#crosstownarts

Calling Crosstown: A Conversation with Maria Chavez & Christina Carter

Christina Carter Singing in the stairwell and Maria Chavez collaborating with curious audience members

Underscore: Christian Fennesz – Sonosphere

Today on Sonosphere Amy talks with Christian Fennesz, electronic music composer and musician. Amy caught up with Fennesz at the annual Big Ears Festival in Knoxville. As the first in-person fest in two years, Big Ears was bigger than ever. Acts from all over the nation and the world descended upon the smokey mountain city and brought amazing sounds, visuals, and excellence in musical composition. Always a Sonosphere favorite! Join Chris and Amy live from WYXR studio in Memphis for some tunes by Fennesz and collaborators like Sparklehorse, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Ulver, and more! For a full track list visit http://www.sonospherepodcast.com

A Mix from Memphis Concrete Founder Robert Traxler

Welcome to Sonosphere radio, today we welcome Robert Traxler, founder of the Memphis Concrete experimental music festival happening this month in Memphis – June 29^th and 30^th. In its third year, the Memphis Concrete music festival is featuring headliners Matmos, Moor Mother, Rapoon, Mykel Boyd, Tavishi and featuring a live score of the original Tron – all right here in Memphis at Crosstown Arts.

Get your tickets today!

Robert is also an electronic music composer working with analog synths and he performs about town.

We’re happy to feature Robert’s mix on today’s Sonosphere Radio.

Track List:

Louis and Bebe Barron – “Main Title” [Forbidden Planet]
Pierre Schaeffer – “Étude Pathétique (Study in Pathos)””
Halim El-Dabh – “Alcibaldis’ Monologue to Socrates”
Matmos – “Thermoplastic Riot Shield”
Zoviet France – “First Vigil”
Bülent Arel – “Postlude from ‘Music for a Sacred Service'”
Éliane Radigue – “Backward 76”
Linda Heck – “Right”
Ihcilon – “Frau im Mond Fragment Three”
Belly Full of Stars – “My God, It’s Full of Ice”
Daphne Oram – “Osram & Rank – Pulse Persephone Experiment”
Jacques Lejeune – “Apparition of the Disguised Queen”
Tavishi – “Lobhe Paap, Paape Mrityu”
Noiserpuss – “Minimum Maximum”
Vladimir Ussachevsky – “Sketch 2” [Two Sketches for a Computer Piece]
Else Marie Pade – “Prolog i Himlen” [Faust Suite]
Max Eilbacher – “For Club III”
Alice Shields – “Study for Voice and Tape”

Mixtape Session with Natalie Hoffman of Nots & Optic Sink

Welcome to Sonosphere radio. Occasionally, Sonosphere will post playlists curated by artists, record label owners, music enthusiasts, DJs, and sometimes by us. This week we’ll hear a collaborative mixtape session with from Natalie Hoffman of the band NOTS fame. She has a project now with Memphis DJ and electronic artist Ben Bauermeister called Optic Sink.

Optic Sink at DKDC

Natalie was one of Crosstown Arts artists in residence last year. Chris and I got to collaborate with her at her studio on a mixtape – each shared songs we’ve been into lately and songs we’ve loved for a while. This mix is dubbed from the tape created during this playlisting session. The tape begins with composer Colleen, we’ll also hear Marie Davidson, CAN, Marbled Eye, and many more.

Check out Optic Sink at the Memphis Concrete Festival June 29 and 30^th – tickets on sale now. Don’t miss Memphis Concrete this month and enjoy this mix!

Track List:

OS SNS RDIO List

Chris Williams and Natalie Hoffman in Natalie’s studio at Amurica in Memphis, TN during her artist in residency with Crosstown Arts.

Nadah El Shazly

Welcome to Sonosphere! The first artist we present in our 2019 Sound Observation series is Nadah El Shazly, Egyptian composer, musician and producer. She will be performing at Crosstown Arts’ Green Room on May 31st as a part of her first tour in the U.S. We are so excited to have her in Memphis. Artist talk at 7 pm, performance at 8 pm.

Sonosphere spoke briefly with Nadah prior to her show. She talks about collaborating in the Cairo music scene, her debut album and her experiences on her first U.S. tour.

Thanks for listening.

Sound Observations: Nicole Mitchell Performs in Memphis

Sonosphere’s last Sound Observation series for 2018 ended on a high note. We welcomed Nicole Mitchell to perform flute with electronics.

