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01.26.2010 This weekend I have the honor of traveling to the west coast to perform with Anthony Braxton and his 12+1tet. We will be performing as an ensemble on Friday night, and on Sunday we will be presenting the world premiere (as a performance) of the Sonic Genome Project. This project consists of 50+ musicians performing Braxton's compositions for 8 hours. The compositions are primarily drawn from the some 150+ Ghost Trance Music (GTM) compositions that Braxton composed from 1995 - 2006. We will also be playing select compositions from Braxton's catalog in different ensemble configurations. There will also be plenty of time for improvisation and experimenting in the space. Also keep in mind that the musicians are not expected to play the whole time. Musicians will take lots of breaks and hopefully the ensemble will break down to a few individuals. That would be pretty amazing. I was fortunate enough to take part in the first Sonic Genome project that happened in 2003 at the Wesleyan University Hockey Rink. "Braxton on Ice," but not really. It was May and the ice was not on the rink. All the musicians were together in one big room. I think that the Vancouver performance will be a little different. I think that there might be different rooms for the musicians and friendly experiencers to walk through. Altogether I am very excited. It is going to be an historic event and I am privileged to take part in it. Coming up in February, I am performing in Rachel Bernsen's piece User as part of Movement Research Judson Memorial Church. I am going to be traveling to Chicago for a couple of performances. I will be playing at my friend Will Faber's loft on Thursday the 18th and at Elastic on Friday the 19th. Both nights I will be playing some select compositions for solo bass, some for electronics. On Friday I will be premiering a new electro-acoustic composition with special guests Jeff Kimmel on bass clarinet, and Nick Broste on trombone. I am excited to be working with some new musicians. Finally when I return to CT I will be performing with the electro-acoustic improvising trio Telepathy at Alina's Ristorante in Wallingford. This will be our first public performance where we showcase our full acoustic and electronic setup, so it is not to be missed. Lots happening and more to come. Please check back soon.
12.20.2009 I had a great week and a great weekend. On Wednesday, I performed with Rachel Bernsen, Anne Rhodes, and Lindsay Bauer in Rachel's evening of dance at Issue Project Room. I think the show was very successful. We performed Rachel's new trio entitled User for the first time and we reached some very delicate, nuanced sound spaces. Rachel also presented collaborations with Matthew Welch and Taylor Ho Bynum which were really great. Hearing Taylor play some incredible long tone multiphonics was a real treat as well as hearing Matt Welch's bagpipes fill the space at IPR. Altogether a really special night of movement and music. On Thursday and Friday I was in NYC for the Blip Festival which was a blast. I got to meet up and hang with Seb Tomczak (aka little-scale) since he was in town to perform at Blip Fest. I also had a great time hanging out with Chris (aka cTrix) and got to talk a lot about music in general and chip music in particular. These are really great guys and fantastic musicians. We went out to lunch and got our picture taken. I am not sure why I am not smiling in this photo, I thought I was smiling, oh well ;) Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. I have many exciting projects coming up in 2010, so stay tuned.
12.09.2009 This Saturday I will be performing a short set for solo acoustic bass as part of the Uncertainty Music Series. I will be opening for the newly-formed trio Broadcloth featuring Adam Matlock on accordion and recorders, Anne Rhodes on voice, and Nathan Bontrager on cello. See the performances page for the details or go to the Uncertainty Music Series site. Please come out! Next Wednesday I will be performing at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn along with Anne Rhodes and dancers Rachel Bernsen and Lindsay Bauer in a reworking of Rachel's piece Unicorns were Horses and a new trio by Rachel entitled User. You can find full details on the performance at Issue Project Room's website.
