FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tamar Fortgang
213-237-2873 (do not publish)
REDCATpr@calarts.edu

Sampling Pioneer John Oswald and the Rascali Klepitoire Perform at CalArts' REDCAT Performance Space

February 20
REDCAT
8:30 p.m.
$24 general admission

View the event on February 16
View the event on February 20

Los Angeles, February 9 - John Oswald, the inventor of plunderphonics, offers a provocative blend of perceptual phenomena for his appearance at CalArts' REDCAT performance space. Having transformed the recorded works of Stravinsky, Metallica, James Brown, Györgi Ligeti, Dolly Parton and the Grateful Dead (at their own invitation), Oswald is joined by CalArts performers to present a program of works that span his controversial career.

REDCAT - the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater - is CalArts' new performance venue and gallery in Walt Disney Concert Hall. Admission is $24.00 for general admission seating. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office located at the corner of 2nd and Hope streets, by calling 213-237-2800 or online by clicking here.

The program for the evening includes the following work:

  • preLieu (1991, from Lieu, dWig Wand/Bay/Tow, v&) for string quartet
  • Oswald's 1st Piano Concerto by Tchaikovsky (2000) for piano solo (Vicki Ray) and orchestra. Composed for the CBC Vancouver Orchestra with Paul Plimley.
  • 20th-Century Woodwind Quintet
  • Excerpt from Transparent Recital
  • Strobe Hands
  • Acupuncture (1991) for sextet
  • Mach (1993) for string quartet with recording. Composed for the Kronos Quartet.
  • ?ƒ? (1999) for brass octet and Ondes Martenot
  • Homonymy (1998) for 10 musicians and cinema
  • Ariature/Panorama
  • Warm Wind Pressure and Aura (1979) for ensemble without instruments
  • Orchestral Tuning Arrangement (1994, created with Linda Catlin Smith) for orchestra
  • Concerto for Wired Conductor and Orchestra (premiered at Boston Symphony Hall)

These works will be performed by CalArts faculty and student ensembles, conducted by Marc Lowenstein. Featured soloist will be Vicki Ray, in Oswald's 1st Piano Concerto by Tchaikovsky. John Oswald will be present, and may perform.

Monday, February16, 3-6 pm, REDCAT:

John Oswald will discuss his work in a special ACF Composer to Composer salon while simultaneously displaying a large-screen projection of the chronophotic image from his brand-new DVD feature movie The Arc of Apparitions. $10 admission at the door only. Tickets for this event will not be sold through the box office or online.

"For the moment, John Oswald is a solo movement, the most exciting school of one in music." -Milo Miles, Village Voice

John Oswald begins 2004 with the first commercial publication of one of his chronophotics: the feature length Arc of Apparitions is produced on DVD by Avatar/Ohm editions. And Oswald's own label Fony will be rereleasing his albums from the nineties, starting with "Grayfolded" (March), "Plexure" (May), and "Discosphere" (August). He is also founding an experimental ad agency called Veracity. In 2003 Oswald premiered his new solo dance opera Spinvolver, with Susanna Hood, in Berlin in February, followed by performances in several European capitals. In the fall, Aparanthesi, a one-note electroacousmatic composition, entailing some research in the perception of sonic morphs, was released on CD by empreintes digitales.

In recent years he composed a Concerto for Wired Conductor and Orchestra, which premiered at Boston Symphony Hall. He designed the soundtrack and system for Stress, an eight-screen movie by Bruce Mau, showing at the Museum of Technology in Vienna. A new piece entitled Oswald's First Piano Concerto by Tchaikovsky, (as suggested by Michael Snow) was premiered in Vancouver by Paul Plimley and the CBC Orchestra. He composed a score for the National Ballet of Canada for orchestra, robot piano and the disembodied singing voice of Glenn Gould. For the past four years he has been creating a database of photo portraits for a series of "Moving Stills". One of his plunderphonie video/photo collages was shown at the Royal Festival Hall Hayward Gallery in London and was immediately sold as a gift to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Of recent works, he wrote, directed and produced a radio play in four interwoven languages (Brazilian, Dutch, English & German); wrote, animated, directed and scored Homonymy (for chamber ensemble & cinema); scored the stage version of the silent movie classic Metropolis; produced the soundtrack album to the gay porn feature Hustler White; as well as appearing as himself in John Greyson's feature film Un©ut and Craig Baldwin's Sonic Outlaws, and he was the subject of one of Moses Znaimer's television documentaries The Originals.

In 1990, Oswald's most notorious recording, plunderphonic, was destroyed by representatives in the recording industry representing Michael Jackson. He has since released recordings on Elektra, Avant, ReR Megacorp, Blast First, and Swell, featuring transformations of the music and performances of Stravinsky, Metallica, James Brown, György Ligeti, Dolly Parton and many others. The first disc of his Grateful Dead production "GrayFolded" was selected as the #1 international recording of the decade by the Toronto Sun. In the same year his album of improvised music, "Acoustics" was a #1 critic's selection in Coda magazine. The "GrayFolded" package, completed the following year was selected for best of the year lists in Rolling Stone, The New York Times and many other publications. A recent retrospective CD box-set and book of Plunderphonic works, just appropriated from Oswald's ƒony label by Seeland, has been called "mind-numbingly amazing" by Peter Kenneth, Rolling Stone Magazine, and made Spin magazine's 2001 top 10. Oswald is Director of Research at MysteryLaboratory in Canada. Eye Weekly's '94 year-end report anointed him a "God-like being" (in 2003 they have upgraded this to "a god proper"). The Montreal Mirror says "John Oswald is probably Canada's most important composer-musician," and the London Observer (England) has called him "the maddest man on the planet."

2003-04 SEASON SPONSORS: Shamrock Holdings; KCRW, Official Public Radio Sponsor; LA Weekly, Exclusive Alternative Weekly, English Language Print Media Sponsor; the Standard, Official Hotel. Additional media sponsorship provided by Los Angeles Downtown News.

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