Pacific Exchange 2010 April 3, 2010

The Pacific Exchange concert series brings composers and performers from diverse areas of the Pacific Rim together in order to exchange ideas and create music on a single concert stage. Thingamajigs created this event to emphasize the commonalities of artists living on the Pacific Rim, as well as to showcase their diversity.

The Pacific Exchange concerts have exhibited the music of composers from Japan, Korea, and the United States. The performance group tov, Megumi Matsuhashi, Jon Brummit, Jean Ann, Kiyoshi Suzuki, Ji-yoon Chun, Shizuka Takeuchi, Tomoko Sogabe, Akiko Hasegawa, and Niji Ito are just a few of the artists that have been featured by this series.

This is the first Pacific Exchange concert held in the USA and we will host Japan's ADACHI Tomomi along with Laetitia Sonami, Judy Halebsky, Dylan Bolles, Suki O'Kane, and Edward Schocker.

Artists involved:

ADACHI Tomomi is a performer/composer, sound poet, instrument builder and installation artist. Known for his versatile style, he has performed improvised music and contemporary works by John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, etc. all over the world including Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Merkin Hall, STEIM, Experimental Intermedia, Melbourne International Arts Festival and Flanders Festival. He has made several sound installations and original instruments (e.g."Tomomin", his hand made electric instrument is familiar with many musicians). Also he directed Japanese premiere of John Cage's "Europera5" in 2007.

Adachi will present his improvisational works that focus on self-made electronic/acoustic instruments and interfaces including his well-known tupperware instruments and infrared sensor shirt.

Judy Halebsky's book of poems Sky=Empty won the 2009 New Issues Poetry Prize from New Issues Poetry & Prose. Since doing her MFA in Creative Writing at Mills College, she has worked collaboratively with Thingamajig artists writing text for performance. Residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Millay Colony as well as a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts have supported her work. Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, she studies Japanese literature at Hosei University in Tokyo on a MEXT fellowship. For the Pacific Exchange series, she will read poems from her new book that explore issues of language and translation between Japanese and English.

Laetitia Sonami is a composer, performer, and sound installation artist who was born in France and settled in the United States in 1975 to pursue her interest in the emerging field of electronic music. She studied with Eliane Radigue, Joel Chadabe, Robert Ashley and David Behrman.

Sonami’s work combines text, music and "found sound" from the world, in compositions which have been described as "performance novels. Her signature instrument, the Lady's Glove, is fitted with a vast array of sensors which track the slightest motion of her enigmatic dance: with it Sonami can create performances where her movements can shape the music and in some instances visual environments. The lady’s glove has become a fine instrument which challenges notions of technology and virtuosity. Sonami’s sound installations combine audio and kinetic elements embedded in ubiquitous objects such as light bulbs, rubber gloves, bags and more recently toilet plungers. She collects electrical wire and embroids them in walls.

Dylan Bolles, Suki O’Kane, and Edward Schocker make up the nucleus of a new ensemble that combines traditional Eastern sensibilities with modern American technologies and performance practices. Creating pieces in a group collaborative process that sometimes incorporate voice and additional instruments, this ensemble of musicians expands and contracts within each performance situation.