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News Archive: 2010 2009 2008

12.20.2009

I had a great week and a great weekend. On Wednesday, I performed with Rachel Bernsen, Anne Rhodes, and Lindsay Bauer in Rachel's evening of dance at Issue Project Room. I think the show was very successful. We performed Rachel's new trio entitled User for the first time and we reached some very delicate, nuanced sound spaces. Rachel also presented collaborations with Matthew Welch and Taylor Ho Bynum which were really great. Hearing Taylor play some incredible long tone multiphonics was a real treat as well as hearing Matt Welch's bagpipes fill the space at IPR. Altogether a really special night of movement and music.

On Thursday and Friday I was in NYC for the Blip Festival which was a blast. I got to meet up and hang with Seb Tomczak (aka little-scale) since he was in town to perform at Blip Fest. I also had a great time hanging out with Chris (aka cTrix) and got to talk a lot about music in general and chip music in particular. These are really great guys and fantastic musicians. We went out to lunch and got our picture taken. I am not sure why I am not smiling in this photo, I thought I was smiling, oh well ;)

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. I have many exciting projects coming up in 2010, so stay tuned.





12.09.2009

This Saturday I will be performing a short set for solo acoustic bass as part of the Uncertainty Music Series. I will be opening for the newly-formed trio Broadcloth featuring Adam Matlock on accordion and recorders, Anne Rhodes on voice, and Nathan Bontrager on cello. See the performances page for the details or go to the Uncertainty Music Series site. Please come out!

Next Wednesday I will be performing at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn along with Anne Rhodes and dancers Rachel Bernsen and Lindsay Bauer in a reworking of Rachel's piece Unicorns were Horses and a new trio by Rachel entitled User. You can find full details on the performance at Issue Project Room's website.





11.16.2009

I am happy to announce that my new electronic music digital release Signals is now available to download for free at http://music.carltesta.net This is a short (20 minute) release of gameboy music written using Nanoloop 2.3. I was first exposed to Nanoloop through Seb Tomzcak aka little-scale and was inspired to try and write some music using the gameboy that still sounded like my music. So hopefully the aesthetic of my music still comes through in the pieces on this EP.

To download, go here and click download now. To download for free, enter in "0.00" as the amount. You are welcome to donate some money if you are so inclined, but there is no minimum price to download the EP in any format you desire. So please download, listen, tell people, and send me your comments if you have any.

My trio is also playing tomorrow at Le Grand Dakar, come out and support if you can. Details are here.

Cover Art and Design by Carolyn Wachnicki, Redhead Canvas





11.04.2009

There was a great article about the New Haven Improvisers Collective and the New Haven improvised music scene in general in the New York Times over the weekend. You can read the article here. I am currently away in Sweden visiting family. I will be coming back in time for the next Uncertainty Music Series concert featuring Max Heath and the Uruguayan group "Pechitos Ecuestres" featuring Marcello Rilla, Vladimir Guicheff Bogacz, and Juan Martin Lopez. I will be performing on some of Max Heath's compositions including one for bass clarinet and melodica.

On November 17th my trio will be performing at Le Grand Dakar as part of James Ilgenfritz's Infrequent Seams series. The Jeff Platz group will also be performing that night. Please come out if you are in the area. Full details for performances here.

Photo by Zara Acosta





10.25.2009

My trio is performing this Tuesday at Freddy's Backroom at 10pm. Bonnie Kane's group will be performing before us at 8:30pm. I am trying to reboot this trio in some ways. I am in the process of writing some new music for clarinet, string bass, and percussion. We will play at least one of these new pieces on Tuesday. I am really excited to start playing with this trio again. We will be playing again on November 17th at Le Grand Dakar. Check the performances for details.





10.20.2009

The performance of Static on Saturday at Ibeam was successful. I am looking to get more shows for this group, hopefully sometime soon. Aaron's set for vibraphone and piano was really beautiful. I hope to get a recording of those pieces sometime soon.

