— 9th NWEAMO International Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music

For Immediate Release

— 9th NWEAMO International Festival of Electro-Acoustic Music —

Greek Myth and Urban Legends
Athens (Greece) VJs put a new spin on the myth of Medea; DJs for the homeless mount their laptops onto shopping carts to gather unique sounds from San Diego’s inner city, and SWARMIUS conjures a new genre based on classical and speed metal.

Festival dates: Fri. Oct. 5 — Sat. Oct. 6 (2 nights, different program each night)
Venue: Smith Recital Hall
School of Music and Dance
San Diego State University
Tickets: $12 general; $8 students & seniors
Box Office: 619-594-6020
Information: 619-303-1509
Website: www.nweamo.org

“In nine years of NWEAMO no artist has ever put 3 shopping carts on the top of their equipment rider,” says Joe Waters, Artistic director of NWEAMO. “This posed an ethical dilemma: Should we attempt to acquire the shopping carts in the usual manner? Luckily Von’s came through with 3 loaners.”

NWEAMO festival seeks ways of connecting new, rebellious, controversial popular music and culture with the most ancient human rituals. This year NWEAMO looks at Greek Myths, notably the myth of Medea, enchantress and wife of Jason, in a live video opera that transplants Medea into the virtual tumult of electronic media saturation, instant global communication, and the intrigues of politics, terrorism and deceit. The greatest themes are ancient and modern. Along with this, other artists explore contemporary urban culture: the irony that makes super computer laptops cheap and available and puts them into the hands of every college student, while the shopping cart, symbol of plenty and homelessness, is the urban vehicle of necessity for the disenfranchised residents of a culture that depends on wheels. The legend of the promise of technology and the American dream.

On a parallel path, SWARMIUS makes music that takes the anger, intensity and idealism of speed metal and fuses this with classical chamber music (but a lot louder!). Is this what Beethoven would be messing around with if he was alive now?

This year NWEAMO expands to 4 cities, on consecutive weekends throughout October. The festival starts in San Diego, then moves each weekend to Boulder Colorado, Morelia Mexico, and winds up the weekend before Halloween in New York City. The programs have a bit of overlap, but mostly are unique this year, featuring a broad spectrum of styles and genres in electro-acoustic music from all over the world.

Program:

Friday, Oct. 5, 2007
• Mobile Performance Group (DeLand, Florida) with Leslie Seiters Dance
Shopping Cart DJ trio & improv. dance
• Medea Electronique (Athens, Greece): Video Opera
• SWARMIUS (San Diego): punk classical


Saturday, Oct. 6, 2007
• Noah Keesecker: urban dance video (a la Square Pusher)
• Joseph Vogel classical electronics and voice
• Synchronism Project : live film score
• SWARMIUS (San Diego) punk classical
• Fransisco Colasanto (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
• Milo Estrado: flamenco & electronics

Detail (information for each night):

Date: Friday, Oct. 5, 2007
Event: NWEAMO concert #1
Time: 8 — 9:30 PM

Artist Name: SWARMIUS
Contact: Jozefius aka Joseph Waters
Email: jwaters@josephwaters.com
Phone: 619-750-7125
Address: San Diego
Website: http://www.swarmius.com/
http://josephwaters.com/
Sound Files: http://www.myspace.com/swarmius

Title/Description: Grand Larceny: a bank heist: grab the money, race for the door, jump into getaway car, knock over fire hydrant as you tear around the corner, cops & sirens in pursuit. Based on speed metal.

Lucas — the Bringer of Light (March 21, 2007) explores the world through the senses of a 7 month-old baby. Babies have great vocals, from animal shrieks to cooing, to sounds made purely for play. The sounds are pure, honest, and vulnerable.

The other subject of this work is, paradoxically, machines, our love of them and the sounds they make. The whole enterprise of music revolves around a dependency and love of machines, whether electronic or mechanical. Machines ARE us — they are fingers and feet. They sing to us and soothe us. We bathe in their voices — the urban soundscape is a aural orgy of unpoliced whirring, growling, revving, purring — some call it noise pollution — most do not think about it — it is said that the wooshing of liquids in the womb sounds like a vacuum cleaner.

Biography: Comprised of SAXIMUS (saxophone), Fiddlus el Gato (violin), Crotalius Redfoot (percussion) and composer/laptop performer Jozefius Vaatierz Rattus, the quartet is committed to creating contemporary classical music with beats in streets, clubs, and bedrooms.

