musiXplore

musiXplore is proud to announce a splendid lineup of performers for our season for 2014-2015. This is our third year of bringing adventurous music of all types to New Jersey. As always, most of these great musicians are natives of New Jersey, with a sprinkling of performers from the Hudson Valley and elsewhere.

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The season starts with legendary synth pioneer Don Slepian. Don is one of the early creators of what later came to be called ambient or new age music. He is best known for his recordings of “The Sea of Bliss”. In the 80’s, NPR’s “Music from the Heart of Space” used his work as a theme song. Although his current repertoire leans more toward classical music, he is doing a special concert for us to revive his original space music sounds of the 1980s.

Zinc Nine Psychdelic is a powerhouse trio of experimentalists. Kevin Norton on vibes and percussion has played with greats like Fred Frith, John Zorn and Anthony Braxton. Nick Didkovsky has studied with Pauline Oliveros, played with Fred Frith and led the Doctor Nerve band, “annihilating the boundaries between rock, metal, improvisation, jazz, and experimental music since 1983”. On top of this wildness is the electronically mutilated trumpet of Dave Ballou, who has extensive experience in both the jazz and classical worlds.

Our November show will feature Sumari. Guitarist Jack Desalvo joins percussionist Tom Cabrera and Matt Lavelle on trumpet for a bopping afternoon of free jazz. Jack is one of the principals behind avant-jazz record label Unseen Rain. Matt has played with Ornette Coleman, among many others.

We’re very fortunate to have booked world music expert Dean Poulsen for January 18, 2015. Dean received his Masters in Balinese and Javanese gamelan, then studied at the Gamelan-Academi Seni Kawaritan in Bali, Indonesia and the the Stockhausen Composition Summer Courses in Europe. He’s doing fascinating work integrating traditional acoustic instruments with electronic treatments.

Next up is Jersey City cellist and vocalist Jody Redhage. Jody is a new mother, but she’s taking time from parenthood and her busy Rose and the Nightingale quartet to play some excerpts from her experimental album “Of Minutiae and Memory”. Click on her name to hear samples of both.

Hailing from Ithaca, NY, The Electric Golem is a synthesizer duo who have been performing for years at festivals like Electro-music and the New Jersey Festival of Electronic Arts. What lifts their work out of the usual space music genre is the scoring and musical structure they give their pieces.

For our final concert of this season, Bryan Alka of Woodbury, NJ favors us with “Occultronica”, a deeply moody and moving electronica. If you like Autechre or Plaid, you’re going to love this performance.