The “long-standing interest” is a graduate seminar expanded on my work developed as a Summer of Protocols teaching fellow (mentioned two newsletters ago). It’s a carrier-bag of writings from protocol studies, improvisation studies, musicology, art history, systems thinking, contemporary aesthetics, and even legal studies and self-help, all towards the following:

How can music, paradoxically mediated and immediate, combining abstract structure and intense feeling, guide our thinking about other systems in our lives? This course will sustain this inquiry through the notion of music as a “protocol” which can be analyzed, practiced, and transferred across disciplines. It is set up as an interdisciplinary series of seminars, discussions, and workshops intended not only for musicians, but anyone interested in refining the creative dimensions and conceptual ramifications of their practice.

The syllabus can be read in full here. The schedule and reading list comes after the classroom-speak, though I feel pretty good about how I tried to articulate what constitutes a “meaningful response” for the discussion posts. Give me a bit, and I’ll try and compile everything in a folder for you.

Even if I still have deep, unsettling questions about the viability and ethos of the entire structure of higher education and arts research…it will be a pleasure and privilege to get to explore these ideas with folks, my students and hopefully readers here as well. What will come of it? Who knows. Maybe nothing. No papers, presentations, love of the ideas and resistance to their ossification in writing. Existing in these ideas again may become the main creative endeavor for the rest of the year…against my better judgement, as I do have a few things to compose, as well as several of the typical (if slightly more distinctive) “things to announce”. Like so:

Confluere is coming (back) to Bandcamp for its proper 10th birthday

Click here to preorder!

“But Ben, didn’t you already re-release this album and tell its story?”

Yes, but that was on Subvert, which I still believe in as an important alternative to Bandcamp, but has been slow to gain traction. That may be a whole other post for dwelling on the technical and social design stranglehold of platform empires.

And now, its actual 10th birthday is approaching, as well as the banal buying Bacchanalia of Bandcamp bFriday. If you pre-order the album there on September 4, all proceeds go to the artist, you’ll get Part 1 now, and Part 2 a decade to the day of its emergence.

It’s kind of wild to start to have milestones like these. On the shorter timescale of announcements:

[nasal Billy Joel Armstrong voice]:
“See my show, beforeee September ends”

The big ones first—

• Microplastique (with Josh Harlow, Molly Jones, and ringleader Adam Shead) is playing Sound & Gravity, a weekend-long festival of experimental hits, the Pitchfork Music Festival team’s response to Big Ears (niche stuff, sorry). We go on at 7 pm on Saturday, September 5 at Judson & Moore Distillery.
  Passes are honestly pretty costly, but it’s a remarkable lineup at least worth ogling at. You might be able to get a venue-and-evening-specific pass for like $35 that’s got us, Tomeka Reid, and Gregory Uhlmann??

• Thursday, September 24, I’m bring Aloier-Abyme to the opening night of the Experiments In Electronic Sound Festival, 8 pm at the Disney Concert Hall at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA. My SoCal debut, amidst a whole lot of local and international talent doing a whole lot of inventive technological performances! See the full schedule here and send it to anyone you know in LA (yes, I know Valencia is 25 miles north but they can deal).

And for other Chicago occurrences:

• Next Tuesday, September 8, at 7:30 pm at the Fulton Street Collective, I’m playing vibes for a new quartet lead by trombonist Ben Link. Some great original jazz material that doesn’t take any standards for granted! More info and tickets here.

• Saturday, September 19, at 7:30 pm at the Checkout, Sarah Plum and Charlene Kleugel give the premiere of the viola version of “where each branch contains what is given to kingdoms”, an eccentric duo inspired by the poetry of Don Domanski where things are rarely still, and if they’re still, they’re off. The whole program, “Homage to Anonymous Ancient Fiddlers,” also includes string duos by Jessie Montgomery, Mari Takano, Sidney Boquiren, Texu Kim and Laszlo Weiner. More info and tickets here.

Let’s see what else happens; if fall resets the mood and is more conducive to focus and restoration. As always, be in touch and see you soon :)

First thing — it’s going to be a very Elastic month:

This Thursday, at 8:30 pm, My Little Realities plays the Improvised Music Series, setting off on another journey of jazzy, bluesy, poetic fourth-world improvisations, with Juliann Wang (voice, guitar, percussion), Evan Kopca (clarinets, guitar), and Graham Nelson (flutes, harmonica, voice). To get more of a sense of what we’re getting up to, I’d be remiss to not point you towards this lovely EPK Juliann made.

