PERSPECTIVES: lunchtime performance + conversation
with Steph Richards and Andrew Munsey
October 14, 2020 at 1pm EST
Presented as part of BMCM+AC’s Museum from Home Initiative and offered virtually, free of charge.
Steph Richards
Exploring the space between new music, improvisation and performance art, trumpeter and composer Steph Richards examines the physical, visual and auditory interactions of live music performance. As reflected in recently commissioned works, Rotations for twelve choreographed musicians and carousel and Trading Futures for six hundred found sound surfaces, Steph’s theatrical tendencies often result in compositional collaborations of sound, sight and movement. Steph has become a prominent voice in experimental improvisation, collaborating with artists such as improvisational pioneers Henry Threadgill, Butch Morris, John Zorn and Anthony Braxton, composer Helmut Lachenmann and performance artists Mike Kelly and Yoko Ono. As a founding member of Asphalt Orchestra, created by the new music collective Bang on a Can, Steph has worked with David Byrne, St. Vincent, Susan Marshall, Tyondai Braxton among others, and performed alongside Kronos Quartet, The Pixies and hip hop artists Kanye West, A-Trak and Common. Championing new music for brass, Steph has premiered works from stages such as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Barbican, the Blue Note NYC, the Guggenheim Museum and others. She holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music, McGill University, California Institute of the Arts and has held residency at Stanford University. In addition to performing and composing, Steph encourages the performance and commissioning of new music and jazz as Vice-President of the Festival of New Trumpet (FONT). Drawing from experience in creative performance practices, Steph looks forward to providing opportunities for dialogue and active performance in the community through courses focusing on improvisation and new music curation, aiming to collectively question and challenge conventions of music presentation.
Andrew Munsey
Andrew B. Munsey is a sound engineer, musician and creative collaborator who works across the fields of contemporary and experimental music, cinema, and television. Since 2008, he has been active throughout the New York City creative music community, engineering projects for Innova Recordings, NNA Tapes, Breakup Records, and Circle Into Square Records while having performed and premiered works throughout North America as a drummer/percussionist including at Lincoln Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and Symphony Space.
In 2010, he formed the Brooklyn-based production outpost BK Sonic Works, which focuses on creative sound and musical collaborations with artists, filmmakers, and composers producing works for cinema and installation. In this role, his work as a sound designer, mixing engineer, and composer has been exhibited and screened at the Guggenheim Museum, Centre Pompidou (FR), Fridericianum (DE), Van Gogh Museum (NL), Anthology Film Archives, and the Library of Congress with festivals including the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals. His work as a sound mixer for television can be heard on the Discovery International, Smithsonian, Comedy Central, and Spike TV networks.
Munsey received his BFA in Jazz Studies from the California Institute of the Arts under the mentorship of Joe LaBarbera where his teachers also included Charlie Haden and Wadada Leo Smith.