55 Workshop/Performance, Essen, Germany

The Third Guangzhou Triennial

I will be presenting a work with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. Details TBA.

The Third Guangzhou Triennial will open from September 6th to November 16th, 2008 in Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China. Opening preview will be on September 6th, 2008. The Curatorial Committee includes Gao Shiming, Sarat Maharaj and Johnson Chang Tsong-zung.

Farewell to Post-Colonialism

For the curatorial discourse of this Triennial, we propose to say ‘Farewell to Post-Colonialism’. This represents the theoretical basis from which we hope to explore our critical vision. ‘Farewell to Post-colonialism’ is not a denial of the importance and rewards of this intellectual tradition; in the real world, the political conditions criticised by post-colonialism have not receded, but in many ways are even further entrenched under the machinery of globalisation. However, as a leading discourse for art curatorial practice and criticism, post-colonialism is showing its limitations in being increasingly institutionalised as an ideological concept. Not only is it losing its edge as a critical tool, it has generated its own restrictions that hinder the emergence of artistic creativity and fresh theoretical interface. To say ‘Farewell to Post-Colonialism’ is not simply a departure, but a re-visit and a re-start.

11. Juli 2008
20:00 Uhr
Alte Aula
Media | Music | Design | Interaction
Workshopkonzert

Neil Leonhard, Saxophonist, Komponist und Lehrer am Berklee College of Music, USA, und Studierende seiner Klasse

Folkwang Studierende der Klassen Prof. C. Lazzeroni, Kommunikationsdesign | Interface Design, Prof. Th. Neuhaus, Musikinformatik, und Prof. D. Hahne, Komposition und Visualisierung das Konzert findet statt im Rahmen des Workshops Media | Music | Design | Interaction“ der vom 7. bis 11. Juli an der Folkwang Hochschule angeboten wird – das Ergebnis der interdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit wird im Workshopkonzert präsentiert

Folkwang Hochschule
Klemensborn 39
45239 Essen
Telefon: 0201_4903_0 Telefax: 0201_4903_288

www.folkwang-hochschule.de

“ReVisioning the (W)hole II: Curious Intersections

I will present music and give a talk at “ReVisioning the (W)hole II: Curious Intersections”:
University of Wyoming
September 23-25, 2008

The event was organized by Margaret Wilson, Meg Van Baalen-Wood, Margaret Haydon and Mark Sheridan Rabideau based around the concepts of Curiosity, Creativity, and Collaboration.

Mark Sheridan Rabideau does a wonderful job of articulating many of the themes of the conference in the interview below. This is one quote that really hit home for me as both an artists and teacher!

"What students learn while actualizing their ideas, on any scale, is that failure is an inevitable consequence of the act of invention, that tenacity and resilience are required throughout the process, and that the world can be changed in ways big and small."

arts entrepreneurship educator's network

Juan Blanco's Espacios V in Daniel Langlois Foundation Latin American Electroacoustic Music Collection

Composer Ricardo Dal Farra worked for twenty five years to compile the Daniel Langlois Foundation Latin American Electroacoustic Music Collection. It is an amazing archive of recordings, biographies, interviews, scores and pictures.

Included are many works by Juan Blanco (Cuba), one of the founding fathers of electronic music in Latin America.

Daniel Langlois Foundation Latin American Electroacoustic Music Collection

I play on this work by Blanco:

Juan Blanco, Espacios V, 1986; Recording time: 11 min 42 s.
Instruments: Tape and sax; Neil Leonard, soprano and tenor sax.

Juan Blanco, Espacios V, 1986

Juan Blanco: Cuba's Pioneer of Electroacoustic Music; by Neil Leonard - published in Computer Music Journal, MIT Press, 1997

Juan Blanco: Cuba's Pioneer of Electroacoustic Music; by Neil Leonard

Concert with Gadi Sassoon (aka MEMORY9)

ECHO RESONANCE & MEMORY premiere performance - NAPOLI

The sound for ECHO RESONANCE & MEMORY is inspired by Jannis Kounellis’ work at La Marrana Arte Ambientale (La Spezia), an installation made up of large church bells that appear to be spiraling out from the earth’s core. I was struck by the intensity by which this arrangement of bells, a chorus of silent tongues, caused sound to resonate in my mind. The work that I have created for ER&M uses computer processed voice and recordings of Kounellis’ bells, and invites us to reconsider how our memory records and abstracts sonic events. This is the first work in which I have collaborated with the choreographer/dancer from the formulation of concept, to the staging of the work and live performance. It is fitting that the premiere takes place on Monte Vesuvio, a sometimes-silent tongue, and like church bell, is the source of a hallmark sound in local history.