Next Thursday, also at 8:30 pm, I’m glad to have helped set up a performance featuring Ken Ueno, an award-winning composer and vocalist, in town from the old stomping grounds of Berkeley, CA. Ken’s work is that distinctly 21st-century span of art and DIY music, which he’ll present as a soloist, and then with myself, Tim Daisy (drums), and Kim Nucci (electronics).

Also, there’s a non-zero chance I’ll be part of the show there on the 20th, featuring the Boston-based saxophonist and composer Jorrit Djikstra. It’s a blessing, and I can’t wait to play some other spots too, lol.

Those DO include the following:

Sunday, August 9, at 3:30 pm at Wicker Park Lutheran Church:
Community Pulse is the expanded, take-all-comers version of Common Pulse’s cross-genre, justice-minded choral experience. This organization has been a really meaningful part of several recent summers, including premiering an original composition of mine (and a slick joyful Minnie Riperton arrangement reprised here), but what’s truly great is the mission-driven programming and above-and-beyond attention to cultivating group experience. You’ll feel it here for sure!
Pay-what-you-can tickets are here.

Saturday, September 5, at 7:00 pm at Judson & Moore Distillery:
Sound & Gravity is like Chicago’s version of Big Ears, so get yours ready for Microplastique’s biggest show yet! We’re going deep in on rehearsals for this expansive experience, with four days of cutting-edge artists across nine venues. More info and tickets at https://soundandgravity.org/.

That’s in a name?

As all this goes down, other things are still brewing in the background. And while a lot of thought is going into the music (or at least I tell myself that), as much is going into that pesky part of what the tracks are called. In the midst of such a spell, I had to ask how folks do this thing…

I got a lot of interesting responses, and some overall patterns started to emerge, with a few trends especially prominent:

• A running list of interesting-sounding phrases, to be referred back to when the rubber meets the road.

• Narrative-first names, where the intended effect or imagery sets the stage first for the sounds.

• Current-life association, whether to a memory or other reference material, making the track as much a marker of life as an allegedly ‘autonomous’ art object.

• You could just give them a number. I’ve been listening to a lot of Takahiro Mukai albums; he just gives his analogue electronic performances a number. And of course, there’s Anthony Braxton’s numbering and schematic system for his compositions.

Outside of these observations as well as within it, there’s always an associative paradigm that somehow allows us to make the link between modalities of sound and other senses. These aren’t quite the same as the kinds of protocols as I discussed in the last ‘stack—whereas those are distributed, emergent structures for behavior, this is more about an internal mental model, but nevertheless a structure equally subject to weights and measures and affordances. I firmly believe, in the manner of Peli Grietzer’s Theory Of Vibe or Adam Harper’s Infinite Music space-coordinates, that even subjective qualities can be pinpointed to some degree of measure. Naming emotions or settings implicates their experiential qualities in what we hear or make — “I felt this there, and this here, therefore the language used for can transfer to the other.” Which qualities we go to first are the personal parts of the system, driven not simply internally, but by our need to isomorphize to a context.

For these tracks, for instance, I told someone “they just don’t feel like multi-word titles!” I think that’s because of a few things:

-The sonic points of reference also tend towards single-word titles. Without spoiling anything, prominent referent points include Ryuchi' Sakamoto’s collaborations with Alva Noto and Fennesz, and favorite works by artists such as Oval, Toan, and Vadislav Delay. This obviously is a limited and biased data set.

-Single words come closer to the “ergodic” forms of these tracks — that is, while they have some internal difference, their qualities are governed by a single overall principle that makes the track a statistical distribution of possibilities of this principle. (with respect to James Tenney)

-Relatedly, multiple words inherently prioritize poetic/linguistic interpretation, whereas these tracks have been approached in a way that is less narrative than sculptural, if that difference makes sense. Granted, even when I do work with narrative, I tend to handle it in diagrammatic, visual, procedural ways, but this especially leaned towards the implication that if I’m chipping away at the sounds, why not a word?

Titles with invented words are probably the most common feature of my music, uniting it in a way genre never could. Besides getting to tap into the flow of gesture and energy the same way I do with an instrument or sound design, being able to use prefixes, suffixes, etc., has a structural dimension to create meaning and nonsense that I find fascinating in its micropoetic dimension. When Calvin said “verbing weirds language” that’s just the start!

