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What do we do when time ends? Tori Kudo and Sarah Hennies in conversation
This past May, Sarah Hennies and I sat on a rock near the Tivoli train tracks that overlooked the Hudson River, gushing in shared reverence over the great Japanese composer and ceramicist Tori Kudo and his enduring, happy accident-prone collective Maher Shalal Hash Baz. I was surprised that Sarah and Tori had never crossed paths,…
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Jonathan Pfeffer & Drew Erin Adams Play the Broken Harpsichord
Drew sent me an unedited recording he made of an improvisation with a broken harpsichord that he’d inherited from some Santa Cruz nuns. The harpsichord may or may not have been taken to the Buena Vista Landfill west of Watsonville. I strung together my favorite bits of the recording then added prepared classical guitar, Axoplasm,…
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“Did These Used to Be People?”: Jenny Gagalka and Sarah Sarchin in conversation
Sarah Sarchin writes: Jenny Gagalka’s works are pop-culture fever dreams pressed through the vernacular of painting. They are image and gesture as one; they are color as form. Gagalka’s upcoming presentation at Good Weather Gallery in Chicago is a homecoming of sorts – a reunion with gallery director Haynes Riley who curated her first solo…
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Ben Bennett’s “Music for Idiophones, Vol. 1”
“Music for Idiophones, Vol. 1” is solitary music in that it seems to have materialized from the same kind of solitude that desert plants and idiorrhythmic monks know. These 10 tunes are amoral, uncivilized dialogues with the metaphysical absolute that suggest non-human persons simply being and breathing, made from objects that signify civilization at its…
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Keeping our antennae on for the trash truck: In conversation with Ben Gerstein
I met Ben in 2009 when he was kind enough to help me workshop some music I had painstakingly but also sloppily made on a QWERTY keyboard using Garageband’s MIDI piano roll editor. I was struck by Ben’s disarming openness and willingness to dive into a backwards process I barely understood. I’ve periodically checked in…
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El reposo es sólo una fantasía (Rest is only a fantasy): En conversación con Cecilia Pereyra
JUMP TO ENGLISH Cecilia Pereyra es una compositora y educadora que vive en Buenos Aires. Sarah me tocó una pieza que ella escribió para 16 guitarras llamada “Atolón” y de inmediato me impactó por su belleza fragmentada y árida y sus ritmos incómodos que penden de un hilo. Me dio la sensación de lo que…
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Friends in Auto-Generated Places: In conversation with Chadwick Rantanen
Chadwick Rantanen is an artist who lives in Los Angeles, California. He predominantly works with post-consumer objects, modified and augmented in ways that emphasize their significance, use, obstinance, and function. In this conversation, Ravi Jackson and Chadwick sat down to drink coffee on February 16, 2024 at Go Get ‘Em Tiger in Highland Park and…
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Gateway Insects: In conversation with Sam T. Rees
Zoom conversation between Sam T. Rees and Jonathan Pfeffer that took place on November 30, 2023, condensed but minimally edited. SR: I grew up in, in the middle of nowhere in the countryside. I was always kind of collecting bugs and flies. and things and my dad was obsessed with picking up roadkill and and…
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“Universal Express” by Robin Clifford Ellis
The brilliant visual artist Robin Clifford Ellis made a short film entitled “Universal Express” that uses a tune from the Wat Sun Meets Jerusalem Cricket 7”.
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There’s Something as the Air: Madison Greenstone and Weston Olencki in conversation
The clarinetist sits in a stackable chair on the chancel of a Queens church in winter. Eyes closed, cheeks puffed, instrument angled downward, knees straight, perfect posture, no wasted movement. Their deliberate de-emphasis on the “self” cuts a figure of someone with a heightened sensitivity of their body in space, but also a sacred ritual…