014. Bethany Younge and Merche Blasco
Bethany Younge’s acoustic and electronic music explores the manifold kinesthetic properties of musical performance. For her, the act of music-making cannot be divorced from the physical presence of the human instigator. Her works often incorporate instrumental deconstruction, exaggerated movement, motion tracking, sounding costumes, and/or other aesthetic devices to sonically heighten corporeal expressivity. Younge is currently pursuing her DMA in Music Composition at Columbia University in New York. Her works have been featured in the 2016 and 2018 International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt, Resonant Bodies Festival, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, The 16th International Young Composers Meeting, and many other festivals. She has worked with many ensembles including JACK Quartet, Distractfold, ASKO|Schönberg Ensemble, TAK Ensemble, TILT Brass, Sputter Box, KLANG, Ereprijs Orkestra, Fonema Consort, AndPlay, Chartreuse, Gyre Ensemble, Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, Inversion Ensemble, Mocrep, and others throughout Europe and the USA. In 2016, she was awarded the Stipend Prize at the International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt. She was also awarded a commission prize by National Sawdust, in New York City and the 10th Mivos/Kanter prize. Bethany was one of TAK's commissioned composers of the 2019-2020 season, and we premiered her work "at midnight I walked into the middle of the desert" at Saint Mary's Church in Harlem last fall. On today's episode, Bethany speaks with Merche Blasco, a multimedia artist and composer based in New York. Blasco designs and builds imprecise technological assemblages that catalyze embodied forms of live electroacoustic composition and new modes of listening. Through her constructed devices, she attempts to establish a more horizontal relationship with other entities, distancing herself from parameters of precision, power, and control. As an alternative form of performance, she engineers collaborative spaces with instruments that are given their own agency, in compositions where her body and the live exploration of organic materials are central elements. She has presented her performances and installations at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Sonar Festival in Barcelona, La Biennale di Venezia, NIME conferences, Tsonami International Sound Art Festival in Chile, The High Line in New York, SONIC Festival, Mapping Festival (Geneva), Queens Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Chile, among others. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Wire magazine. You can find Bethany online at: www.bethanyyounge.com You can find Merche online at: http://half-half.es/ https://soundcloud.com/mercheblasco @blasco.merche The music in this episode is all by Merche Blasco: RECONFIGURATIONS I: Conversations with Anette Shelley Hirsch – Voice Dafna Naphtali – Voice, electronics Levy Lorenzo – Percussion Dennis Sullivan – Percussion Merche Blasco – Anette Audio recording and mix: Yi-Wen Lai-Tremewan Bardenas, live performance by The Rhythm Method Leah Asher, violin Marina Kifferstein, violin Carrie Frey, viola Meaghan Burke, cello EEMF03: Rinoceronte azul Christa Robinson … Electric guitar + electric toothbrushes Alice Teyssier … Antenna and piezoelectric collar Mosa Tsay … Electric guitar + electric toothbrushes Viola Yip … Antenna and piezoelectric collar Viento y Sierra Merche Blasco - Electronics and musical saw Rehearsal saws - recorded in Cleft Ridge Span in Prospect Park Gryphon Rue - Musical saw Merche Blasco - Musical saw This week's episode was produced by Bethany Younge in collaboration with TAK Ensemble, and edited by Marina Kifferstein.