“Mesotallic” from Alike Untils is just one example — meso, a slightly more unusual prefix neither mega or micro, and metallic, a word which those prefixes don’t usually get added to, destabilizes our expectations of the material world in a way that the track rarely stays in one place with its vibraphone-based sonic material.

Non-, anti-, oto-, ob-, ab-, -ing, -ish, -esque, -ary, -s, to name just a few, are immediate interventions in their referents pave the way for possible conceptions of other things that don’t exist (yet). Or as meaningful decorations, they can attach to words in a way that still lets the primary referent hold strong while creating distinction. I think of my series of compositions “In/difference”, “Outdifference”, and “Outdifferencing”, which used linguistic variation as the means of departure from one concept to the next, acknowledging the origin point if not always the resemblance.

And as I move throw my practice, I realize I’m not as multi-whatever as I once was, or maybe ever wanted to be. The interventions or explorations I’m getting into are narrower, more about craft, honoring certain commitments to material and following their paths. So if I’m weirding fewer media at this point, I can still at least weird language while keeping this up in a way that feels more possible than not. Because oddly enough, for all these little forms of word-messing, I’ve never felt terribly capable of writing in the creative sense (done it yes, but not since like freshman year, and doing is different than feeling capable of it). Now, that could change, and it is vital to state that being good at something is not the only reason to do it, obviously! There is immense value to doing things your way, not a ‘right way’.

But when it comes to what feels like the practice right now—the context of creative right-doings I’ve staked my livelihood on (terrible bet), right now the experiments in that dimension are small in scale. Focusing the intention, going intensive rather than expansive, hopefully keeps me good at fine-tuning in a way that will transfer to the other mental models when the time comes.

Microdreaming? Oneironutiae? It’ll do for now, but your thoughts and feedback are always warmly welcome, here and out in the world.

(don’t ask how this table got up here, I don’t know either)

A lot of things have made it long. The move discussed in the previous missive went well, all things considered. The new place is more than workable. The shows went well (though more thoughts on that below) given what felt like hardly enough time to dig in to the most-present meat of them. That last feeling was pretty pervasive, and to make it worse—when most of your usual means of preoccupation are in a box, you end up on your phone way more which makes that feeling even worse. So I’ve configured things to make it a lot harder to get onto Instagram, though not impossible. In a perfect world, this Substack would do the trick on its own when it comes to conveying a tsunami of events and ideas. But here we are, endlessly needing to be visible and this being one brick in that wall:

The one July gig (that’s technically three)

The Frē Festival - “An immersive multi-disciplinary avant-garde jazz festival” and a stunningly ambitious debut by fellow Wizards Chandler Browne and Tommy Carroll.

At 7 pm on July 23, at Space-Time Sounds (3419 W Fullerton Ave, Chicago), I’m holding down the harmonic content of the Chandler Browne Percussion Ensembe on vibes, alongside a batterie of drums, percussion, and tap.

At 3 pm on July 24, at Artifact Records (3423 W Fullerton Ave, literally next door!), I’ll be providing high-atmosphere solo vibes (literally and figuratively).

Then at 5 pm in the same space, things will amp up SIGNIFICANTLY as part of a quartet with Labrat (sax), Jacob Fawcett (drums), and Eric Miller (cello).

Full details, lineup, and tickets here. New festival energy is inspiring and much needed!

Looking ahead to August, I’m once again at Elastic Arts a hefty amount:
Thursday the 6th with My Little Realities & Thursday the 13th in an ensemble with award-winning Bay Area composer and vocalist Ken Ueno.

Both shows start at 8:30 pm. I’m grateful to be so deeply part of a place like this, even if my curatorial hijinks bring a great deal of possibility and conflict with my attempt to keep an even-keeled protocol and perspective about access. And speaking of protocol, another thing that occupies my brain a lot…

We botched the score but that made the piece better?

Photo by Tim Schmoll from June 26- I may never be this focused again in my life

While I was a Fellow with the Summer of Protocols, one of the main concepts I was trying to convey from a systems-thinking perspective was the notion of “expressivity” in musical performance:

Specifically, I found ‘expression’ to be the space of legible variation within a set of musical givens (notation but also socially contextual performance practice ‘tradition’). Even within this space, certain practices may favor a certain position or degree of variation - a ‘sweet spot’ between novelty and familiarity. And that legibility may be shared between creators/performers and audiences, or not. Where there’s a gap or tension in this space…now we’re getting somewhere interesting.

