Friday September 23, 4-7:30pm: Accidents of Manufacture: A musical happening by Stuart Dempster & Paul Kikuchi
Frequent collaborators Dempster and Kikuchi will build, prepare and share their instruments during an open studio from 4-6pm. At 6pm they will perform and discuss their musical process while painter Suiren creates sumi paintings based on the music as it is being improvised.
Read Accidents of Manufacture by Stuart Dempster
About the artists:
Stuart Dempster–Sound Gatherer–trombonist, composer, didjeriduist, et al, and Professor Emeritus at University of Washington, has recorded for numerous labels including Columbia (Sony), Nonesuch, and New Albion. The latter includes In the Great Abbey of Clement VI at Avignon – a “cult classic” – and Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel consisting of music sources for a 1995 Merce Cunningham Dance Company commission. Grants include: Creative Associate at SUNYAB; Fellow, Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois; Fulbright Scholar (Australia); NEA Composer, US/UK, and Guggenheim Fellowships. Dempster, a leading figure in development of trombone technique and performance, published his landmark book The Modern Trombone: A Definition of Its Idioms in 1979. A founding member of Deep Listening Band, he has toured extensively and produced the first three DLB recordings. Dempster is also known for soothing aches, pains, and psychic sores with his healing, yet playful, Sound Massage Parlor. In 2006, his 70thbirthday, awarded a “Golden Ears Deep Listening Certificate” not to mention being feted in a “Dempster Diving” extravaganza featuring sixty performers and all the spaces that Town Hall Seattle had to offer; in 2007 participated in a Deep Listening Convergence Artist in High Falls NY; 2008 saw Deep Listening Band’s high-end dbl LP on TAIGA “Then & Now Now & Then: Celebrating the Band’s 20 Years”. Inducted into Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame (Earshot Jazz 2009 Golden Ear Award Recipient). In 2010 received International Trombone Association Lifetime Achievement Award.
Paul Kikuchi is a percussionist, composer, sound artist, and educator originally from Indianola, WA. After playing in rock bands as a youth, Paul went on to study music at Bennington College (BFA) and California Institute of the Arts (MFA). He currently works as a musician and educator in Seattle, WA.
Paul is involved in a wide variety of musical projects, including percussion ensembles, toy instrument ensembles, and jazz quartets, as well as his own groups that feature his compositions and invented instruments. His recent work has emphasized performances and recordings in site-specific locations with unique acoustics, such as train tunnels, cisterns, and nuclear cooling towers. He actively performs internationally and his recorded music can be heard on a number of record labels both in the US and abroad. Paul is the founder and artistic director of Prefecture Records, which supports musicians working with experimental percussion, unusual acoustic environments, and found and invented instruments.
Suiren, artist name, a.k.a. Renko Ishida Dempster, is influenced by Japanese aesthetics and Buddhist philosophy inherited from her parents. Upon moving to Seattle from San Francisco, she engaged in formal art studies at Factory of Visual Art and University of Washington School of Art. Suiren’s work includes costume design/construction for theater pieces; performances of drawings with Seattle’s movement, sound, and visual arts collective ROOM; and sound and visual art collective ARTKOAMIA. Suiren’s solo exhibitions include Seattle’s Northwest Asian American Theater’s RAW Gallery “Celebrating Year of the Dragon”; Jack Straw New Media Gallery (Seattle) “Dream–Time–Pieces” (with musician Stuart Dempster). Group shows include Commencement Gallery in Tacoma “Drawn From…” and “Painted Word Exhibition” Evergreen State College, Olympia WA (2005-06). Suiren also collaborated with Deep Listening Band and dancer for “Sound Symposium” St. Johns Newfoundland (2002). As an Associate Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (2005) she created a body of work for the Dome Project, and later (2007) was a Deep Listening Convergence Artist at Lifebridge Sanctuary in High Falls NY. Also in 2007 created real-time drawings during “Tanabata Remix” at Seattle’s Chapel Performance Space. She also had a solo exhibition and painted in real time during “Abundant Sound Gardens: In Memory of Toyoji Tomita” at San Francisco’s Meridian Gallery (2009). Suiren’s art appears on CD covers of Echoes of Syros (2008), Traveler’s Todi (2010), Flightpatterns inner sleeve foldout (2010), and Issue #1 with Trio Tritticali (2011). Also in 2011 Suiren was a featured artist for an on-line show “Art on the Wall” Kingston NY, and was “Ring Sketcher” with other musician/performers for Pauline Oliveros’ “Tower Ring” at Ann Hamilton Tower, Oliver Ranch, Geyserville CA.