11.16.2009 I am happy to announce that my new electronic music digital release Signals is now available to download for free at http://music.carltesta.net This is a short (20 minute) release of gameboy music written using Nanoloop 2.3. I was first exposed to Nanoloop through Seb Tomzcak aka little-scale and was inspired to try and write some music using the gameboy that still sounded like my music. So hopefully the aesthetic of my music still comes through in the pieces on this EP. To download, go here and click download now. To download for free, enter in "0.00" as the amount. You are welcome to donate some money if you are so inclined, but there is no minimum price to download the EP in any format you desire. So please download, listen, tell people, and send me your comments if you have any. My trio is also playing tomorrow at Le Grand Dakar, come out and support if you can. Details are here. Cover Art and Design by Carolyn Wachnicki, Redhead Canvas
11.04.2009 There was a great article about the New Haven Improvisers Collective and the New Haven improvised music scene in general in the New York Times over the weekend. You can read the article here. I am currently away in Sweden visiting family. I will be coming back in time for the next Uncertainty Music Series concert featuring Max Heath and the Uruguayan group "Pechitos Ecuestres" featuring Marcello Rilla, Vladimir Guicheff Bogacz, and Juan Martin Lopez. I will be performing on some of Max Heath's compositions including one for bass clarinet and melodica. On November 17th my trio will be performing at Le Grand Dakar as part of James Ilgenfritz's Infrequent Seams series. The Jeff Platz group will also be performing that night. Please come out if you are in the area. Full details for performances here. Photo by Zara Acosta
10.25.2009 My trio is performing this Tuesday at Freddy's Backroom at 10pm. Bonnie Kane's group will be performing before us at 8:30pm. I am trying to reboot this trio in some ways. I am in the process of writing some new music for clarinet, string bass, and percussion. We will play at least one of these new pieces on Tuesday. I am really excited to start playing with this trio again. We will be playing again on November 17th at Le Grand Dakar. Check the performances for details.
10.20.2009 The performance of Static on Saturday at Ibeam was successful. I am looking to get more shows for this group, hopefully sometime soon. Aaron's set for vibraphone and piano was really beautiful. I hope to get a recording of those pieces sometime soon. I have some trio gigs up ahead with Mike McGinnis on clarinet and Bill Carbone on drums. One at Freddy's Backroom on the 27th of October and one as part of Infrequent Seams on November 17th at Le Grand Dakar. Check the performances page for more details. Plus I have a little music surprise that will drop in the next few weeks. Stay tuned. Photo by Zara Acosta
10.11.2009 We had a very successful benefit for Barry Seroff's piece Democracy. Barry and I were very happy with how everything turned out. The music was great, and I got a chance to try out some new bass heavy electronic music courtesy of Lou Guarino's subwoofer. Next Saturday I will be presenting my group Static at Ibeam in Brooklyn. I am very exciting to be presenting this music in New York. I will be joined by Jonathan Goldberger and Sean Moran on guitars, and Josh Sinton on bass clarinet. I am very excited to be working with these very talented musicians. Please come out! You can hear samples of this piece here. I will be sharing the evening with the composer/percussionist Aaron Siegel. Aaron will be performing pieces from his Book of Notions for vibraphone and piano with Emily Manzo. You can hear some samples of his music on his webpage. I highly recommend coming out and hearing this music. See full details on my performances page.
09.22.2009 I have a lot of exciting events coming up in the next few months. Tomorrow I am performing with Dead Cat Bounce at the Cambridge YMCA Theatre. I always look forward to playing with this group. This fall I am presenting a number of performances in Brooklyn. On October 17th, my guitars/bass clarinet/electronics group STATIC will be playing at Ibeam on a shared evening with composer Aaron Siegel. I am excited to finally present this piece in NYC. Later in October and November my trio with Mike McGinnis and Bill Carbone will be resurfacing at Freddy's Backroom and Le Grand Dakar. I will be presenting some new compositions that I have been working on for the past few months. See the Performances page for more details. I have been continuing developing the trio Telepathy along with Lou Guarino Jr. and Jarawa Gray. We are developing a very unique form of electro-acoustic music. You can listen to samples of the group here.