The Tri-Centric Experiencer’s Unit’s performance of Composition No. 76 by Anthony Braxton last month was a great, sharp example of such. Even in Braxton’s notoriously expansive and arcane compositional language, this one has a high density of novel (and occasionally unexplained) symbols requiring a lot of pre-planned and spontaneous interpretation, to the extent that “doing it right” in terms of a precise notational accuracy is no longer possible, or indeed the point. Per Paul Steinbeck’s insightful analysis, the score is “in dialogue with the musicians, not dictated to them.” Steinbeck’s article also shows, though, that it’s absolutely still possible to correlate the choose-your-adventure-order of the score to a performance. Doing so allows us to better appreciate the dialogue by seeing where both sides are coming from to reach that aforementioned ‘space’ of expression. Even stretched to the limit, in the context of Braxton’s music the ‘protocol’ for the shared legibility is knowing the players are giving it their all to craft a music that is both of the score and also of the moment, even if what is ‘right’ for the moment is incredibly subjective.

A couple of folks, including Steinbeck and others familiar with the context, had great to things to say about the June 26 performance! Take a listen yourself (the embed code defaults to an image of the other group, Lion’s Head, who were also spectacular). What they don’t know, though, is that (Mark, Fred, don’t hate me) we literally were not on the same page for the first 25% of the piece.

What happened, I think, is a consequence of programming. Following a rendition of Composition 23C, we decided to transition in 76 with a brief free improvisation. Our landing point, however, was a page of material open enough that aural information alone did not cue us in to a player ‘arriving’ at the page. Not until 3 or 4 sections later did we have a passage that allowed us to fully, demonstrably lock in. “Demonstrably” is an important word here. There easily could have been visual, gestural, or even verbal signs that would have assisted cohesion section-by-section. But is there another protocol, another norm at play in this music, that discourages players from revealing the process? Are we not only making the music legible, but our alleged telepathic powers? Or would those additional forms of information confuse the means and ends, impacting the delivery of sounds or audience attention? Isn’t it, in the end, ‘about the music’?

What IS ‘the music’ though? Especially if the loaded term “just” had been put in front…

Music is incredible for how it can make itself legible on multiple register of understanding: technically, bodily, emotionally, culturally, etc. What is most thrilling about improvised and experimental music for me is that it pushes everyone involved, creators and experiencers alike, to refresh and reconstruct the terms of the experience as it happens; more or less often, exercising this capacity becomes the foreground source of expression, emotion, and sensation (but still, hopefully, not the only source). In doing this music, we all deeply pursue our ability to make understanding together in a low-stakes, high-imagination environment (compared to, say, nuclear diplomacy). So even when we didn’t do it ‘right’, folks still saw the space of expression and appreciated the particular qualities of moments of performance, and understood it well within the space overall. We were bummed on behalf of our own technique and egos but quickly moved into learning for next time. That’s not only a musical protocol, but a broader way of being that I’m glad doing this fosters.

Also fostering it is Braxton himself, who once said in one of my classes at Wesleyan working on his music: “After the show, I’m gonna send you a bill charging one hundred dollars for every wrong note…I’m gonna send you another bill charging two hundred dollars for every right note!” (Who said free music was free??)

So moving forward with that spirit. Haven’t done a lot of things right, but trying to do with insight and compassion and around others with the same.

Speaking of doing, if these sorts of additions to the ‘stack speak to you, let me know! It’s probably good practice on my part, to not let expression and imagination get cordoned off in “just the music”. Could I be practicing instead, though?? Yes, as soon as I get home, at which point, I’ll do so when I could’ve been writing. Ack, but also thanks, in the spirit of Sarah Kay’s “The Paradox”.

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It’s not very far, and no unforeseen miseries have arisen. But it does preoccupy a lot of mental space as part of a number of shifting life-tectonic-plates. If this was a different newsletter, more might be disclosed. But I don’t think I’m there yet with this thing.

Because, dear reader, I value your time and attention in a way that toes the line between the personal and professional, the inviting and revealing, (the demure and neurotic), including not making you slog to important information about things happening in the world unless you truly wanted the juicy details in a way that would be better served by writing me directly. So…

June is defined by the move, but it’s also topping off with a 3-day show marathon at its end:

• Wednesday the 24th, at 6 pm at the Marquette Park Auditorium (enter via the Fieldhouse, off Marquette Rd. & Kedzie Ave): The Marquette Park Composers Workshop is a crack group of creative music explorers, courtesy of Matt Riggen bootstrapping a proper para-conservatory-laboratory out of the city’s after-school programming like it’s the 70s all over again. It looks like a big band, but they’ve taken incredibly well to some of my most open and text-based compositions.

