Antarctica: Music from the Ice album released!

I'm thrilled to announce that Antarctica: Music from the Ice is now available on CD and as a digital download from Other Minds Records. 

In the austral summer of 2008-2009 I traveled to Palmer Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula as a participant in the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. During my explorations around the station I made field recordings of ice, water, wind, and wildlife. I also gathered (with the proper permits) rocks, shells, and penguin bones, which I later fashioned into the one-of-kind, sculptural instruments featured on this album. These sound sources are woven together into eight compositions about the Antarctic Peninsula's dynamic environments and ecosystems. 

You’ll hear bowed penguin bones howl along with Antarctic wind, icicles dripping in gamelan-like textures then shattering amongst calving glaciers, and kelp flutes duetting with the gentle snores of napping elephant seals. In this music I have sought to embody the joy and wonder I experienced in Antarctica. So many fascinating sounds! So much beauty! Stories of climate change on the western Antarctic Peninsula are also knitted into these compositions, as there was no way to make music about this place without reflecting on the profound transformations underway there. Even back in 2009, the effects of warming in the region were obvious and impossible to ignore: new islands unveiled by retreating glaciers, increasing populations of sub-Antarctic seals and penguins, moss and grass growing in areas previously buried under ice. I have embedded these stories in the music via instrumentation, playing techniques, melodies, rhythms, and organizational structures. 

Wandering around wind-whipped islands in search of howling seals, being lowered into glacial crevasses to record melting ice, experimenting with penguin bone playing techniques in my studio, fabricating icicles in my freezer, performing live on stage with limpet shells and penguin nesting stones - the process of creating this album has been a long, crazy, magical ride. I’m incredibly thankful to the many, many people and organizations that have supported this project over the years. I’m also honored that the album is included in Bandcamp’s Best Contemporary Classical Releases June 2022. 

I hope you’ll enjoy the sonic journey.

Antarctica: Music from the Ice is available from Other Minds Records via Bandcamp. The CD is also available from Soundohm in Europe. The album is accompanied a 28-page booklet containing photos, an essay about the project as a whole, and detailed liner notes for each individual piece. Graphic design was done by my Antarctic roommate and co-adventurer, visual artist Oona Stern. 

Chattermarks album re-released on Bandcamp

Just a quick note that I have re-released Chattermarks: Field Recordings from Palmer Station, Antarctica. It is now available from Bandcamp as a digital download or on CD. This makes the album more easily accessible to all (you can preview complete tracks), and I will get a better percentage of the sales (iTunes, Amazon, etc. take around a 30% share). 

Enjoy the penguins, seals, ice, and wind. Happy listening!

Environmental Sonic Art Exhibition at Western Carolina University

I am proud to have some of my Antarctic work on display in Resounding Change: Sonic Art and the Environment, an exciting exhibition that is up this fall in the Fine Art Museum at Western Carolina University in Cullowee, NC. The exhibition features contemporary artists who explore environmental issues through sound, and includes works by Matthew Burtner, Raven Chacon, Timothy M. Collins & Reiko Goto Collins, Gordon Hampton, Cheryl E. Leonard, Katie Paterson, Andrea Polli, and Lee Weisert. Audio, graphic scores, and penguin bone instruments from my compositions Lullaby for E Seals and White on White are on display. The exhibition runs August 20 - December 6, 2019. 

Watershed - New Album Now Available!

New year, new album!!! 

I’m very pleased to announce the release of Watershed - available now via Bandcamp as a digital download or on CD. You can also get it from iTunes or CD Baby. Although not a collection of Antarctic compositions (that album is next on my to-do list, I promise!), this album includes plenty of ice sounds. Most notably, the entire piece Frozen Over is built on my Yosemite frozen lake field recordings (here is the post I wrote about recording these unearthly sounds).

