Thursday, May 27, 2010

Get a Taste

Get a Taste at Taster:

Thursday, June 3th, Free
At 2640 Space: a collectively run events venue in Baltimore, located at 2640 St. Paul St. 
 TASTER! A free introductory concert to experimental / improvised music with a bevy of stellar Baltimore musicians.
Are you interested in experimental music but not sure where to start? Or do you have friends or family members that you think might be interested in this stuff if it was introduced to them in the right way? In order to make this sort of thing happen more frequently, High Zero has put together this special free event at 2640 space called TASTER. Its a buffet of virtuoso experimental music styles.
In addition to good food and drink and casual conversation, this event will feature short, highly varied sets by these hand-picked ensembles of great Baltimore area musicians:
Neil Feather: inventions
Eric Franklin: inventions
Dan Breen: inventions

John Dierker: bass clarinet
Samuel Burt: bass clarinet
Britton Powell: bass
Will Redman: drums

Susan Alcorn: pedal steel guitar
Paul Neidhardt: drums
Chris Pumphrey: alto saxophone

Andy Hayleck: inventions
Ayako Katoaka: inventions
Peter Blasser: inventions

Audrey Chen: cello, voice
Shodekeh: human beat-boxing
Brian Sacawa: saxophones

Please come and bring interested friends and family. Its a chance to get them to peek into the amazing, exotic world of Baltimore experimental music and see what you like. We think they will find it interesting, and it may open some interesting doors for people. The whole event will last about an hour and a half, starting at the Church at 8PM sharp.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Ehse Records is Proud to Announce the Exclusive ReRelease of a Rare Katt Hernandez LP

Katt Hernandez

"Seriously Boss" - Byron Coley and Thurston Moore in Arthur



Ehse Records is Proud to Announce the Exclusive ReRelease of a Rare Katt Hernandez LP

"It's a solo record I did a bit back in boston. My landlord had 1950s Cole ribbon mics from the BBC sound studio (incidentaly of a series number which apparently indicates their probable use on Doctor Who). I made this very sort of purist recording there with him."


Ehse will be rereleasing the very rare Boston solo violin recording of Katt Hernandez. The release will be available in June, with Katt touring in Europe from her new homebase in Stockholm.


INFO

Katt Hernandez is about to move to Stockholm, Sweden. She went there to play at Hagenfesten with pianist Eve Risser in summer of 2008, met her current partner, and so will go to join him there. She has done a bit of work in the Electronic Music Studio there already, and played with Joel Grip. Currently Katt is in Boston, where she has most recently played at X-Fest, in Zack Fuller's "Into the Shiny Battle" at Mobius and performed and recorded with Joe Morris, Luther Gray, Matt Samolis, Steve Norton, Mitch Ahern, Andrew Neuman and Junko Simons.
Katt lived in Philadelphia for three years, after living in the Boston area for nine years, playing the violin, running spaces, and producing shows. She immediately became involved in performances with Bowerbird, Soundfield, Ars Nova, and Nicole Bindler's Dance Ensemble upon her arrival.  During her time there she played regularly with the Balkan Dance band West Philadelphia Orchestra, toured the U.S. with Vashti Bunyan and Vetiver, sat on the Board of World Music presenting organization Crossroads Music, and worked with musicians from Gregg Weeks' "Language of Stone" Label. She created a quasi-composed piece for shadow-puppet and screen print artist Erik Ruin which toured throughout the East Coast. She worked regularly with Psychotic Quartet and permutations thereof- Dan Blacksberg, Evan Lipson and Michael Evans. And she regularly went to Baltimore to collaborate as well. She has worked a great deal with John Berndt, the Second Nature ensemble, the duo Isabel with Audrey Chen, and collaborated most recently with Andy Hayleck and Catherine Pancake.

