Cambridge Chronicle/Tab 01/01/03:

Exploding Electroacoustic Frontier on Jan. 4

with The Receptors and Substation

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

“Rob Chalfen's Sub Cafe concerts are always interesting,” said Berklee College Assistant Professor of Music Synthesis Stephen MacLean. “They.allow an

audience to hear artists’ work up close and personal, and he brings

together unusual or otherwise impossible combinations of people for

highly spirited events.”

On Jan. 4, MacLean will be playing guitar and kora, with effects, in The Receptors, along with Joe Montiero on percussion and found objects and Jorrit Dijkstra on alto sax and electronics. The group will be half of a double bill called “Exploding Electroacoustic Frontier” which will also feature Substation, a technical trio comprised of Andrew Neumann on laptop, switches and sensors, Katt Hernandez on F sharp violin, and Eric Rosenthal on drums.

Guitarist and composer MacLean, a Cambridge resident, has played in the Roswell Rudd Quartet, Doctor Nerve, Mercy, the Steve Maclean Ensemble. He currently performs with percussionist Chris Cutler and the art remix duo smacdada. He was co-founder of the Portland Experimental Music Collective, performed several pieces for New Music Across America, was the curator for the concert series “2001 New Music Odyssey.” He has recorded on his own label and others including Recommended Records, U.K.

Dutch saxophonist and composer Dijkstra has been active in the improv and jazz scene of Amsterdam since 1985. He toured Europe with Trio Jorrit Dijkstra, which released three CDs on BVHaast Records, and has received the prestigious Podium Prize from the Dutch Jazz Foundation, as well as various composition commissions from the Foundation for the Creation of Music and the NPS Radio. He taught at the New England Conservatory in Boston on a Fulbright grant in 1998-99, and is currently working on Jorrit Dijkstra + Strings, which processes and loops Dutch string players including Wiek Hijmans on guitar, Maurice Horsthuis on viola and Paul Pallesen on banjo. He also leads the electro-acoustic trio Tone Dialing, and, with Guus Janssen, playing the music of Lee Konitz, the cool-jazz Quartet Sound-Lee! Besides the alto saxophone, Dijkstra plays soprano saxophone, Lyricon, clarinet, and tin whistles, and, with electronics such as loop and delay machines, a pitch shifter and an analog modular synthesizer, processes his saxophone sounds live on stage.

The two will be augmented by Montiero’s percussive backbeat, and will be followed by Substation, a worldly and proficient outfit in its own right. Neumann, a local media, musical, electronic, film and video artist with a B.S. from Emerson, had recent shows at the DeCordova at the Boston Cyberarts Festival. His videos have been aired on PBS, The Worldwide Video Festival and Artist Space; he has two CDs, No Fly Zone and Scramble:Lock:Combination on Sublingual Records. He was an Artist in Residence at the iEAR Studio at Rensalear Polytech Institute and at the Visual Studies Workshop. He has also taught filmmaking at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and continues to crank out the technological edge.

“Currently, I am designing a computer controlled 16mm film system, as well as refining the MIDI Grips, a gestural controller for improvised electronic music,” he said.

Hernandez, a Michigan native who moved to the area four years ago and assists in Zeitgeist event management, has worked with myriad musicians and dancers. Substation’s collaboration between a micro-tonalist violinist, an electro-accoustic laptop player, and a free jazz and klezmer influenced drummer encapsulates the eclectic format of Chalfen’s series, and the gallery’s overarching mission.

“These kinds of unlikely combinations are endemic to the experimental and improvised music scene in Cambridge,” she said. “We have in this town a constant and fantastic meeting of the minds, stemming from all kinds of musical and philosophical influences. The subconciousCafe, along with the Playground new music series, the Intansitive series, and countless individually produced improvisation concerts and events, have all made their home at at the Zeitgeist.”

Hernandez has been working with Neuman for a year; the two will join with Rosenthal, who has recorded and toured internationally with Either/Orchestra, the Pakula/Karayorgis Quartet, Hypnotic Clambake and the klezmer groups Shirim and Naftule’s Dream, for the first time on Jan. 4. It’s sure to be undefinable, and not for meek receptivity. “This will be a very high energy group, dense and quick, and full of fast and tiny detail- a mad calliope of hyper-mep!” she said.

“The electroacoustic thing is our home-grown contribution to modern music, and these are the folks who've been synthesizing the stuff in the lab, so to speak,” said Chalfen.

“I always enjoy attending or performing at the Subconscious Café,” said MacLean. “Events such as this are filling a very important need in the

Cambridge/Boston community.”

The Subconscious Café’s Exploding Electroacoustic Frontier with The Receptors and Substation is Jan. 4 at the Zeitgeist Gallery, 1353 Cambridge St. in Inman Square, Cambridge. For ticket information, visit www.zeitgeist-gallery.org or call 617-876-6060. Performers’ CDs are sold at the shows; the gallery is not handicapped accessible.