Solo set on the opening night of the Line Upon Line Winter Composers Festival at CRASHBOX in Austin, TX.
Sawyer Edition releases enclosures, an album featuring some of Watson’s composed concert music from the last 3 years. Composer’s notes on the album are below:
enclosures addresses issues of space, place, reverberation and resonance across five pieces. An exercise in scale, each piece is a portal: a biome, containing its own environment, weather, sense of time. Featuring juxtaposed convolution reverbs that transport an ensemble through real and imaginary spaces, beatings between Just Intonation and Equal Temperament, a triptych of environmental portraits, an exercise in the musicalized resonance of the harp’s pedal mechanism, and finally, an exploration of precarious sounds and sonic expiration, these works are attempts at worldbuilding that conserve intimacy—each piece a sonic imprint, a palimpsest of both positive and negative space, a constellation of both event and aftermath.
Premier of six chimeras for three performers and electronics at the Line Upon Line Winter Composers Festival, January 11th at 7pm.
if/then - a modular piece for cello and octophonic electronics, is premiered by Eduard Teregulov at Concordia College on the CIRCUIT721 concert series.
Watson & Kleijn Duo plays the ELASTRO Series at Elastic Arts.
The Grossman Ensemble Premiers OSCILLATIONS with Kari Watson performing synthesizers and electronics on the premier of their work for Grossman Ensemble under conductor David Fulmer.
A set of modular synthesizer music specifically designed for the CLEAT spatial speaker array at Elastic Arts. Bill includes solo performances by Hanna Elliot and Gabi Kinlock.
TETHER - for three modular synthesizers, dancer and live projections will be performed at Epiphany Center for the Arts.
a solo set for spatialized modular synth, recorded voice, and tape at CLARA.
lovemusic (FR) gives EU premier of Enclosures at the 2024 Donaueschinger Musiktage 2024, which will take place from 17 to 20 October 2024 .
at cutelab, a spatial audio set of modular synthesizer and electric guitar
https://cutelab.nyc/
A movement film comprised of three acts, where each dancer choreographs a piece dedicated to a part of their body that they’ve neglected or overlooked. The title ‘Touch of Recession’ interprets the Portuguese translation of the word ‘curfew’ (toque de recolher). The text in the film studies the embodiment of restriction, regulation and impediment. The visual language is crafted from hand-processed super-8 film, and the score features a modular synth composition by Kari Watson, performed in a quadraphonic speaker array at the Bond Chapel in Chicago, Illinois.
credits
Movement & Photography by Haley Dennis, Kristen Bernier, Lua Borges
Hand-processed & Edited by Lua Borges
Score by Kari Watson
Scan by Nicki CoyleTouch of Recession, 8mm, 7 min 2023
September 5 Thursday
Bennardo | Watson & Kleijn
Maya Bennardo violin solo
Kari Watson & Katinka Kleijn, duo for cello & electronics
Maya Bennardo is a founding member of the violin/viola duo andPlay and member of the internationally acclaimed Mivos Quartet. She also performs new and traditional repertoire for violin and piano with pianist Karl Larson in their Bennardo/Larson Duo. Kari Watson and Katinka Kleijn bring together a wide range of sounds, merging acoustic, analog, and digital sound sources and exploring extended aspects of improvisation such as physicality, attunement, and embodiment. By combining cello, modular eurorack synthesizer, Max MSP, and handheld electronics, the two create tactile performance environments for their audiences.
A duo quadraphonic set for modular synthesizer and electric guitar at Midnight Tea in downtown Chicago’s Fine Arts Building.
RSVP:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kari-watson-alec-goldfarb-live-studio-session-tickets-980329541047?aff=oddtdtcreator
Composers Now is collaborating with Chicago composers and ensembles to host the fifteenth edition of Dialogues, a program launched in 2015 designed to bring together audiences and composers through conversation and live performances. Co-hosted by Composers Now Founder/Artistic Director Tania León and Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) Executive Director Coco Elysees, this event features compositions by Edward Wilkerson Jr, Sophie McMillan-Myers, and Kari Watson played by members of the AACM, Ensemble Dal Niente,and the Grossman Ensemble. Free and open to the public. Reception to follow.
Dialogues #15 August 17, 2024 @ 3 PM, Piano Forte - Chicago, IL 60605.
PROGRAM:
Younghi PAGH-PAAN TSI-SHIN / TA-RYONG III
Leilei TIAN Melting
Victor ARUL Disconcerts of large structures (world premiere, commissioned as part of the ANAM Set)
Kari WATSON Mx.Mechanica
Luke PAULDING clothed like birds with wings as garments
Abbotsford Convent, Rosina Auditorium
1 St Heliers St
ABBOTSFORD VIC
Opening for Forest Swords at Empty Bottle on June 15th at 9pm!
Soak is a dance-based performance project that emerges from a study of public bathing. This work considers how both dance and bathing practices carve out space to imagine new ways of relating to our bodies, our community, and the natural world. The work is created through the exploration of pleasure and leisure, collectively created social space, and the relationship between body and ecology. This showing of Soak will feature dance set to live a score performed by Kari Watson on modular synthesizer with amplified voice, and video projection mapping.
