Friday March 1, 8pm
BraidedSOUND: Brooklyn
Live sound w/ Cheryl Kingan, Azumi O E, Benedict Kupstas, Jeremy Young, and Jesse Perlstein
With a solo set by Ben Seretan

Image courtesy of Jesse Perlstein

Microscope is pleased to present the NYC debut of BraidedSOUND, a series of improvisational sound performances using as score visual notations by New York-based artist Jesse Perlstein and played by an always shifting ensembles of musicians. Every performance is unique and the result of the different interpretations by each group of instrumentalists.

The evening’s ensemble includes Cheryl Kingan, Azumi O E, Benedict Kupstas, Jeremy Young, and Jesse Perlstein. Previous performances of the international touring series have taken place in Japan, Western Europe, Canada, and the US. A tour of Portugal will take place this April.

“ […] BraidedSOUND distances itself from the aesthetics and behaviors of “concert music” almost entirely — we are rather seeking to explore and define a contemporary use of the graphic score as a map, the compass and legend of which must be figured out with every single new performance, by every participating artist, together as a unit, in every new space and every different city, and using the hybrid sonic avenues of electronic and acoustic elements as its toolkit.” – Jesse Perlstein

A solo set by Brooklyn-based electronic guitarist and singer Ben Seretan will open the evening.

General admission $12
Members & Students $10

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Cheryl Kingan (sax, synth, vox) has been delivering her off-kilter, up-beat energy to a number of NYC-based music projects since 2006. she plays baritone sax with The Scene Is Now and 75 Dollar Bill. synthesizers, vocals, and all manner of tiny percussive devices are also a regular part of her sonic arsenal.

Azumi O E (movement) was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. She is a former principal dancer of New York-based Butoh company Vangeline Theatre performed over 8 years. She joined as an assistant choreographer/main dancer for Butoh Master Katsura Kan’s several world tours. Her own solo work was presented in New York, Boulder, Beijing, Moscow, St.Petersburg, Helsinki, San Miguel de Allende, Puebla, Stuttgart, and Kyoto. Expansion of her 10 year Butoh career, she works as a dancer/choreographer for Video Sculpture artist Katja Loher, visual/performance artist Ayakamay, on going collaborative work for MARCK his video art and live performances, duo project with Bassist Sean Ali, Trio with Composer Takuya Nakamura+3D mapped Stage visualist Marton Gabor. azumi is constantly at work on wide range interactive/experimental tech, surround sound, stage-visual projects, film, video-art. Yet she keeps her own solo projects consistently growing as well.

Benedict Kupstas (guitar) is a writer and musician based in Brooklyn, NY. He has written songs and played instruments in a number of bands, most recently his avant-folk project Field Guides. For several years he toured internationally with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company in the show We’re Gonna Die, including performances at Lincoln Center, the Melbourne Festival, Festival d’Automne à Paris, and the 2015 Meltdown Festival, at which he shared the stage with David Byrne. He has also performed with the New Music percussion trio Tigue and experimental pop songwriter Alena Spanger.

Jeremy Young (oscillators, piezo’d objects, reel to reel) is an American sonic artist, improviser and creative strategist living and working in Montréal, Canada. His creative work includes instrumental and electroacoustic composition for recording and live performance, reel-to-reel tape collage, sound-poetry and audio-visual scoring. His main interests as an artist lie in the analog treatment of surface-based audio (piezo mic’d objects and surfaces, manipulating tape and tone via texture and voltage) and promoting the notion that both the audio signal and the medium on which it is recorded, edited and played back, should equally contribute to the creation of a sonic narrative, an underlying principle of musique concrète. For this reason, Jeremy’s live performances feature no digital equipment or processing. He has performed and released material throughout Europe, Asia, the US, UK and Canada.

Jesse Perlstein (vox, field recordings) is a multi-disciplinary artist, based in Queens, NY, focused mostly on field recording and improvisation. Capturing sounds around him, he transforms environment into instrument through composition & digital manipulation. He is also a vocalist, using his voice as the melodic drive in many of his pieces. He travels the world producing improvisational ensembles that perform his graphic scores (i.e. Braided Sounds) and is a member of the acclaimed neo-classical trio Sontag Shogun.

Ben Seretan (guitar, Vox)
If heaven exists, Ben Seretan, wants to find it with delay pedals and join the chorus of angels. Long, swirling clouds of tones met with cascading waterfall plucks of electric guitar joined together by a honeyed singing voice and a deep appreciation of tenderness. At times fearfully, ecstatically joyful, at other times whispering drowsily into the coffee cup of your ear. Grew up in Southern California, studied music at Wesleyan University, Flux Factory artist-in-residence 2014, Sitka Fellows Program recipient 2013, Wassaic Project artist-in-residence 2012, organizer and performer of sunrise concert series, has performed in horse barns, bedrooms, churches, movie theaters, power plants, rooftops, and once on top of the wheelhouse of a tall ship.