Listening in Asia…

Greetings from Yangon, Myanmar! I’ve had an amazing two months in Southeast Asia. In January I was Artist in Residence at ComPeung in northern Thailand where I was making field recordings, sound designing for some upcoming projects and experiencing the beautiful landscapes, people, smells, sights and sounds of the region​.

recording the landscape in Bagan, Myanmar; photo by Monica Gentile   Here’s a piece I made inspired by the landscapes of Thailand and Myanmar. Traveling in the land that’s home to Theravada Buddhism has been profoundly powerful. There’s so many temples, stuppas, pagodas, monks and lots of psychedelic Buddha shrines! To see all this first hand has changed me and given me perspective on the practice, dhamma and the nature of connection.​ Click below to hear and download this new piece of music “Once You Hear This You Will Always Be a Part of the Song”.

My next stop will be a residency in North India at PECAH in the Uttarakhand region in the foothills of the Himalayas. There I’ll be working on Echozoo, playing and collaborating with North Indian musicians and artists and working on upcoming projects for a very busy April when I return to Philadelphia for a month. If you’re in Philadelphia I’ll be involved in a number of projects including:​

2017 In Review

Happy holidays to everyone reading this! Thanks for being a part of an amazing year of sonic adventures. Without the connection I get by sharing these sounds, moments and memories with you all, this would be meaningless. In the midst of the busy holiday season I hope you’re all finding moments of connection and peace.
If you’re looking for a tonic to the holiday sensoral overload, I recommend two Mikronesia ambient albums I released this year. :dibba-sota is a quiet sonic meditation on Deep Listening and natural spaces and Dissolve is an hour long continuous piece of music that was described by music legend King Britt as “sonic sage”, great for clearing and cleansing a space. In the spirit of the season all the albums on my Bandcamp (including the Landscapes series) are “name your price”. So you can download for free or pay any price that’s good for you 🙂

dibba-sota

Also this year I released three albums in a series called Landscapes. These albums were created at artists residencies around the world this year. The intention of these albums is to allow the listener to experience a sense of place through listening and explore the sonic character of a geographic location. The environmental recordings are augmented with subtle effects and “sonic photography” techniques to represent our own coloring of sound through listening consciousness.

Landscapes 3: Iceland

In 2018 I’ll be continuing my nomadic life with residencies at Com Peung in Chiang Mai, Thailand and PECAH in Uttarakhand, India. I’m very excited to travel to Asia for the first time and focus on the soundscape recording, creation and Echozoo at these residencies.
In addition to traveling and releasing music this year I was glad to begin a new collaborative project Mixes from the Field, with fellow Deep Listener Sharon Stewart. This project seeks to connect people of all ages to explore modes of Deep Listening and the work of Pauline Oliveros through field recording, sonic meditation and music. Our initial project was supported by American Composers Forum for workshops in Philadelphia at Village of Arts and Humanities. My connection with VAH will continue in 2018 in an exciting community project around a basketball court in North Philadelphia that’s being renovated by the Philadelphia 76ers. More on this early next year….

VAH Students exploring the sonic spaces above Philadelphia

Mixes from the Field also led workshops and soundwalks in Berlin, Germany and Arnhem, Netherlands. We’re hoping to continue the work in 2018!
A quick note for anyone in Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve. I’ll be leading a dharma talk, discussion and silent meditation at Springboard Studio in Mt. Airy from 10pm through midnight. The theme for the night will be intention and the infinite potentials found in the ground of being. Hope to see you there! It will be my last night in Philly as I fly to Thailand on Jan 1!
Again, thanks for being a part of an amazing 2017 and I look forward to keeping in touch with you all in 2018.
with Mettā,
Michael

Dream Concert and Album Release

Hello and Happy Halloween! I’m back in the US for a few months and I have some new albums (new and old) and concerts coming up I wanted to tell you all about.

MAGICK CITY DREAM CONCERT

Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State

Saturday 11 Nov, I’ll be doing an overnight dream concert at Magick City in Brooklyn. As a concert experience these durational soundscape performances last from night until early the next morning. These concerts are an immersive, supportive sonic environment. A gentle sea of ambient found sounds and soft tones unfold over an evolving eight-hour concert. Limited tickets remain, purchase here. View some footage from a overnight concert below:

Also this will be an album release show for my new album Dissolve coming out on NOREMIXES. Anyone who buys a ticket to the show will get a free download of the hour-long album. More on this soon…


LANDSCAPES 3: ICELAND

Landscapes 3: Iceland

During my recent residency at Listhus in Olafsfjordur, Iceland I spent a lot of time hiking and taking in the auditory and visual splendor of the land. At night I would work in the recording studio, editing, augmenting and treating the recordings. The third in the Landscapes series was released this week on Bandcamp (with a cover photo by fellow resident Alfredo Esparza). 

