The Living Earth Show

Post-Kickstarter Thank You!

Travis — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:47:43 +0000

Wow. Jeez.
We can’t really express how excited and grateful we are for the support and encouragement we received from you guys. 97 people donated to our kickstarter campaign, and tons of others reposted our videos, shared our links, and were generally awesome throughout the whole thing. We raised well over our $5,000 goal. We have ordered the quartertone vibraphone and guitar, and they are being built and are en route. As soon as the instruments arrive, we will be working to put together Brian Ferneyhough’s Renvoi/Shards. It will be, without question, the most difficult piece either of us will have ever played. We are unbelievably excited for the challenge.
· We will be rolling out a new website within the next month. The space will be exponentially more interactive. The goal will be to make the collaborative process that goes into the creation, learning, and performance of new music as transparent and interactive as possible.
· In addition to the Ferneyhough and the new website, we will be kicking off our performance season in earnest. In the March and April, we will be playing on several festivals (Hot Air on March 4 and Switchboard on April 1) and performing with Tangents on April 27 and 28. If you are only interested in seeing half of the Living Earth Show, Travis will be performing with CalPeformances and mathrocking with MirthKon, and Andrew will be performing with the Magik*Magik Orchestra on Otherminds on March 3 and rock/rolling with Glass Gavel.
· Well, as long as we’re announcing things, we will be releasing our first recording, The Living Earth Show: The Complete First season. Here’s the “tracklist” or whatever. The actual order of these on the recording is yet to be determined.

We are honored, humbled, and inspired by y’all. Thanks for your support,
-Andy and Travis

KICKSTARTER LAUNCHES IN 10 DAYS

"The Edge" — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:07:03 +0000

Hello, friends and enemies!!!

We have been frantically getting the pieces in order in anticipation of the launch of our KICKSTARTER fundraising thing! Yay!

We will have more detailed information for y’all as the days go on, but we will be raising funds for the construction of custom-built quartertone instruments (a vibraphone and a guitar) to perform Brian Ferneyhough’s Renvoi/Shards and other newly commissioned works for these instruments.

Our Kickstarter will launch fo’ realz in 10 days. We will be posting stills from the video every day until then on facebook and twitter while we edit the final cut, rehearse our incentives (“Sport’n A Woody” by Dangerous Toys and a full hour of 311 songs aren’t going to learn themselves) and get everything else in tip-top shape for the official launch.

Woooooo!

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

"The Edge" — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 04:27:44 +0000

And a happy end of summer to you. Things have been extremely busy here at The Living Birth Show HQ. We have announcements up the wazoo.

First of all, our 2012 season is shaping up rockingly. We will be performing commissioned works by Luciano Chessa, Timo Andres, Adrian Knight, Dan Becker, Matthew Cmiel, Max Stoffregen, Damon Waitkus, and Jon Russell. We will also be performing Renvoi/Shards by Brian Ferneyhough. We will be babbling more about each of these composers on this web-site internet-house in the coming weeks.

We are deep, deep, deep in the throes of recording our debut “recording” titled The Living Earth Show: The Complete First Season. We are looking to inflict it upon an unsuspecting public in the middle of 2012. We’ll be rolling out tracks through the fall and winter.

Like this one. This is Double Double, written for us by inimitable Brendon Randall-Myers. Double Double is a rockmposition for two phasing guitar-drum duos. He wrote it for TLES and Grains (Grains is a fabolous drum and guitar duo: Brendon plays guitar and Marc Deriso, of Cults fame – maybe you’ve heard of them??? – plays the drums). We recorded this with Grains at Broken Radio studios in SF. Shove this in your ear-holes now. Did it attach to this post? I dunno. Whatever.

Double Double (Featuring Grains)

We’re also gonna be playing, like shows and stuff. Lots of ‘em. Schedule’s on the way. Check out our new website.

¡New Video!

"The Edge" — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 19:04:07 +0000

Featuring the superhuman Deanna Hammond.

The Living Earth Show performing Tension Study #2 by Samuel Adams

Spring Show Retrospective, pt 1

Travis — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 02:53:40 +0000

Blender 2.0… I know we went quiet afterwards. But I think it went swimmingly. Despite the heat inside of The Schoolhouse, you clowns stuck around for 3+ hours of flamenco, guitar trio, improv dance, pipe-smashing aerialism. You amaze/bemuse me. Because of your steadfast allegiance to the Blender, we will never quit. Nor shall we stayed quitted. Blender 3.0 this fall…

I’m really pleased with how this press photo turned out

"The Edge" — Tue, 17 May 2011 19:31:16 +0000

youtube channel

"The Edge" — Thu, 12 May 2011 20:46:39 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/livingearthshow

tryna go viral up in here.

The Past Is A Grotesque Animal

"The Edge" — Thu, 12 May 2011 20:45:25 +0000

First of all, thanks a billion to everyone who came to our recent shows. We had an awesome time playing ‘em. Here are brief recapz:

The Music Blender/Baconalia: A Chamber Music Surprise Party!/CuisinART at the SchoolHouse was a whale of a time. The SchoolHouse’s 100 Days of Spring events are the most fun thing. Everyone that played and arted rocked exponentially. There was lots of music and art and grilled cheeses! We’ll post some vids and pictures from the event as we get ‘em. Bassoon Friends’ medley of ‘Danserye’ by Tielman Susato + ‘Friday’ by Rebecca Black, with live yarn art accompaniment, was one of the highlights of my musical year. It was also an absolute pleasure working with aerial silk artist Deanna Hammond. We can’t wait to do it again. We are trying to set up the next iteration of this event for early to mid June. We will post informations this week! Woo!