I have some trio gigs up ahead with Mike McGinnis on clarinet and Bill Carbone on drums. One at Freddy's Backroom on the 27th of October and one as part of Infrequent Seams on November 17th at Le Grand Dakar. Check the performances page for more details. Plus I have a little music surprise that will drop in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.

Photo by Zara Acosta





10.11.2009

We had a very successful benefit for Barry Seroff's piece Democracy. Barry and I were very happy with how everything turned out. The music was great, and I got a chance to try out some new bass heavy electronic music courtesy of Lou Guarino's subwoofer.

Next Saturday I will be presenting my group Static at Ibeam in Brooklyn. I am very exciting to be presenting this music in New York. I will be joined by Jonathan Goldberger and Sean Moran on guitars, and Josh Sinton on bass clarinet. I am very excited to be working with these very talented musicians. Please come out! You can hear samples of this piece here.

I will be sharing the evening with the composer/percussionist Aaron Siegel. Aaron will be performing pieces from his Book of Notions for vibraphone and piano with Emily Manzo. You can hear some samples of his music on his webpage. I highly recommend coming out and hearing this music. See full details on my performances page.





09.22.2009

I have a lot of exciting events coming up in the next few months. Tomorrow I am performing with Dead Cat Bounce at the Cambridge YMCA Theatre. I always look forward to playing with this group.

This fall I am presenting a number of performances in Brooklyn. On October 17th, my guitars/bass clarinet/electronics group STATIC will be playing at Ibeam on a shared evening with composer Aaron Siegel. I am excited to finally present this piece in NYC. Later in October and November my trio with Mike McGinnis and Bill Carbone will be resurfacing at Freddy's Backroom and Le Grand Dakar. I will be presenting some new compositions that I have been working on for the past few months. See the Performances page for more details.

I have been continuing developing the trio Telepathy along with Lou Guarino Jr. and Jarawa Gray. We are developing a very unique form of electro-acoustic music. You can listen to samples of the group here.





07.29.2009

A lot of performances coming up. Please check the Performances page for the list of upcoming performances. On Monday I will be performing in Dave Ruder's And It's Surely To Their Debit at The Tank in NYC. This performance will feature simultaneous performances of Clarinet trios, solo practicing, jokes for children, and other things. It will surely be a memorable and original performance. Please come out.

Lesley Flanigan, an artist and performer from NYC will be performing on the next Uncertainty Music Series. She specializes in building her own speaker feedback systems and develops a music of varying tones and rhythms of feedback and blends these sounds with her own voice. The performance should be really special. I will also be performing a set of music for solo bass and electronics that expands on a piece that I performed at last month's Uncertainty concert using voice and electronics. Please come out and support. Thanks





07.15.2009

The last Uncertainty Music Series concert with myself as Kalle and John C. Miller as Avmus went very well. I performed some new electronic music of mine and I hope to release some of it in some form sometime soon as a digital download EP. More info about that soon.

Speaking of digital downloads, I have decided to start selling my Uncertainty digital downloads on Bandcamp instead of here on this site. I have also decided to LOWER the PRICE! So now you can download my album Uncertainty in any digital format for only $5. You can also decide to give more if you are so inclined. Click here to download. You can also still purchase physical CDs from me or from CDBaby. Please spread the news to those who might be interested.

Photo by Zara Acosta





06.29.2009

On Saturday June 27th 2009, something very interesting if not spectacular happened. A very bright rainbow appeared in the sky over Brooklyn, NYC. I live in New Haven, CT and heard about the rainbow over Twitter through a friend. I saw that he posted a photo of the rainbow to Twitpic. From the photo, I could see that rainbow was pretty special. Later on in my twitter feed I saw that another person had posted a photo of the rainbow, naturally from a different perspective. It was at this moment that I was reminded about something that has interested me for a long time, simultaneity.

Read More . . .