07.29.2009 A lot of performances coming up. Please check the Performances page for the list of upcoming performances. On Monday I will be performing in Dave Ruder's And It's Surely To Their Debit at The Tank in NYC. This performance will feature simultaneous performances of Clarinet trios, solo practicing, jokes for children, and other things. It will surely be a memorable and original performance. Please come out. Lesley Flanigan, an artist and performer from NYC will be performing on the next Uncertainty Music Series. She specializes in building her own speaker feedback systems and develops a music of varying tones and rhythms of feedback and blends these sounds with her own voice. The performance should be really special. I will also be performing a set of music for solo bass and electronics that expands on a piece that I performed at last month's Uncertainty concert using voice and electronics. Please come out and support. Thanks
07.15.2009 The last Uncertainty Music Series concert with myself as Kalle and John C. Miller as Avmus went very well. I performed some new electronic music of mine and I hope to release some of it in some form sometime soon as a digital download EP. More info about that soon. Speaking of digital downloads, I have decided to start selling my Uncertainty digital downloads on Bandcamp instead of here on this site. I have also decided to LOWER the PRICE! So now you can download my album Uncertainty in any digital format for only $5. You can also decide to give more if you are so inclined. Click here to download. You can also still purchase physical CDs from me or from CDBaby. Please spread the news to those who might be interested. Photo by Zara Acosta
06.29.2009 On Saturday June 27th 2009, something very interesting if not spectacular happened. A very bright rainbow appeared in the sky over Brooklyn, NYC. I live in New Haven, CT and heard about the rainbow over Twitter through a friend. I saw that he posted a photo of the rainbow to Twitpic. From the photo, I could see that rainbow was pretty special. Later on in my twitter feed I saw that another person had posted a photo of the rainbow, naturally from a different perspective. It was at this moment that I was reminded about something that has interested me for a long time, simultaneity. Read More . . .
06.21.2009 Happy summer everyone! It definitely doesn't feel like summer, but summer it is nonetheless. I have made some minor changes to the layout of my site. I am now using Bandcamp to showcase my music. If you click on the Music link above you will be taken to my bandcamp site at http://music.carltesta.net. There you can download free albums of mine as well as buy CDs and downloads. I will continue to update the site with new music, including live sets, studio recordings, etc. Please check back often. In addition to the new Bandcamp site, I have also updated most of the pages on this site including the Projects page, About, and others. So please take a look around if you haven't in a while. I am preparing for the next Uncertainty Music Series concert featuring Avmus and myself performing as Kalle. I have some new pieces that I am excited about presenting. I hope that you come out. So please enjoy the new site layout and let me know if you have any comments or suggestions. Thanks, Carl
05.12.2009 I woke up this morning to find an email from one of my favorite electronic/chiptune musicians Seb Tomczak (little-scale) in my inbox. He said that he had written about my music on his blog. I was so happy to see someone whose music and work I really appreciate enjoy and appreciate my own work. little-scale offers most (if not all) of his music for free on his website and I have been enjoying his music for over a year now. So I few months ago I decided to share some of my own music with him by sending it to him in an email because he has been so generous with offering his music out to anyone. This brings me to something that I want to try out. I want to do more trading in music. So if you are interested in my music but don't want to pay money, offer me a trade. I will accept downloads for downloads and CDs for CDs. If you are not a musician, then suggest something comparable. I am always interested in hearing new music, so make me an offer :) In this spirit, I have also started a podcast. It will offer complete tracks of my music as well as commentary. It isn't in full swing yet, but you can check out the beginnings of it on iTunes here. I rehearsed last week with my guitar trio for my upcoming performance of Static in New Britain, CT. I am really excited about this performance. I just need to make a few adjustments to the electronic part and it will be ready to go. Details for the performance are here.
