Synth Nights, curated by Laurie Anderson

Legendary composer and artist Laurie Anderson has curated this third installment of Synth Nights, a new intergenerational electronic music series. Each evening features London-based artist and composer Ebe Oke. Thursday’s concert also features composer Annie Gosfield, while Friday evening includes Yuka C. Honda with Nels Cline, as well as Brian Marsella.

Thursday May 9: Annie Gosfield and Ebe Oke
Friday May 10: Brian Marsella, Yuka C. Honda with Nels Cline, and Ebe Oke
8pm

Oke is a multidisciplinary artist working in sound, poetry, performance and dance. His musical works are raw but refined to a point, giving them a quality of timelessness. Recent compositions blend classical instrumentation and instruments of diverse cultural origins with processed field recordings as a backdrop to Oke’s lyrical songmanship and androgynous voice. On these nights, he will perform works from “Valor,” a new project, with an electro-acoustic quartet featuring Oke on piano and electronics alongside cello, violin (Audrey Morse), and laptop (Brian Belukha).

Gosfield’s work often explores the inherent beauty of non-musical sounds, and draws from diverse sources of inspiration, sampled sounds and noise. Thursday evening will feature two of Gosfield’s most celebrated works. Mary Rowell will play “Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites,” a solo piece for violin and sampler. In addition, “EWA7″ will be performed by Gosfield on piano and electronics, Kenny Wolleson on drums, and Roger Kleier on guitar.

Friday’s program features new works from Japanese composer, musician and producer Yuka C. Honda, specifically Fig, her collaboration with composer and musician Nels Cline. Fig is, as WNET’s Thirteen said, “an electro-acoustic experiment pairing Honda’s diverse sound sources and computerized rhythms with Cline’s genre-crossing guitar work.” The pair will perform new music – Honda on keyboards and sampler and Cline on guitar and flute.

Composer Brian Marsella, an emerging artist in the improvised music community, joins the Friday concert as well. Known for his diverse style, enriched by extensive classical and jazz training, Marsella will play solo arrangements of music from his forthcoming debut album “The Clocks Have Gone Mad,” which will be released in Fall 2013. The music features a range of instruments – piano, accordion, animal sounds, gamelan, shahii baaja, and more – many that he will play live.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ebe-Oke/35822747291

Ebe Oke photo by William Morgan.