Category — Live Performance

Friday, November 12, 2010 | 8:15pm

Join us at The Bridge (after the VABC’s Raucous Auction in Ivy Square) for a 90-minute audio documentary screening featuring works about the Lives of Animals–specifically looking at the struggle of humans to value and understand the lives of animals.

Producer Lulu Miller (now UVA MFA, former Radiolab producer) has an original story about why grasshoppers become locusts. Louisa Jonas has an account of deerhunting in rural Maryland. Jesse Dukes has a story about a young farmer killing a batch of chickens for the first time. Kelley Libby has a verite piece about a calf being born.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 | 8pm | $5

The Bridge PAI presents an evening of experimental and improvised music featuring special guests Gene Coleman (bass clarinet) and Chao-Ming Tung (gu-zheng and electronics). The evening will also include the debut of Charlottesville’s newest improvised string duet comprised of Kevin Davis and Bridge regular Jonathan Zorn. Kevin is new to Charlottesville from Chicago by way of Istanbul.

Gene COLEMAN is a composer, musician and director. He has created over 50 works for various instrumentation and media, often using complex notations and improvisation in the same score. Innovative use of sound, space and time allows Coleman to create work that expands our understanding of the world. Since 2001, his work has focused on the global transformation of culture and music’s relationship with other media, such as architecture, video and dance. He studied painting, music and film making at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where his principle teachers included legendary experimental film artists Stan Brakhage and Ernie Gehr, as well as Robert Snyder (music) and Barbara Rossi (painting). His work has been commissioned by top musicians, ensembles and organizations throughout the world and has been composer in residence in Tokyo, Beirut, Taipei, Berlin and other places. More information here.

Chao-Ming TUNG is a Taiwanese-born composer and gu-zheng player (Chinese zither) based in Taipei City. His music encompasses stage, instrumental, vocal, and electro-acoustic works, and multimedia-performances with visual arts and dance. Since 2000, he has gradually incorporated Chinese instruments into his music, and
improvises with guzheng and live electronics in concerts. In 1988, he began composition studies with Chien Nan-Chang in the Chinese-Culture-University Taipei. He continued his training from 1990-1997 at the Musikhochschule Koeln Germany with Johannes Fritsch and Mauricio Kagel, and later at the Folkwang- Hochschule Essen with Nicolaus A. Huber, where he graduated with distinction. Since 1999, he has worked as a freelance composer and musician, and facilitates East-West cultural exchanges. Tung’s work has been presented in concerts of numerous festivals throughout Europe, Asia, and the USA. He has collaborated with choreographers, dancers, painters, musicians, ensembles, sound-, media- and video artists, e.g. Annegret Heiln, Rene Pieters, Bernhard Gal, Klang Forum Wien, Ensemble Ictus, Ensemble Modern, ensemble 2e2m, Ensemble On-Line Vienna , ensemble DEDALO, and Chai Found Music Workshop. He was awarded the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Scholarship for Composers from the City of Cologne in 1999, the Scholarship of National Culture and Arts Foundation Taiwan in 2001 and Stipendium of Villa Aurora Los Angles 2004. He is now composer in residence of Chai Found Music Workshop in Taipei and a professor of music composition at Ciao Tung University in Taiwan. More information here.

Sunday, November 28, 2010 | 8pm | $5

At the Charlottesville Experimental Music showcase last March Tatsuya Nakatani presented a condensed percussion blast using his pared down setup. On Novemeber 28th Tatsuya will return to Charlottesville with a truck full of gongs to present a full evening of intense improvised percussion music. Tatsuya will perform solo and with local improvisers.

BIOGRAPHY:
Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion) is originally from Osaka, Japan. In 2006, he performed in 80 cities in 7 countries and collaborated with 163 artists worldwide. In the past 10 years he has released nearly 50 recordings on CD.

 He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. He utilizes drumset, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects, bells, and various sticks and bows to create an intense, organic music that defies category or genre. His music is based in improvised/ experimental music, jazz, free jazz, rock, and noise, yet retains the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music.

