CREATIVE MUSIC SERIES

locationthe luggage storedateThursday, May 14 2009 8:00 PM

ALL AGES WELCOME, $6-10 SLIDING SCALE, NO ONE REFUSED FOR LACK OF FUNDS

Outsound Presents
8pm: Forms of Things Unknown
9pm: Thea Farhadian, laptop & Tom Bickley, recorder

Forms
Of Things Unknown is an acoustic/electronic project dedicated to pan-idiomatic explorations beyond the pale of sectarian orthodoxies, being the brainchild and primary creative enterprise of San Francisco composer/multi-instrumentalist Ferrara Brain Pan.

Ferrara
Brain Pan (birthname Steven Hitchcock) began his formal musical training on the flute as a teenager in the 1970s, later on as an adult extending his instrumental abilities to include other Western orchestral woodwinds such as saxophone, bass clarinet and recorder. A fascination with musical exotica and alternate tonalities led him to explore various ethnic wind instruments including the Australian aboriginal didjeridu, shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute), and the kangling (a ritual Tibetan trumpet made from a human thighbone), among others. The subsequent addition of harmonium, bowed psaltery, glockenspiel, percussion, and assorted electronics ranging from vintage oscillators and shortwave radio to digital signal processors led to a further expanded instrumental palette for Forms Of Things Unknown.

Thea Farhadian
is an interdisciplinary artist and performer based in the Bay Area. Her work has been seen internationally at venues which include the Meridian Gallery in San Francisco, the Center for Experimental Art and the Aram Kachaturyan Museum in Yerevan, Armenia, the Alternative Museum and Issue Project Room in New York City, Raumschiff Zitrone in Berlin, and the International Women™s Electroacoustic Listening Room Project in
Amsterdam and Los Angeles. In 2002, she co-founded the Armenian Film Festival in New York City and currently is one of the curators for the film festival in San Francisco.

Thea studied Arabic classical music in New York City and in Cairo, Egypt. She has an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from San Francisco State and an M.F.A. in Electronic Music at Mills College. In 2002, Thea co-founded the Armenian Film Festival in New York City and currently is one of the curators for the film festival in San Francisco.

She is currently is a lecturer in the Art Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Tom Bickley
listens to the world always hoping to hear more and more fully. He plays and teaches recorder, and composes and performs using recorders, electronics and voice. He grew up in the semitropical soundscape of Houston, sojourned in Washington, DC (studying music, religion, and information science) and came to the Bay Area as a composer in residence at Mills College. In Berkeley he lives in Berkeley and sings at Incarnation Priory (an Episcopal Benedictine community), teaches music privately and in workshops and at the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training, and teaches on the library faculty at Cal State University East Bay. He plays with Gusty Winds May Exist (with shakuhachi player Nancy Beckman) and with Three Trapped Tigers (with recorder player David Barnett), and directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir
(large choral ensemble devoted to performance of experimental music)  His principal teachers were Pauline Oliveros, Ruth Steiner, and Scott Reiss. His work is available on CD on Quarterstick and Metatron Press. Musical influences in his life include Gregorian chant, Landini, Lou Harrison, John Cage, John Coltrane, and the natural environment.