There’s an ancient magnificence in the landscapes of Iceland, I hoped to convey that through sound. I recently heard a quote from Irish poet John O’Donahue on the podcast On Being that captures the essence of my recent interest in landscape recording.

Whether you believe you are walking into dead geographical location, which is used to get to a destination, or whether you are emerging out into a landscape that is just as much, if not more, alive as you but in a totally different form. And if you go towards it with an open heart and a real watchful reverence, that you will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to you. And I think that that was one of the recognitions of the Celtic imagination: that landscape wasn’t just matter, but that it was actually alive. What amazes me about landscape, landscape recalls you into a mindful mode of stillness, solitude, and silence where you can truly receive time.


:DIBBA-SOTA, QUIESCENT & VXVII ON ITUNES & SPOTIFY

Lastly, I recently remastered some of my most popular albums (including the 8-hour long sleep music album Quiescent) and reissued them to iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google, etc. So for people for that don’t use Bandcamp you can now stream or purchase these albums on your favorite platform.

Just search for “Mikronesia” in your favorite music platform and melt into timelessness…

Europe Residencies

Greetings from Berlin, I hope you’re enjoying your early fall / late summer days and nights. I had a wonderful time in Iceland. The other artists at Listhus were very inspiring. I got to take many walks in the mountains, fields, shores, towns and volcanic plains taking in the otherworldly sights and sounds of that lovely country.

I recently uploaded one of the tracks built around fields recordings from Iceland. You can listen here on Soundcloud:

Olafsfjordur ♫ 

My travels continue this month with a residency in Berlin at the prestigious soundart gallery/venue Liebig12. The space has a really great sound system where I will be working on some mediation / sleep music and Echozoo sounds. Also as part of my residency I’ll be taking part in three concerts (many with my old friend, Bilwa, from Philadelphia who lives in Berlin now) and a Deep Listening workshop. If you’re in Berlin it would be great to see you!

Here are the dates of the events:

Friday Sep 8
SPEKTRUM

Wednesday Sep 13
XBLiebig

Saturday Sep 16
Opening soundscape at Liebig12, 15:00-19:00
for Natsuko Tezuka + Tomomi Adachi Duo, 19:30

Friday Sep 29
18:00 – Deep Listening Workshop at Liebig12 with Sharon Stewart

CITIES AND MEMORY PROTEST SOUND MAP

I created a sound collage piece that I recorded at a Black Lives Matter Protest in Philadelphia for the Cities and Memory Protest Sound Map. This sound map is an amazing collection of over 200 recordings and remixes from protests all around the world. The project has been featured on Wired, BBC, The Guardian, Mashable and dozens of other news outlets. Check it out!

http://citiesandmemory.com/protest/ Protest and Politics is the first global mapping of the sounds of protest, demonstration and political activism.
Sourcing field recordings from our own archive as well as from dozens of field recordists around the world, we assembled a database of protest sounds over summer 2017, and opened this up to artists and musicians to recompose and reimagine, bringing to bear their own experiences and memories onto these sounds.
You can explore the documentary field recordings of protests, spend time in the alternative sound world created by their reimagined counterparts, or flip freely between the two as you choose.

MIXES FROM THE FIELD

Sharon and I are ramping up our Field Recording, Deep Listening, Sonic Works project Mixes from the Field with some exciting projects in 2018. Check out our latest Newsletter detailing all we’ve been up too and having coming up, including a Deep Listening outing in Arnhem, NL in October. Also please get on our mailing list to find out more about our upcoming events and projects!

Read more here: http://mailchi.mp/b03cec94af07/deep-listening-and-roundtable-at-sonsbeek-park

LUCID

7th Annual Fall Experimental Music Festival
November 12, 2016 at 9:00 p.m. – November 13, 2016 at 6:00 a.m. http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2698662​
Facebook Event

Press Release:

For the second time this year, composer and <fidget> artist-in-residence Michael Reiley McDermott will perform an overnight sleep music concert.

Lucid will be an 8-hour sleep music performance exploring the liminal space between sleeping, dreaming, meditating and listening. As participants sleep and explore their lucid dream space McDermott will create a soothing, supportive, continuous score exploring the themes of death, bardo and rebirth found in “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”.

