Judy Dunaway/Ricardo Arias + Wendy Eisenberg
Non-Event and SMFA Library Sounds present
JUDY DUNAWAY / RICARDO ARIAS (balloon duets)
WENDY EISENBERG (guitar, banjo)
SMFA W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library
230 The Fenway
Boston
8pm / $10 gen admission | $8 students + Non-Event members
FREE for SMFA students
Both RICARDO ARIAS and JUDY DUNAWAY have separately specialized in free improvisation and experimental music on the latex balloon for decades, making it their main instrument. Arias’ background as a percussionist led him to develop the “balloon kit”(“batería global”), and Dunaway’s background as a guitarist led her to approach each size and shape of balloon as a solo instrument. Arias and Dunaway will combine their expertise to explore and expand the details of their shared world and present heretofore unimagined sonic landscapes. This concert marks the second meeting of these two avant-garde virtuosi.
RICARDO ARIAS has presented his work internationally at many venues including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Roulette (New York), Museum Kunst Palast (Düsseldorf), Galerie Rahel-Haferkamp (Cologne), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), the Miró Foundation (Barcelona), FIMAV (Victoriaville, Canada), Experimenta Festival (Buenos Aires) and Espace SD (Beirut) among others. Arias has collaborated with numerous experimental musicians, improvisers and sound artists including Axel Dörner, Tatsuya Nakatani, Pauline Oliveros, Mazen Kerbaj, Pascal Boudreault, Chris Mann, Sharif Sehnaoui, Christine Abdelnour, Michael Zerang, Anne Wellmer, Gabriel Paiuk, Lou Malozzi and Miguel Frasconi. His essays on his work and on Colombian experimental music and sound art have been published in Experimental Musical Instruments, Resonancias, and the Leonardo Music Journal. Arias is the Director of the Art Department at Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá.
JUDY DUNAWAY has presented her works for balloons at Bang on a Can Festival (NYC), MACBA (Barcelona Museum of Modern Art), Cafe Oto (London), Guelph Jazz Festival (Canada), Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors (NYC), New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC), Performance Space 122 (NYC), Podewil (Berlin), Roulette (NYC), Roy and Edna Disney Center (Los Angeles), STEIM (Netherlands) and many other venues. Her discography includes solo CDs on the Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI) and Innova labels. Her awards/grants/residencies include Elektronmusikstudion Stockholm, New York State Music Fund, Aaron Copland Fund Recording Grant, the American Composers Forum’s Composers Commissioning Fund and Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medientechnologie. She received a Workspace Residency award from Harvestworks (NYC) for development and presentation of her new installation work “Chamber Ensemble for Balloons” in 2017. She teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.
WENDY EISENBERG is an improviser and composer who performs on guitar, banjo, voice and electronics. Her work is about the ways that visual and sociological space inform the musical signs of time and frequency. Her compositions and instrumental technique are developed from her involvement with the traditions of free jazz, punk, heavy metal, avant-garde composition and art songs. She was in the band Birthing Hips and has multiple solo projects, some fully improvised, some featuring modern guitar and banjo composition, and some song-based.
This program is supported in part by the Universidad de Los Andes and the Boston Cultural Council, a local agency which is funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and admistrated by the Mayor’s Office of Arts + Culture.
