January 9th at 8pm

An Evening of Old and New Works for Homemade and Electronic Instruments, Video and Voice

Featuring compositions and performances by David Simons, Lisa Karrer, Skip LaPlante, Laurie Bennett, Concetta Abbate and Kyle Farrell.

Skip La Plante brings together a group of diverse musicians (Lisa Karrer, David Simons, Concetta Abbate, Kyle Farrell, and Laurie Bennett) for an evening of multi-media exploration — with the media ranging from sophisticated electronics and video to styrofoam boxes and hand-cut pipes and strings on a board marked with colored pencils (aka a tuning board).

La Plante and Simons and Karrer first worked together in the 1980s, in the long running ensemble (1975-2005) Music for Homemade Instruments (MFHI), notorious for performing on musical instruments cobbled together from found objects (or to use a perhaps less complimentary but more accurate word-trash), more often than not using items members of the ensemble salvaged just ahead of the sanitation trucks. All three have extensive experience with various Indonesian performing traditions. La Plante has continued to work acoustically, using his trash derived instruments to explore non standard musical tuning systems. Both Simons and Karrer’s recent work are multimedia extravaganzas..

Simons uses the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments as a trigger activating other electronic processes, primarily activating samples from a huge range of sources including many from various recorded media. For example, InnaGaddaDetective employs samples of old radio broadcasts of detective stories.

Karrer, known as a vocalist with a seemingly unlimited range, often creates work where her vocal prowess becomes a single element in a multimedia phalanx. For example, her premiere Forgivemess will incorporate voice, keyboard samples and video, while Two-Fold- Story uses voice, camera, body triggered vocal samples and video.

LaPlante and Abbate and Farrell have recently come together in a group with the working name of Norman Stephen and George, which has been deploying LaPlante’s instrument creations (most notably, of late, the tuning board) and his talents on percussion, wind, and bass, Farrel’s skills on percussion, and Abbate grace on strings and vocals, to craft unusual improvisational pieces. Norman Stephen and George (the mythical brothers of Ridgewood after whom the street at which Outpost is located and LaPlante lives) will play their magic for you.

LaPlante and Laurie Bennett have recently been challenging Bennett’s vocal chops and ear and LaPlante’s prowess on the pipes with LaPlante’s recent piece on Thoreau, his settings of a few paragraphs of Thoreau’s Walden, written in 31 pitch per octave equal temperament.

After playing their newer work, the musicians will join together to reprise a few of MFHI’s venerable game structure pieces including La Plante’s Ascention (1977) and Simon’s Your In Flight Movie (1982) — bringing new instruments and energy to some tried and true works.