04.12.2009 This past weekend I performed with trumpeter Lou Guarino Jr. and percussionist Brian Jarawa Grey as part of the group Telepathy. The music was great and I look forward to working with these guys more. In addition to acoustic music we are also working on electronic music. So I am excited to continue working on these ideas. Next month's Uncertainty Series will feature the group Dead Cat Bounce. This is a saxophone quartet plus bass and drums. Matt Steckler leads the group and is a great composer and saxophonist. I will be playing bass with the group. I definitely recommend checking out this show. And again, my guitar group Static will perform at the Art League of New Britain on May 23rd, mark your calendars. Photo by Dede Guarino
03.17.2009 This Thursday, March 19th, the Educational Center for the Arts Student Orchestra and soprano Anne Rhodes will perform a section of my piece "Clouds" that I arranged for them. The conductor Roy Wiseman asked me at the beginning of the year if I would be interested in arranging a piece for the student orchestra. I was very happy to adapt the piece to the group as it is my first experience writing for a large ensemble. The performance is part of New Music/New Sounds III that will also include performances of compositions by Jeff Fuller, Noah Baerman, Douglas Fisk and many others. A short heads up about a performance of my piece "Static" for 2 guitars, bass clarinet, and electronics on May 23rd at the Art League of New Britain. I am very happy to have Sean Moran, Jonathan Goldberger, and Michael McGinnis scheduled for this performance. More details soon.
02.08.2009 I hope that everyone had a good new year. My end of the year performances went well. Anne performed a section from my new piece "Clouds" which I am really excited about. I hope to finish up the other sections as soon as possible. 2 weeks ago I performed with Rachel Bernsen and Anne Rhodes in Rachel's piece "Unicorns Were Horses." The performance was very successful. We will have another performance at Danspace as part of Draftwork in March. This Wednesday I will be performing on electronics for the first time with Bill Carbone's Buru Style at Public in Middletown, CT. It should be a good show. More updates soon. Photo by Taylor Ho Bynum
11.14.2008 My CD is finally listed in iTunes. It seems that TuneCore (the distributor) forgot to flip a switch! Oh well, it is now available in all the various digital stores. Here is the direct iTunes link. My CD release show at Monkeytown went very well. Sean Moran's group played a great set, and there was a great turnout and my group did a great job. I am now moving full swing into December and preparing for Anne Rhodes's performance of my new piece for voice and electronics. Please review the CD on iTunes if you want. Thanks.
11.01.2008 My CD is now available at Downtown Music Gallery in the East Village. The owner Bruce also wrote a very nice review of the disc which can be found here. It has been great to have all these different reviewers listen to the disc and write down their thoughts. Everyone has brought a new and different perspective to the disc. If you have any thoughts send me a message. Thanks.
10.30.2008 Another review of my debut disc is on the Free Jazz blog by stef. It is a nice review with some fresh comments. You can read the review here. Also, physical CDs are now available on this site here. If you are in New York, then come out to Monkeytown on November 11th for my NY CD release party. Full details are here. Thanks.
10.21.2008 Today, October 21st is the official release date for my album Uncertainty. You can now purchase and download the album directly from my site. Click here to be taken to the purchase page. A physical CD will be available soon. The album is also available from iTunes and Amazon MP3. It will be available at other stores soon. Please let others know that the disc is now available. I hope that you enjoy it. Thank You.
10.10.2008 Tonight I am performing in Boston with Matt Steckler's group Dead Cat Bounce. I am excited to be working with this really incredible group. Tomorrow, Saturday the 11th is my CD release concert at Never Ending Books in New Haven, CT. Check the performances page for full details or you can go to the Uncertainty Music Series site for all the information. I am really excited to hear this group play this music as we haven't performed publicly in a long time. Please come out and support this release. Never Ending Books is very casual, feel free to bring drinks, food, and friends.