--- Italian press release ---

ECHO RESONANCE & MEMORY

di e con NEIL LEONARD & GABRIELLA RICCIO
performance multimediale danza musica immagini
prima assoluta

domenica 25 maggio 2008 ore 21.30
teatro IL TORCHIO spazio per le arti di Somma Vesuviana – Napoli
via colonnello Aliperta – Parco degli Aromi

ECHO RESONANCE & MEMORY performance site-specific multimediale (musica danza immagini) nasce dall'incontro di Gabriella Riccio artista-coreografa napoletana di formazione e percorso europeo - una delle figure più interessanti nel panorama cittadino della giovane coreografia d'autore e della nuova danza di ricerca della regione Campania - e Neil Leonard - sound artist, compositore e sassofonista di Boston, professore di musica elettronica al Berklee College of Music, curatore di GASP sonic art series a Boston, direttore di festival di musica elettronica di respiro internazionale. Neil Leonard si esibisce tra gli altri alla 49a edizione della Biennale di Venezia, all'Auditorium di Roma, al MOMA di NY, alla Carnegie Hall. E' attualmente in tourné in Europa per collaborazioni con il Conservaotrio Pollini di Padova e la Folkswangschule di Essen.
E' proprio Neil Leonard che apprezzando il lavoro di Gabriella Riccio ha lanciato l'idea per una collaborazione che vede la luce proprio nei prossimi giorni con un debutto nel suggestivo teatro Il Torchio spazio per le arti di Somma Vesuviana.

GR: Il tema è emerso dai primi suoni proposti da Neil, suoni arcaici, ancestrali, metallici. Materia, appunto. Ed evocazione/memoria. Abbiamo iniziato a parlare di eco e di risonanza del suono e l'impianto del suono è diventato ragione fondamentale per la ricerca e l'indagine sul corpo e sul movimento. Indagare le possibilità coreografico-compositive per i concetti di eco e risonanza con un uso dell'immagine ripetuta moltiplicata e riprodotta del corpo, per andare oltre ed arrivare ad un corpo/movimento visionario. Offrire allo sguardo/corpo suggestioni che possano risuonare questa volta in senso poetico con lo spettatore. La possibilità di lavorare in composizione istantanea sia con il corpo, sia con il suono, sia con l'impianto visivo (disegno luci di Fernado Siciliano, camera mobile di Alia Scalvini e missaggio video di Alessandro De Vita) offrono una rara possibilità di indagine dello scarto tra evento e reazione della mente, intelletto vs istinto, dentro vs fuori, luce vs buio, tra sacro e profano, perché il corpo ed in particolare il corpo-danzato resta sempre ed inevitabilmente materia della terra, ma che da questa materia può come corpo-poetico lasciare apparire, trasformarsi, evocare.

NL: "I suoni per Echo Resonance & Memory sono ispirati ad un lavoro che Jannis Kounellis ha presentato a La Maranna Arte Ambientale di La Spezia, una istallazione realizzata con grandi campane che affiorano in una spirale dal centro della terra. Mi ha colpito allora l'intensità con la quale l'organizzazione di queste campane, come un coro di lingue silenti, potesse fare risuonare il suono nella mia mente. Il lavoro che ho creato usa voci elaborate elettronicamente e registrazioni di suoni che ho generato dall'installazione delle campane di Kounellis in modo da suggerire il primo apparire del suono come riportato dai miti dell'antichità. Il lavoro invita a riconsiderare come la nostra mente registra e trasforma il suono e la musica. Questo è il primo lavoro in cui ho collaborato con l'artista coreografa/danzatrice sin dalla formulazione del concetto fino alla messa in scena dell'opera nella formula della "live performance". Non è un caso credo che il lavoro debutti alle falde del Vesuvio, una lingua a volte silente e come le campane un segno sonico della storia locale.

ECHO RESONANCE & MEMORY

My first view of Mt. Vesuvius - site of the premiere performance.

Ariel shot from Google Earth - Somma Vesuviana us in the bottom left corner, just below the cloud.

After recording vocal tracks with Dagon Lorai and Alessia De Capua, residents of Somma Vesuviana. Alessia's voice is amazing and it was a real pleasure to work with these musicians from Somma Vesuviana, a small town near the summit of the volcano.