  • The pieces on this program haven’t been played since my 2022 doctoral recital (Clarke Distributions, Meillassoux Distributions), workshops in 2017 (Great American Scrapbook), or ever (premiering The Same River, A Thousand Rivers and One & Two Study). It gets abstract, but also pretty intense, grooving, and even silly.

• Thursday the 25th, at 8:30 pm at Elastic Arts: The Tri-Centric Experiencers Unit rides again! Together with Mark Nagy and Fred Jackson Jr. on winds and other things, we’ll return to Anthony Braxton’s monumental Composition 76. Changing instruments is frequent and mandatory, the order of pages is never the same twice, and it keeps us grounded in our improvising tendencies while really bringing out space and direction. We might even sing as part of it…

  • We’re first on the bill, followed by Lion’s Head, a Madison-to-Chicago trio with deep ties and takes on the free jazz tradition. Two sides of the coin this music doesn’t usually make.

• Friday the 26th, at 8 pm once more at Elastic: The Elastro series highlights electronic and audiovisual performers, and it’s a serious honor to split the bill with Kristina Warren, who’s on tour from Providence, RI, and a delight to finally meet up again for the first time since…possible 2017 when we met on the same Atlantic Center for the Arts residency??

  • This will be the first time in about a year to see my solo feedback work in Chicago! I plan for this to be a light release celebration of Always Untils, and thus will have both vibes and trumpet in tow to make noise and let the noise make me. Discounted download codes will be available for sale for one night only!

Then it will be July. There will be recuperation, rearranging, family visits, and several sets with the Fre Fest.

What else…while catching up with someone I haven’t seen in a long time, they asked what I was doing for me. It’s an important question, though I’m trying to find answers to it that leave room for all this ““““work”””” as part of the formation and not just reactionary sources of joy. Possibly a skewed take on the question, and a sign of ongoing walls that will get moved around like furniture or sounds in the air.
That being said…jump in a body of water if one is near you, it helps a lot.

See you soon and/or be in touch : )

I’m writing this from a farm on the Wisconsin border, briefly stopping over before landing fully back in Chicago. First and foremost, it’s an absolute privilege to be able to go out to a new city and make new sounds, in the well-supported company of old and new friends. The Twin Cities area has some fantastic music and community going on, and they really get the stakes of it.

Alex Hecker, Ross Clowser, Asha Rowland, Truth North Studios, Wussow’s, Resource—thank you <3

Somehow, things stack up one after another. Cause and effect doesn’t work in a straight line in this life. It’s as surprising to me as to you, dear reader, that this ‘stack is as full as it is. Thanks in advance for your time and attention :)

1. An actually new album! Always Untils, June 1

“Ben, geez, didn’t you just announce a new album in the last newsletter? Where’s your sense of timing?”

It’s true, but to be fair, that was an older album given new life.

This one is genuinely fresh, sounds VERY different, and the plans for it got rolling before the other dates and events took hold. Always Untils comes out next Monday in collaboration with the Berlin-based Elektramusic, on their Bandcamp and mine.

The sounds are at once intensely digital and organic, continuous and surprising, as the little clip above hopefully hints at. It’s a noisier listen, but also one that rewards riding it out like a journey once you get used to the temperature.

This album is the spiritual successor to Alike Untils, using the same interactive feedback system but now with cornet, and produced in a ‘live’ studio setting. It’s one of several projects I worked on at the Stockholm EMS, both as its own thing and in preparation for composing the ensemble expansion Jericho-Nigredo, which premiered this month. Here’s the studio where it all went down:

In such a small, acoustically-refined space, with multiple speakers, the system went absolutely bonkers in the best way, and sent the inspirations and mental connections in all kinds of directions. If I may quote the notes:

With four microphones and an immersive multichannel speaker system, they and the sounds wandered within the space. All the music featured here was made live, with long takes reconfigured but with no change to the ‘sounds themselves’.