08.26.2008 Richard Kamins of the Hartford Courant has posted the first review of my CD. You can read it at his blog. In other news, I have scheduled some shows for the fall including CD release shows in New Haven and New York. I will also be performing with the group Dead Cat Bounce this fall which is very exciting. Stay tuned for more updates. Check the performances page for all the details.
07.26.2008 I have finally put up a webpage featuring my debut recording as a leader. The CD is entitled Uncertainty. Please goto the webpage to listen to samples from the disc. The release date is October 21 2008. I am currently setting up some CD release shows for October. Stay tuned for more info.
07.16.2008 Bruxism, featuring Anne Rhodes and myself will be performing this Friday night at the Art League of New Britain as part of the Hideout Performance Series. We will perform compositions by Katherine Young, Sabrina Schroeder, Chris McDonald, and myself in a program that features works for voice and string bass. Check the performances page for more details. Please come out as this is a very special program.
07.13.2008 The Uncertainty Music Series concert went really well on Saturday. There was a great turnout and all the music went really well. I was pretty happy with how my set turned out. It was great to finally do a performance with the printer. I think the results were good and I got a good response from a lot of people. Tom Crean and David Jensenius of the Polish Club played a great set. I particularly liked Tom's excellent dobro playing and David's layering of electronics, Nintendo DS, and guitar. Check out some photos of the show to the right. I will post a video of the performance soon as well. This friday Anne and I will be performing as Bruxism in New Britain. I haven't gotten final word on exactly where the venue is. So stay tuned for that information. Check out the Performances page for more info.
07.09.2008 I have taken a break recently from writing here, but I have lots of news to report. First of all I will be performing as Kalle this Saturday at Never Ending Books as part of the Uncertainty Music Series. I will be premiering some new music for electronics, including a new piece for printer. I have been trying to implement some printer stuff into my electronic setup for a while now and I am just starting to get some things to work. There has been a lot of great printer music done in the past and currently being done. Please check out some of these links if you are interested. Sue Harding has quartet printer music, Seb Tomczak has worked with Max/MSP and printers, Paul Slocum has done some work reprogramming printer firmware. I look forward to continue to learn more about using the printer. After this Saturday, I will be performing as Bruxism with vocalist Anne Rhodes next Friday in New Britain. We will perform our set that we performed in Boston in May with one change. We might try a new piece for voice and electronics that I tried with Gergely Kiss on clarinet back in May at Wesleyan. This piece involves the voice using only different 4 sounds while the electronics sample small bits of the voice and manipulating it in real time. Check the performances page for details. Also, the big news is that my debut disc as a composer and leader, Uncertainty is back from the printers. So I now have copies but I am going to take my time in releasing it. I will be posting more information about the release soon. I am aiming for an October release. More details soon.
05.13.2008 Last week was full of activity and concerts. I went to go hear Braxton's Small Ensemble concert with Anne. He played two sets of Falling River Music. Both sets were great. On Thursday I went to go play bass clarinet with Braxton's Large Ensemble. We played some Falling River Music as well as Composition 169 as well as some Ghost Trance compositions. I had a great time and I am really looking forward to playing with the septet in Pittsburgh at the end of May. On Saturday we had the Uncertainty Music Series concert with Forbes Graham. First Gergely and I played a set for clarinet and electronics. I hadn't had time to finish all of the work to get my electronics ready, so I wasn't completely happy with my set. Forbes sounded really great. I could tell that he has really developed his electronic set up. Everything flowed well and he had a great variety within his set. On Sunday Gergely and I went up to Wesleyan to perform a short set as part of Adam Tinkle's mini-festival entitled WDWNDS. Adam and Rod O'Connor performed a set for alto saxophone and electronics and Phillip Schulze and Andrew Raffo Dewar performed a set for soprano saxophone and electronics. Andrew was working with a great stereo microphone setup. He would move his saxophone between two mics and the sound would swing across the space. I thought that it was really effective, and of course Phillip's electronics are really advanced and he does some really great work. Gergely and I played 2 pieces, my piece 23-melodic for 2 clarinets and electronics and a new piece that involved Gergely playing multiphonics, long tones, breath sounds, and puckering sounds, while I did some short live sampling and granular synthesis. I had fixed some things that weren't working Saturday night, and I think that Sunday's performance went much better. See pictures at the right. Photos by Phillip Schulze