Rehearsing with Gabriella Riccio, Alia Scalvino and Alessandro De Vita at Il Torchio, Somma Vesuviana.

SECOND PERFORMANCE IN THE WORKS - MORE INFO TBA THIS WEEK!

Concert at Discoteca Di Stato - Sguardi Sonori 2008

In addition to concert, there will be a conference in the afternoon at 16.00 at the Center for American Studies in Via Caetani 32, Roma.

Turn up the Volume: The Audio Archive and Ways of Listening
Sguardi Sonori presentation at Discoteca di Stato and the Center for American Studies
Rome, Italy
June 27, 2008

By Neil Leonard

This year’s edition of Sguardi Sonori is hosted, in part, by Discoteca di Stato (DDS), an extensive archive and study center dedicated to the preservation of sonic memory. The archive houses tens of thousands of hours of sound from around the world, with an emphasis on the unique sonic culture of Italy, including music, political speeches, and ambient sound of social events.
In this venue, Scanner (Robin Rimbaud), Kim Cascone, and I will present a concert of live electronics works. The personal collections of sounds we each work and tour with mirror DDS’s comprehensive collection. In our case, however, the collections are not the final product or center of discourse, but rather, raw material that we process to generate new works.

I was introduced to Scanner’s early work by my students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in the early 1990’s. They were fascinated by Scanner’s inventive recycling of disposable sounds from police scanners, which he collected for his early compositions – and from which he adopted his stage name, Scanner. His use of the disembodied voices and electronic noises, produced by scanning devices, did much to focus our critical discussion on the writings of Luigi Russolo and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, and on the work of Marcel Duchamp, whose readymade sculptures of the early 20th century strongly suggested that sonic equivalents were just a matter of time.

Mining the airwaves, Scanner built an important body of work that changed to reflect the character of each location in which he eavesdropped. While John Cage explored similar ideas of appropriated broadcast and sound maps in his Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951) for 12 radios, digital technology handed Scanner the means to create real-time sound-maps that include the most private transmissions.

Like Scanner, Cascone has spent years constructing a sonic archive that fuels his current performances. Cascone’s work draws on a vast collection of sounds he created with hardware and software synthesizers. He builds home-brew software to navigate this repository in concert. After recycling and mixing these sounds algorithmically, to create a meta-soundscape, Cascone remixes them again on stage.

Cascone’s work epitomizes the extent to which new technologies are continually reshaping the ways we listen to, and work with, audio. In his recent Spectral Space, for example, Cascone uses indeterminacy to mimic the media overload that surrounds us. The work examines our ability to assimilate and decode this dense, omnipresent chorus of disembodied sound that has nothing to say, and yet, dominates our cultural soundscape. The result is a non-narrative performance in which Cascone finds “tangles of sounds that glint, shimmer, collide and implode within the fabric of noise.”

My own sonic archive has a distinct component of field recordings I collected while I was living in Italy for much of 2006. The sounds range from recordings of ancient Lazio ritual, that Dr. Massimo Pistacchi, Director of DDS, generously shared with me to recordings I made of Joseph Kournelli’s installation (located at La Marrana, the private estate for environmental art in La Spezia) to my recordings of Padovan a cappella groups -- comprised of workers from the open marketplace whose voices are quickly being replaced by the homogenous din of broadcast media. With the aid of computer processing, I have extracted, exaggerated and juxtaposed aspects of these keynote sounds to create a personal sonic statement.

My recent Italian commissions provided opportunities to leverage these sounds in three large scale works, including a permanent installation on the top of a mountain overlooking the Ligurian Sea, in a surround audio installation in the remains of the Templar church, Chiesa San Galgano, and most recently, as part of a 400-meter installation in the porticos of Padova’s historic district. These works explore the colliding sonic identities of new and old worlds and the relationship of the visitor to local histories.
Our short residency at Discoteca di Stato and the Center for American Studies provides several ways to reconsider the audio archive as an essential resource for 21st century art and examine how technological is changing the way we listen to and create sound works.

Neil Leonard
Boston
Director, Sonic Arts @ GASP
Professor, Berklee College of Music
May 2008

uscir ad ascoltar le stelle…

Photos of Rondò da Passeggio can be found here:

Nicola Bernardi's photos of Rondo da Passegio

Commission from Mimi Rabson

Violinist Mimi Rabson commissions Neil Leonard, JoAnne Brackeen, Stephen Webber, Winston Maccow, Norm Zocher, Victor Mendoza to create new works for solo violin. More details coming soon!

