Performance: Variant State and Isaac Roth Blumfield

Performances by Variant State and Isaac Roth Blumfield.

Doors: 7:30pm
Music: 8pm

Variant State is a project originally instigated by Howard Martin (reeds), Jesse Kenas Collins (trumpet, reeds, feedback objects), and Michael Rosenstein (amplified surfaces and objects, modified field recordings.) Now primarily working as a duo, Collins and Rosenstein explore the interactions of acoustic instrumentation, electronics, multiphonics, abraded and degraded recordings, and feedback within performance spaces. Process is central to their approach. This includes building and modifying instruments, both traditional as well as those assembled from every-day objects, and investigating their use and misuse in open-form sonic investigation. They have performed for over a decade in spaces around New England.

Isaac Roth Blumfield is a composer from Saint Paul, Minnesota, currently based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He writes experimental music for acoustic and electronic instruments, exploring resonance, materiality, and affect through expanded approaches towards instruments, objects, and electronics. His music looks for uncanny places and expressions that embrace the beauty, pain, and strangeness of life.

His music has been influenced through work with performers such as Schallfeld Ensemble, Ensemble Proton Bern, SWR Symphonieorchester, Yarn/Wire, Ensemble Multilatérale, line upon line percussion trio, Ensemble Modern, and Quartetto Maurice at programs such as the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Darmstädter Fereinkurse, Klangspuren Schwaz, Impuls, the Banff Centre for Creativity, New Music on the Point, and Ticino Musica Festival. His music has been broadcast on Swiss, Austrian, and Southwest German public radio and has received scholarships and residencies from the Hirschmann Stiftung, Fondation Nicati- De Luz, and the SWR Experimentalstudio. In addition to instrumental music, he is active as a performer of improvised electronic music, performing in duos with Rebecca Lawrence, Alec Toku Whiting, and as a solo artist. He studied composition and electronics in Boston, Basel, and Vienna with Stratis Minakakis, Timothy McCormack, Caspar Johannes Walter, Svetlana Maraš, and Clara Iannotta. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Harvard University, studying with Chaya Czernowin and Hans Tutschku.

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