Watershed contains three compositions (Confluences, Frozen Over, and Watershed) that explore water in California. Intertwining audio field recordings with sounds performed on natural materials, glass, and metal, these pieces feature the singular voices, rhythms, and sonic textures of water and ice, while reflecting on tough issues surrounding water in California, such as drought, flooding, and sea level rise. Thus, the album encompasses both my delight in discovering and creating with unique, surprising, and intricate sounds, and my concern for the future of our planet's environments and ecosystems. Each composition develops from a foundation of field recordings. Sounds from oceans, estuaries, lakes, streams, rivers, and caves are highlighted, including Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge, Windansea Beach, Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, and Lower Cathedral Lake and Tenaya Lake in Yosemite National Park. Emerging from these ambiences, are sounds I played on glass, driftwood, stones, shells, crab claws, bird bones, feathers, kelp flutes, Japanese bowl gongs, Nepalese bells, water, and sand. 

Confluences was originally created as an interactive sound/sculpture installation commissioned by the La Jolla Historical Society. In it, I wanted to give voice to the factors that produce extreme high sea level events and to consider vanishing coastal sites and sounds. Frozen Over emerged out of the drought winter of 2011-12, when I was able to record unusual sounds produced by frozen lakes in the high country of Yosemite National Park. Watershed was inspired by hydrology and California landscapes, and considers the journeys of water from precipitation into streams, rivers, lakes, aquifers, and the sea. Audiophiles please note: these pieces are also available from Bandcamp as high definition audio (up to 96Khz, 24 bit). The lovely CD cover art is by Rebecca Haseltine.

I hope you enjoy my latest musical offering. More releases are in the works for later in 2019.

Polar Music Performance September 20 in Brooklyn, NY

Still from Oona Stern's video for Glugge

I'm looking forward to performing my Arctic and Antarctic compositions in Brooklyn next month as part of the Musical Ecologies Series. I don't get out to perform on the East Coast often, so if you are in the area come check out this great series and see/hear my penguin bone instruments live!

In other news, I've been very busy in the studio over the past year or so and am finally almost finished mixing down the studio recordings of my Antarctic pieces. I plan to release them soon! Additionally I'm working on an album of music about water and climate change in California, and after that will come an album of Arctic music.


THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 20, 2018, 8:00 PM, $10

CHERYL E. LEONARD: Music from the Ice
 
The Old Stone House

in Washington Park, 3rd Street & 5th Avenue
Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY – Map
718-768-3195


The 2018-19 season of Musical Ecologies opens Thursday September 20 with San Francisco-based composer, performer, and instrument-builder Cheryl E. Leonard. Making a rare New York appearance, Leonard will present a set of music that investigates how climate change is transforming polar environments and ecosystems. Performing with an array of amplified stones, wood, water, sand, seaweed, shells, and bones, in combination with field recordings of natural soundscapes, she will perform works from Antarctica: Music from the Ice, a series of compositions developed from her experiences on the Antarctic Peninsula in 2008-2009 as a grantee of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. Also included will be music inspired by a 2011 residency in Svalbard, an archipelago in the High Arctic north of mainland Norway. Her performance will be accompanied by videos from visual artists Oona Stern (Brooklyn) and Genevieve Swifte (Australia). The evening will begin with a conversation hosted by series curator Dan Joseph.
Now it its sixth season, Musical Ecologies is a monthly symposium on music and sound held at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Curated and hosted by composer Dan Joseph, each event typically focuses on a single artist who presents a work or project either in the form of a talk or lecture, a multimedia presentation, a performance, or combination thereof. Each presentation is preceded by an extended conversation with the curator and audience.

Polar Soundscapes concert in the San Francisco Chronicle

A very nice article about my polar music and upcoming May 11th concert was published in the San Francisco Chronicle last week. Check it out!

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Polar-Soundscape-gives-chills-to-its-7378891.php

If you are planning on coming to this concert I highly recommend purchasing advance tickets and arriving early to get a good seat. The show is likely to sell out. You can buy tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-nature-of-music-polar-soundscapes-tickets-19827278925

And now, back to rehearsing with the ice and penguin bones...

Polar Soundscapes Concert May 11

Save the date! I've got a concert of polar music coming up on May 11 in Berkeley, California. This show will feature Meltwater, an Antarctic composition of mine which uses icicles "live" on stage, and several works with videos by visual artists Oona Stern and Genevieve Swifte.