05.04.2008 Anne and I had a great show on Friday in Boston at GASP. Allen Chase and Bruno Raberg played a beautiful opening set. We then performed a set of pieces by Chris McDonald, Sabrina Schroeder, Katherine Young, Anne Rhodes, myself, and one piece by Neil Leonard. We got a great response from the audience and all the pieces seemed to go over well. Take a look at some pictures on the right. This week I will be performing with the Anthony Braxton Large Ensemble at Wesleyan. I will also be performing on the Uncertainty Music Series. I will play an opening set for electronics, clarinetist Gergely Kiss will be joining me for the set as well. We will be opening for the trumpeter, electronicist, and composer Forbes Graham who will play a solo set for trumpet and electronics. I did an interview with him recently. You can listen to it at the Uncertainty Music Series Podcast website. Gergely and I will also perform a short set at Wesleyan the next day as part of Adam Tinkle's Mini-Festival of woodwind/electronic music. Stay tuned for more updates.
04.28.2008 Bruxism, my duo with vocalist Anne Rhodes has a performance coming up in Boston on Friday. Anne will feature some of the compositions that she performed at her solo concert in New Haven back in November. We will also be performing a new piece of Anne's, a new piece by Neil Leonard, and my piece for two bullhorns. It will be good to get another solid performance of the bullhorn under our belts. I am trying to finish up a new piece for my concerts in early May. I will be opening on May 10th for Forbes Graham on the Uncertainty Music Series. I will then be playing again up at Wesleyan the next day as part of a woodwind/electronic music mini-festival that Adam Tinkle is arranging. Gergely Kiss will be joining me on clarinet for both shows. I am in the process of writing some new material for solo clarinet. I am reaching towards a slightly different aesthetic with this new music. I am trying to incorporate more space and breath into the melodic lines. This piece will also incorporate new electronic music, but the electronics will have a lighter touch. I will be posting some news soon about an upcoming podcast of my music as well as my first official release of my clarinet trio music. More info soon!
04.27.2008 This weekend I had the opportunity to play a new electronic piece at MonkeyTown as part of David Jensenius's concert entitled SPACE. The piece involved combining my recorded material for clarinets and my materials for electronics that utilize sounds of appliances. On Friday I went to go see Aaron Siegel's new composition for string quartet and voices entitled The Swan Catchers which was performed at the Chocolate Factory by the FLUX String Quartet. You can find more information about the piece at http://theswancatchers.com I really enjoyed the piece and I thought that it all came together well. I hope to hear a recording sometime soon, because there were so many layers to the piece, and it was hard to catch everything that was going on. After the concert I went down to the East Village to the BENT Festival to check out my friend Chris McDonald's photo-booth/installation entitled Gertrude. The photo that he took is to the right. For more information about Gertrude check out http://vanitaphonecompany.com
04.21.2008 Welcome everyone to the news section of my site. I have decided to create a dedicated space where I could update those interested about what is happening with the site and my music in general. Check back here for news about upcoming performances, projects, or changes with the site. Soon you will be able to subscribe to this news feed with your favorite RSS reader and easily stay up to date with changes to the site. This past weekend I had a very successful performance at the Chocolate Factory as part of the Live Sh--* series. Matt Bauder and Jeremy Viner joined me on clarinets for 2 pieces and I think that the music was well received by the audience. This weekend I will be presenting a new electronic piece as part of David Jensenius's project entitled "SPACE" at Monkeytown in Brooklyn. Check the Performances page for more details. Pictures from the concert are pictured at the right.
contact me - carl (at) carltesta (dot) net