Karl Jensen

When artist Karl Jensen constructed the set for the first Music Now festival in 2006 his studio was unavailable to work in. So he designed and built it in his Williamsburg, Brooklyn kitchen. “Things got a little hairy,” recalls Jensen, “it took weeks. I had three assistants working there. Stuff was all over you couldn’t get around. It’s a good thing I’m skinny because for the last month I had to slip sideways just to make coffee in the morning.” It was also a technical challenge. There were over 50 pieces to the backdrop pattern, each one had to be cut accurately and tracked. And there would be no way to know if it would all fit together until the actual installation (happily, it did). Transport was another issue. A crate would be too large to fit down the stairs so one had to be built on the sidewalk. “And it nearly buckled the roof of my car, too.” But it all had a happy ending. “Cincinnati was great,” says Jensen, “everyone was so enthusiastic and helpful. I started out hiring two assistants and in the three days it took to install I ended up having more people volunteer than I knew what to do with. It was just great.”

Jensen is looking forward to working in Memorial Hall. “What an incredible place, the way the space flows between the different levels and through the arches. And all that decoration. It’s kind of mournful –but it also has great dignity and was obviously made with heartfelt love. I can’t wait to work there.”

When Jensen is not working in Cincinnati he makes sculpture and architecture in New York City.

Awadagin Pratt

Pianist Awadagin Pratt, a renowned performer of the classical repertoire, has recorded and performed internationally. He currently serves on the faculty of the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati.

Learn more about Awadagin and the Pratt Music Foundation.

Erik Friedlander

Erik Friedlander “can do things with a cello that should have a reasonable listener fearing for his or her life,” says PitchforkMedia.com, “Rostropovich one second and Rottweiler the next.” A virtuosic veteran of New York City’s downtown scene, Friedlander has backed John Zorn, Laurie Anderson and Courtney Love. Erik Friedlander is a unique cellist whose work blurs genre borders. He is a composer and an improviser, a classical musician and a jazzbo.

Erik is the son of Lee Friedlander, an art photographer known by musicians and jazz aficionados for the cover photographs he took for Atlantic Records. His passion for r & b and jazz greatly influenced Erik, whose earliest memories are of a household filled with the sounds of his father’s subjects—Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, McCoy Tyner, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane. Erik started playing guitar at age 6 and added cello two years later. His latest release is Block Ice and Propane features a number of pieces he premiered at MusicNOW.

Learn the latest, including an iPhone ad, from Erik Friedlander.

Kyaw Kyaw Naing

Kyaw Kyaw Naing is a Burmese master musician with command of all of
the drums, tuned drum sets, xylophones, tuned gong sets, and other percussion instruments. He learned these traditions from his late father, Chein Tit Tee, one of the most famous masters of his generation.

Kyaw Kyaw performs mostly on the pat waing, the Burmese Drum Circle, a traditional instrument made of 21 separately tuned drums. These drums surround the player completely, and are played melodically at lightning fast speed. Naing’s blazing tempos and blistering musicality have made him famous throughout Southeast Asia, and he has used his gifts to become highly sought- after as a composer of music for film, and as a live performer at Burma’s traditional kickboxing tournaments.

Now in the US, Naing is spreading the word about Burmese music – so far largely unknown – throughout the country. After a performance at the Asia Society last season, The New York Times called his music “an exhilarating tease, defying expectations of symmetry or steady tempo.”

He regularly performs with Bang On a Can.

Learn more about Kyaw Kyaw Naing on Wikipedia.

CelloProject

Jacques Ammon, native of Santiago de Chile, hails as one of the most sought-after pianists of his home country. Invited as artistic advisor for 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Jacques helped produce their Grammy nominated CD production (EMI) of Latin-American music. Jacques Ammon began his studies with Margarita Herrera in Santiago and Konrad Elser at the Lübeck Musikhochschule where, since 2000, he has been a member of the faculty.

Internationally recognized as cellist and founder of the renowned Artemis Quartet, Eckart Runge is engaged worldwide in the most prestigious concert halls and festivals. Alongside his quartet playing, Eckart Runge has maintained an active solo career. Eckart’s passion to present chamber music to a younger, more diverse audience led him to create his “CelloProject” in 1998. His programming would span musical styles beyond what is traditionally considered classical. CelloProject programs are released on four CDs and include baroque, tango, and music for film as well as a Visual Concert with pantomime from Marcel Marceau’s company.

Learn more about CelloProject.

Video: Shara Worden

Shara Worden, playing a new song, “Like a Sieve” in the bowels of Cincinnati’s Memorial Hall, during the MusicNOW Festival.

Published by Vincent Moon, le blogotheque

The Books

Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong are The Books. They have released three records and toured extensively, including a tour of the UK with Clogs.

After completing college studies in chemistry and the visual arts, Nick worked as an art-conservator before moving to New York City for a year to pursue his creative work. Foregoing his aspirations in synthetic-organic chemistry, he instead focused his efforts on synthetic-organic music, releasing his tracks on small experimental labels such as Apartment B and Infraction.

Born into a musical family, Paul de Jong of The Books began studying the cello seriously at the ripe age of five. He took a razorblade to his first audiocassette at age fifteen, moving quickly through feverish periods of teenage experimental band life and absurdist theatre. Paul de Jong work includes interpretations of classical repertoire and composition of instrumental and electronic music for dance companies.

David Cossin and Glenn Kotche

David Cossin made his debut at the festival in 2006 with Glenn Kotche, who is the drummer/percussionist for the rock band Wilco. Beyond Wilco, Kotche is a member of the experimental rock trio, Loose Fur, along with Jeff Tweedy and postclassical composer/producer Jim O’Rourke. Kotche is also a member of the jazz experimental duo, On Fillmore, with bassist Darin Gray. Nonesuch Records released Kotche’s third solo recording, Mobile, in March, 2006. The album includes eight new compositions by Kotche, with inspirations ranging from mobile sculpture, composer Steve Reich, the Ramayana, Wilco drumbeats, the Nonesuch Explorer series, and percussionists Tony Allen and Ed Blackwell. His two previously released solo works are titled, Introducing and Next. Kotche holds a degree in music performance from the University of Kentucky and is an alumnus of the Rosemont Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps.

Bell Orchestre

Bell Orchestre are a five-piece instrumental band from Montreal, Canada. In late 2003, they recorded their first album, at the same time and in the same studio that Arcade Fire recorded Funeral. However, Arcade Fire’s popularity was just beginning to break when they asked Bell Orchestre to tour with them in the fall of 2005, delaying the release of their album. Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light was finally released in 2005.
Learn more about Bell Orchestre at their website.

Sufjan Stevens

An American songwriter with a penchant for storytelling, Sufjan Stevens mixes autobiography, religious fantasy, and regional history to create folk songs of epic proportions. His grand proposal to make a record for each of the 50 states has thus far transpired two albums, Michigan and Illinois.

A preoccupation with epic concepts has motivated other projects, including an electronic record for the animals of the Chinese Zodiac (Enjoy Your Rabbit, 2001), a five-disc Christmas box set, and, more recently, a symphonic tone-poem for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

With his stepfather Lowell, Sufjan owns and operates his own music label, Asthmatic Kitty Records, named after Lowell’s beloved cat Sara, who suffers from acute feline asthma.