Always Untils calls to the past and future of working with the intangible, as music’s entanglements with mysticism and cybernetics are not far from mind here. Neither is Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The track titles lean into metaphysical reflections on change and identity— live processing as alchemy, the base materialism of feedback, the blurry line between where the instrumental ‘bodies’ begin and end, the mirror images of sonic satisfaction and obliteration. It offers a listening experience that is simultaneously contemplative and intensive, and highlights a bracing new branch of Zucker’s mercurial composer-performer practice.

It’s been finely polished by the mastering excellence of Guillermo Pizarro’s Vittoria Regia Studios. The cover is graced by one of Corey Grabiec’s collages, which have captivated me from the second I saw them, and felt like a perfect complement to the interplay of the textural and semi-artificial processes. Very glad this is coming into the world for you to experience it!

And for it to follow in the footsteps of a rich legacy of trumpet/live electronics work—I’d be absolutely remiss to not mention touchpoint work by Jon Hassell, Ben Neill, Toshinori Kondo, and Sarah Belle Reid, amongst many others.

2. Speaking of legacies…

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I’m not really a podcast or interview-listening person, however, having been back on the giving- end of one, I remember the format’s appeal and art-form possibility. Scott Rubin had me on his interview series to talk about a Chicago artist I admired.

So I decided to go on a mini-spiel about Jason Adasiewicz, who I think has a special place in the canon of avant-garde jazz vibraphone for his totally personal solution to its challenges.

TL;DW: The easy thing to say about what he does is that he can play the vibes REALLY LOUD, and holds the pedal down to let the sound out. What this REALLY gets at is an approach to musical shape on the instrument utterly distinct from the linear (bebop) tradition that the instrument found its original footing in.

(It’s closer to the sort of sound-forward craft that Matthew Shipp called the “Black Mystery School” (ex. Monk, Taylor, Waldron) when applied to piano. On the vibes, I’ve been thinking about what this mystery school might be and who’s touching upon it. Bobby Hutcherson briefly invoked it in the 60s, and my former teacher Jay Hoggard has made a seamless integration of the avant-garde into a blues-rooted language, especially on his early solo album. Walt Dickerson and Khan Jamal are two serious participants, as is the very recently departed Gunter Hampel. I only see myself in dialogue with the approach, not as devotee or some kind of contender.)

As you can tell by the above paragraph, I’m slowly coming back around to wanting to talk and write about intellectual interests in a more codified way. The video will do for now. Besides, there’s music to be made, first and foremost!

3. So, May and June events

(All shows are in Chicago/Central time)

• Saturday, May 30, 7 pm at Space Time Sounds (3419 W Fullerton Ave): Chandler Browne and Hasani Cannon have a multimedia gallery-type shindig going on, with their visuals all over the space, and activated by an all-percussion ensemble including my vibes. (Chan is also organizing a “Fre Fest” in late July I’ll also be appearing across)

• Sunday, May 31, 5-7 pm at Clara (2027 W North Ave): My Little Realities (with Juliann Wang, Graham Nelson, and Evan Kopca) returns for the Sunday happy hour with poetry and poetic cross-cultural, post-jazz improvisation.

• June 5-7, the Constellation Mens’ Ensemble Presents “Zodiac”: A cycle of new commissions for the stellar male choir, inspired by the astrological signs. True to my nature, I have written the Taurus portion, which is subdued and Shakespearean to various degrees. The concerts are free but with a suggested donation going to the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. Click here to learn more and get the exact locations across the city.

• June 24, 6 pm at the Marquette Park Auditorium: The Marquette Park Composer’s Ensemble, under the fearless direction of Matt Riggen, takes on my compositions for improvisers. It’s been great to see emerging pro folks more rooted in ““jazz”” stretch their approaches on the graphic notation and text instruction in these works, including Distributions last performed on my doctoral recital, a Chicago premiere of the “Great American Scrapbook”, and two brand new works, one of which was written especially for them!

• June 25, 8:30 pm at Elastic Arts: The Tri-Centric Experiencers Unit’s reprises Anthony Braxton’s Composition 76, with myself, Mark Nagy, and Fred Jackson Jr. switching up instruments as frequently as we can.

• June 26, 8 pm at Elastic again: Brand new setups for vibraphone and electronics, sharing the bill with Providence-based composer/performer Kristina Warren on concertina and synths. A long-overdue reunion!!
  

