Thomas Ankersmit / Kelley Sheehan
Thomas Ankersmit and Kelley Sheehan
Saturday, february 18, 2023 at 8pm
Goethe-Institut Boston
170 Beacon Street, Boston
Doors: 7:30pm Performance begins promptly at 8pm
Admission: $15 / $10 for members and students (suggested donation)
Advanced tickets available
Please note, masks are strongly encouraged.
Non-Event is pleased to present a new piece in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Serge Modular Synthesizer by Thomas Ankersmit and a performance by composer Kelley Sheehan.
About the artist
Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and sound artist based in Berlin and Amsterdam. He plays the Serge Modular synthesizer, both live and in the studio, and collaborates with artists including Phill Niblock and Valerio Tricoli. His music is released on the Shelter Press, PAN and Touch labels, and combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power, with a very physical and spatial experience of sound. Acoustic phenomena such as infrasound and otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play an important role in his work, as does a deliberate, creative misuse of the equipment.
Following a recommendation from Maryanne Amacher, the Serge Modular has been Ankersmit's main instrument since 2006. 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of this iconic instrument and he will be performing a new work composed exclusively for it (with no digital effects or other equipment). With this new project, he'll be exploring the boundaries of its capabilities to create an almost organic, musique concrète-like sound world, but he’ll also be going "back to the essentials" with a more purely electric/electronic sound. The music exists in the tension between abstraction and a more cinematic sound: noise, crackle, hiss, pulsation become thunder, fire, rain, heartbeat - with Ankersmit trying to "breathe life" into the electricity. Ankersmit is also in contact with Serge Tcherepnin himself, who lives outside of Paris and has written about his work:
“Thomas's concert was spectacular, among the very best things I've ever heard done on a Serge synth. Best thing was, I didn't hear a single bleep or bloop, or filter sweep, or driving sequencer beat. In fact, I heard nothing at all that I could tell was made using one of my synthesizers. That's genius.”
This will be the first time in over ten years that Ankersmit has performed with Non-Event and at the Goethe-Institut Boston.
Kelley Sheehan (1989) is a composer and computer musician moving between electro-acoustic, electronic, and performance art works. In any medium, her work constructs environments meant to merge electronic and acoustic forces into one composite organism, dependent on this merging to become more than just an extension of itself. Her work has been described as “Full of discovery, collaboration, and unpredictability” (Iannotta, Kyriakides, & Stäbler) with “Woozy Electronics” (LA Times). Named prize winner of the Gaudeamus Award 2019, winner of the 2022 Hildegard Commission, awarded first place for the 2020 ASCAP/SEAMUS commissioning competition, and the 2021 George Arthur Knight Prize, among others.
When not composing, she’s an avid improviser on self-made DIY electronics, no-input mixer, her AI-electric guitar hybrid called ‘other machines,’ or modular. Having performed at such venues as the Banff Center for the Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and with Non-Event at the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, her upcoming projects include works for Line Upon Line and Yarn/Wire.
This performance is co-presented by the Goethe-Institut Boston