WEDNESDAY MAY 11, 2016

7:30pm, $15 general, $12 students and teachers, $5 kids 12 and under
Advance tickets available here

David Brower Center
2150 Allston Way
Berkeley, CA 94704

POLAR SOUNDSCAPES
In this closing event for the Vanishing Ice exhibition, Other Minds and the Brower Center present composer, performer, and instrument-builder Cheryl E. Leonard, who will create a concert using Arctic and Antarctic field recordings and natural-object instruments including penguin bones, dried seaweed, ice, and seashells. Leonard, with Phillip Greenlief, will perform works about polar environments and climate change including Meltwater, a delicate and innovative composition produced with icicles. A post-concert Q&A will be hosted by Charles Amirkhanian.

On the radio tonight

Tonight, starting at 8:30pm PST, I'll be on the air at KALW (91.7 FM in San Francisco), talking about my music and natural-object instruments. I'll play some examples of my Antarctic and Arctic compositions and perhaps something brand new from my recent trip to Australia. Tune in if you can!

Antarctic Works in Tempe, AZ and Santa Cruz, CA

Next week I'll be out in toasty Tempe, Arizona for the Balance-Unbalance Conference, exploring intersections between nature, art, science, new technologies, aid agencies and society.

I'm very pleased to be performing at the conference on Sunday in Sonic Reckonings, a 60-minute concert of contemporary music about Antarctica. The program includes live performances by Doug Quin, Jay Needham, and myself, as well as a selection of outstanding works for tape by some of the world’s leading “polar” sound artists, including Philip Samartzis and Lawrence English. The performance will include a special edition of program notes authored by music theorist and musicologist Dr. Carolyn Philpott.

If you are in the area don't miss this show!


SUNDAY, MARCH 29, 2015
12:15pm-1:15pm  

Balance Unbalance Conference: Water, Climate and Place 
Stauffer B111, Arizona State University 
950 S. Forest Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281  

SONIC RECKONINGS CONCERT 
Musical works about Antarctica and climate change by Lawrence English, Cheryl E. Leonard, Jay Needham, Phillip Samartis, Douglas Quinn. Live performances by Cheryl E. Leonard, Jay Needham, and Douglas Quinn.

Info on conference registration, and single day/keynote events admission

Fellow Antarctican Oona Stern and I also have a video and music piece entitled Southern Ocean currently on display in the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History in their unique Everybody's Ocean exhibition. Our piece is among the video pieces that cycle through on a flat screen monitor on the left side of the gallery as you enter. 


ON VIEW THROUGH APRIL 19, 2015 

Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History
705 Front Street
Santa Cruz, CA

Everybody's Ocean Exhibition
A constantly evolving exhibition of artworks about the ocean featuring both crowd-sourced and curated pieces. Cheryl Leonard and Oona Stern's music and video piece Southern Ocean is included in Wave II of the exhibition.

February Performances in Oakland, CA and Boulder, CO

This month I'm excited to be performing polar music and video works in California and Colorado, including a piece inspired by the Southern Ocean (which encircles Antarctica). The show in Colorado will be streaming live, so you can watch it from anywhere with internet!

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 8, 2015
8-9 pm, free

Temescal Art Center
511 48th Street (at Telegraph)
Oakland, CA 

Composer, musician, and instrument builder Cheryl Leonard will present four works about water created in collaboration with visual artists Rebecca Haseltine and Oona Stern. Inspired by hydrology, aquifers, and California landscapes, Watershed combines field recordings from caves, rivers and oceans with sounds played live on water, glass, shells, kelp, and sand. Frozen Over is based on aural and visual phenomena from frozen lakes, and features recordings of flanging, thumping, and cracking lakes in Yosemite National Park. Rebecca Haseltine will create live video for these two pieces using natural objects, drawing, pouring, and painting. Southern Ocean and Glugge are shorter works about the polar oceans that Leonard has developed with Brooklyn-based Oona Stern. Merging audio recordings and video footage collected in the Arctic and Antarctic with live sounds from natural objects, these pieces reflect on climate change at the ends of the earth.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 25, 2015
7:30pm (Mountain Standard Time), free
live streaming at music.colorado.edu/live

ATLAS Black Box Theater
Level 2B, Roser ATLAS Building
1125 18th Street
University of Colorado Boulder
Boulder, CO

Pendulum New Music Concert Series
Music and multimedia works by Nick Balderston, Aidan Patrick Cook, Hugh Lobel, JP Merz, and the final round of the 64-Bit E-Music Competition. Cheryl Leonard will perform Southern Ocean and Glugge, two pieces about climate change in the polar oceans with videos by visual artist (and fellow Antarctican) Oona Stern.