06.21.2009

Happy summer everyone! It definitely doesn't feel like summer, but summer it is nonetheless. I have made some minor changes to the layout of my site. I am now using Bandcamp to showcase my music. If you click on the Music link above you will be taken to my bandcamp site at http://music.carltesta.net. There you can download free albums of mine as well as buy CDs and downloads. I will continue to update the site with new music, including live sets, studio recordings, etc. Please check back often. In addition to the new Bandcamp site, I have also updated most of the pages on this site including the Projects page, About, and others. So please take a look around if you haven't in a while.

I am preparing for the next Uncertainty Music Series concert featuring Avmus and myself performing as Kalle. I have some new pieces that I am excited about presenting. I hope that you come out.

So please enjoy the new site layout and let me know if you have any comments or suggestions. Thanks, Carl




05.12.2009

I woke up this morning to find an email from one of my favorite electronic/chiptune musicians Seb Tomczak (little-scale) in my inbox. He said that he had written about my music on his blog. I was so happy to see someone whose music and work I really appreciate enjoy and appreciate my own work. little-scale offers most (if not all) of his music for free on his website and I have been enjoying his music for over a year now. So I few months ago I decided to share some of my own music with him by sending it to him in an email because he has been so generous with offering his music out to anyone.

This brings me to something that I want to try out. I want to do more trading in music. So if you are interested in my music but don't want to pay money, offer me a trade. I will accept downloads for downloads and CDs for CDs. If you are not a musician, then suggest something comparable. I am always interested in hearing new music, so make me an offer :) In this spirit, I have also started a podcast. It will offer complete tracks of my music as well as commentary. It isn't in full swing yet, but you can check out the beginnings of it on iTunes here.

I rehearsed last week with my guitar trio for my upcoming performance of Static in New Britain, CT. I am really excited about this performance. I just need to make a few adjustments to the electronic part and it will be ready to go. Details for the performance are here.





04.12.2009

This past weekend I performed with trumpeter Lou Guarino Jr. and percussionist Brian Jarawa Grey as part of the group Telepathy. The music was great and I look forward to working with these guys more. In addition to acoustic music we are also working on electronic music. So I am excited to continue working on these ideas.

Next month's Uncertainty Series will feature the group Dead Cat Bounce. This is a saxophone quartet plus bass and drums. Matt Steckler leads the group and is a great composer and saxophonist. I will be playing bass with the group. I definitely recommend checking out this show.

And again, my guitar group Static will perform at the Art League of New Britain on May 23rd, mark your calendars.

Photo by Dede Guarino





03.17.2009

This Thursday, March 19th, the Educational Center for the Arts Student Orchestra and soprano Anne Rhodes will perform a section of my piece "Clouds" that I arranged for them. The conductor Roy Wiseman asked me at the beginning of the year if I would be interested in arranging a piece for the student orchestra. I was very happy to adapt the piece to the group as it is my first experience writing for a large ensemble. The performance is part of New Music/New Sounds III that will also include performances of compositions by Jeff Fuller, Noah Baerman, Douglas Fisk and many others.

A short heads up about a performance of my piece "Static" for 2 guitars, bass clarinet, and electronics on May 23rd at the Art League of New Britain. I am very happy to have Sean Moran, Jonathan Goldberger, and Michael McGinnis scheduled for this performance. More details soon.





02.08.2009

I hope that everyone had a good new year. My end of the year performances went well. Anne performed a section from my new piece "Clouds" which I am really excited about. I hope to finish up the other sections as soon as possible.

2 weeks ago I performed with Rachel Bernsen and Anne Rhodes in Rachel's piece "Unicorns Were Horses." The performance was very successful. We will have another performance at Danspace as part of Draftwork in March.

This Wednesday I will be performing on electronics for the first time with Bill Carbone's Buru Style at Public in Middletown, CT. It should be a good show. More updates soon.

Photo by Taylor Ho Bynum




News Archive: 2010 2009 2008

contact me - carl (at) carltesta (dot) net