Commission | February 13, 2020 | BMCM+AC {120 College Street} – Grammy-winning Chicago-based percussion ensemble Third Coast Percussion and composer Bana Haffar debuted the newly commissioned Shed for percussion and modular synthesizer. Drawing from the rich legacy of Anni Albers, Haffar engages with the materiality of sound, the essence of cloth, and the symbiosis of the machine and handmade by transposing standard weaving draft notation into musical scores.
Commisioned by BMCM+AC as part of Question Everything! The Women of Black Mountain College.
March 30, 2019 – The annual {Re}HAPPENING brings together dozens of contemporary artists whose work responds to and extends the legacy of Black Mountain College visionaries such as John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards and Robert Rauschenberg. The 2019 {Re}HAPPENING celebrated the influence of non-western music on such legendary artists by showcasing contemporary musicians who continue the legacy of experimental music within a global context. Featured performers included Arooj Aftab, Anjna Swaminathan & Rafiq Bhatia Trio, Free Planet Radio and Kiranavali Vidyasankar, Sandhya Anand, Vinod Seetharaman.
December 12, 2019 | BMCM+AC {120 College Street} – Gandelsman is the one of the first to record or perform Bach’s complete cello suites on violin. This is Gandelsman’s second initiative towards adapting Bach’s compositions to violin, following his recordings of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas in 2018. Having worked with incredible masters of various world music traditions, like Bela Fleck, Martin Hayes and Kayhan Kalhor, Gandelsman’s playing of the Suites is equally inspired by folk and fiddling traditions, as it is by historically informed performance.
Saturday, November 2, 12:30 PM Peek behind-the-scenes of Asheville’s home-grown music collective celebrating its 20th season. Flutist Kate Steinbeck and guitarist Amy Brucksch will play music and speak about Pan Harmonia’s November concerts, “Women’s Work,” featuring...
November 6, 2019 | {120 College Street} – The Southeast premiere of Aki Onda’s “Reflections and Repercussions,” a multi-media performance exploring the interplay among luminosity, acoustic, architectural, and emotional relationships within the space. Performing with various types of lighting equipment such as theater lights, flashlights, bare light bulb, mirrors and other objects, Onda arranges and rearranges the tools composing the visual and aural as a total environment.
November 21, 2019 | {120 College Street} – In 2017, Cherokee student leaders assembled a forum for open discussion on what it means for them to be Cherokee in the past, present, and future and how they view their cultural heritage. This new work was created with the words, voices, and vision of the Cherokee Chamber Singers, choral students at Cherokee Central Schools, written by composer William Brittelle. Originally commissioned by the North Carolina Symphony, the BMCM+AC event includes a pre-concert discussion and performance with the Cherokee Singers and music director / pianist Michael Yannette.
August 24th, 2019 – Transfigurations III, Celebrating 15 Years of Harvest Records presents Flaherty/Corsano Duo at BMCM+AC. Saxophonist Paul Flaherty and drummer Chris Corsano are New England-based musicians dedicated to the promise and purpose of free improvisation. Paul has released over 35 recordings since the late 70’s.
August 24, 2019 {120 College Street} “Flyer in a Dark Chamber,” a reimagining of the mythology of Lilith, told through spoken-word, dance and music. Ten vignettes explore the stories of Lilith as the first wife of Adam, an empowered and emancipated woman, an outcast from Eden, the original vampire, the black madonna, along with contemporary figures such as Chikesia Clemons and Cyntoia Brown. Words by Alli Marshall, music by Elizabeth Lang/Auracene, movement by Sharon Cooper and Coco Palmer with special guests.
August 1, 2019 | BMCM+AC {120 College Street} – performed Sonatas and Interludes, John Cage’s groundbreaking cycle for prepared piano. The work was composed in 1946–48, shortly after Cage’s introduction to Indian philosophy and the teachings of art historian Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, both of which became major influences on the composer’s later work. Sonatas and Interludes is generally recognized as one of Cage’s most important compositions.
June 28, 2019 – Currently in residence at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, Gamelan Yowana Sari has recently returned from a tour in Indonesia, performing in Pengosekan, Bali, at the home of the composer I Dewa Ketut Alit. They perform Alit’s work, traditional Balinese arrangements, and a new arrangement of Double Music by BMC composers Lou Harrison and John Cage.
June 8, 2019 – Original performances by Pia van Gelder, Peter Blamey, Nathan Thompson, and Jenn Grossman. Performances will utilize processes that explore the material nature of the instruments employed – handmade electronics, solar power, feedback systems, and contained sound.
