Home Toronto Change City  The Music Gallery X AVANT Festival: The Nihilist Spasm Band + Michael Gordon's Trance  

X AVANT Festival: The Nihilist Spasm Band + Michael Gordon's Trance at The Music Gallery

Toronto Event Date: Sun, October 23, 2011

08:00 PM

Neighbourhood:
queen west, downtown
Activity:
live music, live performance
Venue type:
theater
Scene:
 
Food/Drink:
 
Music:
post-punk, progressive rock, swedish, progg
Cost:
Drink n/a (add)
Meal n/a (add)
Cover $30
Share

The Music Gallery
197 John Street
Toronto, ON M5T 1X6

416.204.1080

Website

Get Directions

Report an issue


Similar Events:
· more...
New Search
VOTE
   
No Ratings yet

Event Description


X AVANT Festival: The Nihilist Spasm Band + Michael Gordon's Trance

X AVANT New Music Festival VI — “Tales of Two Cities”
Sunday October 23

THE NIHILIST SPASM BAND
CONTACT performs TRANCE by MICHAEL GORDON
An epic closing night, featuring a double bill of Michael Gordon’s powerful hour-long Trance + the London, Ontario legends and inventors of noise music!

Location: The Music Gallery
Doors 7pm, concert 8pm

Tickets $25 advance at Rotate This, Soundscapes & Ticketweb.ca
At the door: $30 regular, $15 member

Admission included in $85 All-Access Festival Pass

8:00pm — CONTACT performs TRANCE by MICHAEL GORDON
Contact Contemporary Music is a contemporary music ensemble and concert producing organization that highlights collaborations with other media, established and emerging composers, performances in alternative spaces, and outreach to underserved communities that stress diversity, collaboration and accessibility.

Praised by the Globe and Mail for its “thought-provoking” and “highly entertaining” programming, and by the New York Times for “methodical and mesmerizing” performances, Contact has firmly established itself as one of Canada’s leading interpreters of the music of our time. Under the direction of percussionist and founder Jerry Pergolesi, Contact has performed at some of the world’s most prestigious new music festivals, including the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK), Open Ears Festival of Sound (Kitchener), and the Bang On A Can Marathon (New York).

In keeping with the festival theme, “Tales of Two Cities,” an expanded version of the Toronto-based Contact ensemble will cross geographic boundaries by tackling New York composer Michael Gordon, epic hour-long work of high-octane, rock-powered new music for a 22-piece ensemble, Trance.

“Trance began after a dream I had in July 1994 while I was in residence at the Djerassi Foundation just south of San Francisco. In the dream I brought my music to an older composer for his comments. The composer was a combination of Gyorgy Ligeti, Louis Andriessen and my own teacher Martin Bresnick. The older composer looked through my scores, one by one, and I could hear in my head the music that he heard in his head as he looked at my compositions. It all sounded like Mozart. After each score the composer shook his head in a discouraging way. Finally he turned to me and said, “You need to work with large forces.” I woke up startled.” — Michael Gordon

9:30pm — THE NIHILIST SPASM BAND
Did you know that the world’s very first “noise” band hails from London, Ontario? True story. The Nihilist Spasm Band was formed in the Forest City in 1965 by a group of friends: the late Greg Curnoe, Murray Favro, John Boyle, Bil Exley, Archie Leitch (who left the band in 1972), the late Hugh McIntyre, Art Pratten, and John Clement. More recent recruit Aya Onishi (Sekiri) has played regularly with them since 1996. A true Spasm band, they play instruments of their own design and modification. Correctly criticized from the beginning for playing “noise,” the band played on in obscurity in Ontario for 3 decades before being “discovered” by the world noise movement and gaining famous fans like Sonic Youth. Tonight’s festival-closing appearance at X Avant celebrates the release of a new recording for Toronto’s Wintage Records.



Add a photo

« Previous Next »
No Photos. Have a good one? Upload it!

Add a review

No reviews yet. Were you there? Tell us what you thought!

Activities

Scenes

 

Food/Drinks

 

Music