This last weekend, Bookless was held at the old Madison Central Library. The building has been emptied for future deconstruction/construction of a new library, and in a feat of absolute brilliance, the library was transformed into a modern art museum for a night. Over 100 Madison artists had exhibitions and installations, and local musicians and performers transformed the place into the event of the year. It was amazing! Lovely Socialite played, and with the help of Conor Fury-King, put together this video, which features the artwork, crowds, and our live performance: Full audio of our performance is available for stream/download here!
Lovely Socialite Mrs. Thomas W. Phipps is up to some exciting things! We've just finished recording our first album, and are now in the mixing stages. We recorded at Blast House Studios with the extremely adept Landon Arkins, and it's sounding amazing! An alternate take of my tune, 'Rock It, Science,' will appear on the Project Lodge benefit compilation album later this week. Lovely Socialite will be starting our own Kickstarter fundraising campaign in the next couple of weeks to help press the album. These videos are from our performance in the Mine All Mine Winter Series at the Dragonfly Lounge, another great development for the Madison music scene. I can't wait to share with you some tracks from the album! Preview: It will include the sounds of children screaming.
The next chance to see Lovely Socialite perform is January 28th, for Bookless, a really exciting event in a big empty library! This week, the Weather Duo heads southeast to Fredericksburg, VA, where we're playing at the Electroacoustic Barn Dance. We've been gearing up for that this week. In preparation, I made some electroacoustic music, which we are using in a piece that we'll perform on Friday: This bit consists entirely of piano sounds that I recorded myself playing on Sunday. It's fun, not being a pianist, to make "piano music." Perhaps sometime soon I'll work on a longer project of affected piano playing.
In addition to our performance in Fredericksburg, the Weather Duo will be heading to Arlington on Sunday, the 30th, to play a show at the CD Cellar. I'm certainly looking forward to this trip, a highlight of which will be teaming back up with Anna, who is returning stateside from her studies in Ireland to perform with us. Woo! I went to the Jazz Jam at the Cardinal a couple of weeks ago, which is hosted by the New Breed quartet every Tuesday. If you're in Madison, this is the place to be on a Tuesday night, believe me. 1/2 price wine and a great band. Go! Anyway, I sat in for a rendition of Wayne Shorter's Footprints, after which a drummer and sax player who also sat in and I decided to meet up later for a trio hang. Turns out we're the coolest band ever! Here is the second improvisation we did, which I've broken into two parts: the JazzSports! sessions, featuring: Pete Ross, saxophone Kyle Traska, drums Ben Willis, bass Speaking of new music, here is some new stuff from some great musicians I'm really happy to know: The recycle project is an electronic music/sound design project of composer/cellist/scholar Brian Grimm, in which he takes recordings of his acoustic works, and manipulates them into new pieces. Here is another new track by Brian, which is exceedingly hip: It is dedicated to a friend of his, a bass player, who has sadly passed this last week. I also lament the loss of another bass player. May he rest in bass! Also check out this month's bell monks video: Lovely Socialite Mrs. Thomas W. Phipps released our Debutante EP through Mine All Mine Records last week. You can listen to it online, and buy a disc or download. Buying a disc or download will help us to record a full-length studio album this fall. The Weather Duo album, which we finished recently, is now available for online purchase through the Mine All Mine Records store. No excuses now! Presenting my new band, Glacier: This video is from our second performance, at the Fredric March Play Circle on June 11th.
We have a rough mix from a live concert recording that will be available as an album in the near future. Until then, here's a track we recorded in Geoff's living room: Hey! My jazzrock band Lovely Socialite Mrs. Thomas W. Phipps has just had a track released on a compilation album through Mine All Mine Records. The release party/concert was last Wednesday, and it was a blast. Lovely Socialite played a largely improvised set, with pared down instrumentation because several members couldn't make it. The Lovely Socialite Mrs. Thomas W. Phipps Satellite Ensemble was joined by a guest trombonist named Ty. You might just see him play with us again on June 30th at Lothlorien when the group expands to the Mrs. Phipps Spontaneous Philharmonia.
Proceeds from the sale of that compilation album go to support school music programs. So you should buy it to tide you over until the full 5-track Lovely Socialite EP is available. The bell monks have just unleashed their May recording/video/photo package. They enlisted me and Pat (Weather Duo) to play some bowed string parts. Listen/download "Let the Waves Carry Us" parts I and II now! You can see both the Weather Duo and bell monks this Sunday evening, June 5th at the Project Lodge! We're playing with a cool Virginia-based band Nash Smith & Ganges.
The two most recent episodes of Mad Toast Live are performances by Shtetlblasters and Thistle and the Thorns. Go to their website and download the podcasts now! I had a great time playing the show with both groups.
Whirlwind week. Got back from the Thistle tour and immediately jumped into a bunch of performances. Played L'histoire du Soldat on Tuesday, followed that evening by a Lovely Socialite Mrs. Thomas W. Phipps performance for Honky Tonk Tuesday at Mickey's Tavern. Here's an excerpt of us playing my tune, 'to float before sinking,' at that show: The recording is a super low quality reference recording, but hopefully you get the sense from it that we had fun, because we did. Next, I went on a mini tour this week with conspirators Anna Weisling, Jeff Herriott, and Eric Sheffield, as a project we're calling Sympathy Swimmers. We reworked Anna's, Eric's and my piece, exit crafting, to include Jeff, and the three of them had a piece called a scrape in the liquid, which we reworked to include me. We also conceived a new improvisation as the four of us to flesh out the set. I feel super lucky to have these three as friends/collaborators. A good deal of my most artistically satisfying adventures of the last year and a half have been with/through them. (Fyi, their band, bell monks, has just release a great song.) We played in Minneapolis on Thursday at Bryant Lake Bowl, supporting We Can and We Must. BLB is a bowling alley, bar, and theater. When I first heard of the place, I admit I thought it sounded dubious, (I generally have an aversion to bowling alleys) but it's actually a really cool space to perform. It would have been nice to have had more of an audience, but we had fun. We took the show back to Madison on Friday with a show at the Project Lodge. We Can and We Must is a really awesome improvising electronics duo from Chicago/Beijing. Composers/performers/improvisors Ryan Ingebritsen and Jason Wampler brought an impressive energy to the stage, using a variety of live electronics, samples, live samples, programmed beats, and live drums and keyboards. Anna Weisling jumped on board with great aplomb to do visuals for them both nights, which was very impressive. And then tonight! Local innovators New Muse coordinated another splendid event, a Vaudevillesque variety show at local gay bar Plan B. They asked Weather Duo to open the night, and we obliged. We play again on Sunday, with a May Day performance at Crossroads Coffeeshop in Cross Plains. And amidst all this running about, I've been rehearsing this week with singer/songwriter Page Foster, because I'm playing with her on June 4th at the Just Coffee warehouse. I'll also be playing a set with Thistle and the Thorns. Page had to teach me her tunes this week, because she's all cool and going to play some shows in New York throughout May. Here she is playing on Mars or somewhere: |
Authorbassist/improviser/ I send emails occasionally about upcoming performances. They're very cordial.
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