Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Missing but not Inaction

Wow. It's been a while - I have to keep reminding myself that I should try to overcome my usual view that my life isn't that interesting to total strangers and just get on with trying to construct a narrative that doesn't involve various manifestations of hysterical misery.

My new solo release Amalgam: Aluminum / Hydrogen is available on the Palace of Lights label. You can find out more about it and listen to a sample by clicking here.

In less object-oriented terms, 've been doing some performing here and there - most recently as one-half of The Desert Fathers, a duo with trumpeter Jeff Kaiser. Our inaugural appearance before actual humans was a part of the second annual Boise Experimental Music Festival.

You can see some pictures of our performance here. It was a great time, and my personal thanks to Krispen Hartung for his hard work and hospitality. You'll probably be hearing from The Desert Fathers in the form of some acoustic Icons, at some point.

The "two laptops and a mandolin" trio it's been my pleasure to tread the boards with has christened itself pendergartontaylor (or just PGT for short, inna prog stylee) and continues to make the joyful noise and generally thrive. Most recently, my pal Brad Garton's 50th birthday neatly lined up with his hosting an evening of the Roosevelt Arts Project in the Borough Hall of the amazing community he lives in, Roosevelt, New Jersey. We did two pieces for the evening's program, and you can listen to the first of them by clicking here.

It looks like the next PGT outing will be a brief performance at the 2007 NIME (New Instruments for Musical Expression) Conference in NYC. I'm looking forward to it.

Apart from that, it's been business as usual - staring slack-jawed with awe and wonder at the BBC documentary series Planet Earth, taking some pleasure in traversing the list of people Clive James thinks we shouldn't forget (there are some excerpts published here, in case you're curious), and enjoying some recent musical offerings from Arve Henriksen, Jim O'Rourke (realizing a graphic Takemitsu score, no less), Menomena, Hal Rammel, and David Torn (among others).

Oh yeah - I managed a quick trip to the Netherlands to do a workshop in Delft.

Well, okay - I guess it has been a gay, mad whirl.