More Ground Play Info

I spend the last four days setting up the sound sculptures at the Schuylkill Center for this fall’s show. Here’s the official press release and flyer for the SCEE show and the all members show at Nexus on 9/9


GROUND PLAY: Nexus Members Show Sept. 9 – Oct. 2, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 9 / 6-9pm
Closing Party / Fundraiser: Saturday, October 2 / 7-11pm

Featuring works by all members at NEXUS with a special showcase of the work of six members for their season long show at the Schuylkill Center. This show will feature a wide array of work from all the members at NEXUS including photography, sculpture, video, dance and works on paper. 

Mark your calendars, Saturday October 2 at NEXUS Gallery we’ll be hosting a fundraiser with comedians, cakes, beer, wine and prizes. The event is help raise money to keep our gallery going. We’ll have live entertainment from comedians, sketch artists, DJ Mikronesia, raffle prizes including original artwork by NEXUS members and much more!

 Saturday October 2, 7pm-11pm
$10 suggested donation at the door


GROUND PLAY: Nexus at The Schuylkill Center 

The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
8480 Hagy’s Mill Road 
Philadelphia, PA

On View September through November 2010

Works by: Susan Abrams, Nick Cassway, Jebney Lewis, Michael McDermott, Leah Reynolds and Jennie Thwing 

Opening Reception: Sunday September 19
Ground Play / Family Friendly Activities / 4-6pm
Artists’ Tour of Ground Play, with concert and performance / 6:30-8pm

For the opening reception on September 19, there will be special shuttle bus that will run from the Crane Arts Building (1400 N. American St) to the Schuylkill Center in Roxborough. The bus will pickup at the Crane Arts Building at 4:00pm and take you the Second Site at the Schuylkill Center. The shuttle bus will return back to the Crane Arts building around 8:00pm after the performances. The bus is free, but space is limited. To reserve your seat email info@nexusphiladelphia.org with the word “shuttle” as the subject.

If you plan to drive to the opening The Schuylkill Centers asks that you park at the main Schuylkill Center building at 8480 Hagy’s Mill Road. A shuttle bus will take you around the corner to the Second Site Brolo Hill Farm (about a 20 minute walk from the main building).

In Ground Play, Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education invites six artists from NEXUS Foundation to respond to the history and physical space of its Brolo Hill Farm. The work in Ground Play is an expression of the insightful ways these six artists use color, scale, sound, texture, humor, fear, storytelling and performance as their own artistic playground, coming up with new modes of expression and creating experiences meant to delight and provoke visitors. 

Ground Play will be one of a series of three environmentally-minded local events, including Manayunk EcoArts Festival on September 25th and 26th and East Falls Eco Fair on October 2, 2010.

Summer Shows

I decided to take a few weeks off from the website and music stuff to rest after our European Tour. All in all it was an amazing trip through London, Berlin and Paris. We met lots of great people, played some shows, hung out, saw some art and ate lots of food. There’s a video up on Gemini Wolf’s Facebook page taken by Yvan Oiry.Yesterday we spend our first day back in the studio. I was mostly working on the computer on some technical stuff. Megan did some vocals for an upcoming Joe Hallman project, but it was good to get back into the studio. Lots of new stuff on the horizon. This summer I have two Mikronesia shows, listed below: 

Friday July 23
Nazareth Center for the Arts
30 Belvidere Street, Nazareth, PA 18064
8:00 pm


Saturday August 7
One Thousand Pulses
9 Edward PlaceWoodcliff Lake NJ 07677

Also Gemini Wolf will be playing an opening set at Johnny Brenda’s on Friday August 6. We’ll be supporting our friends and neighbors, Turning Violet Violet for their EP release party. 

The other major project I have going on this summer is a new piece of music and sound art. Six member from NEXUS will be doing at show at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education.

It’s going to be wide array of sculpture, art, prints, video and music. For my part, I’m creating four wind sculptures and will have a performance of a new work, Aeolus, which is a quartet for violin, flute, guitar and percussion to harmonize with the wind sculptures. The opening reception and concert will be Sunday September 19. The Schuylkill Center is out at the edge of the city, so we’ll be running a shuttle bus from NEXUS (at 1400 American St. in Fishtown) that will pick people up at 5:00 PM and bring people back at 9:00 PM.

Where It Soon Shall Not Be

This Thursday will cap off a busy spring of film scoring, exhibitions, concerts and recording.

Thursday April 22 - 7:30 @ NEXUS (1400 N. American Street)

Please join us at NEXUS for an edifying evening of music and learning

-See the Nexus New Members exhibition which features eerie floating landscapes made of found bits and plastic bags, a giant wall of math, an 8 speaker sound and video installation with 500lbs. of cold hard stone, and a collection of subconscious photography!

