Nov

17

Port St. Willow plays Syncope Port St. Willow plays Syncope

with Port St. Willow plays Syncope & Julie Byrne

Tue November 17th, 2015

7:30PM

Main Space

Minimum Age: 18+

Doors Open: 7:00PM

Show Time: 7:30PM

Event Ticket: $12

Day of Show: $15

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free for members
event description event description

presented by S&S
 
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TABLE SEATING POLICY
Table seating for all seated shows is reserved exclusively for ticket holders who purchase “Table Seating” tickets. By purchasing a “Table Seating” ticket you agree to also purchase a minimum of two food and/or beverage items per person. Table seating is first come, first seated. Please arrive early for the best choice of available seats. Seating begins when doors open. Tables are communal so you may be seated with other patrons. We do not take table reservations.
 
A standing room area is available by the bar for all guests who purchase “Standing Room” tickets. Food and beverage can be purchased at the bar but there is no minimum purchase required in this area.
 
All tickets sales are final. No refund or credits.

the artists the artists

Bing & Ruth

Bing & Ruth official site | Bing & Ruth on Facebook | Bing & Ruth on Instagram | Bing & Ruth on Twitter

In 2006, David Moore started Bing & Ruth as a way to bring his compositions to an audience beyond academia. A pianist from Kansas, studying at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York’s Greenwich Village, Moore was writing the sort of music he wanted to hear: minimalist ensemble music with a certain filmic sensitivity, one that prioritized grace and texture over the style’s once-radical subtraction. Following the seasoned history of minimalist heroes at the New School like John Cage and Steve Reich—both of whom taught at the institution throughout the 1950s and ‘60s—Moore’s compositions looked past the studied repetition of the style’s most prominent forerunners towards a form built on feeling, a mobilization of time-honored shapes, now angled outward towards a greater totalizing sublime. The piece’s mark the culmination of Moore’s piano studies, pairing tender lines that emphasize the instrument’s more percussive qualities with running woodwinds, warbling tape delays, and splattered upright bass lines that stare out with a wide-eyed transcendence.

After a short hiatus, spent focused on other projects, Moore returned to Bing & Ruth in 2010 with City Lake. The ensemble had grown to eleven members, making touring and rehearsals increasingly difficult to coordinate, especially given the current landscape of classical music, which can make finding patronage outside of a few prodigious, metropolitan institutions a task that often seems insurmountable. Instead he sold self-released vinyl from his basement and at their shows around New York. As Moore continued, despite constant setbacks and frustrations, in his early sketches of new material, it seemed that the project would soon fade into obscurity. Around this time, Moore was put in touch with the experimental label RVNG INTL. and the pair worked together on two full-length LPs over the coming years.

Of these albums, 2014’s Tomorrow Was the Golden Age parsed the group’s eleven members to a seven-person ensemble that distilled minimalism’s most emotive moments down to artful melodies with a heavy, heartbreaking affect. The album brought the band a newfound acclaim as it made waves around the underground community, reviving interest in the meditative pop traditions of Philip Glass and Harold Budd, stretching so-called “classical” music to new limits, and proving that there was in fact a committed audience for this sort of thoughtful contemporary composition. The album was even named “one of the finest leftfield releases of the year” by Pitchfork and earned similar praise from The Quietus and Resident Advisor.

Now almost two years later, No Home of the Mind finds Moore returning to the piano a heavier, more driven feeling. Composed on seventeen pianos across North America and Europe over numerous sessions, tours, and travel, the pieces channel the idiosyncrasies and respective limitations of each instrument into inspiration. “For me I feel like different pianos all have their own personalities,” Moore says, “So in writing these new songs, I tried to embrace the personalities of the pianos I was spending time with.” These self-contained piano lines soon grew into accompaniment and independent parts as the pieces were arranged for tight five-person ensemble pieces. Recorded in just two days at a repurposed church in Hudson, NY, in the fewest takes possible, an attempt to capture the immediacy of classic session-style musicianship, where one-take recordings were a standard to keep costs down. “We had everything rehearsed, worked out and ready to go before we ever stepped in front of a microphone so when we did, it was like instinct coming back into play,” he noted. After over a year of heartfelt composition, No Home of the Mind finds a newfound confidence, a refinement of color and cadence that pulls together a year’s worth of studied feeling into an album that looks outward with fresh-faced, affective new forms.

Port St. Willow plays Syncope

Port St. Willow is the solo vehicle of ambient pop and drone artist Nicholas Principe, joined live by Thomas Alton Crane and Andrew Dunn.
 
The project started in 2009 when Principe was living in Portland, Oregon, and melded textural atmospheric sounds with soft, slow core song structures and falsetto vocals. A self-released first album, Even//Wasteland, appeared in late 2010, making the rounds in the form of a hand-stamped CD-R. Principe migrated to Brooklyn in 2012 where he finished and self-released a second album Holiday. Holiday made more of an impression, drawing outspoken praise from several media outlets as well as a public nod of recommendation from noise pop godfather Brian Eno.
 
Port St. Willow’s sophomore effort, Syncope, uses the same focus on rhythm, texture, and voice to revisit a world that Holiday built. Principe returns to this world with an expanded palette of colors and language to explore the things that unwind us and bring us back to ourselves.
 
Written and recorded with a focus on improvisation, Principe sought to capture the moments just after an idea is found. Working closely with engineer Victor Nash, the energy of these performances makes Syncope feel alive and breathing. Arranged after the fact as a continuous piece, the listener is placed in a bed of noise and rhythm that intersect to create new moments across each listen. Guided by Principe’s clear falsetto, each piece becomes an image described, coming into focus against a backdrop of sirens and metal, waves and light.
 
In the spirit of the original effort, contributors Will Epstein (Nicolas Jaar, High Water), Peter Silberman (The Antlers), and David Moore (Bing & Ruth) all deliver performances captured and unedited.
 
This is visual music with an emotive core. An expression of love in response to sudden change, and the patient steps forward of a rebirth.
 
Port St. Willow is currently located in New York.
 

Port St. Willow official site
Port St. Willow on Facebook

Julie Byrne

Julie Byrne was born at Sisters of Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, New York on October 15th at 5:47pm. She has since lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Northampton, Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, Seattle, Washington, New Orleans, Louisiana for eight days and presently New York, New York. Julie Byrne is a traveling salesperson and has worked throughout the continental United States and elsewhere.
 
Julie Byrne official site
Julie Byrne on Bandcamp
Julie Byrne on Soundcloud

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