Ablation Zone in the San Francisco Tape Music Festival Jan 10th

The Marr Ice Piedmont, Anvers Island, Antarctica

This Saturday January 10th my Antarctic piece, Ablation Zone, will be played in the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, America's only festival devoted to the performance of audio works projected in three-dimensional space. This year the festival features four distinct concerts of classic audio art and new fixed media compositions by 32 local and international composers. Hear members of the SF Tape Music Collective, along with guest composers, shape the sound live over a pristine surround system consisting of 16 high-end loudspeakers while the audience is seated in complete darkness. It's a unique opportunity to experience music forming - literally - around you.

My piece, Ablation Zone, is crafted from field recordings of the Marr Ice Piedmont (the massive glacier that enshrouds most of Anvers Island) plus sounds produced on Adélie penguin vertebrae and nesting stones. Like most glaciers along the Western Antarctica Peninsula, the Marr is shrinking, and behind Palmer Station the ice has retreated more than 1500 feet over the last 50 years. The "ablation zone" of a glacier is the area below a certain elevation where there is a net loss of ice mass due to melting, evaporation, sublimination, calving, wind scouring, and so forth. Within the Marr's ablation zone I collected field recordings of meltwater streams and crevasses full of icicles. In the ocean near the Marr's terminal ice cliffs I recorded icebergs and brash ice that it had jettisoned.

The Marr produced a beguiling array of unique sounds. Each meltwater stream bubbled, gurgled, or sputtered it's own rhythms and melodies, sometimes sounding like electronics or machinery. Icicles dripped the intricate layers of gamalan songs. Icebergs crackled and snapped like giant pop-rocks, or contained large cavities in which waves resonated. To my field recordings, full of motion and insistent energy, I added the subtle sound of polished penguin nesting stones rubbing together, and otherworldly voices produced by bowing Adélie penguin vertebrae.

For this show I won't be playing any instruments live, but I will be running the mixing board and shaping how my piece is dispersed amongst the 16 loudspeakers that surround the audience. It should be cool (pardon the pun please)!

Antarctic Call and Response Show Nov 18

Tomorrow I'll be giving an Antarctic talk and performing Antarctic music at the Emerald Tablet in North Beach, San Francisco. Come check it out!


TUESDAY NOVEMBER 18, 2014
7:30pm, $5-10 suggested donation

The Emerald Tablet
80 Fresno Street
San Francisco, CA

Call and Response
Cheryl E. Leonard speaks about her project Antarctica: Music from the Ice, and performs a short solo set. Plus a group improvisation by Sheila Bosco, Jesse Burson, Kristina Dutton and Cheryl Leonard.

Polar Oceans Multimedia Performance July 12

In just a few short weeks visual artist Oona Stern and I will perform four music/video pieces inspired by the Arctic Ocean and the Southern Ocean in the Soundwave Festival in San Francisco. Two of the pieces, including one about walruses(!), will be world premieres. I'll be making music with amplified sand, rocks, kelp, penguin bones, and oyster shells, some of which are originally from the polar regions. Fabulous musician Phillip Greenlief will be joining me to play some new "Kelpinets" plus other found natural objects. Furthermore we will have a small iceberg on stage.  Don't miss this one!

Please note: Soundwave Festival events sometimes sell out so I recommend buying advance tickets for this show or arriving early on the day of the concert.



