“We are somewhat fearless, which means none of us will say stop as we’re heading off the cliff, but that’s what keeps it interesting, and hopefully will for the audience as well. What I like about the project is that we are all adventurous and experimental.” Dean Terry, head of EMAC (Emerging Media and Communication) at UTD, speaking of the improvisational live trio he performs in with two other UTD professors….
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Don’t call them space cowboys. Don’t call them gangstas of love. Don’t even call them Freddy and the Gizmos (although I’m tempted). They all have secret identities as rock stars. Call them expressive, innovative and dynamic. Call them ready to step out of their customary Clark Kent garb to don their Super-Duper Musician Men suits and entertain you with untoward abandon in “an evening of death-defying music-theater”.
Friday April 24, 8pm, Margo Jones Theatre in Fair Park in Dallas, for openers. Fred Curchack. Dean Terry. Scot Gresham-Lancaster.
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Last year three respectable gentlemen of a certain age got together for a visit over a round of drinks after work. All distinguished professors at University of Texas at Dallas in different fields, they viewed each other as more than colleagues, as true friends. Conversation meandered into music, where they shared a depth of experience as performers, composers and experimenters. Just for fun, they decided to get together every so often in theatre professor Fred Curchack’s home music studio to bang out a few improvised tunes and play with electronic gizmos, see where it led. Along the way, bolstered by strong friendship, a wealth of life experience and musicianship and devotion to performance art, the idea of performing as an improvisational, multi-instrumental, theatrical trio emerged. And they kept at it.
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“Improvising, when it works, is one of the best things about our collaboration, which requires all of us to stretch beyond our normal aesthetic roots. I’m definitely stretching but the uncertainty of it is what makes it compelling,” Dean Terry continues. “I’ve been making recordings a long time and it has been my most consistent and obsessive creative activity over the years, though most people know me here in other capacities. When I was in art school I spent most of my time making experimental recordings on a 4track cassette recorder. I am playing two new pieces (if my voice holds up) at the show. “When it Wasn’t Now” is a sort of love song played on the Moog synthesizer. “Falling Inside” is about personal and physical entropy and is played using a 12 string electric mandola though a delay line.”
Fred Curchack describes how this performance has come together and what to expect. “It’s pure collaboration. It’s become more structured as we’ve been enjoying the “jambient” experience, as Scot describes us, with a clearly defined emotional arc. Some pieces will be strictly improvised at the moment, others more devised and rehearsed. There is a sort of a symphonic rock vibe, but nobody will need earplugs. The evening will last about an hour and fifteen minutes.”
Who plays what instruments?
Dean Terry will play a “crazy array” of guitars and synthesizers.
Scot Gresham-Lancaster will play analog and digital synthesizer and a variety of guitars.
Fred Curchack: “I’m focused on voice and voice synthesizer, recorders, percussion, bells, guitar, bass, ukulele, shadow theater incorporating William Blake’s “The Mental Traveler” and mask theater music from/inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest.”
About Scot Gresham-Lancaster from his website, the “mystery man” of the trio: a composer, performer, instrument builder and educator with over three decades of professional experience, toured extensively in rock and synthesizer bands. Since Fall of 2012 Scot has been a professor of sound art with ATEC at the Univ. of Texas at Dallas, his most recent research has been on the boundary between science and art specifically developing advanced techniques in sonification. He has recently performed in a series of “co-located” performances collaborating in real time with live and distant dancers, video artists and musicians in network-based performances. For over two decades, he has worked with multimedia prototyping and user interface theory. http://scot.greshamlancaster.com/
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Come see Fred and Dean and Scot in their creative, secret guises as “rock stars”, in their scintillating, first night ever performance collaboration. Tickets: $10-$15
events/1428133300816658/
brownpapertickets.com/event/1433744
criticalrant.com Alexandra Bonifield 