with Brian Crabtree/Jay Gilligan – St. Margaret’s Church – Whalley Range – 13/11/16

Who	with Brian Crabtree/Jay Gilligan
When	Sunday, November 13, 2016 5:30pm - All Ages
Where	St. Margaret's Church (map) Rufford Road Whalley Range, England M16 8AE
Other Info	MICHAEL FISCHER Austrian saxophone solo acoustic and electronics extraordinaire http://m.fischer.wuk.at/ PADANG FOOD TIGERS heavy drone weeze tacoma vibes from these Londoners with a new record out on Northern Spy https://padangfoodtigers.bandcamp.com/album/bumblin-creed MONOME/JAY GILLIGAN/RODRIGO CONSTANZO awesome collaboration between US based bespoke synth/interface artist designer/performer Brian Crabtree of Monome, artist music maker extraordinare Rodrigo Constanzo and US born now resident in Sweden juggling master Gilligan. http://monome.org/ http://www.fourthshape.com/ http://www.rodrigoconstanzo.com/ RIE NAKAJIMA/PIERRE BERTHELT/LEE PATTERSON International (JP/FR/UK) trio of sound artists working at the edges of sound, sculptures, instrument making and performing. http://www.rienakajima.com/ http://pierre.berthet.be/ http://www.q-o2.be/en/artist/lee-patterson/ Doors 5:30pm kicks off at 6pm on the dot. £7/£5

Borealis Festival – Bergen Kunsthall – Bergen – 11/03/16

Who	Borealis Festival
When	Friday, March 11, 2016 11:00pm - All Ages
Where	Bergen Kunsthall (map) No. 5 Bergen Kunsthall, Rasmus Meyers allé 5 Bergen, Norway 5015
Other Info	Rodrigo Constanzo is all about playing some pieces for you. He wants to play you some loud pieces, with flashing lights. As well as some quieter pieces, that are charged with a simple stillness. Rodrigo plans on using the following: a drum (maybe even a drumset), some tuning forks, an old computer hard drive, a variety of metal objects and sticks, and some digitally controlled lights. At some point in the middle you may find him singing quietly to himself. He is alone on stage, so no one will hear him. It is unlikely that that he will travel through time tomorrow(/yesterday?), but do not worry. It is(/was) all worth it.

Tech talk – MadLab – Manchester – 26/01/16

Concurrent conference (dfscore) – Alison House – Edinburgh – 16/01/16

Lights

Here are a couple of performance videos using an approach I’ve just recently started calling Light Vomit.

What you see in the video is a combination of automated processing (via The Party Van/Cut Glove) with a variety of DMX light interactions and behaviors. Everything is controlled from a Max patch I made specifically for the gig (and specifically to test these behaviors), most of which use audio analysis to dynamically record/play/process incoming audio and trigger a variety of light behaviors. (Click here to view my moment to moment analysis of the performance using my Making Decisions in Time improv analysis framework.)

Continue reading »

Solo drums+electronics – Coffee Kabin – Huddersfield – 09/12/15

dfscore 2.0

Tag cloud datafile

dfscore 2.0 is here! dfscore 2.0 is a much improved and completely rewritten version of dfscore that I started working on a couple of years ago. The dfscore system is a realtime dynamic score system built to display a variety of musical material over a local computer network. The primary motivation for building the system was to allow for a middle ground between composition and improvisation.

But before I get into all of that, here is a video showing the latest version along with its premiere at the Manchester Jazz Festival:

Continue reading »

Trio with David Birchall and THF Drenching – Cutting Room – Manchester – 18/09/15

Who	Trio with David Birchall and THF Drenching
When	Friday, September 18, 2015 7:30pm - All Ages
Where	Cutting Room (map) Blossom Street Manchester, England M4 5AF

dfscore – Manchester Jazz Festival Pavillion – Manchester – 02/08/15

Who	dfscore
When	Sunday, August 2, 2015 5:00pm - All Ages
Where	Manchester Jazz Festival Pavillion (map) Albert Square Manchester, England M2 7DH
Other Info	Rodrigo Constanzo percussion, electronics / Richard Craig flute, electronics / Sam Andreae tenor saxophone, electronics / Alex Harker, Anton Hunter guitars, electronics / Pierre Alexandre Tremblay bass, electronics / Richard Knight electronics Composer and drummer Constanzo has conceived a ground-breaking creative tool for communicating commands to musicians through digital devices. Using graphic, visual or written cues, new music is created instantaneously by improvisers, simply following the instructions appearing on screen in front of them as they play. Leading improvisers will perform music created using the system, including the world première of a work commissioned especially for mjf 2015 in collaboration with Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