SATURDAY JULY 12, 2014
8pm, $15 general, $10 students/seniors/underemployed

Intersection for the Arts
925 Mission Street #109
San Francisco, CA 94103

THE ASTONISHING SEA - An audio-visual performance event by Cheryl E. Leonard and Oona Stern, Mem1 and Elia Vargas

Out beyond our sights and minds comes The Astonishing Sea. Special sound and music performances reveal hidden worlds happening on our water planet. Music duo Mem1 performs ‘Mascaret’, featuring one of North America’s few tidal bores where incoming tides travel against the river’s current. Sound artist Cheryl E. Leonard and visual artist Oona Stern with guest musician Philip Greenlief return from ‘The Polar Oceans’ to weave tales with sounds from natural-object instruments including bones, shells, rocks and kelp, interspersing field recordings and videos from the Arctic and Antarctic that reveal alarming climate change; and artist Elia Vargas conjures ‘Liquid Landscapes,’ a performance installation where audiences walk through projected mist and sound that meld the digital and the natural, and water and light, while confronting profound ideas about our future technological ecosystems in comparison to our natural world. Note: Guests are asked to bring a plant, to take part in ‘Liquid Landscapes.’

More info and advance tickets available at http://www.soundwavesf.com/6/july12/

Concert, Lecture and Lab April 16-18 in Milwaukee

Next week I'm heading to Milwaukee to be a guest artist at the University of Wisconsin. I'll be doing a concert, giving a lecture/slideshow, and holding "lab" hours where you can try playing my instruments or bring your own found objects to experiment with. My performance will feature the premiere of a brand new video/music work about the thawing of the Arctic Ocean created in collaboration with visual artist (and fellow polar adventurer) Oona Stern.

Come on by if you are in the area. All three of these events are free!

WEDNESDAY APRIL 16, 2014
7 pm, free

Studio 254, Mitchell Hall
3203 N Downer Ave
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53211

Polar Music Concert
Cheryl E. Leonard presents music and multimedia works inspired by polar environments and ecosystems. Leonard will play natural-object instruments made from shells, bones, kelp, driftwood, and stones, in combination with field recordings collected in Antarctica and Svalbard. The concert will include video/music works created in collaboration with visual artists Oona Stern (Brooklyn, NY) and Genevieve Swifte (Canberra, Australia).

 
THURSDAY APRIL 17, 2014
4-6 pm, free

American Geographical Society Library
3rd Floor, East Wing, UWM's Golda Meir Library
2220 E Hartford Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53211

Music from High Latitudes Lecture
Cheryl E. Leonard will share stories, images, sounds, and music from her polar music projects, discuss what its like to record audio at the ends of the earth, and demonstrate several of her instruments made with natural objects like penguin bones, shells, and rocks. Audience Q&A to follow.

 

   
FRIDAY APRIL 18, 2014
2-5 pm, free

Kenilworth Square Room 416
1925 E. Kenilworth Place
Milwaukee, WI 53202

Tinkerer's Lab
Come try your hand at making sounds with found objects! Cheryl E. Leonard will have an array of microphones and playing implements available for you to experiment with. Play around with underwater and contact microphones. Try bowing kitchen bowls or your desk lamp. Find out what happens when you amplify a rock and turn it up to 11. Bring your own materials to experiment with, or try out some of Cheryl's natural-object instruments, including ones made with penguin bones and shells from Antarctica.

Polar Music this Friday, January 10

This coming Friday, January 10th, I'll be performing a set of compositions inspired by climate change in the polar regions. The concert will include several of my Antarctic works as well as the premiere of a new piece for kelp flutes, water, Arctic stones, and recordings I made in my ship's portholes while sailing around Svalbard in 2011.

FRIDAY JANUARY 10, 2014
8pm, $10-$15 suggested donation

Turquoise Yantra Grotto
32 Turquoise Way
San Francisco, CA

Fire and Ice: New Music at Extreme Temperatures
Conceptual sound artist Todd Lerew presents a work of thermoacoustics on his quartz test tube organ. Cheryl E. Leonard performs music about climate change in the polar regions including pieces that explore shrinking sea ice, the collapse of Adélie penguin populations, changing weather patterns, and melting tidewater glaciers.

Meridian Gallery Concert, Dec 11

My next performance featuring Antarctic compositions will be this coming Wednesday evening at Meridian Gallery in San Francisco...

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2013
7:30pm, $10 general, $8 students/seniors

Meridian Gallery
535 Powell Street
San Francisco, CA

Meridian Music: Composers in Performance
Cheryl Leonard presents music and multimedia works inspired by environments and ecosystems in the polar regions. The evening will include the premiere of Ablation Zone, a new composition about Antarctica's melting glaciers and video/music collaborations with Oona Stern and Genevieve Swifte.


