Strange Attractions 16

New music and intermedia performance works will highlight offerings of experimental intermedia art at Fine Arts Studio 677 eXperimental interMedia. Presented by Metropolitan State University’s Program in Experimental Music and Intermedia Art, the festival continues its tradition of offering cutting-edge performances in a casual, community arts setting.

The featured artists will include Andre Stephani on March 30. The trombonist-composer will present his Senior Capstone of Cuban and Latin-influenced music and cultural improvisations featuring Cuban pianist Nachito Herrera. Stephani began his musical adventures at age 14 playing his first professional gig on trombone. He spent the next 54 years playing and singing music—from a piano bar in Chicago to Don Ho’s backup band in Hawaii.

Stephani began work on his first album 10 years ago. Though he knew he wanted a Cuban salsa sound, he said he was missing the "clave," a Latin term for the pulse of Afro-Cuban music, a creative impediment that forced him to put the project on hold. His clave came a year ago in the form of Cuban pianist and one-time musical director for the great Cuban group Cubanismo, Herrera. Stephani met Herrera at a gig, and the two hit it off so well that Herrera agreed to work on Stephani’s album. Herrera ended up not only appearing on the album but also arranging and co-producing it.

Tom Kanthak will also be featured on April 6. The Metropolitan State graduate and composer/musician will bring a new collaborative work based on recent sounds and images from Japan as part of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund Teachers Program (JFMFTP). In October 2006, Kanthak traveled to Japan for three weeks as a guest of the Japanese government as part of JFMFTP. It was his intention on that trip to explore and mine the Japanese culture for unique and interesting sounds that would define his immersion in the Japanese culture. Those sounds would then become the aural score for a new music travelogue.

Strange Attractors 16 will be the first opportunity for an audience to hear Kanthak’s new music exploration. Collaborators for this project will include the visual art of Bill Jeter, a new film by Ashley Wilkes, David Means, Steve Goldstein, and other special guests.

Asteroid 2004 MN4 Ensemble will also be featured as part of the festival on April 13. In honor of Friday the 13th musicians Goldstein, Dean Granros and Means ponder the plight of the earth on April 13, 2029. Friday the 13th is supposed to be an unlucky day, the sort of day you trip on your shoe laces or lose your wallet or get bad news. But maybe it’s not so bad. Consider this: On April 13 - a Friday - 2029, millions of people are going to go outside, look up and marvel at their good luck. A point of light will be gliding across the sky, faster than many satellites, brighter than most stars. What’s so lucky about that? It’s asteroid 2004 MN4 not hitting Earth. The asteroid’s trajectory will bend approximately 28 degrees during the encounter, "a result of Earth’s gravitational pull." What will happen next is uncertain. Some newspapers have stated that the asteroid might swing around and hit Earth after all in 2035. Charts, data, drawings and visual materials will provide score materials for electric guitaurist Granros, laptop computer percussionist Goldstein and digital wind and computer musician Means.

Abdul Gindeel will be featured April 20. The graphic designer and cultural collaborator will present a Senior Capstone linking images and sounds of two of the world’s largest rivers, the Nile and Mississippi Rivers. French texts are woven into a musical collaboration featuring laptop musician Goldstein.

John Franzen will also be featured as part of the festival on April 27. The Colorado-based composer/guitarist and photographer will join Means in the world premier of "Longs Peak." Longs Peak is the tallest mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park, and forms the visual and sonic background for a collaboration between Colorado composer and former Metropolitan State faculty member Franzen and Strange Attractors producer and composer Means. Visual and sound materials were gathered on site last October and refined via Internet communication and MIDI (Music Instrument Digital Interface) signal processing to translate waveforms, shapes and colors of the Colorado Mountain into an experimental intermedia collaboration.

"Some of my ideas are based on the West, mountains and nature. I have been building samples of animals, water, even iconic Western songs like ‘Maverick,’ ‘Johnny Yuma,’ ‘Long Ranger,’ ‘High Noon,’ etcetera, into performance tools. Some other thoughts include using material from my past. Sort of a fragmented retrospective of the last 60 years—OK, the last 42 years if you include only the years that I wrote music," said Franzen. "I have sounds from the San Francisco, Minneapolis and Colorado years incorporated in samples that are playable."

"Out of Africa/Life on the Mississippi" is a collaborative performance installation by Sudanese graphic designer Gindeel and composer/sound designer Means. The project focuses on geographic, historic and cultural connections between the Nile and Mississippi Rivers basins, and features live performance calligraphy by Gindeel, music by Means and laptop computer musician Goldstein, with texts by Mark Twain, Haile Selassie, Isak Dinesen and Means, narrated by Mary Garvie and Jon Spayde.

The festival will run Fridays, March 30 – April 27, at 7 p.m. at the Fine Arts Studio, St. Paul Campus. For more information, contact David Means at (651) 793-1434 or visit http://www.geocities.com/studio677. The festival is produced and presented by the Program in Experimental Music and Intermedia Arts; Communication, Writing and Arts Department; and College of Arts and Sciences.