Announcing the 6th annual HIGH ZERO Festival of Experimental Improvised Music in Baltimore, Maryland -- Sept 30th - Oct 3rd, 2004. High Zero is organized yearly by the Red Room Collective of Baltimore to provide an outlet for the most inspired musicians from around the world to come together and create music which has never been heard before.
Baltimore icon Ian Nagoski has recently written a beautiful description of what the festival entails:
“We simply can not reccommend the High Zero festival highly enough to those who may not familiar with it. From September 30th to October 3rd, the Theater Project will host four days of performances by improvisors from all over North America (and two from Europe) from a wide variety of backgrounds. The performers are grouped by the festival's organizers into sets which will challenge both the audience and the performers. High Zero doesn't invite bands to come and show off their acts; it sets individuals into interesting musical contexts, forcing them into novel situations and many cases drawing from them their deepest and/or farthest-fetched playing. Ideas and aesthetics stacked teetering-high; exotic sounds, superimposed in a strange miasma; personalities aflame; playing itself set in stark relief from normal life. The effect, in the end, is an active meditation of the natures of music and creativity, unlike any other musical experience available, if you ask me."
In addition to the main performances, High Zero 2004 also features:
* Three sound installations at galleries in Baltimore running prior to and throughout the festival.
* Workshops with out-of-town artists at select institutions.
* Guerrilla street performances all across the Baltimore area.
We are proud to announce the multi-disciplinarian all-star cast featured at this year's festival:
From Afar :
Susan Alcorn (pedal steel guitar) - Houston
Nicole Bindler (dance) - NYC
Caroline Kraabel (reeds, voice) - London
Le Quan Ninh (percussion) - Toulouse, France
Sabir Mateen (reeds) - NYC
Joe McPhee (reeds, pocket trumpet) - Poughkeepsie, NY
Andrea Parkins (sampler, piano) - NYC
Jesse Quattro (voice, electronics) - San Francisco
Jack Rose (guitar) - Philadelphia
Stanley Schumacher (voice, trombone) - Bethlehem, PA
Karen Stackpole (gongs, percussion) - San Francisco
Howard Stelzer (tapes) - Boston
Todd Whitman (reeds) - Buffalo, NY
From Baltimore:
Jackie Blake (reeds, flute)
Tom Boram (synth, guitar, voice)
Dan Breen (multi-instrumentalist)
Audrey Chen (cello, voice)
John Dierker (reeds)
Michael Gayle (piano)
Joel Grip (acoustic bass)
Daniel Higgs (voice, jews harp)
Scott Larson (inventions, guitars)
David Mor
For more information contact All About Jazz.