The concert begins at 10pm Saturday and will go until 6am Sunday morning. Please bring sleeping bags and blankets for your journey. There will be wine and dream tea available. Come early for a pre-show talk by McDermott and <fidget> co-director Peter Price at 9pm.

Tickets for this 10+ hour event are available at different levels of support named for the six stages of Bardo described in “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”:
Kyenay – $6 (online only)
Milam – $12 (student/artist)
Samten – $24
Chikhai – $48
Chönyi – $96
Sidpa – $192

As preparation for this sleep music concert I took part in a Dream Over at the Rubin Museum in NYC last week. It was a magical night sleeping among ancient Buddhist artifacts and artwork and sharing the space with dozens of other dreamers. You can read a review of the event at Artsy


HOH RAINFOREST

In August 2016 I traveled to the Northwest United States to do some field recording for my Echozoo project. The idea was that I would record some ambient sounds from habitats from a biologically unique place in North America for designing the imaginary sound habitats for Echozoo. My travels took me to Glacier National Park and the National Bison Reserve in Montana, Turnbull Wildlife Refuge and Hoh National Forest in Washington.

Of these four locations I found the Hoh Rainforest to be such a unique land and soundscape. I decided to create a sonic portrait in my Sonic Photography series of sounds recorded in the Hoh Rainforest. I spent two nights staying in a tent at Huckleberry Lodge. TV personality Mick Dodge from the National Geographic show The Legend of Mick Dodge lives at this lodge. Mick and I had some nice conversations about the sonic characteristic of the Hoh Rainforest. He told me about the low growl of Hoh River and its connection with the native Hoh tribe which found its way into this piece.

With this Hoh Rainforest piece and many of these Sonic Photographs, I am attempting to create a liminal journey between the real and imagined sound world of an environment. Like a photographer who would use photographic development techniques, I work with collage, saturation, filtering and creative lighting to reframe the beautiful sounds of this rainforest as a surrealistic journey for the ears and mind.

Philadelphia Fringe Festival 2016

I have music/sound design in two Philadelphia Fringe Festival shows in the next two weeks. 

This Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I’ll be doing some live sound design and music for Fran Markey’s new piece At & About the Edge of.

Then next week I have some brand new music in Zornitsa Stoyanova’s Explicit Female.

Also I’m hard at work on several new music / sound projects including Echozoo – my forthcoming iPhone/Android App which plays sonic portraits of extinct animals from your area.

As part of the research for Echozoo, I traveled to the Northwest United States to do some field recording. The trip was made possible by the support of the Echozoo Hatchfund backers (thank you!). My trip took me to Portland, Forks, The Hoh Rainforest and Turnbull Wildlife Refuge in Washington and the National Bison Range and Glacier National Park in Montana. I captured a lot of great ambient sounds of rain, wind, trees, crickets, birds, elk, owls, squirrels, bison and lots of unidentified sounds for the Echozoo App. Here’s a Flickr album with some photos from the trip. 

Sleep Concert, Attune and Beep

SLEEP MUSIC CONCERT

Last month I played an all-night sleep music concert during the Spring Equinox at thefidget space. The 12-hour concert was a beautiful night / morning with people doing yoga, dancing, reading, and sleeping throughout the night as I played. The piece was covered in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Here’s a video taken of some of the music and projections that were happening throughout the night:

Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State

Here’s the entire 12-hour concert audio at archive.org.

Finally, I wanted to share this beautiful poem that Glenn Benge, who attended the event, wrote in response:


ATTUNE

ATTUNE
Image by Shaily Shah

As part of my training with Pauline Oliveros to becoming certified as a Deep Listening practitioner, I’m co-leading a sound and movement workshop with Darcy Lyons next week. I’ll be leading some sound meditations, Deep Listening exercises/scores and playing some music for the dance/movement portion.

“In this two hour workshop participants will be guided through improvisational movement structures, gentle bodywork, still/moving meditations, and listening practices that foster compassion, healing, and connection. Everyone is welcome. No experience required.”