The Noise Upstairs – Fuel Cafe – Manchester – 09/07/15

sonADA Festival – Seventeen – Aberdeen – 01/05/15

Who	sonADA Festival
When	Friday, May 1, 2015 9:30pm - All Ages
Where	Seventeen (map) 17 Belmont Street Aberdeen, England AB10 1JR

Everything. Everything at once. Once. (3)

Tag cloud datafile Here is the 3rd iteration of my ongoing series of pieces ‘Every. Everything at once. Once’.

Before I gib gab about it, here is “Everything Everything at once. Once. (3a)”:

The idea for these pieces is to focus my creative process and energy on the curatorial act of choosing the instruments I will improvise with. This has now extended into the choosing of the location, look, and visual approach used in each video. Each video in the series has had its own distinctive look, and has also come to include new collaborators alongside my long-time collaborator Angela Guyton.

Going into this third video, I knew I could try something different, because of the acoustic (and battery powered) nature of the instruments chosen. A melodica (which I bought over 15 years ago at a flea market for $5!), and my trusty ciat-lonbarde Old Mr. Grassi. I first thought about using some kind of outdoor location, but after seeing David Pocknee and Michael Baldwin‘s basement, I thought that it would be a wonderful place to film.

The original idea was to use some dripping paint, with David and Michael each having a squirt bottle, and then adding some vertical glitching artifacts similar to the language Angela had explored in her latest video. But after doing a take with the paint, and seeing how amazing the lighting by David and Michael was, the paint/glitch idea was scrapped altogether. Angie thought that with David and Michael enacting two tasks, what their role meant within the work changed. It created a different context and gave the work a different character, but one that didn’t seem as complete as when they were focused completely on their dispassionate navigation of the space as they sensitively manipulated the lighting.

I was initially hesitant about this change, since I was quite excited about the paint/glitch idea, but I trusted Angie’s judgement on the matter. And in the end, the videos came out better.

The choice of instruments for this particular version of the piece is far smaller than the other versions, with just two instruments:

1 x ciat-lonbarde Old Mr. Grassi
1 x Artist Ltd. Pianica

The first version had 10 instruments, and the second version had 18.

That being said, this particular combination of instruments is one of my longest standing ‘pairings’, going to back to when I initially started performing solo improv. In that sense, it served as an almost proto version of this creative thinking. Some of the language in the third video (3c), particularly the near-unison sustained pitches, diatonic-y material (Gminor?!?!), is something I strongly associate with this particular combination of instruments.

Even though the combination of instruments is quite old for me, I wanted to incorporate that specific pairing into this compositional framework, where the choice of instruments defines the piece.

I am still, however, surprised at the endless source of inspiration these instruments provide. It almost feels like cheating, at this point, given how interesting the instruments sound, but I felt I found lots of new and fresh angles on them. My work on the Battle Pieces, .com pieces, and dfscore system has given me such a fluid understanding of form, gesture, and pacing, that I can really focus on multiple formal levels while attending to the micro/developmental nature of the sounding materials themselves.

The visual identity of these pieces is becoming something that is increasingly important, which in this case specifically involved dynamic manipulation of light. This tendency has been apparent in all of my work over the last few years, but each one of these videos, particularly, has a very considered visual identity and approach. I am curious to see where this will go, and if the general idea of these pieces (to draw a metaphoric circle around the part of the creative act I want to focus on) will explicitly be extended to the entire ‘art object’.

When asked, after filming the videos, to describe what we thought was important using only three words (Michael had asked David this question before), Angela and I shared two of the three words: creativity and love. We disagreed on sharing vs freedom for the third word, but what can you do. I am comforted by the fact that I’m right and she’s wrong.

Distractfold Ensemble – Usine Kugler – Geneva – 30/01/15

Distractfold Ensemble – Gare du Nord – Basel – 29/01/15

Distractfold Ensemble – Anthony Burgess Foundation – Manchester – 25/01/15