Contemporary African-American Music

SAXIMUS, in addition to having impeccable chops as an avant garde classical performer, also has a deep connection and knowledge of contemporary African-American music, electronica, punk and contemporary rock. He also played bass in a punk band for several years as a teenager, and this music had a formative effect on his tastes and attitudes as a mature musician.

Equally important to his performing style are the years when he was sponsored as an amateur skateboarder. "Being a skateboarder, has taught me that you have to have balls, you have to go for it. If you are speeding across a parking lot, about to kickflip-ollie down a set of 15 stairs, you have a choice to make. Either you pull the trick or you're going to end up bloody as hell, getting stitches and picking at scabs for the next three weeks. I keep the same mentality now when performing."

The youngest members of the group, both barely thirty, are SAXIMUS (aka Todd Rewoldt) and Fiddlus el Gato (Felix Olschofka). SAXIMUS, the quartets' saxophonist, completed his Doctorate in Saxophone performance at the tender young age of 26 at the prestigious Eastman School of Music.

Fiddlus el Gato was a recording artist at the age of fourteen and was a star at the renowned Berliner Hochschule für Musik (Germany's best conservatory). He performed for the president of Germany at age nineteen, and concertized widely across Europe as a teenage prodigy.

He said, "Most of my friends are not musicians – they are fun, active, modern young professionals from all over the world. They love classical music intensely but also want new music in a language that speaks to our time, our interests, our passions. I want to make that music for them!"

Towering Presence

At six-feet and three-inches tall, Fiddlus el Gato is a towering presence with huge hands that enfold his fragile, priceless violin.

According to SAXIMUS: Fiddlus has that whole European look going for him. You know, the 'fan' hairstyle, the tight jeans, and that lovely grin, with a laugh just behind the eyes. Each of us has a wild side. For Fiddlus this emerges when he is performing. Onstage he is a like a giant cat — prowling around the stage, making the violin sing, purr and growl, ready to pounce.

Fiddlus el Gato continues to play the great classics with orchestras throughout the world, and now is also focusing on the performance of contemporary literature, in particular, the music of SWARMIUS composer Jozefius Vaatierz Rattus (aka Joseph Waters). Jozefius is a member of the first generation of classical composers who grew up playing in rock bands, studied at Yale and has worked to create a startling musical brew that juxtaposes such odd bedfellows as hip-hop and Mahler, for example.

"I'm not interested in making simple, or, 'dumbed-down' music for the masses. On the contrary, I think in general people are smart, that the musical choices they make are important and worthy of serious consideration. I love classical music, and realize that for it to remain healthy it must connect in the most vital way with the music that most people listen to in their daily lives and that speaks to them and that they care about. I also love this music — it is where I came from and it resides deep in my gut.

Frequent Special Guest

Crotalius Red Foot (aka Joel Bluestone) was tapping things before he could walk, maintains a rigorous performance schedule of horse racing, rock drumming & head-banging. According to Crotalius, "I'm just a kid with two sticks who likes to party and extract sound from anything that does not protest too loudly." Crotalius' unique flair provides SWARMIUS with a blast of rhythmic color.

Traveling the World

SWARMIUS plays at diverse venues across the planet in places such as Bonn, Germany, Ljubljana, Slovenia, the Veneto Jazz Festival in Venice, Italy, rave club Rivolta in Marghera, Italy, Flykingen in Stockholm, Berlin, Morelia, San Diego and New York City.

They are working on their first CD/DVD release, due out in early 2008.


Artist: Medea Electronique

Contact: Emmanuil Manousakis
Email: manolis.manousakis@yahoo.com
Phone: 011306978118448
Address: Athens, Greece
Website: http://medea-electronique@blogspot.com

Title/Description: Peirama 1 — based on a contemporary reading of the Myth of Medea. The inner voice of Medea, is the human conscience trying to change the course of the events and prevent murder.

Medea figures in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts. Medea is known in most stories as an enchantress and wife of Jason. She is the granddaughter of the sun god Helios and a niece of the witch Circe.

This modern day Medea has memories of televised wars, Reuters’ pictures in her mind. Recorded, radiophone sounds are reproduced in parallel to her inner voice, making the latter indiscernible. Bits of Audiovisual information fly around her head affecting her judgment.

The play relies on Interactive technology to create a dynamic environment where visual and sonic data of the performance are continuously processed and re-imported into the play. The audience affects the play by commenting with electronic sensors. The creation of this virtual environment is achieved through use of multiple video screens, scattered around the audience, so that the projected action the engulfs the audience. The audience interacts with his virtual environment, co-directing the play.
s
Biography: Medea Electronique, based in Athens, Greece, founded 2006, is composer Manolis Manousakis, Panagiotis Tsagarakis (computer programming, interactive technology) and Yannis Lolis (video art and computer animation).


