through solo percussion” via Roger Reynolds’ half-hour solo percussion epic Watershed I.  He writes:

“Watershed, a 30 minute tour de force for solo percussion, explores the limits of sonic and visual gesture.  Reynolds’ unparalleled sense of pace and compositional development allow percussive sounds to interact and bloom in a compelling and mesmerizing fashion.  Performed from memory, Watershed pushes the performer to the limit and immerses listeners in a sonic world like no other.”

Join us on Saturday, October 1st, 5pm at Exapno (33 Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn, 5th floor) for these in-depth presentations!  Hang out, drink a beer, grab a snack, most importantly, ASK QUESTIONS!!!

Hope to see you there,
- Cory

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1ST: Performers Forum presents DENNIS SULLIVAN and RYAN NESTOR

Hi all,

Check out our UPCOMING EVENTS tab for the low-down on our forthcoming and thoroughly epic Performers Forum event on Saturday, October 1st, 5pm at Exapno featuring the power-house percussion talents of DENNIS SULLIVAN and RYAN NESTOR.

Dennis will dive into a unique and wildly theatrical work for solo zarb by Greek-born composer Georges Aperghis called Le Corps a Corps.

Ryan will perform and examine the epic, evocative solo multi-percussion masterpiece Watershed I by American composer Roger Reynolds.

Stay tuned for blog updates in the coming days including score excerpts, videos, articles, and statements from the performers!

Be well,
- Cory