HOUSE BLEND II
with Konus Quartett (Switzerland), Gelsey Bell (voice) and Erin Rogers (saxophone)
A double bill
HOUSE BLEND MUSIC
August 19 at PS21 Pavilion
Konus Quartett. Konus performs Klaus Lang’s Drei Allmenden, for saxophone quartet and harmonium, which the quartet recorded for Cubus Records in 2020 with the composer as soloist. Lang has described the organic blending of the harmonium and the four saxes as “creating a balance that ultimately serves a purpose: the revelation of concealed qualities and the beauty of sound.”
Duration: 40 minutes
With
Skylighght, written and performed by Gelsey Bell (voice) and Erin Rogers (saxophone). The piece uses sound to gradually alter our experience of a space in ways akin to how artists James Turell or Robert Irwin use light. The two performers move through the space wordlessly directing the sound in pathways that dance around the room. The piece also involves a section called Building Canyons, where Bell sings into the bell of Roger’s tenor saxophone, exploring its inner chamber and sounding a rainbow of diverse multiphonics. Skylighght will be released on Chaiken Records in May, with the album release party in the catacombs at Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn.
House Blend is PS21’s annual chamber music series exploring a full range of adventurous music and creative modes of expression, fostering new collaborations specific to our place, venue, and audiences.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Konus Quartett
Based in Bern, Switzerland, the four members of Konus Quartett—Fabio Oehrli (soprano saxophone), Jonas Tschanz (alto saxophone), Christian Kobi (tenor saxophone), and Stefan Rolli (baritone saxophone)—are a celebrated voice in contemporary music, commissioning and performing new compositions by Jürg Frey, Phill Niblock, and Klaus Lang, among many others. Their international tours have brought the quartet to Cafe OTO in London, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and Canada’s FIMAV (Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville), to name only a few venues.
Gelsey Bell
Gelsey Bell is a singer, songwriter, and scholar - a composer-performer, teacher, and sound artist. She has been described by the New York Times as “one of New York’s most adventurous musicians” and the “future of experimental vocalism.” She performs regularly as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, culling from a wide range of techniques and styles to create her own performance works, to literally voice those of contemporary composers, and to explore improvisation.
Her works often center the voice and range from song cycles and sound walks to collaboratively created operas and structures for improvisation. Her experimental opera mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mounring] was commissioned by the HERE Arts Center as part of their residency program and premiered in 2023 in the Prototype festival to an extended run of sold-out shows. Her sound walk Cairns (2020), created with composer Joseph White, was listed on the New York Times’ Best Theater of 2020 list. After many years as a singer-songwriter, during which she released two studio albums, Under A Piano (2005) and In Place of Arms (2010), Gelsey began to bring her songwriting into the experimental world through song cycles and collaborative works. These include SubtracTTTTTTTTT (2020) and A Series of Landscapes (2020), created with thingNY for online; Skylighght (2019), created with composer and saxophonist Erin Rogers; shuffleyamamba (2019) and shuffleyamamba: Yamamba as a Bear (2021), created with choreographer Yasuko Yokoshi; Prisoner’s Song (2015), created with visual artist Erik Ruin; This Takes Place Close By (2015), a collaboratively composed opera by thingNY; Airs and Interruptions (2015), originally composed for CNDC-Angers/Robert Swinston’s performance of Merce Cunningham’s choreography, with music by John King – this became the album Ciphony (2017); WIFE (2015), which was commissioned by Avant Media; the song cycle Our Defensive Measurements (2013) for five performers, which was commissioned by Roulette and the Jerome Foundation; SCALING (2011) for piano and two vocalists; and Bathroom Songs (2010), which has been performed in bathrooms all over the world. Her smaller pieces include “Murmuration” (2020), commissioned by the String Orchestra of Brooklyn; “Aviatrix” (2019), commissioned by Megan Ihnen and Alan Theisen; the This is Not a Land of Kings suite (2018), which was also released as an EP; Spent Horizon (2015), first performed with vocalist Odeya Nini; “Weight” (2014), which was commissioned by Ne(x)tworks; and Locker Room Duet, commissioned by the LUMEN festival and created with fiddler Cleek Schrey. She also developed and composed music for Wealth from the Salt Seas with choreographer Anna Sperber and composed music for choreographer Kimberly Bartosik’s You are my heat and glare. She received a 2017 sound/music grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and both a residency (2015-2016) and a commission (2013) from Roulette and the Jerome Foundation. She has been a resident artist at Mount Tremper Arts, the Kinosaki International Arts Center, and the Exploring the Metropolis Ridgewood Bushwick Composer-in-Residence. Her work has been performed throughout North America, Europe, and Japan.
Erin Rogers
Based in New York City, Erin Rogers is a Canadian-American saxophonist, composer, and improviser dedicated to new and experimental music. Her “decidedly future-oriented” music has been described as “whimsical, theatrical” (Brooklyn Vegan), “radical and refreshing” (Vital Weekly) and “a richly expressive display of stentorian brilliance” (The Wire Magazine). Her work ranges from chamber music performance to solo experimental improvisation to individual and collaborative compositions that incorporate live electronics, theatre, and text. Rogers’ music has been performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), Roulette Intermedium, Centro Nacional de las Artes (Mexico City), Celebrity Series (Boston), MATA Festival, Ecstatic Festival at Merkin Hall, Prototype Festival, Winspear Centre (Edmonton), Resonanzraum (Germany), Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid), and NyMusikk Bergen (Norway). Rogers is co-artistic director of NYC-based performance ensembles: thingNY, New Thread Quartet, Hypercube, Popebama, and a member of LA-based Wild Up. “A consummate collaborator” (The New Yorker), Rogers crosses genres from music-theatre-to-dance-to-installation-to-silence in her work with Abilities Dance Boston, Orange Theatre, Panoply Performance Lab, Harvestworks, Experiments-in-Opera, Decoder, and Music for Contemplation. She has received commissions and honors from The Barlow Endowment, Library of Congress, Robert Bielecki Foundation, Copland House, ASCAP, and the Jerome Foundation. Her music has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, musicworks magazine, and The Wire. Rogers has performed with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea, Wet Ink, and Copland House and can be heard on New Focus Recordings, New World Records, Tonus Vivus, Edition Wandelweiser, Relative Pitch, INNOVA and Gold Bolus labels. Her solo album 2000 Miles was listed in Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp. Rogers is a D’Addario Woodwinds and Conn-Selmer artist, a Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Teaching Artist and Co-Chair of the Manhattan School of Music Contemporary Performance Program and Co-Artistic Director of the Tactus Ensemble.
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