Nov 18, 2019

On November 21, renowned jazz clarinetist Roland P. Young will take the stage for a rare solo performance—his first in over ten years—as part of a double bill with the band L’Rain presented by The Kitchen at Public Records.  Born in Kansas City, Young was trained in both jazz and classical clarinet and began his professional music career in San Francisco in the 1960s as a radio DJ and performer. While in San Francisco, Young recorded albums both with the improvisation ensemble Infinite Sound and as a solo act. Young moved to New York in 1979 and continued to create music solo and in various bands, including The Offs. Young’s first solo record, Isophonic Boogie Woogie (1980), incorporated both electronic and acoustic instruments (including clarinet, saxophone, kalimba, and bells),... Read On

Nov 6, 2019

Each season at The Kitchen, artists working across disciplines present a wide range of performances, exhibitions, screenings, and events. Since 2012, our annual L.A.B. series has run in parallel with this programming, creating opportunities for practitioners to speak with one another and with audiences while addressing terms that are relevant to our contemporary social, cultural, and artistic landscape; past words include presence, audience, relation, and representation. This year our curatorial team selected the term “regeneration” with the aim of probing its various registers of meaning and engaging with its combined evocations of looking to and moving on from the past. We launched this year’s L.A.B. season on September 18 with a conversation among Taja Cheek, Catherine Damman, ... Read On

Oct 23, 2019

Last week, James Allister Sprang premiered his performance Turning Towards a Radical Listening at The Kitchen. Culminating his five-week residency, this performance in our black box space is the first full realization of a project that the artist has been developing over several years in various contexts.  Sprang has drawn inspiration from a number of writers, researchers, and thinkers while creating Turning Towards a Radical Listening. Additionally, he has collaborated with a range of practitioners to develop specialized software and equipment to bring his vision for this sound-based sculptural installation to life. To give insight into Sprang’s process, this post aggregates a bibliography of texts that have been central to his thinking and a set of digital drawings that a... Read On

Oct 8, 2019

Mario Diaz de Leon is a NYC-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, performer, and educator whose work encompasses modern classical, experimental electronic, extreme metal, and creative improvised music. Cycle and Reveal, released in September on Denovali, is his fourth full-length modern classical LP. His longtime collaborators include ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble), Talea Ensemble, TAK Ensemble, and Mivos Quartet—many of whom collaborated on Cycle and Reveal. Diaz de Leon is also a member of the electroacoustic improvisation trio Bloodmist and a co-founder, with bassist Samuel Smith, of the electronic metal duo Luminous Vault. In anticipation of his October 24 performance with The Kitchen at Queenslab, we spoke to Diaz de Leon about his work fusing electronic and acoustic ... Read On

Oct 2, 2019

How does language shape—or even program—our lives? What happens to language when it is translated and transcribed through apps or other modes of technology? In what ways are social biases encoded in these translations? These are among the questions James Allister Sprang raises in his ongoing project Turning Towards a Radical Listening . Currently in residence at The Kitchen, Sprang is in the process of developing a new iteration of this project that will give shape to these inquiries through a sculptural sound-based installation and performances. As a central aspect of his project, Sprang has invited three poets to take part in public conversations with him: Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Tracie Morris, and M. NourbeSe Philip. During these events, the writers will read selections from... Read On