Saturday April 16, 11:30-1:30 PM
The Iron Factory

118 Fontain Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19122
Tickets $12 in advance (Sales End April 14)
$20 Cash or Check at the door


NOREMIXES NORESIDENCY

The NOREMIXES monthly at The Art Dept continues in April with sets by Mikronesia, Jeff Zeigler and Oh! Pears

Friday April 22, 7-9 PM
The Art Dept

1638 E. Berks St. Philadelphia, PA 19125
Doors 6:30pm, Show 7-9pm, $10


BEEP COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCY

BEEP class

This semester I am Composer-in-Residence at Temple University’s BEEP (The Boyer Electroacoustic Ensemble Project). For this residency, I’m guest lecturing and developing a piece using my “Sonic Photorgraphy” techiniques for the students that they’ll perform at the end of the semester. More info on this premiere next month. Here’s a photo from my first BEEP class:

Discussing artistry, community, and Deep Listening with composer in residence @mikronesia. @beep_TU @BoyerCollege pic.twitter.com/cZi0ZGDYCE — Adam Vidiksis (@vidikulous) April 1, 2016

Don’t You Wonder Sometimes

Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet

I’m really honored to be working with Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet again this season. Our new work EPHEMERAL is our grandest to date. Seven dancers, lighting design by Dutch artist Katinka Marac and an evocative score of environmental elements and sonic stillness.

EPHEMERAL
Christ Church Neighborhood House Theater, Philadelphia
Feb. 19-21

Tickets can be purchased online also running concurrently will be a dance-film festival that Nora has curated.
 


David Bowie Night

Bowie Night

Last month planet Earth lost one of its a greatest visionary artists of the last century: David Bowie. David’s music and style had a huge influence on me. As I tweeted the morning of his death: “He taught the world it was ok to be different, it was ok to experiment, it was ok to change.”

In two weeks I’ll be part of an all-star night of Philadelphia musicians playing Bowie’s music. I’ll be playing keyboards with some (very talented) friends. I don’t want to spoil the surprise but we’ll be playing two songs from my favorite Bowie album as well as his last epic artistic statement.

DAVID BOWIE TRIBUTE NIGHT
Thursday, February 11at 8 PM
The Fire
412 W Girard Ave, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19123
$8 / 21+


Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State

Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State

March 19, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. – March 20, 2016 at 7:00 a.m.
thefidget space
1714 N Mascher Street Philadelphia
$10 – $20 sliding scale

This is going to be a 12-hour long concert of sleep music! Bring a sleeping bag, pillow and blanket, enjoy some dream tea and snuggle in for 12-hours of dream drones and tape loop lullabies. I’ll be performing ambient music all night with visuals from Alex Bond focusing on themes of Bardo, reincarnation, Dream Yoga and sleep (un)consciousness.

To get a taste of the kind of music you’ll hear, please check out my 2014 sleep music album, Quiescent. It’s an eight-hour mix of music for the four sleep cycles.

2015 In Review

Hello and happy holidays! I wanted to thank everyone for their support of my musical projects throughout 2015. Below is a recap of projects I worked on in 2015 with some free downloads, videos and other media.

In a River the Color of Lead

In a River the Color of Lead

Early this year I released my 8th solo studio album on NOREMIXES. The album is a continuation of my exploration of the piano as an object of beauty and noise. It was released digitally and as a vinyl record (with support from Kickstarter backers). I’m very proud of this work and hope you all got a chance to listen to it.

NOREMIXES Store


Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet

In February I was delighted to perform with my long-time choreographic partner Nora Gibson and her company Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet in the premiere of 257,885,161-1. This ballet was a meditation on the mathematical concept of twin primes. The premiere was well received and sounded and looked gorgeous. Excerpts from the premiere can be viewed here on Vimeo.

In 2016 I’ll be working again with NGCB on an even more ambitious project EPHEMERAL, a work about time for dance, light, and environmental sound score.

EPHEMERAL
Christ Church Neighborhood House Theater, Philadelphia
Feb. 19-21

Tickets can be purchased online and you can support NGCB’s second season on their Hatchfund page.


Field Recordings / Cities and Memory

This year I began to really explore the sound world of actual places through field recording. I published several works through the brilliant UK based site Cities and Memory. Here are three pieces they published:

  • Turtle River (Philadelphia) presented on World Listening Day and at the Oxford Contemporary Music Festival.
  • Corca Dhuibhne (Western Ireland) field recordings and reimagined sounds recorded in Dingle and the Cliffs of Moher. 
  • Utopia part of an international collection of artists who created an imaginary sound world for the Thomas More novel Utopia (1515)

The last piece I wanted to share was from the Papal visit to Philadelphia in September 2015. The piece contains recordings I gathered over three days as about a million people descended on center city Philadelphia to celebrate the historic visit by Pope Francis. As with many of these recordings, I sought to remove the element of time and create a shifting landscape of timeless space.
 