Artist: Noah Keesecker
Contact: Noah Keesecker
Email: n@noahkeesecker.com
Phone: 612-360-8360
Address: Minneapolis, MN
Website: http://www.noahkeesecker.com

Tonegoblin (2007) is a complex layering of many extremely intricate surfaces into a hyper-surface experience that disregards 'deep' in favor of an obsessively precise directness. The result is simultaneously startling, absurd, funny, intense and danceable.

Biography: Noah Keesecker is a multi-disciplinary artist, primarily working in sound. His interests span into the realm of video, installation, text and performance art.

Artist: Mobile Performance Group
Contact: Nathan Wolek
Email: nathan@lowkeydigitalstudio.com
Phone: 386.848.2551
Website: http://www.mobileperformancegroup.com

Description: With laptops and video projectors mounted on shopping carts and powered by marine batteries, Mobile Performance Group (MPG) presents mobile and improvised audiovisual performances using materials gathered specifically from the festival location. During the day, MPG collects sounds & images from sites surrounding the venue using audio & video recording equipment, in addition to other small found objects. At night, MPG improvises live using custom software that enables the performers to manipulate these materials in real-time. Using modified shopping carts, MPG is able to move around the city and locate public spaces in which the group can present their unique brand of audiovisual performance.

Biography: Based in Florida, Mobile Performance Group (MPG) is a collective of new media artists interested in finding new ways to present art and music outside of traditional venues. MPG disseminates their work by using automobiles, video projection, cell phones, FM transmission, wireless hotspots, and any other technologies that allow artist to engage the public. The Group was founded by Matt Roberts and is part of Stetson University’s Digital Art program.



Date: Saturday, Oct. 6, 2007
Event: NWEAMO concert #2
Time: 8 — 9:30 PM

Artist: Joseph Vogel
Contact: Joseph Vogel
Email: joseph.m.vogel@gmail.com
Phone: 612-825-1899
Address: Minneapolis, MN
Website: http://www.abbiebetinis.com

Title/Description: Dancing Light uses text to create a sonic landscape. The melody was written as a text painting with its accompanying material reinforcing these ideas. The tape part consists of vocal material and a melody sung by a female vocalist that I digitally manipulated. The work is partly an exploration of what the female voice is capable of. The performer here is given a lot of freedom, within certain guides posts, to shape her part as she sees fit.


Artist: Synchronism Project
Contact: Ross Karre & William Brent
Email: ross.karre@gmail.com
Phone: 440 935 2489
Address: San Diego, CA
Website: http://www.synchronismproject.com

Title/Description: Dziga Vertov makes clear his intentions of a "total separation from the language of theatre and literature" in his 1929 formalist masterpiece, the Man with a Movie Camera. As one of the first examples of cinema verite', Man with the Movie Camera seeks to capture life through the eye of the camera; with no narrative, plot, or scenario. Ross Karre and William Brent's live score strives to emphasize the formalist spirit of this pre-WWII film with the sounds of the 21st century: percussion and electronics. With a mesmerizing and meticulous musical structure predicated on a synchronized one-note-per-cut formal system, the live score transports the audience member into the intricate world of Dziga Vertov’s “Kino-eye”.

Biography: Ross Karre has presented video and percussion works in the art galleries and performance halls throughout the USA & Europe. He has worked with legendary music figures Pierre Boulez,SO percussion, Simon Rattle, Steven Schick, Meredith Monk and Joan Tower.

William Brent has worked with Fred Frith, Alvin Curran, and Pauline Oliveros.



Artist Name: Genre?
Contact: Milo Estrada
Email: agroelectronic@yahoo.com
Phone: 541-385-4902
Address: Bend, OR
Website: http://www.genre.altpro.net

Biography: Milo Estrada is a traditional Flamenco guitarist who incorporates elements of Alternative, Industrial, Electronic, Edgy, etc. Genre? has heavy Synth lines, Intricate guitar, driving drum beats, and smooth melodic vocal.



Artist Name: SWARMIUS
Contact: Joseph Waters
Email: jwaters@josephwaters.com
Phone: 619-750-7125
Address: San Diego
Website: http://www.swarmius.com/

Title/Description: Lucas — the Bringer of Light (March 21, 2007) explores, mainly, the world as perceived through the senses of a 7 month-old baby.. The infant expresses itself with an enormous range of vocalisms, from animal shrieks to soothing cooing, to vocal sounds made purely for experimentation. The sounds are pure, unbiased, capable only of honesty, dependent, fragile and vulnerable.