That seems like plenty? All I can tell people these days is “no day is the same” — which is kind of a lie because plenty of days are me staring down my laptop and barely keeping life admin afloat while trying to fix down other parts of life — and it’s enough and not, but I see no way out for…well, any of us in this environment…other than cultivating multitudes. See you soon, I hope, in real life or here! I’d love to do more actual dives into the music, rather than just throwing it around as “news”, as my sense of time (not actual time, that can always be made) permits.

As always, there’s a lot more to say and do, but I’ll leave it at that for now.

Social media, for better or worse, is another good place to experience more as it comes.

Thanks as always for your eyes and ears. Whatever the topic, I’d love to hear from you!

Hello! Thanks to everyone who’s signed on here. Folks who became paid subscribers, hope you liked the goodie bag : )

Still working out how to best use this thing, but probably will keep it newsletter-y for the time being. Hope this method of getting the word out keeps on being as viable as…any of this is.

It was great to see folks at the various shows mentioned in the last newsletter!
Some followups on those:

• More My Little Realities shows are pending, including golden hour vibes on May 31, 5-7 pm at Clara, and an August 6 appearance on the Elastic Arts Improvised Music Series.

• All The Wizards Were Here may be emphasizing the “were” part for a bit, but the Theatre Y show raised the roof and a bunch of mutual aid funds! And we will always leave a mystical trace on the ears thanks to the release of the EP, from the sessions that started it all: Listen hereeee

• The premiere of Jericho-Nigredo was a good loud time! Wonderful collaborators, kickass artists sharing the bill, and the system behaved as much as it ever does. Would be great to figure out how to keep it evolving in itself and other spaces. Unusually for a CLEAT show, this one was streamed, so you can begin to get a sense of the intensity by clicking here.

• The William Ferris Chorale sounded great, and it was a privilege to blend sound worlds and sound-times with the electronic interludes. A live recording is forthcoming…

Coming off these weekends, I have to take stock and move through the days differently. However, things are happening which necessitated a Part 2 to the original title pun.

Why part 2?

So much for avoiding the internet. This one’s interesting though, I think.

Subvert is a new music distribution platform based on a co-operative ownership model. This means a couple of good things:

1) All proceeds go to the artist! It’s like Bandcamp Friday every day!
2) Artists on the platform have a say in business decisions due to its LCA-owning-a-public-benefit-corporation.

Will this work? Let’s find out. It’s got tech and VC ties, but it’s worth having multiple platforms to work with. Bandcamp is still going strong obviously, but there’s no telling what the future holds. Relatively little to lose consider the landscape as it already is. So: https://www.subvert.fm/benzuckersounds

For now, it mostly has albums that I have fully produced and released myself. I am gonna be in touch with labels about how this might work with them and see what can happen. Chien-An Yuan from 1473 Recordings (the best) has generously let me put Alike Untils up (the noisy-vibiest), and to run a little experiment, I get to do another kind of Part 2 on here:

The 10th anniversary reissue of Confluere, my first “real” album!

I made Confluere while living in London, a period that really kicked my ass on so many levels about my choices as an artist and person. In person, I will tell the story about its challenges, but this was a bright spot. One weekend, I just set up a bunch of mics in a Brunel University classroom and had at it with every instrument I could at the time. Subsequently, what I was planning on making an arduous editing process out of became a joyful surprise of space in the inherent layering of my subsequent selves. As a kind review put it:

The layered parts result to this listener as unprocessed as one can wish, each voice occupying a distinct position in the mix. The ambit is that of a soothing kind of improvisation with a minimum of instant structure but, in essence, not revolving around fixed shapes or tonal definitions.

This notwithstanding, the adjective evoked by these acoustic aggregations is just that: “harmonic”. Meaning that the atmosphere is peaceful, the melodies unfold calmly, the resonances are all-encompassing.

…you’re going to appreciate the warm embrace of its unassuming truthfulness.

I released it through Not Art Records, an eclectic NYC label run by Tyler Gilmore (who I had just met in Spain, and who has just released an AMAZING album doing tape loop stuff with giants Jason Moran and Marcus Gilmore). Not Art went offline last year, and I’m glad I used some of the time and space to practice my improved mixing skills and take stock of what I was up to.

I think the same drives are still present in some recent work, and the goals as very-roughly conceived then are mostly achieved there. The thought of trying a similar project again has crossed my mind, but my stubborn refusal to reiterate keeps winning.

So instead, here it is, cleaner but still unassuming, out now only on Subvert. Let me know what you think the music and the thing it’s on!

Something about twine?