 In addition to live solo and ensemble performances he works as a sound designer for film and television. He teaches Masterclasses and Workshops at the University level and heads H&H Production, an independent record label and recording studio based in Easton, Pennsylvania. He was selected as a performing artist for the Pennsylvania Performing Artist on Tour (PennPat) roster as well as a Bronx Arts Council Individual Artist grant.

Makoto Takeuchi (attic photo)

Tuesday, November 23, 2010 | 7 pm

Melissa Nieuwoudt studied poetry with Grace Paley at Lebanon College in New Hampshire. All are welcome to an evening of poetry.

“See the reflection of words, as it stares at you.
Hear it speak of a life so familiar;
Drift away on a meaning
To discover the perfect image.

Poet soul behind passion presents the soulful life of words themselves.”

Katherine Young (solo bassoon) + Jacob Wick (solo trumpet)
Also featuring Kevin Davis (cello), Chris Peck (voice, electronics, ukulele), and Jonathan Zorn (doublebass, electronics)

Sunday, November 21, 2010 | 8pm | $5

In November, Brooklyn-based composer/improvisers Katherine Young and Jacob Wick will
embark on a double solo tour throughout the East and Southeast performing material that explores
and exploits the limits of their respective instruments. Young’s solo bassoon work, documented on her 2009 Porter Records release Further Secret Origins, carefully employs specific amplification and pedals to enhance the overtones, interior sounds, and power of the bassoon. Of this music The Wire called Young “Bassoon colossus,” while her work was described in Downbeat as making “seriously bold leaps for the bassoon”; and Sequenza 21 said “Katherine Young’s solo bassoon music does more than rock. It f-king kicks ass. And takes names…Her performances are powerful and compelling….If you thought Stravinsky’s high bassoon writing was ‘otherworldly,’ then you have to hear this.” Young has toured with Anthony Braxton, recorded with members of Faust and Einsturzende Neubauten, and also performs regularly in the improvising duo Architeuthis Walks on Land, whose recent release Natura Naturans has been called “mind-bending” by Time
Out New York.

Wick’s solo piece, swarm, is a performance that concentrates on breaking down the trumpet into its constituent parts: air, metal, spit, song. By manipulating the instrument to reveal its myriad sonic possibilities, Wick creates an environment that has been described as “one of the most challenging and intimate things I’ve ever had to do” (Columbia Free Times). Of his 2008 duo release with Andrew Greenwald,
37:55 (Creative Sources), the Chicago Reader wrote “I’ve never heard a trumpet sound so inhuman—his flickering tone and stuttery articulation dislocate the instrument’s voice like an electronic filter, and for minutes at a time you might imagine you’re listening to an old-school analog synth.” In New York, Wick leads two groups: A Mown Lawn, a chamber group with Judith Berkson, Curtis Hasselbring, Josh Sinton, and Katherine Young; and hungry cowboy, with Jonathan Goldberger, Briggan Krauss, and Mike Pride. He also performs internationally with the Trans-Atlantic collaborative trio White Rocket, whose 2009 release White Rocket was hailed as a “dazzling and promising debut” by Downbeat.

Saturday, October 23, 2010 | 9pm sharp! | $5

There will be 2 PAs at either end of the room, and the sets will be back-to-back in “ping pong” style. As soon as one band finishes, the one across the room starts while the band that just finished gets their shit out of the way so that the next band in their spot can set-up up and be ready to go when the band before them finishes. This was done at a show in July and it worked great…made the show go by quickly and kept everyone in attendance interested. Really fun!

Worn In Red
(myspace.com/worninred)

Nurse Beach
(myspace.com/nursebeachh)

Graves
(hate the internet)

The Catalyst
(myspace.com/thecatalyst)

The War Tempest
(too cool for the internet)

Tuesday, October 12, 2010 | 8pm | $5

Baltimore Annex Theatre comes to the Bridge for an evening of experimental and DIY performance. Join us for their original play A Fistful of Flowers. As usual, there will be a suggested donation of $5 at the door.

