Alternating Currents Live presents Jaap Blonk & Damon Smith Duo

720 East Locust Street,Milwaukee WI 53212

23 October, 2022

Description

Alternating Currents Live presents Jaap Blonk & Damon Smith Duo, in conjunction with Then as Now: Woodland Pattern 1980–2022 For the first set Damon Smith will perform Ben Patterson’s Variations for Double Bass 1961, and Jaap Blonk will perform Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonate. The second set will be Blonk and Smith’s duo version of Hugo Ball’s Six Sound Poems, 1916. Jaap Blonk is a self-taught composer, performer, and poet best known as a vocal performer in improvised settings as well as in the presentation of the classic repertoire of sound poetry—e.g. the works of dada poets Hugo Ball and Kurt Schwitters. Jaap Blonk’s powerful stage presence and almost childlike freedom in improvisation, combined with his keen grasp of structure, results in a unique sonic experience. He has visited Woodland Pattern on numerous occasions, but this will be the first time in Milwaukee that he will perform Kurt Schwitters’ Die Ursonatte in its complete form. Blonk is a featured artist in Woodland Pattern’s art retrospective, Then as Now. Damon Smith is a virtuoso double bassist, improvisor, and teacher currently residing in St. Louis who has studied with Lisle Ellis, Bertram Turezky, Joëlle Leandré, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser, and others. His explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. Damon has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra’s Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Keith Rowe, Jaap Blonk, Roscoe Mitchell, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Weasel Walter, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann, and Peter Kowald.