• Carl Stone has a very interesting half-hour live broadcast concert coming up on February 24th via the unitedArtscene website.  Note: all their broadcast times are in Pacific Standard Time. Stone will also be performing March 5th at 7:30pm at the University of California at Berkeley Art Museum (link).

• Lubomyr Melnyk will be performing two concerts in North America in the coming weeks.  The first is at the University of Victoria on February 27th (link), which will hold the world premiere of “Windmills”, for multiple taped and live pianos.  Following that will be a jaunt over to Seattle for a March 2nd concert in the Wayward Music Series.

• Elodie Lauten has a couple of charity events to benefit Haiti in March featuring a new program of tango compositions for keyboard inspired by the French songs of her childhood in Paris and her experience of New York and Argentinian Milonga.  The first takes place at Public Assembly in Brooklyn, NY on March 12th.  The next is March 27th at the Lafayette Bar in NYC.

Lauten will also be performing piano compositions from her soon to be released 2CD Piano Works Revisited in April at the Gershwin Hotel.  More details on that to come.

• “Blue” Gene Tyranny will perform in NYC on April 15th at Roulette with violinist Conrad Harris, premiering new 4 new electro-acoustic works (link).

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Set for release in March 2010 is the fifth installment of Unseen Worlds releases, Elodie Lauten Piano Works Revisited.

Piano Works Revisited is a 2CD collection that includes, for the first time on CD, the complete Piano Works (1983) and Concerto for Piano and Orchestral Memory (1984) Cat Collectors LPs with original artwork, Lauten’s solo piano magnum-opus Variations on the Orange Cycle, and other previously unreleased music.

A preorder option is available here.

Today we have the first of a few videos from a concert Elodie Lauten performed in 1985 at Music Gallery in Toronto, half of the program on piano and half performing selections from her then-recently-completed record The Death of Don Juan, which we reissued on CD last summer.  Since she couldn’t very well transport the Fairlight CMI from NYU to Toronto (and it seems Peter Zummo and Arthur Russell were busy that week doing their own history making) Lauten performs solo to her own prerecorded music.  The original VHS video of this performance is, in effect, completely black.  The room is quite dark, and the lighting too subtle for the VHS to register well.  We’ve edited the picture significantly to make the scene visible again.  The production is minimal, yet the setting is conceptually elegant for a work that has its sympathies in the psyche of an artist alone in his studio who is, through the allure of his technology, hexed by his exploits.  John Massey’s beautiful, shadow-laden cover image of an empty theater washes over Lauten with her recordings, and, in true post-modern style, she is alone, both the only character and more characters than we can count.

So despite the somewhat spotty quality of the video, it is an improvement over the 3 minutes of darkness waiting for Lauten’s blue-lit visage to appear during her close-up, which is previously the only visible segment of the video [ed. note: though I did find it to have some charm of its own ].

Also Elodie Lauten performed her piece S.O.S.W.T.C. on 9/11 this year at the New Museum to commemorate the tragedy during the Howl Festival.  Two videos of that performance have surfaced on YouTube.  Here and here.

And last but certainly not least is the fact that this week is the week of the November 12th concert at Friends Meetinghouse on 15th street in Manhattan with “Blue” Gene Tyranny and Lubomyr Melnyk.  Please see the two posts below for more info or visit unseenworlds.net/NOV12.html

ONE NIGHT SPECIAL EVENT

Fifteenth Street Friends Meetinghouse (Manhattan)
15 Rutherford Place
New York, NY 10003

Thursday
November 12, 2009
7:00pm – 9:00pm

Cost: $15 / $10 Students and Seniors
Advance tickets

On Thursday evening, November 12th, 2009, Unseen Worlds presents a night of piano music at 15th Street Friends Meetinghouse in Manhattan, only 3 blocks walking distance from 14th Street Union Square.

Composers “Blue” Gene Tyranny and Lubomyr Melnyk will each perform full sets of their own piano works.

“Blue” Gene Tyranny’s piano work, well-known in the Downtown New York scene since the 1970s and proven beautifully in the Lovely Music releases The Intermediary and Take Your Time, has only become more and more well loved and revered with each passing year. His appearance at this concert is very special and greatly appreciated.

Lubomyr Melnyk’s reputation has been slowly and quietly building. Over the last 30 years Melnyk has crafted a massive catalog of artistically demanding and aesthetically beautiful works, outpacing a means of documenting and publicizing them. Recently, with public admiration from popular musical figures like James Blackshaw and Jim O’Rourke, Melnyk’s reputation and fan base is larger than ever. This event is only his second New York appearance ever and his first in 20 years since he first performed at the Ukrainian Institute in 1989. Please join us in welcoming his music back into the States.

It’s with great honor and excitement that we present these two artists in a truly rare meeting. We look forward to seeing all who attend. Special thanks to the Arts Committee at the Meetinghouse for making this event possible.

LINK TO FULL PRESS RELEASE

Pick up a copy of this month’s Wire to preview the track “Cat Counterpoint” from the upcoming Elodie Lauten Piano Works 1983-1991 2CD set.  The track is featured on the Wire Tapper 22 disc that comes packaged with the issue.