The play, “A Fistful of Flowers takes the western genre and bends, reshapes and queers the old format into a genre all its own. This play follows two contemporary cowboys, who are ex lovers, as they chase each other around the desert trying to kill each other. The play is populated by the traditional western characters and non-traditional absurdist characters while the future mixes with the past. TNT is detonated via an iPhone app. A man takes violent revenge for a bad Darth Vader tattoo. Desert cacti are animate characters. The landscape comes alive with invented and real imagery that is as psychedelic as it is everyday. Intermittently, gender roles are reversed to lend broader depth to the main characters’ search for what it means to be a man… a real man (a woman).” The show is appropriate for all ages.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010 | 7pm

Paul Legault journeys back to Charlottesville for a reading celebrating the release of his first book. A signing will follow.

Due to a conflict, Gabrielle Calvocoressi will be unable to appear at The Bridge on Tuesday. Paul Legault will still read as scheduled.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart (Persea. 2005) and Apocalyptic Swing (Persea. 2009), which was a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Award. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer’s Award and a fellowship to Civitella di Ranieri in Umbria. Her poems have been featured in the Washington Post and on Garrison Keillor’s Poet’s Almanac and in numerous journals. She also writes the Sports Desk column for The Best American Poetry blog and is the Virtual Editor for Broadsided Press. She tweets @gabbat, @broadsidedpress and may be writing her third book @caracaraoriole. She is on the advisory board of The Rumpus’ Poetry Book Club. She lives in Los Angeles.

Paul Legault received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia and a B.F.A. in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California. He is the co-founder and co-editor of the translation journal Telephone. His first book, The Madeleine Poems, is just out from Omnidawn Press. He lives in Brooklyn, NY where he works at the Academy of American Poets.

Sunday, October 24, 2010 | 8pm | $3

Little Master formed only year ago and in that short time has undergone some line-up changes, fought some legal battles, and won the admiration of those few devoted softees still wimpy enough to put on their favorite Lemonheads CD while driving to Fan Thrift to rummage through second-hand brick-a-brack. Sometimes compared to later Husker Du, Moving Targets or to certain grungier elements such as The Afghan Whigs or Nirvana, its safe to say that Little Master has all the catchiness, moodiness, and guitar-driven songcrafting that can pull at your heart strings while you bang your head against the wall.

Dreamy guitar licks, catchy hooks, sweet harmonies, and a steady rhythm section will keep Charlottesville’s Doppleganger pleasantly swimming in your head for days. Featuring Bailee Hampton on ukulele and vocals, Danny Zezeski on guitar and vocals, Marie Landragin on bass, and Geoff Otis on drums. You can expect solid rock and roll from these indie darlings at their second show.

Dead Dog is an Athens GA based punk rock group. The group has gone through many changes since their debut release on Mauled By Tigers. Moving from Bed-Stuy to Athens, John and Ella were able to recruit a new drummer in the form of Lexi and now, with the lineup solidified, it seems the Dead Dogs are on top of their game. Their sound is pretty hard to describe because they tend to avoid any kind of generic characterization as though it were toxic. Maybe this can give you a clue: they sound like spaghetti sauce stained black jeans and George Harrison is wearing them while riding a skateboard down Bedford Avenue shopping for a new hat for his ghost to wear. Don’t get it? Come check them out… maybe you will, maybe you won’t.

Friday, October 22, 2010 | 8pm | $5

Central VA’s most popular comedy act for the past 5 years. Come out and join the Bent Theatre for a fabulous comedy show featuring improv, sketch, and music all made up on the spot based on your suggestions. What do you want to see? Sean Connery at Bodos? Lunar plumbers? Your family celebrating Arbor Day? You tell us

Also featuring, the improv detective act, Noir-Prov.