Focused primarily on freely improvised music, 
Katt draws a firey array of electronic-like sounds and keening melodies from her unaltered, accoustic violin. She also works extensively with microtonality, drawn from a study of a mixture of sources, including traditional folk and sacred musics of the Middle East, Turkey, and Eastern Europe, various odd-ball whisps of old Americana, and the Maneri/Sims 72 note system. Playing with as wide and unexpected a variety of other performers as possible is tantamount to her sonic and spiritual pursuits. She has also played music of the late Ottman empire and Whirling Dervish ceremonies with the Eurasia Ensemble. She spent some time playing old-time, vaudeville, and early jazz tunes with Matt Samolis(a.k.a. Shoe) whilst channelling the spirit of Amelia Earhart in the duo Lindy's Radio. And she also has played the mysterious incarnation of a disturbing cartoon character in the frightening music and performance art duo Dr. Selenium and Madame Margo.Before leaving for Philadelphia she participated in the Voltaic Vaudeville festival, wherein she played Solo, with butoh dancer Jennifer Hicks, and as part of the Beat Circus Vaudeville Orchestra. In fact, she plays somewhere for somebody at least weekly, come hell or high water.
Katt has collaborated with a magnificently variated sea of musicians, dancers, and others including- but certainly not limited to- Joe Maneri,David Maxwell, Nicole Bindler, John Voigt, Allisa Cardone, Gordon Beeferman, Jonathan Vincent, Walter Wright, Joe Burgio, Eric Rosenthal, Jeff Arnal, Jaimie McGlaughlin,Dave Gross and Hans Rickheit. She has twice been invited to perfrom on the Autumn Uprising, High Zero, Mobius ArtRages, and Improvised and Otherwise festivals, and has also appeared at the Montreaux-Detroit, Brandeis New Music, Boston CyberArts, Michiania, Phenome, IAJE, IASJ, and Ear Whacks festivals. She has been a guest artist at MIT, Harvard, University of Indiana and the New England Conservatory, performed in a vast slew of localized venues and life-making places throughout the east coast metropolii.

In addition, 
Katt booked well over a hundred shows, festivals, and concerts during her time in Boston. She was a crazed avatar for the Zeitgeist Gallery, where she worked on everything from publicity and shows to mischeif and whimsey. She also lived in the short-lived Andrew Square art space next to an elevator shaft, and performed multiple times at the Pan 9 space. She continues to seek out underground spaces for those things too strange and magnificant for commercial clubs and foundation concert halls.
Katt grew up in Ann Arbor, MI, where she met all kinds of the most remarkable humans you might imagine, and played her violin throughout the Detroit metro-area on a regular basis starting at the age of 14. Her first free improvisation show was at teh age of 15, where she was delighted to find herself sharing the stage with Eugene Chadbourne, Frank Pahl and LaDonna Smith. She attended Community High School as a kid- a public school based on the utopic visions of the late sixties. She also spent two weeks every summer at the National Music Camp, wearing silly uniforms and learning about symphonic and chamber music. After attending classes as a teenager at the University of Michigan's Music School, she went there and studied composition, violin, electronic music, jazz, and improvisation, graduating in the end with the very first BFA in "Jazz Studies and Contemporary Improvisation" awarded by the school. Her teachers were George Balch Wilson, Ed Sarath, Even Chambers, Donald Walden, Elaine Sargous, Karin Swanson, Mike Grace, and Andrew Jennings. She played with a great many musicians and others there, including Only a Mother, Doctor Arwulf-Arwulf,the Creative Arts Orchestra, and the Blue Sun Quintet.

QUOTES FROM REVIEWS AND SUCH

"Another Beantown expat is improvising violinist Katt Hernandez, whose debut solo LP Unlovely (no label) is seriously boss. A student of Joe Manieri, Katt plays in a style that flies through the valley separating new music and free jazz, like a hive of cunning bees. Great inventions." Byron Coley and Thurston Moore, Arthur No. 32 (Dec 2008)

". . . musicians everywhere are aware of her exceptional artistry, and even international writers and producers are telling us of their fortunate discovery. . .it may be overdue, but it is good to see that someone as good as 
Katt is finally being recognized." Stu Vandermark, Cadence Magazine, Dec. 2004, pg. 133

". . .The Long Awaited Etcetera puts 
Hernandez squarely on the radar. . . as one of the few violinists of consequence in improvised music" Stanley Zappa, Bannanafish, Issue Seventeen, pg. 88

"
Hernandez is a young violinist who shows the potential to develop into a major voice in experimental violin improvisation and join the ranks of Mat Maneri, Mari Kimura, Malcolm Goldstein, and Takehisa Kosugi". Michael A. Parker, All About Jazz, http://www.allaboutjazz.com/reviews/r0502_135.htm

"It was Hernandez that stood out in this piece, bringing an ear clearly comfortable with classical and rock approaches, but despite this grounding, at times flirting with complete choas" Eric Allen Hatch, Signal-to-Noise Winter 2002/issue 24, page 55

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Ehse Radio Brings the Fresh Top Hits!

Ehse Records' owner Stewart Mostofsky was recently interviewed on Baltimore's best local radio program: The Signal.

Check out the program and hear how host Aaron Henkin responds to the likes of Leprechaun Catering and Sejayno. The Ehse talk takes place towards the last ten minutes of the program.