SPLICE Institute 2023 Concert 3 Program
featuring
Popebama
Erin Rogers, saxophone
Dennis Sullivan, percussion
Wednesday June 29, 2022
7:30pm EDT
Dalton Recital Hall, Western Michigan University
Livestream simulcast on SPLICE YouTube (unique link)
download program pdf (does not include notes/bios)
Dennis Sullivan : Prelude to Substructure (2021)
Kittie Cooper : Edgewise (2020)
Erin Rogers : Basket Case (2021)
Varun Kishore : this used to be something else (II) (2023)
Ess Whiteley : inter[ ARE] (2023 - world premier)
Popebama : Remote Cipher (2023 - world premier)
Notes
Dennis Sullivan : Prelude to SubstructurePrelude to Substructure is an intentional organization of unintentional and unavoidable sonic events. The amplification of the tenor saxophone and percussion highlights more of the instrument "doing its job" as opposed to the aural product of the action (though this is also unavoidable). A series of over-driven, self oscillating distortion pedals provide a layer of multiphonic noise to act as an adhesive between sometimes disparate sound worlds. Maintenance Hum is equal parts product and byproduct of instrumental sound. back to program
Kittie Cooper : Edgewise
Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVPs) are recorded sounds that are interpreted as the voices of ghosts, spirits, and other paranormal entities. EVPs can be recorded unintentionally or can be intentionally requested and recorded, usually via human-conducted conversation in supernaturally active spaces. During this process, people speak to and record the space, and then listen to and edit recordings later, interpreting any replies. EVPs provide the text and much of the sonic material for edgewise.
edgewise engages with the relationship between humans and space in the documentation of EVPs, as well as the power dynamics at play when humans seek to project meaning onto sound and space. This piece creates an environment in which humans, recordings, and spaces struggle to be heard amidst conflicting modes of communication and interpretation.
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Erin Rogers : Basket Case
During a Popebama road trip, it became apparent through the constant dashboard drumming, that Dennis Sullivan knew the drum fills to nearly every 90's hit that landed on the randomized playlist. The fills in Green Day's Basket Case (Dookie, 1994) are rhythmically simple yet, when played at top speed, present a perfectly crisp noise. The song deserves a 30-year anniversary tribute. Paired with 0-Coast semi-mod desktop synth, freeze and ring modulation pedals, a peaked-out vocal mic, and a catalog of soprano multiphonics, Basket Case encounters its next-generation self.
—Erin Rogers
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Varun Kishore : this used to be something else (II)
Phonetic text scores originally created for exploratory drone improvisation using electric guitar, ebow, and synthesizers are reimagined for saxophone and percussion. Performers interpret short fragments of text as sound, ranging from recognizable vowels to abstract groups of letters, creating textures that offer a different perspective on the idea of the drone.
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Ess Whiteley : inter[ ARE]
This piece is a sonic and visual meditation on synthetic-organic hybridities, inter-material entanglements, cross-species kinship. The term “more-than-human worlds” (David Abrams, 1996) has been used to call attention through the senses to what exists beyond what is conventionally considered in Western paradigms to be human. In such a way, this piece orients us towards environmental sonic and visual fields melded with technological ones, bringing into being a speculative “more-than-human" audiovisual world made up of cross-species cyborg-organism assemblages and inter-material becomings.
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Popebama : Remote Cipher
Remote Cipher is an exploration of spontaneous sound, light and resonance. It is in a constant state of becoming and actualization.
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Bios
Popebama is a New York-based experimental duo that focuses on exciting performances of unconventional works. Described as “Noisily Virtuosic” (clevelandclassical.com), Erin Rogers (saxophone) and Dennis Sullivan (percussion) are composer-performers who apply text, electronics, and high-energy instrumental writing to freshly-squeezed sounds. Specializing in works conceived by Rogers and Sullivan, Popebama has championed composers such as Merche Blasco, Paul Pinto, Jenna Lyle, Rick Burkhardt, Seong Ae Kim, Kittie Cooper, Ryan Carraher, Varun Kishore, Chin-Ting Chan, Chelsea Loew, Daniel Silliman, S Whiteley, and Alex Christie. The duo has collaborated with yarn/wire (NYC), Tøyen Fil Og Klafferi (Oslo), Brandon Lopez (Brooklyn), Anne La Berge (Amsterdam), Merche Blasco (NYC), Jessica Pavone (Queens), Ogni Suono (Cleveland), Rage Thormbones (LA), and DECODER (Hamburg). Popebama has been featured at the Elbphilarmonie (Hamburg), NYmusikk Bergen (Norway), The Shed (NYC), Edmonton Fringe Festival (Canada), Splendor (Amsterdam), Diabolical Records (Salt Lake City), VU Symposium (Park City), Bodies-As-Technology (Brooklyn), ReSound Festival (Cleveland), The Stone (NYC), SPLICE Festival (Kalamazoo), New School of Music (Boston), Studio Loos (Den Haag), Chance & Circumstance Festival (Long Island City), and The Walden School (New Hampshire), with lauded performances at the 2017 New Music Gathering, and NASA 2018 Biennial (Cincinnati).back to program
Kittie Cooper is a sound and intermedia artist, performer, and educator based in Vancouver, BC. She makes work that explores the spectrum between silliness and seriousness, and in particular where those two things overlap with spookiness. Much of Kittie’s work looks at the messy insides of people, places, and things. Their work has been called ""highly original and wonderfully fun"". They are interested in text and graphic scores, improvisation, and DIY electronic instruments. They have performed and presented at a variety of festivals across the United States and Canada, and perform regularly as a guitarist, electronic musician, and improviser.