ECHO RESONANCE & MEMORY

ECHO RESONANCE & MEMORY
performance multimediale
idea Gabriella Riccio e Neil Leonard
coreografia e danza Gabriella Riccio
musica originale dal vivo Neil Leonard
camera mobile Alia Scalvino
mix video Alexis - Alessandro De Vita
luci Fernando Siciliano



Il Torchio, Somma Vesuviana, Napoli
(on the active volcano Mt. Vesuvius)
May 25, 2008
http://www.myspace.com/il_torchio



ECHO RESONANCE & MEMORY has been selected for a repeat performance by
La Fondazione Campania dei Festival per il triennio a Napoli il NAPOLI TEATRO FESTIVAL ITALIA
June 28, 2008
www.teatrofestivalitalia.it

RONDÒ DA PASSEGGIO

RONDÒ DA PASSEGGIO
Giornata dell'Ascolto 2008
Padova, Via Roma, May 18th 2008, 10:00 AM – 08:00 PM

Would you like to taste music like an ice-cream to go? Or walk on a sunny afternoon without the usual annoying presence of daily chores? You may want to try the Rondò da Passeggio (Rondeau to Go), a musical form that can only be completely appreciated by walking under the beautiful porticoes of Padova, in via Roma, on Sunday May 18th, 2008. The second edition of the Giornata dell'Ascolto (the listening day), the entire day will dedicated to the activity of listening in all its forms.

The Rondò da Passeggio takes place in the context of a musical installation that will rebuild the classical form of a seven-part rondeau (a b a c a b a) in a central street of Padova, Via Roma. Along its 900 feet of porticoes, where no cars are allowed, seven distinct compositions, each lasting 10 hours (from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM), will accompany walkers, strollers and joggers. Instead of the usual disturbing collection of sonic junk – dazed and confused – that emanates from pedestrian audio appliances that surround us, music will meet the city. Streets, squares, boulevards and buildings, a whole city will start whispering, playing and singing.

A “composition of compositions,” the Rondò da Passeggio is created by eight composers and installed by a horde of sound engineers. While each composition will be a distinct vision by a specific composer, the seven compositions will all be tied together by the formal scheme of the rondeau.

Rondò da Passeggio is a project commissioned by Prof. Sergio Durante (inventor of the Giornata dell'Ascolto) to the Conservatory “C.Pollini” of Padova and coordinated by Prof. Nicola Bernardini. The project involves numerous Conservatory teachers, composition students, electronic music students, and students from the Sound Engineering curriculum with the extraordinary participation of Neil Leonard and two of his students from Berklee College of Music, Boston.

Francesco Babolin, Anthony Baldino, Nicola Bernardini, Giovanni Bonato, Marco Braggion, Mirko Brigo, Gennaro Cantoro, Maura Capuzzo, Davide Ceccon, Andrea Cera, Raffaele Cipriano, Davide Corsato, Matteo Costa, Dario Dassenno, Pierluigi Duravia, Giacomo Frega, Gianni Giacomazzo, Francesco Guerra, Neil Leonard, Michele Marelli, Francesco Marescotti, Francesco Morosinotto, Marco Petrone, Matteo Pilotto, Spencer Putnam, Alberto Schiavo, Stefano Trento, Luca Uggias, Michele Vaccarotto, Andrea Versolatto, Riccardo Xotta. Rondò da Passeggio: 31 participants, 10 hours of music, 7 compositions, a single project.

Album Review @ Touching Extremes, May '08

VARIOUS ARTISTS - Nothing works as planned (Interval)

There is a good variety of styles and atmospheres in this double CD, which collects live performances of new music by American and Israeli composers (Ido Govrin, Amnon Wolman, Jonathan Chen, Neil Leonard, Kiki Keren-Huss, Beth Denisch, Arie Shapira, Keren Rosenbaum and Yossi Mar-Chaim). The pieces should represent different approaches to the phrase that gives the title to this set, but in truth it's rather perceivable as the effort of a community - led in this occasion by the American Composers Forum of New England - to find a common ground amidst variegated compositional methods and interpretations of contemporary visions, the whole presented in unconventional intimate settings. There's difference between the two discs in terms of aesthetic: the first contains works that could almost be placed into a quasi-newfangled electronica sector (Govrin's static minimalism, Chen's unfolding spirals of noise, Leonard's organic mysteriousness-cum-saxophone), while the second winks more to XX-century classic scores, with the majority of the situations involving acoustic instruments in pretty dissonant clothes and tendencies to non-serene disillusion (Mar-Chaim's piece for violin, contrabassoon and electronics, but also the disturbing "War" by Keren-Huss, which includes disquieting human voices expressing sufferance). The impression remains one of a reunion of people familiar with the reciprocal particularities, and the rarefied applause heard at the end of the performances gave me the idea of an audience formed by few knowledgeable aficionados. Interesting disc, in any case.

