Great to have Eli Keszler back at OTO for another solo performance after his standout set at last year's PAN festival. Keszler's playing combines advanced technique and seemingly impossible speed with a gift for sonic imagination, combining the drumset with crotales, suspended strings and motorized electronics. The evening will also include two more solo sets from John Chantler on synthesizer and Jennifer Allum on violin.

ELI KESZLER

Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and currently based in New York City, Eli Keszler began playing drums at eight, and composing at twelve. Before finding an interest in experimental music and improvisation, he played in rock and hardcore bands; his work retains an intense physicality and churning, often ferocious energy. He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory, where he studied composition with Anthony Coleman and Ran Blake. He has collaborated with Phill Niblock, Roscoe Mitchell, Tony Conrad, Joe McPhee, Loren Connors, Jandek, and many others, and has recorded more than a dozen CDs and LPs for ESP-DISK, REL, and PAN.

Keszler’s installations employ piano wires of varying lengths; these are struck, scraped, and vibrated by microprocessor-controlled motorized arms, giving rise to harmonically complex tones that are percussive yet resonant. These installations are heard on their own and with accompanying ensemble scores. Said Keszler in a NPR All Songs Considered interview, “I like to work with raw material, simple sounds, primitive or very old sounds; sounds that won't get dated in any way.” In addition, the patterns formed by the overlapping piano wires allow Keszler to create visual components that relate directly to the music, without having to use projections or other electronic equipment.

His visual work often features dense, fine detailed drawing and painting which use a variety of sources, from the surfaces of objects to large scale spaces, and intuitive design.

His installations have appeared at Eyebeam (NYC), Boston Center for the Arts, Nuit Blanche NYC and the Shreveport MSPC New Music Festival with upcoming projects at the Tektonic festival in Reykjavik, Iceland, an installation for the Gaudeamus Festival at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, and a performance at Barbican in London.

elikeszler.com

Eli Keszler – L-Carrier from eli keszler on Vimeo.

JOHN CHANTLER

Originally from Australia but now a long-time UK resident after a stint in Japan, Chantler will release his third solo LP for the ROOM40 label in September 2013. 'Even Clean Hands Damage the Work' (recorded for the most part at the hallowed EMS studios in Stockholm) follows 'The Luminous Ground' - released in 2011 and included in The WIRE magazine's top releases of that year. That was his first LP release focusing on the analog/digital modular synth system he first explored as part of the trio LP with Lawrence English and Tujiko Noriko - 2009's 'U'. Live, he patches a versatile system capable of self-generated, shifting patterns of sliding arpeggios and visceral noise, pointillist interjections and infinitely variable texture.

“Hearing this music for the first time has a similar impact to the first exposure to Oval’s Systemisch from 1994, or the early Sähkö recordings like Ø’s Metri, in that it has a beauty partly derived from having travelled beyond the reach of human influence” Rob Young, The WIRE (on 'The Luminous Ground')

www.inventingzero.net



JENNIFER ALLUM

Although undeniably classically trained, Allum's violin playing is resolutely free of flourish and mannerism. She has been a regular attendee of Eddie Prevost's weekly workshop since 2005, with whom she has recently released the critically acclaimed duo CD 'Penumbrae'. She is the founding member of the Post Quartet, with whom she has worked with composers like Christian Wolff, Michael Parsons, Tom Johnson and Michael Pisaro.

"Jennifer Allum's violin stridulations provide a welcome shift in energy." The WIRE

www.jenniferallum.info