Roger Clark Miller
Joy Guidry
Mountain Laurel
The Elastro series is incredibly excited to host the legendary Roger Clark Miller to present a solo electric guitar ensemble performance, a solo bassoon/electronics set from Joy Guidry, and an opening set from Mountain Laurel.
For this concert, Miller will be performing compositions from his newest album on Cuneiform Records "Curiosity for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble". He currently uses a customized stratocaster 6-string electric guitar and three lap-steel guitars on stands, two of them loaded with alligator clips or bolts, the other tuned to a post-Glenn Branca unison E. Using bass and tenor guitar strings, this melts his previous prepared piano ideas into more portable guitars, resulting in percussive grooves and bass-lines. Combining advanced looping technology with new stomp- boxes, many in stereo, he truly creates a "solo ensemble" sound.
To organize the compositions, he turned to his "Dream Interpretation" technique. By tightly following and translating a specific dream into music, a new type of structure was available: organic and personal, yet universal. Realizing the essentially surrealistic/ psychedelic nature of dreams, the type of guitar sounds he was interested in now had an appropriate context.
On "Curiosity" he also revisited his "Natural Phenomena" composing technique, in this case using five photographs taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover to structure the music of a longer composition. Space Music indeed.
Joy Guidry’s Five Prayers, is an intuitive convergence of sound, spirit and radical self-expression. A celebrated voice in experimental and avant-garde music spaces, Guidry pushes sonic boundaries rooted in Black sonic traditions. With this new album, they shift away from free jazz and into a meditative, ambient realm. In the live performance, Guidry blends bassoon with low rumbling synths, warm electronic sounds and poetry that reflect the artist’s lived experience as a Black trans woman from the South.
Grace Papineau-Couture (Mountain Laurel) is a Canadian electro-acoustic sound artist working with low-tech and found objects as instruments. Inspired by the human tendency to mythologize the material world and environmental disaster, Grace creates haunting sonic meditations using tape loops and uncanny instruments. Her sound work exalts low fidelity as a method of listening that allows us to listen beyond what is being heard.
$15 / $10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available Below or at the Door
Artist Bios
Roger Clark Miller is a guitarist, pianist, bassist, composer, singer, percussionist and occasional cornet player. He has been a band leader since 1967. His recordings have appeared on Matador, Fire, Ace of Hearts, SST, New Alliance, Forced Exposure, Cuneiform, Atavistic, Feeding Tube, Fun World, World in Sound, and others. He has toured nationally since 1979 and internationally since 1998. His career officially began in 1979 when he co-founded the influential post-punk band Mission of Burma on guitar and vocals. The band is in Michael Azzerad's book on indie rock "Our Band could Be Your Life". He is also the keyboardist for the Anvil Orchestra silent film composing ensemble with recent shows at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Roger Ebert Film Festival. He has performed in too many ensembles aside these, and made too many wildly diverse records to mention here, generally pushing the boundaries of sound and composition. He has scored soundtracks that appeared at the Sundance and the Telluride Film Festivals, and his art installation "Transmuting the Prosaic", has been at two different art museums.
Joy Guidry is a bassoonist, versatile improviser, performance artist, and composer of experimental, daring new works that embody a deep love of storytelling; Joy’s music channels her inner child in honor of their ancestors and predecessors. The San Diego Tribune has hailed her performances as “lyrical and haunting…hair-raising and unsettling.” Joy was born in Houston, Texas, into a creative family that has shaped who she is today.
Joy has presented her original work at The The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum for American Art, Hauser & Wirth, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The Kitchen, Redcat, among many other venues. She has been commissioned by The National Sawdust, Long Beach Opera, JACK Quartet, Gaudeamus Festival, and the I&I Foundation. Joy has been featured in festivals like the La Biennale di Venezia, Banlieues Bleues festival, A'Larme Festival, Cologne Jazz Week, Spoleto Festival USA, Big Ears Festival, and many more.
Joy holds a bachelor’s degree in Bassoon Performance from the Peabody Conservatory and a Graduate Performance Diploma from the Mannes School of Music. In addition, Joy Guidry is the winner of the 2021 Berlin Prize for Young Artists. She is currently playing on a Heckel Bassoon number 6101.