Dates with Giuliano Perin Ensemble in Padova:

Venerdì 16 maggio Lazise club "I Paparazzi"
Sabato 17 maggio Abano Terme Teatro Kursaal
Domenica 18 maggio Padova Palazzo Zukermann
Lunedi 19 maggio Padova Poesia e Musica

Plus

Domenica 18 maggio:
L'installazione della scuola di Musica Elettronica, di Composizione, il corso di Tecnico di Sala di Registrazione per la Giornata dell'Ascolto 2008 lungo via Roma. Nuovo lavoro con Maura Capuzzo

Domenica 25 maggio
Il Torchio, Somma Vesuviana, Napoli
Multimedia work with choreographer Gabriella Riccio

Multimedia performance @ Folkwang Hochschule, July 11, Essen

Premiere of Multimedia performance created in collaboration with Claudius Lazzeroni, Dietrich Hanne, Thomas Neuhaus. More info coming soon ...

Uscir ad ascoltar le Stelle - May 18th, Padova

The Giornata dell'Ascolta (Listening Day) festival commissioned the site specific sound installation, "uscir ad ascoltar le stelle…,” for the entrance of the Santa Maria dei Servi Church in the medieval city of Padova, Italy. As listeners enter the church for Sunday mass, they will experience an audio triptych that echoes themes and structures linked to the ancient architecture, painting, literature, and sounds that are essential to Padova's cultural heritage. Sound will emanate from the top of the portico structure, an architectural hallmark of the city.

I created the sound in collaboration with composer Maura Capuzzo, using sounds of sacred music from around the world. The title,  "uscir ad ascoltar le stelle....,"  is derived from the final words of Dante's Inferno: "Then we came forth, to see again the stars." The title suggests the idea of listening to, and feeling, something immaterial that comes from another word, the world of  sacred feelings and attitude. In the case of our installation, the title asks our listeners to "listen to the sacred world of our collective civilization ..."

The piece is a departure from any work that I have done in the past. Our commissioners asked for ten hours of continuous, non-repeating sound. I tell my composition students that duration is the first consideration when planning a work. Setting out to create a ten hour sound installation changed the way that Maura and I approached everything, from sonic result to process to artistic dialog. In addition, the site itself suggested things that were new, such as devising a three speaker configuration to match the theme of the trinity.

"uscir ad ascoltar le stelle...."  is one of seven sound installations that will adorn a 400-meter stretch of Padova's main boulevard, via Roma. Together, these seven installations form a rondeau form (i.e., A1 - B1 - A2 - C - A3 - B2 - A4). Nicola Bernardini (Berklee '81), installation organizer and director of electronic music at Padova's Pollini Conservatory, titled this series of installations "Rondò da Passeggio" or "Rondeau to go." This is a pun on the classic rondo form and an ice-cream they do in Venice, the 'gianduiotto da passeggio'. It's an ice-cream that you pick up and stroll around with, you are not supposed to eat it on the premises (double whipped cream: top *and* bottom). Festival director Dr. Sergio Durante is encouraging all stores and restaurants to give their radio and CD playback a rest for the day and emphasize the unique sounds of the city and its musicians.

Berkee alumni Anthony Baldino and Spencer Putnam assisted in the realization of the audio.

Mil Manera para Decir Adios with The Simple Company

Mil Manera para Decir Adios for computer generated sound, guitar and dancers
November 2007, Padova, Teatro delle Maddalene with The Simple Company and Interensemble

Music: Neil Leonard (music copyright Neil Leonard 2007)
Choreography: Elena Borgatti
Dancers: Hoda el Deib, Tiziana Maiuro, Veronica Pasqualotto
Guitar: Marco Pavin

Neil Leonard @ Auditorium di Roma

Echoes and Footsteps - live at the Auditorium di Roma. Music copyright Neil Leonard, 2007.

