Hello everyone, we wanted to take a moment to say hi, wish you a happy holiday and new year! Listening Bodies did not offer any in-person workshops this year, but we were creating videos, online experiences, and planning for the future.Â
The first thing we wanted to share with you this holiday season is the “Meditation on Light” written by Monica Gentile (read by Michael in English and Italian by Monica). It’s a lovely guided meditation exploring the sensorial nature of light during this deep wintertime.
Also while we were in Philadelphia for several months this spring, due to the pandemic, we were happy to live near and spend time with the wonderful dance/media company known as Fidget. This year Fidget will be hosting a Virtual New Year’s Eve Party called Age of Aquarius co-hosted by Forbidden Fruit. Listening Bodies will premiere a new video dance piece we created called “A Song the Earthworm Sang”. This piece is dedicated to Deep Listening founded by Pauline Oliveros and is a reference to a poem she wrote called “The Earthworm Also Sings” found in her Anthology of Text Scores. Please consider purchasing a ticket to raise a toast and enjoy hours of art and entertainment for this virtual party in the comfort of your own space.
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:
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:
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
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:
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
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.
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.
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
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
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!
For The Fidget Fall Experimental Music Festival Nora Gibson and myself were asked to create a music and dance work. We decided to show a work-in-progress for a large media project Antarctica. Antarctica is the story of the end of human data, the end of history, the end of information. It was presented as a 20 minute film projected on three translucent floating screen and with singing by Steve Quaranta.