April 25 – April 28, 2019 {120 College Street} Neo Pastiche: Changes in American Music Festival with performers: Eugene Chadbourne, Anka (Carmelo Pampillonio + Marcyanne Hannemann), Petr Kotik (“There is Singularly Nothing”), Sarah Louise (Deep Listening inspired exercises), Deforrest Brown Jr. and Nick James Scavo (“Wrecked New American Music of a Cancelled Species”), Theodore Cale Schafer, Kimathi Moore and Elizabeth Lang, Jeff Witscher, Jaclyn Miller (aka Voice Training), S.E.M Ensemble (Julius Eastman’s “Macle” and John Cage’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, and Morton Feldman “For Philip Guston”)
December 4, 2018 – Performance: “The Future Leaks Out.” A quadraphonic modular synthesizer piece in which spoken-word audio recordings are cut up in a similar manner to the Surrealist “Exquisite Corpse” game, or the cutup literary method or Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs. Realized using the Make Noise Morphagene and other synthesizer modules. Composed and performed by Eric “Rodent” Cheslak and Walker Farrell.
October 19, 2018 {120 College Street} “The Jacob Lawrence of Jacob Lawrence” by Jace Clayton aka DJ /rupture. Presented in conjunction with African Americans in WNC & Southern Appalachia Conference, The Jacob Lawrence of Jacob Lawrence is a video and performance by Jace Clayton. The video is a hand-drawn animation with texts that form part of the script for the performance. As Clayton and vocalist Arooj Aftab perform, their voices will be transformed and processed live, using the sonic mutations to extend and transform the themes of the source text.
September 8, 2018 (120 College Street) – Performance of original works by vocalist Theo Bleckmann and guitarist Ben Monder. For over 15 years, the Theo Bleckmann & Ben Monder Duo has been touring the U.S., Europe, and Asia creating a unique approach to what might be called “jazz art song”, blurring the boundaries between jazz, classical, ambient, and rock.
November 7, 2018 | BMCM+AC {120 College Street} – BMCM+AC and UNC Asheville presented the Asheville debut of the eclectic string quartet Brooklyn Rider with the premiere of their new project Healing Modes. The healing properties of music have been recognized from ancient Greek civilization to the field of modern neuroscience and expressed in countless global traditions. The slow movement of Beethoven’s Opus 132, a ‘Song of Holy Thanksgiving From a Convalescent to the Deity in the Lydian mode,’ is among the most profound expressions of healing in the string quartet repertoire. This autumnal masterwork is presented in its entirety alongside five compact new commissions which explore the subject of healing from a wide range of historical and cultures perspectives. Composers include Tyondai Braxton, Reena Esmail, Gabriela Lena Frank, Matana Roberts and recent Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw.
June 27, 2018 | BMCM+AC {56 Broadway} – Presented in collaboration with the Asheville Percussion Festival, 51’15.657″ for a Speaking Percussionist is Bonnie Whiting’s realization of a solo simultaneous performance of John Cage’s 45′ for a Speaker and 27’10.554″ for a Percussionist. These are vintage pieces: music from the mid-50’s and part of a series of timed works that Cage enjoyed mixing together and referred to in notes and letters as “the ten thousand things.” A culmination of 14 months of work and study, Whiting is the first performer to execute both pieces in their entirety.
June 15 + 16, 2018 – Make Noise 10th Anniversary. “Recursion Mechanism,” an installation by Richard Devine with visuals by Matt Kew. This machine/modular system generates an infinite number of sounds, that evolve, grow and multiply into new organic forms. The piece will utilize a 4 channel quad speaker configuration. Each speaker will represent one audio element that will focus on various captured field recordings, synthesis, and manipulated digital audio fragments to make up an ever-changing music composition.
June 5, 2018 (56 Broadway) – María Chávez, solo turntable performance and workshop. Born in Lima, Peru and based in NYC, María Chávez is best known as an abstract turntablist, sound artist, and DJ. Her work combines recorded sounds from vinyl records with the electroacoustic sounds of vinyl and needle in various deteriorating phases. Accidents, coincidence, and failures are themes that unite her sound sculptures, installations, and other works with her improvised solo turntable performance practice.
February 23, 2018 | BMCM+AC {56 Broadway} – The Tesla Quartet performed selections by composer Hugo Kauder. This special program is presented in collaboration with The Hugo Kauder Society. Kauder was a composer-in-residence at BMC in the summer of 1945. The program included Kauder’s String Quartet 4, a piece performed at BMC in 1945, as well as Bartok’s String Quartet 3 and transcriptions of works by Gesualdo and Ravel by Tesla violinist Ross Snyder. Praised for their “superb capacity to find the inner heart of everything they play, regardless of era, style, or technical demand” (The International Review of Music), the Tesla Quartet brings refinement and prowess to both new and established repertoire. The group was formed at The Juilliard School in 2008 and includes Ross Snyder (violin), Michelle Lie (violin), Edwin Kaplan (viola), and Serafim Smigelskiy (cello).