Huge props to Brendon Randall-Myers and Grains for putting together a wonderful event at the Luggage Store Gallery. Grains played awesomely and mathingly, and Brendon wrote some incredible ~~gender~~ genre bending pieces for all of us to play together. Also, if you happen to be across the Atlantic this summer, be sure to throw assorted undergarments at Grains drummer Marc Deriso as he traipses ‘cross Jolly Old Europe drumming for Cults. If you happen to be in the Bay Area this summer, be sure to throw assorted undergarments at Brandon Randall-Myers too. I think he’ll around but I’m not sure. Also, Nonsemble 6 is our new favorite thing. Lots o’ love, y’all. Collaborating with you guys is like collaborating with a big hug. Let’s do it again sometime?

Blogging is hard.

-A

Oh hey. This is us!

"The Edge" — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:11:21 +0000

Sam Adams: Tension Study #1

check ch-check check check ch-check it out!

if you enjoy it, please give sam “slam” adams some love over at www.samuelcarladams.com

Music Blender?????

"The Edge" — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:35:29 +0000

So we’ve got a show this Friday! The fine, feathered folks at The Schoolhouse (1592 Market Street @ Franklin) have given us three hours to fill with music-sounds and visual art. We, in turn, thought it’d be cool to just call up buddies whose music we enjoy and put everyone in a room and alternate pieces, round robin-style, for a few hours. Then we were all like, what if a bunch of artists came and made art at the same time?? So we got a bunch of artists together too. If all goes according to plan, there will also be dance and painting and poetry and collage and food art composed simultaneously. The lineup of stuff should be really diverse and make for a pretty incredible night of music and art-making.

We’ll be playing Tension Studies 1 and 2 by Slam Adams and Adagio Tranquilo by Alexis Alrich. There will also be music composed by Javier Alvarez, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Sergei Prokofiev, Mario Davidovsky, Tielman Susato, Frank Martin, and others.

Here’s some of the other people performing! I don’t know how to make everything the same font because I don’t know how the internet works! Is this too long for a concert info post?? I’m self conscious about all this.

Founded in 2009, the violin duo DoubleTake formalizes the long-standing musical relationship between violinists Shaina Evoniuk and Natasha Makhijani, who first met at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as undergraduates in 2004. Later on while Natasha was pursuing her masters degree in New York, they continued to create opportunities for collaboration. In addition to performing as a violin duo they founded the Ganesh String Quartet, which gave concerts for people of all ages and musical tastes and and did outreach to school children in New York, Washington D.C., and France over the following two years. Finally living in the same area code again, DoubleTake has now planted roots in the bay area. The group performs in a wide array of venues and modalities – literally from museums to nightclubs and Bach to rap. Recent appearances include collaborations with the renowned hip-hop group Felonious, and performances at venues such as The Independent, the Cafe du Nord, and the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. DoubleTake is pleased to announce that in March of last year it was granted affiliation with the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music.

The only thing Jeff Ward’s Bassoon Friends do better than playing bassoon quartet music is being best friends. These four bassoon playin’ pals, playin’ bassoon music, all bassooning at the same time, is a sight and sound to behold. You will tell your children and grandchildren about the time you saw Bassoon Friends live! They can play anything you can possibly imagine, just as long as it’s with their Bassoon Friends!

A force of nature in the Bay Area contemporary music scene, Carrie Smith has made an indelible impact on the way the Yay Area hears sounds n shit. She has performed with countless peeps around our glorious metropolitan area, most recently with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in their 40th anniversary performance of Terry Riley’s In C. In this capacity, she will be performing solo guitar works to be featured on her upcoming feature recital in a few weeks. This will be a fun preview of ‘em!

Coming off a critically acclaimed solo turn with Ensemble Paralelle, Doug Chin wins hearts, minds, and stomachs with his attention-grabbing percussioning. He plays with more groups in the Bay Area than you can possibly imagine, winning converts to his fat jamz and stylish fashion sense.

Brendon Randall-Myers is a guitarist, composer and music educator. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Pomona College in 2009 with a degree in Music, where he studied composition with Tom Flaherty and guitar with Jack Sanders, and was the two-time recipient of The Gordan A. Hogan Memorial Prize in Music. He has performed in masterclasses for Roland Dyens, Brian Head, Ben Verdery, and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. His works have been performed by Sqwonk, Jack Sanders, and the Aeros Quintet. He currently lives in San Francisco, where he teaches guitar, works on the administration of The Walden School, and performs with drummer/ percussionist Marc Deriso in the composing ensemble Grains.

Soprano Amy Foote has been most recently heard as ‘Laurie’ in The Tenderland with Berkeley Opera, under the baton of Phil Kuttner. As an in-demand collaborator and chamber musician, Ms. Foote has traveled in performance with her group Nonsemble 6; presenting works such as Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, to audiences at the Astoria Music Festival, and in venues such as the Kennedy Music Center in Washington, D.C. Upcoming performances include a premier of Mark Ackerly’s The Little Matchstick Girl at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Chamber Music Celebration, as well as ‘Elsie’ in Yeoman of the Guard, with SF Lamplighters. Other roles include ‘Ellen’ in The Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters, ‘Just Jeanette’ in Too Many Sopranos, and ‘Beth’ in Little Women, as well as ‘Pamina’ in The Magic Flute with the BASOTI summer program.

Kevin Rogers began playing the violin at the relatively late age of fourteen. After a couple of years, and a very encouraging support system through his local youth symphony, he decided to pursue a career in music. He completed his Bachelor degree at the University of South Carolina under Dr. William Terwilliger. As a passionate proponent of contemporary music, he has premiered over 60 student compositions, recorded several local film scores, performed for three years in a Jazz string quartet, for two years in a World Music Contemporary Jazz Ensemble and commissioned two violin solos and two violin and cello duets.