It was a beautiful show preceded by a panel talk on Afrofuturism that we’ve posted as the first part of this Sound Observations.

The discussion informed this improv performance keeping the works of afrofuturist writers and musicians at top of mind.

Thanks for listening!

Nicole Mitchell talks with James ‘IMMAKEMADBEATS’ Dukes.

Sound Observations with Maria Chavez & Christina Carter

In this month’s episode we highlight Sonosphere’s Sound Observations series. Sound Observations is a quarterly performance and lecture series featuring experimental artists from around the nation.

We were honored to host turntablist and DJ Maria Chavez, and vocalist and musician Christina Carter of The Charalambides on May 11, 2018.

Maria and Christina’s site specific works took place in the atrium of the Crosstown Concourse building, an old Sears Roebuck building retrofitted for art galleries, residential and commercial spaces. The result is echoing vocals and scratchy, vinyl sounds that swirl up a red staircase to the entrance of the stage.

Enjoy this Sound Observations performance in this month’s episode below.

To hear about Maria’s performance in Marfa, TX a few years ago, tune into an earlier episode on the Marfa Myths festival!

The Block at the Judd Foundation with Maria Chavez

Chavez’s double hydraulic needle and broken records

Maria Chavez explaining her work

Press Play: Analog Tara

This month the Press Play mixtape features Tara Rodgers, aka Analog Tara. Tara is a multi-instrumentalist composer and historian of electronic music and sound who produces techno tracks using analog sound sources.

This is a mix of Analog Tara tracks from the album At the Switch Hotel from 2003, written, performed, and produced by Analog Tara on synths, drum machines & more.

Tara Rodgers is a former Sonosphere podcast guest, and we are big fans of her book, Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound. The book features 24 interviews with 24 women from the electronic music genre.

Rodgers originally hails from upstate New York and is now based in the Washington, DC area. She earned an MFA in Electronic Music & Recording Media at Mills College and a PhD in Communication Studies at McGill University.

SoundObservations_Poster_TaraRodgers

She’ll be presenting a free, open to the public artist talk at noon on the Crosstown Concourse Theater Stair on March 31. Later that night at 8 pm (doors at 7:30 pm), she’ll perform original compositions in Crosstown Arts’ East Atrium, including tracks from her new Fundamentals EP, out this spring on the DC label 1432R.

The performance is a ticketed event with a cash bar. Tickets are $12 and available on
Eventbrite: https://tinyurl.com/y82m3v7e

This is the first performance in Sonosphere’s Sound Observations series. This four-part series will highlight new explorations in sound through lectures and performances by musicians, composers, and scholars from across the country. Join us as we explore the sounds all around us.

Enjoy the mix:

An Evening with Wu Fei

In this special, bonus episode of Sonosphere we present An Evening with Wu Fei in collaboration with Crosstown Arts. This is Fei’s live performance at the Crosstown Arts gallery on Cleveland Street in Memphis, TN on June 30, 2017. Fei CA Poster The intimate space lent itself to an interactive performance between the audience and Wu Fei as she showcases what the guzheng can do through its thousand-year history.

Wu Fei is a composer and guzheng player. She is a native of Beijing and a current Nashville resident. She is a master of the guzheng, the ancient 21-string Chinese zither. At this performance Fei told stories of her upbringing in Beijing, her relentless practice with the guzheng and how she found improv at Mills College as well as through her time in New York’s improv scene. She mixes her Western and Chinese traditional sensibilities with a contemporary, experimental dialect that only Fei can convey in her “down-to-earth,” personable way. We thank her and Crosstown Arts for an amazing show!

19488502_10102857140110500_3340501144111317316_o

19467929_10102857140260200_3595315055522488124_o

The World’s First Duets for Mellotron

With the upcoming release of the Duets for Mellotron LP, we decided to share our interview with the people behind this project. Prior to the April 16, 2016 performance, at Crosstown Arts in Memphis, TN, we sat down with Winston Eggleston, Robby Grant and Johnathan Kirkscey and talked about what brought this show to fruition and their history with this unique instrument. Check out the interview on this episode of Sonosphere featuring a track from the performance, “Joan Folds Towels” written by Robby Grant and Jonathan Kirkscey.

15826566_203776573418898_2656035400152452806_n Pick up your album January 13-18th, 2017 at Crosstown Arts and relive a beautiful night that was a first of its kind.