Wavelength 450 Ninth Anniversary Festival:
Timber Timbre
Ghost Bees
Dorit Chrysler
Thursday February 12th, 2009
Music Gallery 197 John St.
Timber Timbre
The breath of descendant ghosts pock-mocking the hallway windowpane as you flick off the last bulb of light before retiring for the night. The lulling glow of the muted television at four AM replaying a story told too many times before. The slight sway of a dead branch on a tree across the street in the neighbours yard revealing glimpses like a nude mirror. Footprints and paw tracks circling around and eating themselves in freshly fallen snow. An empty grave. An echo across a frozen lake hunting for any embers still burning. In your bed huddled under the blankets with a gun, some gum, a flashlight and a tin can telephone, waiting, just waiting.
Ghost Bees
Crochet Shakespeare lucid dreaming tea parties with Olympians in drag. German cabaret rock opera actors prowling for gnomes and eggs in the knots of gnarled trees. A bridge! But a bridge to where? A gleam off a butter knife growing sharper under watchful and hungry eyes. A rocking chair rocking on steady splinters. Lovers asleep under a blanket of decomposing leaves and fortunes. Little strips of paper inked with invisible kisses and fingernail shavings. A wind chime summons flint and flame. A house rattles its bones under the weight of held breath. Archers winks. Ballerinas plie on French pressed coffee, skating on the crema, ribbons saluting children and politicians on lunch breaks.
Dorit Chrysler
The Theremin: the only musical instrument in the world played without being touched. That’s right — *playing the air*. Invented in 1919 by Russian physicist León Theremin during Soviet research into proximity sensors, the Theremin captured the imagination of American concert-hall audiences following its creator’s move to New York. Later, its eerie, otherworldly sounds became familiar to viewers of schlocky ’50s science-fiction films, and then to pop music fans for its cameo appearance on the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” Interestingly, many of the most notable theremin virtuosos have been women, starting with classical thereminist and León’s great unrequited love, Clara Rockmore. More recently, Lydia Kavina, Carolina Eyck, Pamelia Kurstin — and now, Dorit Chrysler. We’re thrilled to have the chance to bring this fantastic Austrian musician, currently based in New York, to perform at Wavelength 450. Creating moody pieces of pop pleasure, Dorit’s theremin is usually accompanied by her voice and laptop beats. Consider this “electro-pop” that brings you back to the *original* “electronic music.”