Neil Leonard performs Tre Fiati with The Simple Company

Tre Fiati for computer generated sound, soprano saxophone and dancers
November 2007, Padova, Teatro delle Maddalene with The Simple Company and Interensemble

Music: Neil Leonard (music copyright Neil Leonard 2007)
Choreography: Elena Borgatti
Soprano saxohone: Neil Leonard
Dancers: Claudia Baldan, Giulia Colombo

Giuliano Perin Sextet guest Neil Leonard - video

April 2008
Imola Forum cafè, Bologna, Italia
Giuliano Perin Ensemble: Giuliano Perin (vibes), Neil Leonard (sax), Maurizio Scomparin (trumpet), Marcello Tonolo (piano), Luciano Milanese (bass), Massimo Chiarella (drums)

Nothing Works as Planned - 4.5 star review

NOTHING WORKS AS PLANNED
[Interval Recordings - 2007 - 2Cd]
Genere: Experimental


Registrato in parte a New York e a Tel-Aviv, questo album rappresenta la fusione delle idee musicali di nove artisti, fissate in presa diretta e trasposte su supporto ottico, che trasformano in suono il 'loro' significato della frase 'Nothing Works As Planned' ovvero 'Nulla funziona come previsto' o forse sarebbe meglio dire 'Nulla di pianificato'. Il doppio CD è la documentazione della serie intitolata "Nothing Works As Planned", tenutasi a Tel-Aviv presso il Tel Aviv Museum of Art in occasione della Biennale di Musica Nuova, grazie alla Riverberazione naturale data dagli ampi spazi e dagli alti soffitti della struttura il suono finale risulta essere corposo quasi vivo, un vortice di suono sempre delicato che ricorda per 'movenze compositive' quei campanellini giapponesi dai quali il suono nasce casualmente sfruttando le vibrazioni indotte dal vento; così, quasi casualmente, lievi interferenze elettroniche vanno a giocare con archi e fiati mentre il 'suono' del pubblico conferisce al tutto una sensazione di presenza, quasi come se fossimo li ad ascoltare con le nostre orecchie, stesi su un tappeto catturati da qualche video installazione, il tutto corredato da un ottimo packaging con paesaggi fotografici dell'artista olandese Stefan Otto. Caldamente consigliato.

http://www.ultrasonica.it:80/site/modules/recensioni/index.php?op=r&rev_id=419&cat_id=1&sort_by

Tour with Giuliano Perin

Giuliano Perin Ensemble: Giuliano Perin (vibes), Neil Leonard (sax), Maurizio Scomparin (trumpet), Marcello Tonolo (piano), Luciano Milanese (bass), Massimo Chiarella (drums)

March 27th, 9:00PM
Teatro Dei Rinnovati, Asolo, Treviso, IT

March 28th, 9:00PM
Villa Bertoldi, Settimo di Pescantina, Verona, Italy, IT


March 29th, 9:00PM
Teatro "Falcone e Borsellino"
Comune di Liminea, Padova, IT

March 29th
Meeting with Nicola Bernardini and Maura Capuzzo to plan sound installation for Giornata del'Ascolto in May.

April 1, 9:00PM
Imola Forum cafè, Bologna, IT

-------------------------------------
IN THE MONTHS AHEAD:

Nov 1 8:00P
Festival de Jazz de Gijón, Spain
and tour of Asturias
Neil Leonrd/Juan Carlos Casimiro Ensemble
-------------------------------------
Friday July, 11th @ 8:00 PM
"Alte Aula" Folkwang Hochschule
Week long residency and Multimedia performance with Neil Leonard, Claudius Lazzeroni, Dietrich Hahne, Thomas Neuhasu
Folkwang University, Essen, Germany
-------------------------------------
Friday, May 2 @ 8:00
GASP Gallery
BRUXISM: ANNE RHODES voice; CARL TESTA double bass, clarinets, and electronics with guests NEIL LEONARD and TODD BRUNEL on bass clarinets

Giornata dell’ascolto, Italy

-------------------------------------
May 18 2008
Giornata dell’ascolto - city-wide listening day, Padova, Italy
Presentations with:
Nicola Bernardini -800 meter sound installation
Giuliano Perin – jazz ensemble at Loggia del Cornaro (above), next to Chiesa Sant'Antonio.

International Computer Music Convention - 2008

I will be assisting with the organization of ICMC 2008 in Belfast. I am looking forward to this amazing event!

Solo saxophone concert

I played a solo saxophone concert on the afternoon of my birthday. This High Street Hill Association sponsors and annual music event featuring Brookline musicians. Several years ago they featured a solo concert by Steve Lacy.

http://www.highstreethill.org/

Site for Giornata d'ascolto installation

This is the site of a sound installation presented by the Giornata d'Ascolto. My collaborator is Nicola Bernardini from the C. Pollini Conservatory, Padova. Maura Capuzzo and I are creating the sound installation for this point. Here is a frontal view of the church.