The other subject of this work is, paradoxically, machines, or more precisely our love of them and affection for them and the sounds they make. The whole enterprise of music revolves around a dependency and love of machines, whether electronic or mechanical. Machines ARE us — they are fingers and feet. They sing to us and soothe us. We bathe in their voices — the urban soundscape is a aural orgy of unpoliced whirring, growling, revving, purring — some call it noise pollution — most do not think about it — it is said that the wooshing of liquids in the womb sounds like a vacuum cleaner.

Biography: Comprised of SAXIMUS (saxophone), Fiddlus el Gato (violin), and composer/laptop performer Jozefius Vaatierz Rattus, the trio is committed to creating a contemporary classical music and contemporary dance that reflects and connects to the music in the streets, clubs, and bedrooms of today's world. Each of SWARMIUS' members is a virtuoso in his own right.

The youngest members of the group, both barely thirty, are SAXIMUS (aka Todd Rewoldt) and Fiddlus el Gato (Felix Olschofka). SAXIMUS, the quartets' saxophonist, completed his Doctorate in Saxophone performance at the tender young age of 26 at the prestigious Eastman School of Music.

Fiddlus el Gato was a recording artist at the age of fourteen and was a star at the renowned Berliner Hochschule für Musik (Germany's best conservatory). He performed for the president of Germany at age nineteen, and concertized widely across Europe as a teenage prodigy.

He said, "Most of my friends are not musicians – they are fun, active, modern young professionals from all over the world. They love classical music intensely but also want new music in a language that speaks to our time, our interests, our passions. I want to make that music for them!"

Towering Presence

At six-feet and three-inches tall, Fiddlus el Gato is a towering presence with huge hands that enfold his fragile, priceless violin.

According to SAXIMUS: Fiddlus has that whole European look going for him. You know, the 'fan' hairstyle, the tight jeans, and that lovely grin, with a laugh just behind the eyes. Each of us has a wild side. For Fiddlus this emerges when he is performing. Onstage he is a like a giant cat — prowling around the stage, making the violin sing, purr and growl, ready to pounce.

Fiddlus el Gato continues to play the great classics with orchestras throughout the world, and now is also focusing on the performance of contemporary literature, in particular, the music of SWARMIUS composer Jozefius Vaatierz Rattus (aka Joseph Waters). Jozefius is a member of the first generation of classical composers who grew up playing in rock bands, studied at Yale and has worked to create a startling musical brew that juxtaposes such odd bedfellows as hip-hop and Mahler, for example.

"I'm not interested in making simple, or, 'dumbed-down' music for the masses. On the contrary, I think in general people are smart, that the musical choices they make are important and worthy of serious consideration. I love classical music, and realize that for it to remain healthy it must connect in the most vital way with the music that most people listen to in their daily lives and that speaks to them and that they care about. I also love this music — it is where I came from and it resides deep in my gut.

Contemporary African-American Music

SAXIMUS, in addition to having impeccable chops as an avant garde classical performer, also has a deep connection and knowledge of contemporary African-American music, electronica, punk and contemporary rock. He also played bass in a punk band for several years as a teenager, and this music had a formative effect on his tastes and attitudes as a mature musician.

Equally important to his performing style are the years when he was sponsored as an amateur skateboarder. "Being a skateboarder, has taught me that you have to have balls, you have to go for it. If you are speeding across a parking lot, about to kickflip-ollie down a set of 15 stairs, you have a choice to make. Either you pull the trick or you're going to end up bloody as hell, getting stitches and picking at scabs for the next three weeks. I keep the same mentality now when performing."

Frequent Special Guest

Crotalius Red Foot (aka Joel Bluestone) was tapping things before he could walk, maintains a rigorous performance schedule of horse racing, rock drumming & head-banging. According to Crotalius, "I'm just a kid with two sticks who likes to party and extract sound from anything that does not protest too loudly." Crotalius' unique flair provides SWARMIUS with a blast of rhythmic color.

Traveling the World

SWARMIUS plays at diverse venues across the planet in places such as Bonn, Germany, Ljubljana, Slovenia, the Veneto Jazz Festival in Venice, Italy, rave club Rivolta in Marghera, Italy, Flykingen in Stockholm, Berlin, Morelia, San Diego and New York City.

They are working on their first CD/DVD release, due out in early 2008.