Having used the Weird Al song to demonstrate the Mixolydian mode to my poor students, maybe I’ll have to actually check that thing out. Next weekend, the chance may arise…

I don’t think anyone here reading this is based in the Minneapolis area, but if you know anyone there, send this along! I’m doing a few shows out there:

• Thursday, May 21, I’m doing a solo vibes & electronics performance at True North Studio (6 pm), part of a new series organized by Alex Hecker (Thanks Alex!)

• Reprising the solo on May 22 in Duluth, sharing the stage with Alex’s clarinet duo and the “gonkulations & electro-acoustic contraptions” of Tim Kaiser. 7 pm at Wussow’s Concert Cafe.

• Resource all day on the 23rd, first as part of a live-sound movement session hosted by my Lykanthea collaborator Asha Rowland, then sticking around for a trio with Ross Clowser (guitar) and Em Garau (drums) as part of the revived Omnivore series! I wish I still had my copy of Deep Refrains for Michael Gallope to sign :o

June will come into focus shortly thereafter. Realllllly not looking forward to moving house.

As always, there’s a lot more to say and do, but I’ll leave it at that for now.
Social media, for better or worse, is another good place to experience more as it comes.

Thanks as always for your eyes and ears. Whatever the topic, I’d love to hear from you!

Hi! If you’re reading this, you subscribe to my irregular email updates, and I’ve brought you along to a new platform. Basically, I was running up against the free monthly email allowance in my site’s built-in app and needed to bust past the boundaries. While I’m missing the design flexibility, not having to be stingy about it hopefully means I can be more flexible and even personable in what I have to share with you all. Not that I’ll do too much, promise. You can check out any time you want AND you can leave. God knows I’m not trying to spend much more time online either, though I’m toying with the idea of subscribers getting some more in-depth peeks at recent works or works-in progress. Thoughts?

This shift also aligns with the boundary crossing of turning 33 last week (hence the subtitle riff). It has been an incredibly full set of days (s/o Joanna for the above photo and day trip) and for all my gripes, I’m pretty blessed to be around some excellent people.

Musically and otherwise! Just last night, Kyle Flens gave the US premiere of f(ne)ar-sited, “the quietest marimba solo you will ever hear” — judge for yourself via Constellation’s ever-generous livestream.

So, what after all that then…

This Saturday, May 2, I will be cutting and running between two stellar Chicago art+community gatherings:

• 5 pm, at the Lookingglass Theatre (16 Pearson St, River North) the EVOLUTION Asian American Arts Festival features My Little Realities, with Juliann Wang on vocals and guitars, Graham Nelson on winds and harmonica, Evan Kopca on clarinets and guitar, and myself on vibes, trumpet, and percussion. This group has been a delightful cross-cultural spontaneous musics collective, and it’s part of a whole weekend of multi-genre art and performance!
  More info and tickets here.

• Around 8 pm, All The Wizards Were Here are part of a benefit lineup at Theatre Y (3611 W Cermak Rd) for a radical abolitionist community elder. We’re glad to be lending our speculative electro-jazz-funk to a really good cause, and line it up with an EP drop this Friday!

And next week:

• Friday, May 8, 8 pm, at Elastic Arts (3429 W. Diversey Ave):
  The premiere of Jericho-Nigredo, a multichannel alchemy for 4 trumpets and interactive feedback, starring the epic CLEAT system, with myself, Monica Benson, Amos Egleston, and Peter Gillette on horns. Its own performers have called it “truly terrifying.” Can’t think of any higher praise! Also on the bill will be fascinating, immersive sets with nnirror’s live coding and Crystina Windham’s audiovisuals. More info here, tickets at the door.

• Saturday, May 9, 7:30 pm at the Church of the Atonement (5749 N. Kenmore Ave, Edgewater): The William Ferris Chorale presents “Rivers”, pairing Majel Connery’s 21st-century The Rivers are Our Brothers with Antoine Brumel’s imposing and monumental 15th-century “Earthquake Mass,” and original ambient interludes by yours truly. Just for you, a little preview of the sound…
  Tickets here.
  

A few more updates are pending, including details of a short Minneapolis tour May 21-23 and June events here in Chicago. In the meantime, I hope this new format works for you. As always, there’s a lot more to say and do, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Social media, for better or worse, is another good place to experience more as it comes.

Thanks as always for your eyes and ears. Whatever the topic, I’d love to hear from you!