March 26th, 2018
Doors at 7. Music at 7:30.
Detroit based composer and performer Molly Jones makes her Option debut. Multi-Instrumentalist Michael Foster and percussionist Ben Bennett perform duo for the second set.
$8 Student/Members, $10 General Admission
MOLLY JONES is a Detroit-based composer, performer, and improviser who works with saxophones, flute, and electronics. Her compositions range from through-composed chamber works to graphic scores to electro-acoustic environments for improvisation incorporating video and audio samples. Some of her working ensembles include the Gabriel Brass Band – a sixth-generation New Orleans brass band, Rhyta Music – a Balkan brass band, ParkJones – an electroacoustic duo with Joo Won Pak, and Hamsters in Honey, a duo with Elizabeth Erickson. She also co-founded and co-directs the Detroit musician collective Polyfold. Polyfold is currently comprised of 18 improvising musicians, and produces concerts and recordings, hosts outreach events and educational workshops, and fosters creative community in Detroit and beyond. Her newest album Microliths came out in 2017. She also produces a zine called Moon Jar, and is working on an upcoming opera-ballet with a planned debut in 2018.
MICHAEL FOSTER is a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist working in the fields of free improvisation, noise, free jazz, graphic & video notation, performance art, and other forms of weird music. Foster utilizes extensive preparations of his saxophone, augmenting it with amplification, objects, balloons, drum heads, vibrators, tapes, and samples as a method of subverting and queering the instrument’s history and traditional roles. In additional to his work as an instrumentalist, he co-founded & co-curates Queer Trash, a series that showcases LGBTQI+ artists engaged with experimental performance. Queer Trash has been selected as Issue Project Room's 2018 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow in residence.
Current ensembles include duos with Lydia Lunch, Leila Bordreuil, Ben Bennett, Ted Byrnes, Richard Kamerman (as The New York Review of Cocksucking), The Ghost, Barker Trio, While We Still Have Bodies, Weasel Walter Large Ensemble. He has performed with Psychic TV, Han Bennink, Michel Doneda, Marina Rosenfeld, Steve Swell, Kid Millions, Spiritualized, William Parker, John Wiese, Peter Evans, Jim Sauter, and many others.
BEN BENNETT is Philadelphia-based improvising percussionist. After studying jazz as a youngster, he developed a unique approach to percussion which took the lineage of free-jazz, free-improvisation, and extended technique playing as its foundation. In searching for an expanded sonic palette, and more fluid movement between various techniques, he distilled the drum set into a smaller collection of drum heads, stretched membranes, and other objects which offered a wide variety of unconventional sounds from very few materials, and which could be rearranged into different configurations during a performance.
This Option concert is sponsored by