Solo modular synthesizer set at Clara Bar in Wicker Park, Chicago with quadraphonic speaker array.
Watson plays at Elastic Arts on the Pleiades Series, a monthly series that features womxn and non-binary musicians and improvisors.
Programme:
James Creed: Tendings
Kaija Saariaho: Cendres
Alannah Halay: Energy cannot be created V
Kari Watson: The Wild Iris
Ben Finlay: Typhon
Anthony Gilbert: Réflexions, Rose Nord
INTERVAL
Ed Cooper: Requiem
Mainly in CCCH (plus external Goods Tunnel), School of Music, University of Leeds, Friday 3rd May 2024 6pm - plus livestream
WATERINTOBEER Brockley, Thursday May 2nd
Kari Watson/Alex Mckenzie (duo)
Rory Salter/Kiran Leonard/Josh Barfoot (trio)
The Greater London Banjo Trio
Five UChicago graduate composers present a concert of works written for and in collaboration with the New York-based TAK Ensemble. The new music powerhouse group, in residence for the 2023/24 academic year, works alongside composers Ryan Garvey, Benjamin Martin, Andrew Stock, Kari Watson, and Justin Weiss.
Percussionist Daniel Lewis performs Splittings, for just intonation vibraphone and electronics at UChicago’s 2024 CHIMEfest concert in the Logan Performance Penthouse.
UChicago’s New Music Ensemble gives the US Premier of Rilke Fragments, for string trio and tenor, originally written in Fontainebleau, FR and premiered in the summer of 2023.
Dal Niente joins the 2024 Frequency Festival with a program of new music by Louis Goldford, Lei Liang, Carlos Carrillo, Kari Watson, and more.
An in-process movement and sound workshop open to the public, led in collaboration with dancer Amalia Raye Wiatr Lewis as part of SOAK, a multimedia album/movement piece.
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/dance_residency.html
A performance on modular synthesizers as part of “Cyberpairings” with, Kotoka Suzuki, Brent Lee, Sigi Torinus, Shelby Lock and Kyong Mee Choi at Columbia College Chicago, Sherwood Recital Hall, 1312 S Michigan Ave, Chicago
Over the past six months, lovemusic members have worked closely with Ryan Garvey, Kari Watson, Jack Cramer, and Benjamin Martin on their latest compositions, which will be unveiled for the first time at the Logan Center for the Arts.
On Monday, December 18, 2023 members of Axiom Brass will premier untethering for brass trio at the Musicians Club of Women in Chicago, IL.
Constellation’s Frequency Series presents two solo sets of live electronic music by Kari Watson and Anna Johnson.
Kari Watson is a Chicago-based composer, performer, and sound artist working between the mediums of contemporary concert music, electroacoustic music, live performance, and interactive installation work. As a performer playing analog synthesizer, they engage a customizable spatialization software built in MaxMSP with spatial speaker arrays to further explore issues of tactility and drama in immersive, sonic environments.
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Anna Johnsonis an experimental artist working at intersections of performance, sound, moving image and installation. She explores processes of transformation through embodied emotional and psychological landscapes. Her work is oriented around immersive experience and site-responsitivity. She is based in Chicago, IL.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2023
7:30 PM 8:30 PM
SFCM BOWES CENTER (MAP)
https://sfcm.edu/experience/performances/nois-saxophone-quartet-performance-electronics
SFCM Bowes Center (in TAC Studio G)
200 Van Ness Ave
San Francisco, CA
Program:
Augusta Read Thomas: Shakespeare’s Jesters (2023)
Elijah Daniel Smith: Perihelion (2022)
Elliott Lupp: minus (2020)
Kari Watson: Shelf Life (2023)
Pauline Oliveros: Thirteen Changes (1986)
https://sfcm.edu/experience/performances/nois-saxophone-quartet-performance-electronics
~Nois: Julian Velasco, Hunter Bockes, Jordan Lulloff, János Csontos
Join ~Nois for the Sixth installment of their “Curiosity Series” at Constellation Chicago. Every fall, ~Nois kicks off their season with a program exclusively featuring the works of composers with strong ties to Chicago. This year, “Curiosity” will feature new works from Kari Watson, Carlos Bandera, and Augusta Read Thomas alongside a special performance by Chicago’s own, Masso Quartet.
Hunter Brown + Kari Watson
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Wed 16 August 2023, 16.00 – 17.00
OS Showcase
Hunter Brown and Kari Watson present two solo sets of live electronic music focused on synthesis. [Hunter -> algorithmic digital synthesis] [Kari -> analog modular synthesis]
MIVOS Quartet gives the European premier of Three Places for string quartet (2022) on a program of string quartets from their call for scores at the 2023 Darmstädter Ferienkurse.
for Maaria - for solo harp, was written for harpist Maaria Pulakka as part of the harp composition workshop with Sarah Nemstov and Gunnhildur Einarsdottir at the 2023 Darmstädter Ferienkurse.