And, if you can't make the Meridian show, next month I'll be performing again in San Francisco...

FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2014
8pm, $10-15 suggested donation

Turquoise Yantra Grotto
32 Turquoise Way
San Francisco, CA

Fire and Ice: New Music at Extreme Temperatures
Conceptual sound artist Todd Lerew presents a work of thermoacoustics on his quartz test tube organ. Cheryl Leonard performs a set of music connected to climate change in the polar regions including pieces that explore shrinking sea ice, the collapse of Adélie penguin populations, changing weather patterns, and melting tidewater glaciers.

New Instrument

My latest Antarctic musical instrument, constructed out of driftwood, dried kelp, and penguin vertebrae, is titled Last Flight of the Adélies. To me, the elegant Adélie vertebrae looked like miniscule spaceships, or, seen from another angle, tiny white birds in flight. Thus I mounted the bones in a flock/formation, with swirly, swooping kelp tracing the flight paths of each individual bird/ship. The name of the instrument is a reference to the collapse of Adélie penguin colonies near Palmer Station, plus I like the idea of flightless (yes, I know they are phenomenal underwater "flyers") penguins returning to the sky.

The instrument will be amplified via a contact mic attached to the wood base and played by bowing, tapping, and rubbing the bones and kelp. It will make it's performance debut next week during my concert at Meridian Gallery in San Francisco.

Last Flight of the Adélies in progress

The completed instrument

Exploratorium Performance + LASER Talk at UC Berkeley

Next week is full of Antarctic events here in the Bay Area. I'm giving a free talk at UC Berkeley on Wednesday and then Thursday I'll present a full set of Antarctic works, including one world premiere, at the Exploratorium in San Francisco! Full details below...

Wednesday, October 9th, 6:30-9pm, free
UC Berkeley Extensions
Room 110, Barrows Hall
Berkeley, CA

LEONARDO ART SCIENCE EVENING RENDEVOUS at UC Berkeley
Talks about art, science, and technology by:
Zann Gill (former NASA scientist) on "Resolving Prediction's Paradox: collaborative intelligence ecosystems"
Jennifer Parker (UC Santa Cruz) on "Publishing in Public: Breaking Down Academic Silos to Create Trans-Disciplinary Research"
Cheryl Leonard (Composer) on "Music from High Latitudes: Making Music from Sounds, Objects, and Experiences in the Arctic and Antarctic"
Wayne Vitale (Gamelan Sekar Jaya) on "Between Ancient Texts and Three Screens" 

Thursday, October 10th, 7pm
The Exploratorium, Kanbar Forum
Pier 15 (Embarcadero at Green)
San Francisco, CA 94111

RESONANCE CONCERT SERIES: CHERYL E. LEONARD
An evening of Antarctic music including compositions inspired by tidewater glaciers, the Southern Ocean, weather patterns, and wildlife. Cheryl Leonard and Phillip Greenlief perform live on rocks, shells, penguin bones, icicles, kelp, sand, salt, and glass. The concert includes the world premiere of Oceanus Meridiem, a piece about ecosystems, currents, and weather in the Drake Passage.

PLEASE NOTE: SPACE IN THE THEATER IS EXTREMELY LIMITED. ARRIVE EARLY TO SECURE A SEAT.
The Exploratorium is open Thursday evenings 6-10pm for ages 18+ only. The concert is included with evening museum admission: $15 adults/$10 members. You can buy advance tickets here.
Doors to the theater open at 6:15pm. The concert starts at 7pm.

Special thanks to the Eric Stokes Fund: Earth's Best in Tune for supporting the development of two of the pieces we'll be performing: Meltwater and Oceanus Meridiem.


Other events on the horizon:

The score for my piece Point Eight Ice is still on view at the Adobe Bookstore Backroom Gallery. The exhibition is up through October 11th. Stop by the closing party October 11th, 6-10pm.

I'll be playing a set, including Oceanus Meridiem, in Tokyo, Thursday, October 17th, 8pm at Waseda Sabaco! More details coming soon...

