Sheetflow Songs Sept. 20

September 20, 2013
8:00 pmto10:00 pm

by Peter Flint, Ben Kaplan, and Dorothy Simpson Krause

Sheetflow Songs – “Halfway” from Peter Flint/Avian Orchestra on Vimeo.

Friday, Sept. 20, 2013
8:00pm
The Cell NYC

338 West 23rd Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues)
NYC

TICKETS: General admission tickets are available for $15 in advance, $20 at the door.
Buy tickets online here now:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/452559

On Friday, Sept. 20th, 2013, Ben Kaplan and I will present a special live performance of Sheetflow Songs, our extended song cycle without words for accordion, electric guitar, electronics, and video. In addition, the program will open with a set of music by pianist/composer Andrew Shapiro with violinist Gregory Fulkerson.

You can listen to a recording of Sheetflow Songs online here:

http://sheetflowsongs.bandcamp.com/

Created in 2012, Sheetflow Songs is a musical collaboration between guitarist Ben Kaplan and myself which responds to Dorothy Simpson Krause’s River of Grass series of artworks, inspired by the disappearing landscapes of the Florida Everglades. The work blends accordion, both acoustically and with electronics, with guitars, synthesizers, and video of Krause’s art, into an ambient, transporting, and ultimately deeply affecting meditation on the character of natural landscapes and their increasing disappearance. “Sheetflow” is a term referring to a broad, wide, shallow flow of water, and in a loose way the music in this performance mirrors this slow, massive flowing. For Kaplan (rock producer, guitarist, drummer, and the force behind the band Sleepmaps) and for Flint (classical composer and founder of the Avian Orchestra), this is a significant stylistic departure that takes both performers into new and unexpected musical territory.

Andrew Shapiro, in collaboration with Greg Fulkerson, will premiere a new piece for violin and piano, entitled Sonata: The Highline, informed by his year of working as a security guard/ranger on NY’s Highline park. In addition, he will play selections from his two albums of solo ambient piano music, which blends his two major influences, ‘80s New Wave pop and Philip Glass minimalism. Shapiro performs regularly and his music is played on radio throughout North America and Europe. Fulkerson, a major proponent of American contemporary music, performs globally and is a professor of violin at Oberlin Conservatory.

River of Grass marks Krause’ return to her deep environmentalist concerns, always close at hand in her work, exploring here the rich landscapes of the Florida Everglades with her unique blend of cutting edge digital processes and traditional art making methods. Krause renders the captivating beauty and shifting light using both organic substrates (linen canvas, wood panel) and inorganic substrates (aluminum panel), with painting and image transfer. From the serenely contemplative Misty River (2011, pigment transfer with mixed media on aluminum, 36 x 36 in.) to the somberly brooding Dark (2011, pigment transfer to aluminum, 24 x 22 in.), Krause’s landscapes draw the viewer into a world defined by sky, water, luxuriant vegetation and reflections. Where the Hudson River painters of the 1800s saw the sublime in the American wilderness, under threat even then, Krause draws out a powerful, all-encompassing spirituality as she at once captures a fragile beauty and underlines it’s inevitable vulnerability.

For more information about Sheetflow Songs and the live performances, please contact:

Peter Flint
917-903-2045
[email protected]
www.peterflintmusic.com