Philadelphia Papal Visit - Soundcloud

dark matter

Photo by Glenn Benge

This season I am Artist in Residence at <fidget> along with choreographer / artist Zornitsa Stoyanova. In November we collaborated on the performance film dark matter. It was premiered at the <fidget> Fall Experimental Music Festival.

The above photo is by Glenn Benge from the premiere.

Here’s a review from Thinking Dance

Excerpt from dark matter on Vimeo


Save the Date

In March 2016 I’ll be performing another concert at <fidget>. This is going to be a 12-hour long concert of sleep music! Bring a sleeping bag, pillow and blanket, enjoy some dream tea and snuggle in for 12-hours of dream drones and tape loop lullabies. I’ll be performing ambient music all night with visuals from Alex Bond focusing on themes of Bardo, reincarnation, Dream Yoga and sleep (un)consciousness.

To get a taste of the kind of music you’ll hear, please check out my 2014 sleep music album, Quiescent. It’s an eight hour mix of music for the four sleep cycles.

Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State

Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State
March 19 7pm – March 20 7am
thefidget space


Happy New Year!
Michael

Fall News

Hi folks, it’s been a few months since my last update. I’ve been working on lots of studio projects with some occasional shows.

Here’s a rundown of recent projects I was involved with this fall.

Utopia

Utopia

Over the past few months as I’ve gotten more into field recording and Deep Listening, I’ve been producing sounds for the site Cities and Memory. The most recent piece I did for them was part of a project to imagine sounds for the 16th century Thomas More’s novel Utopia. For my piece I focused on a darker aspect of More’s work: slavery. This seedy aspect of this well known concept of Utopia seemed to echo the modern day issue of hidden slavey in our “advanced” society.

Read more and listen to the piece at Cities and Memory


Papal Sound Collage

Another recent sonic piece I created was an audio collage of the sounds of Pope Francis’ historic visit to Philadelphia in September 2015. Approximately one million people visited Philadelphia creating one of the largest gatherings in the city’s history on the Ben Franklin Parkway. For three days I walked around with my field recorder and captured the sounds of the crowds, choirs, vendors, singers, chanters, musicians and ambiance to create an sonic photograph of what this beautiful weekend was like.

Listen to the Papal Sound Collage


The Buddy System

Buddy System from the stage

The Monday after the Papal visit I was honored to perform along side two giants in the electronic music scene: King Britt and HPrizm (from Antipop Contortium) for their Buddy System series at Johnny Brenda’s. Myself, finger drummer phenom OddKidOut and Matthew Law (AKA DJ Phsh) joined King and Priest for a smoking improvisational set of electronic music. I’ve heard the recordings back and they’re quite good. Look for some excerpts coming soon once the Buddy System site launches.


<fidget> Residency / dark matter / Fall Experimental Music Festival

Dark Matter Collaborator at the Ice Box

I’m also excited to announce that I am artist in residence at one of the most vital performance laborites in Philadelphia, thefidget space, for their 2015/16 season. As the resident composer/musician I’m sharing my time with choreographer/artist Zornitsa Stoyanova. We’ve been working together off and on for almost nine years! Throughout 2015 we’ve been doing some experiments with sound, dance, reflective mylar and modular lighting. On Friday November 6 we’ll be debuting a new piece that showcases some of that work. dark matter will contain four channel surround sound music, video, dance, mylar, smart phone media and live music. I’ll be joined by another old friend, violinist Carlos Santiago, for this performance.

Friday, November 6, 8pm
at thefidget space (1714 N Mascher St)
Space Pulse Pattern Presence, with:
dark matter, by Michael McDermott and Zornitsa Stoyanova (2015/16 <fidget> artists in residence)
SP3, by <fidget>/Peter Price & Megan Bridge (work-in-progress)
and guest curator Flandrew Fleisenberg welcomes:  
ID M Theft Able, Himself (Portland, Maine) 
Bromp Treb, Performance (Western Massachusetts)
Tickets: $10- $20 sliding scale

dark matter


New Website

Finally I’d like to welcome you to my new website SoundofListening.com. For years I’ve done sound art, film and dance scores, ambient music albums, performances, etc. all under the umbrella of Mikronesia. The Mikronesia moniker will still live on, but that will refer specifically to ambient music recordings, shows and productions. With Sound of Listening I want to highlight my work with Deep Listening, Field Recording, Sonic Awareness and Interaction. Check it out!