Kittie’s music has been commissioned and performed by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Ensemble Dal Niente, Splinter Reeds, Popebama, and Warp Trio. She serves as Director of Composers Forums and Faculty for The Walden School Young Musicians Program. They hold a BM from Northwestern University in music education and guitar performance, and an MEd in teaching students with visual impairments from George Mason University. They are currently working toward an MFA in interdisciplinary arts at Simon Fraser University. They also like ghost stories, chili, and cats.
You can find more information and documentation of Kittie’s work at kittiecooper.com.
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Varun Kishore is a guitarist and composer from Kolkata, India. His work explores interdisciplinary approaches to music technology, literature, and the audiovisual, with a focus on designing frameworks for composition and improvisation to investigate what he sees as the ‘apocalyptic’ nature of creative practice. Varun's recent work has been performed by the Tokyo Gen’on Project and Popebama, and presented at SEAMUS, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and the South Bend Museum of Art. His current areas of interest include drone and experimental electronic music, metal studies, digital instrument and interface design, alternative notation, and video. Varun is a graduate of the University of West London (BMus Popular Music Performance, 2012) and Goldsmiths, University of London (MMus Creative Practice, 2019). He is currently a PhD student in the Composition & Computer Technologies program at the University of Virginia. www.varunkishore.net
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Erin Rogers is a Canadian-American saxophonist and composer. She is Co-Artistic director of NYC-based ensembles thingNY, Popebama, New Thread Quartet, Hypercube and a core member of LA-based WildUp. Her music has been performed worldwide at the Prototype, Ecstatic, and MATA Festivals, Celebrity Series (Boston), Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Centro Nacional de las Artes (Mexico City), and NYmusikk Bergen (Norway). Rogers is faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music Contemporary Performance Program, a Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Teaching Artist, and a D’Addario Woodwinds and Conn-Selmer endorsing artist. Described as "a richly expressive display of stentorian brilliance" (The Wire) she has recorded two solo albums for Relative Pitch Records and can be heard on New Focus, New World, INNOVA, GoldBolus, Infrequent Seams, and Edition Wandelweiser. erinmrogers.com
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Born in Akron, Ohio, Dennis K. Sullivan II is a percussionist, composer, improviser and electronicist based in Queens, NY. Dennis explores cross-genre coalescence between acoustic, electronic and timbral sound alchemy. As a percussionist, Dennis is a founding member of the performance duo, Radical 2 with percussionist/engineer, Levy Lorenzo and Popebama, a high octane experimental percussion/saxophone duo with composer/saxophonist Erin Rogers. In addition, Dennis is the percussionist and co-director of the Wavefield Ensemble and has shared the stage with The International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble ECCE, Ensemble Court Circuit, Either/Or, Ensemble Pamplemousse, The Argento New Music Project and others.
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Ess (‘S’) Whiteley (they/them) is a San Diego-based multimedia composer and improvisor working primarily with electronics and intermedia. They are interested in cyborg consciousness, embodiment, formations of the self, and Deep Listening in the context of virtually entangled, post-internet life.
They have toured Europe, the UK, and North America with various bands, had their music featured on publications like Pitchfork and The Wire and released labels like Not Not Fun, 99Chants, Topshelf Records, and Touchtheplants. Their work has been performed at the MATA Festival (NYC), Dublin Music Current Festival (Dublin, Ireland), MA/IN Matera Intermedia Festival (Matera, Italy) [Honorary Mention Award], SEAMUS National Conference (NYC), WOCMAT 關於 (Hschinchu, Taiwan), Mise-en Festival (Brooklyn, NY), Echofluxx (Prague, CZ), Int-Act Festival (Bangkok, Thailand), Festival di Nuova Consonanza (Rome, Italy), N_SEME (Denton, TX), University of Pittsburgh Music & Erotics Conference (Pittsburgh, PA) and others.
S has held residencies at the I-Park Inc. Foundation Artist Residency, Dublin Sound Lab, and the Labo de Musique Contemporaine de Montréal. Their work, creative practice, and Deep Listening practice is heavily informed by the 2 years they spent studying Buddhism and practicing meditation intensively in residential monastic retreat at several different Zen Buddhist Monasteries in Oregon, the Bay Area, and New Mexico.
They received their BM in Composition from McGill University and are currently a PhD student in Composition at the University of California San Diego. Their mentors have included Melissa Hui, Philippe Leroux, Marcos Balter, Rand Steiger and Michelle Lou.
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