Concert with Vijay Iyer

The Music Technology Division Presents
A Music Synthesis Department Visiting Artist
VIJAY IYER

Concert: Wednesday, Feb 20
7:30 p.m.
1A, 1140 Boylston Street
Free and open to the public

The concert will feature Vijay Iyer on acoustic piano, laptop and video playing solo and with Music Synthesis students, alumni and faculty.

Neil Leonard - saxophone; Spencer Putnam - laptop; Anthony Baldino - laptop; Leah Gough-Cooper - EWI




Described in the The Village Voice as “the most commanding pianist and composer to emerge in recent years,” VIJAY IYER was named #1 Rising Star Jazz Artist and #1 Rising Star Composer by the Downbeat International Critics Poll for both 2006 and 2007. His twelve highly acclaimed albums include Reimagining (2005) and Tragicomic (2008) with his quartet; Simulated Progress (2005) and Orbis Tertius (2008) with the trio Fieldwork; Raw Materials (2006) in duo with saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa; and In What Language? (2004) and Still Life with Commentator (2007), his large-scale works with poet-performer Mike Ladd. In his newest ensemble, "Tirtha," Vijay joins forces with South Indian guitar virtuoso Prasanna and young tabla star Nitin Mitta. Vijay performs constantly around the world at international festivals and concert venues, and he has collaborated with artists such as Steve Coleman, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Amiri Baraka, Butch Morris, Ethel, dead prez, Karsh Kale, George Lewis, DJ Spooky, John Zorn, Dennis Russell Davies, and the American Composers Orchestra. He received the 2003 CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts, the 2006 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and project grants from the Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, the New York State Council on the Arts, Chamber Music America, Creative Capital, American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, Arts International, and The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. He is a faculty member at New York University, New School University, and the School for Improvisational Music, and has published articles in Music Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Current Musicology, Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, and Sound Unbound.

myspace.com/vijayiyer

Bass Clarinet on Landon Rose's Dr. Clash & His Assistant

Neil Leonard, bass clarinet on Dr. Clash & His Assistant

Leonard wins Newbury Comics Faculty Fellowship

(photo of Leonard interviewing Stanley Crouch, Herb Alpert visiting professor)

Newbury Comics Faculty Fellowship Awardees Announced
The Office of Academic Affairs is happy to announce the awardees of the inaugural Berklee College of Music Newbury Comics Faculty Fellowship: Lori Landay and Neil Leonard

Berklee College of Music
The Newbury Comics Faculty Fellowship
Awardees Announcement

Congratulations to all who submitted project proposals for the inaugural Berklee College of Music Newbury Comics Faculty
Fellowship. We are pleased to announce the awardees.

Lori Landay is an Associate Professor in Liberal Arts. Her project, Visual Worlds, focuses on online 3-D animated
environments in which people can interact socially, express themselves creatively, fly, play games, shop, build things, own
"land", share music and video, and learn in new educational contexts. She will research various virtual worlds such as
Second Life, ActiveWorlds, and There.com, with particular emphasis on two foci important to Berklee: how the music industry
might become involved with virtual worlds and the educational opportunities for virtual worlds.

Neil Leonard is an Associate Professor in the Music Synthesis department. His project, Composition and Performance for
Robotics, Video and Architecture, explores the role of sound in connection to three visual disciplines (robotics, video and
architecture). He will create three new works: 1. a composition for woodwinds, custom music software, drawing machines,
and live video; 2. a work for saxophone, video/performance artists and laptop musicians based on recordings of a sculpture
by Jannis Kounellis; 3. an 800 meter sound installation for the Giornata dell'Ascoloto (Listening Day) festival in Padova, Italy.
Through collaboration with video and interdisciplinary artists, Leonard will explore strategies for creating personal narratives
using new technology. These compositions will be performed in Essen Germany, La Spezia and Padova, Italy, with
collaborators there.

VORTEX presents:

Neil Leonard - sax & live electronics with
Anthony Baldino & Spencer Putnam - live electronics

Also appearing:

Doug Principato - guitar
The Rivera Brunel Method - Brunel - clarinets/Rivera - cello

Fri. 15 February @ OUTPOST, 8pm $5 or b/o
http://www.zeitgeist-outpost.org/

Anthony Baldino composes electronic music for modern dance and concert performance. Last summer he toured Italy playing in the Sguardi Sonori, Pop-Eye and Futurity Festivals. He composed and designed sound for films featured in the Sundance film festival. Anthony recently conducted the world premiere of Olivia Block's Rime and Glaze for 24 musicians (voices, string quartet, laptop soloists, contact mics).