Performance Tomorrow at Cal Academy of Sciences + Ongoing Exhibition at Adobe Books

I'm busy making icicles right now for tomorrow night's performance/installation of my piece Meltwater at the California Academy of Sciences. Musician/composer extraordinaire Phillip Greenlief will be joining me on stage in the African Hall near the African penguins (Yay! Penguins!). In between our performances you can try your hand at playing some rocks from Antarctica, icicles, and scientific glassware.

SAN FRANCISCO ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVAL 2013
NIGHTLIFE AT THE ACADEMY
Thursday September 12, 2013, 6-10pm, $12 admission

California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Drive
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA 94118

- Water-inspired performances by Maggi Payne and Lucky Dragons in the Coral Reef
- Performances and interactive presentations by instrument designers Donald Swearingen (gesture controllers) and Cheryl E. Leonard with Phillip Greenlief (Antarctic ice piece Meltwater) in the African Hall
- Modular synthesizer workshops with I/O Music Technology
- Screenings of the math-meets-music show Chaos and Order in the planetarium
- Music from DJs Geeta Dayal, Dominique Leone, and Joshua Kit Clayton

I would like to once again give special thanks to the Eric Stokes Fund: Earth's Best in Tune for supporting the creation of my piece Meltwater.

ALSO...the score of another one of my Antarctic compositions is currently on view in the Experimental Notations Exhibition at the Adobe Books Backroom Gallery in San Francisco. You can check out all the funny squiggles I came up with to represent various ice, penguin bone and limpet shell sounds in my piece Point Eight Ice, and then listen to a recording of the piece and follow along on the score. Of course I recommend checking out all the other neat graphic scores/pieces in the exhibition!

EXPERIMENTAL NOTATIONS: AN EXHIBITION OF GRAPHIC NOTATION & SOUND
September 7 - October 11, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 7, 6-10pm
Closing Reception with live performances: Friday, October 11, 6-10pm

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
3130 24th Street
San Francisco, CA
co-presented by Soundwave Festival

Artists: Canner MEFE, James Cordas, Chris Duncan, Gretchen Jude, Nicholas Kanozik, Cheryl Leonard, Sarah Lockhart, Collin McKelvey, Jeff Ray, Ben Tinker with Sharmi Basu, and Voicehandler.

FURTHERMORE... Next month on October 10th I'll be performing a set of Antarctic works at San Francisco's Exploratorium in their lovely state-of-the-art new theater, the Kanbar Forum. Word is there will be a live webcast of the show too, so even if you are far away you'll be able to watch it. More details coming soon...

Antarctic Instruments at Touch the Gear this Sunday

If you've ever wanted a chance to play my natural-object instruments come to Outsound's Touch the Gear Expo this Sunday. I'll have several of my Antarctic instruments (penguin bones, rocks, and shells) set up and perhaps a few other goodies. This is a super fun, FREE event in which you get to see and try out a wide range of unusual sound-producing gizmos.

SUNDAY, JULY 21, 2013, 7-10pm
free

San Francisco Community Music Center
544 Capp Street @ 20th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

Outsound New Music Summit: Touch the Gear Expo
A hands-on, family friendly event that allows the public to roam among 25-30 musicians and inventors with their various configurations of "gear" - everything from oscillators and electronics to planks of wood with strings attached. Exhibitors: Douglas Benner, Amar Chaudhary, Bob Marsh, Joe Lasqo, Matt Davignon, Tom Nunn, Bill Hsu, Philip Everett, David Samas, Bryan Day, Lindsey Walker, Doug Lynner aka Synthesizerman, Dr. Martin DeVideo, Ari Lacenski, Cheryl E. Leonard, Nick Wang, Andrew Wayne "Chopstick".

And I have a couple of exciting Antarctic music gigs coming up this fall so save the dates!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2013 -  SFEMF 2013 NightLife at the Academy, California Academy of Sciences, installation/performance inspired by Antarctica's melting glaciers, with Phillip Greenlief

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2013 -  Resonance Music Series at the Exploratorium, concert of my Antarctic/Arctic music, performed by Phillip Greenlief and I