Chris Cogburn / Maria Chavez in Mexico

[Gerardo A]

This Tight Rope
Maria Chavez: turntable [NYC]
Chris Cogburn: percussion [Austin]

Maria Chavez is an avant-turntablist from Peru who focuses on electro acoustic sound of vinyl and needle. She has a collection of needles from immaculate to ruined that she calls her "pencils of sound" and a collection of records that provide the palette. She has toured with Christina Carter (Charalambides, Scorses), recorded with Kaffe Matthews, and performed with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth in her New York City debut. The artist in residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn during the fall of 2006, she was recently selected to participate in a 2008 residency program with Merce Cunningham Dance Company at the Dia Foundation`s museum in Beacon, New York.
http://www.myspace.com/mariachavez

Austin-based improvising percussionist Chris Cogburn is an active composer, performer, educator and organizer within an expansive global community of creative artists. Approaching the physical nature of his chosen instrument with an interest and attention to the drum's subtle and overlooked timbres and textures, Cogburn's music gives rise to unexpected sound worlds suffused with meanings and forms, acute yet infinite. Moving across, atop, below and around a single drum with a variety of percussive objects and implements, Cogburn's fluid physicality provide a rich dynamic to an expanding complexity of sound. Highly original in his investigations of the acoustic drum, Cogburn's music conjures timbres, textures and forms often believed to only exist in electronic sound sources.

Primarily working in the field of Creative Improvised Music, Cogburn has collaborated with many of the premiere international artists in contemporary music, including: John Butcher, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Dave Dove, Joelle Leandre, Jaap Blonk, Sean Meehan, Joe McPhee and avant-rock outsider Jandek. Other projects include work with the trio Perruque (with Ringling Brothers clown Aaron Tucker and Toronto guitarist Kurt Newman); For Forms (with NYC poets Joshua Beckman and Jen Bervin, NYC avant-turntablist Maria Chavez, and New Orleans dancer/acrobat Scotty Heron); frequent duo collaborations with Vancouver percussionist Jeffrey Allport, avant-vocalist Liz Tonne and Seattle-based pianist Gust Burns.

Since 1998, Cogburn has led workshops on creative music making around the US and Canada, working in contexts as diverse as inner city community centers, homeless shelters, battered women's shelters, public and private high schools and elementary schools, art spaces, dance studios, a church and Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening Space. He has recently received performance and teaching grants through Meet The Composer, Creative Connections and The Yellow Fox Foundation; held residencies through Seattle Improvised Music, Nameless Sound and Gallery 1412; and has performed at the No Idea Festival, the Seattle Improvised Music Festival and the No West Festival. In October 2006 Cogburn was fortunate enough to travel on the Wave Books Poetry Bus, performing solo and with poet/Wave Books editor Joshua Beckman, with a final performance at James Turrell's Roden Crater.

As an organizer, Cogburn has previously hosted performances by international improvisors, always in direct collaboration with local artists. Beginning in the summer of 2003, Cogburn's Ten Pounds To The Sound has hosted an annual festival of improvised music - the No Idea Festival - showcasing a handful of Texas' premiere creative musicians in collaboration with improvisors from around the U.S., Europe, Japan, Mexico and Canada. Regarded as "one of the finest creative improvised music festivals in the world" (Paris Transatlantic) NIF aspires to connect creative musicians, providing the space and time where creative relationships can flourish, leading towards new areas and approaches in the music.
http://www.rasbliutto.net/artists/chriscogburn.html
http://chriscogburn.blogspot.com

This Tight Rope
Chris Cogburn: percussion [Austin]
María Chávez: turntables [NYC]

Guest [second set]:
Armando Martín: prepared electric guitar, effects

Friday June 22, 2007

9:00 PM [doors opening]
10:00 PM [first set]

DJ sets / live act / sound collage:
Augusto Palma
[ambient/noise]

El Cervantino
Calle 47 número 520-D por 66
Santa Ana, Centro Histórico
Mérida, Yucatán, México

Men: $50 pesos / Women: $40

A Dynamo Aktivität: Radical Sound Art production.