Spencer Putnam began his music career in Omaha, Nebraska and now resides in Boston, MA. Under the moniker of Maetoba, Spencer performs as a multi-instrumentalist often toting a guitar, bass, keyboard and/or a variety of percussion instruments in an electronic setting using a variety of software applications on his laptop to simultaneously manipulate live and pre-recorded sounds. He has written and recorded music and sound for televised and private advertising, a small collection of short films and animations, the Boston 48-Hour Film Project and is currently in the process of incorporating live video-manipulation techniques into his on-stage performance.

ACHILLE SUCCI, BRUNO RABERG, GARRISON FEWELL, NEIL LEONARD

Sonic Arts @ GASP proudly presents:

Friday, January 25th @ 8:00

Achille Succi - saxophone/bass clarinet
Neil Leonard – saxophone/electronics
Garrison Fewell – electric guitar
Bruno Råberg – acoustic bass

Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Genova

I will be helping with the organization of the 8th International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression hosted by Università degli Studi di Genova. 5 - 7 June 2008

The conference consists of a three full-day event where research papers, demos, and performances will be presented on the state-of-the-art concerning new interfaces for musical expression. There will be one day of workshops before and after the main conference, as well providing focus on special areas close to the NIME community.

Performance Program Committee

Miguel Azguime, Andreas Breitscheid, Pascal Decroupet, Raphael De Vivo, Michael Edwards, Jean Hébert, Neil Leonard, Michelangelo Lupone, Pietro Polotti, Curtis Roads, Jøran Rudi, Rodrigo Sigal, Alvise Vidolin, Daniel Weissberg, Iannis Zannos

http://nime2008.casapaganini.org/index.html

NEW CD!

Various Artists / Nothing Works As Planned / Interval Recordings 02

Release Date: 17.12.2007
Genre: Experimental / Electro-Acoustic
Double CD
Time: CD1 40:30 / CD2 41:17

Track List
CD1;
1 – Intro (1)
2 – Ido Govrin / Limbo Sketches; live laptop and video (1)
3 – Amnon Wolman / Increased Fines; live laptop (1)
4 – Jonathan Chen / Three Switch-Hitters; live electronics and video (2)
5 – Neil Leonard / Echoes and Footsteps; saxophone, electronics and video (1)

CD2;
1 – Kiki Keren-Huss / summer 2006, War; contrabassoon, violin and electronics (1)
2 – Beth Denisch / Fire Mountain Intermezzo; string orchestra (3)
3 – Arie Shapira / Violin 2004; violin and electronics (1)
4 – Keren Rosenbaum / Waltz; violin and electronics (1)
5 – Yossi Mar-Chaim / Nothing Works as Planned; violin, Contrabassoon and electronics (1)

(1) Recorded live at the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, October 3rd 2006, Tel-Aviv Israel
(2) Recorded live at Issue Project Room, December 5th 2006, New York USA
(3) Recorded live at Moscow, Russia (February 2006) by the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, Misha Rachlevsky, Music Director

Words

This double CD presents diverse approaches to the phrase ‘nothing works as planned’ by nine composers and sound artists. Each and every one of them captures a singular moment which was compiled together to create an esthetic sonic statement of reason and beauty.

‘Nothing works as planned’ is comprised of live recordings of concerts in Tel Aviv and New York.
The double CD is a documentation of a series, entitled “Nothing Works as planned”, which held at the above mentioned cities and was premiered at the Tel Aviv Biennale of New Music hosted by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

The premier took place in a large suite of galleries that was between exhibitions and therefore void of art work. The high ceilings, long reverberation and departure from conventional concert seating made for a cathedral-like setting and proved to be an ideal site for the concert of works featuring electronics, small ensembles and large video projections.

The series continued with a concert at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, New York. IPR is located in a circular tower that was once a silo situated on the Gowanus Canal. Again, the unconventional setting and the unique acoustical space made an ideal venue for the performance of experimental music.

‘Nothing works as planned’, as with every release by Interval Recordings, contains a photo/visual image by the Swedish artist, Stefan Otto, and an “interval” graphic design rework and over all cover design by the Norwegian artist Erik Skodvin.
_______________________________
interval recordings / Info
www.interval-recordings.com
www.myspace.com/intervalrecordings