-Learn about the fascinating, terrifying dynamics behind hysteresis, bifurcation, and environmental collapse from biological mathematician Todd Parsons!

-Enjoy a solo set of electronics and harmonium performed through an eight speaker setup by Mikronesia!

-Discover the secrets of the Shadow Self, as expressed in Jungian psychology, in a talk by psychologist Sean Duffy.

It’ll be a veritable potpourri for the mind and ears. Plus, there will be beer and snacks!

Admission is free, but there will be a small suggested donation that will go to support Penn Futures. More info on them here: www.pennfutures.org

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Mikronesia on NPR about NEXUS Radio

NEXUS closing party

Well two months have gone by very fast at NEXUSradio (well for me as a listener and part-time contributor, but probably not for Bilwa and Nick and all the people that have been working hard everyday to keep it on air). Tomorrow is the closing party for NEXUSradio and it’s going to be off the handle.

Just to recap, NEXUSradio was a two month art gallery “installation” where they turned the gallery into a functioning low powered AM radiostation. They had a super wide range of on air and in gallery events, from chamber music, to DJs to live theater to comedy to talk radio. It was an honor to be a part of NEXUSradio and it’s sad to see it go. Maybe it will be back again someday.

The first thing I did at NEXUSradio, was one of the first events there; a string quartet recording for upcoming Gemini Wolf album and future Mikronesia project. You can hear the “string only” version of the Gemini Wolf song, The Music You Make - here. The other string quartet we recorded was a full version of “Daemon En Gauze”. That will be released after some production and processing for a full length album down the road.

Gemini Wolf did a small acoustic-y set for the Winter Solstice celebration. That a fun weird day with a fake fire place, live painting, and video. Megan and I were zonked, since it was the day after Festivus, but we did our thing.

Then a few weeks later we had earSnake day, with performace by Ben Fleury-Steiner, Baby Cowface and Carl Franke. It was also the long awaited premiere of the prequel to the opera, Pangaea. Solomon Slowburn and I did a performance of the Orson Wells type radio drama with narration by Solomon and music by myself of the creation myth of Pangaea. We have a recording of that, but I’m putting the finishing touches on a studio version of that piece which will be released on earSnake soon.

So thanks to Nick, Bilwa and everyone who was involved with NEXUSradio, it was a great event that expanded the minds and ears of people within the radio span of 1650 AM.

Nexus Radio

Happy New Year. I’d like to take moment to thank all the musicians and artists I was able to work with in 2008. Last year was a tremendous year of growth for me as as a composer, a producer and an artist.

2009 is here and is looking to be an even more exciting and action packed year than 2008!

People close to me have been hearing me talk (and joke) about my “rock opera” Pangaea for years. It’s been something I’ve been kicking around for almost 15 years now! Last year I sat down and wrote out the story and I’ve sketched out about 3/4 of he music on piano. Last year, I was planning on performing it late this year and maybe early 2010. However, with the amount currently slated for Gemini Wolf, earSnake and other solo work, I would be rushing to get it done in a year. I’ve waited 15 year, so what’s another year or two?

I want to take time, get some funding, meticulously craft the score and recording, and make it the best production I’ve ever done. Therefore, I’ve decided to make the opera premiere and recording release Pangaea: When the Continents Were One on November 11, 2011. I’ve always been a fan of patterns with number, an an opera about one unified super continent seems like it should happen on 11/11/11 (plus it’s a Friday).

This will also give me some time to premiere some supplementary narrative and artistic work to help contextualize and tell the mythological tale of Pangaea, which bring us to this Saturday.

This Saturday, Solomon Slowburn (earSnake MC/Poet/Musican) and I will be premiering Pangaea: Trinity Sun on air for NEXUSradio. Trinity Sun, is an epic poem of the creation myth of Pangaea in the vein of Judaeo-Christian story, Genesis, or the hundreds of other Creation Myths out there. The idea came from Christian (Solomon Slowburn) to make the first chapter in the Pangaea story the myth that the tribes on Pangaea belive, which gives them a moral and spiritual guidance in their lives.

This will be the first in a series of smaller scale Pangaea performances leading up to the opera in 2011.

The performance will be Christian reading the text with orignial ambient music I wrote and will perform on air at NEXUSradio. In December 2008 and January 2009, Nexus Gallery has been turned into a low powered AM station for the comminity in North Philadelphia. If you’re in Philadelphia you can tune in to 1650 AM or drop by the gallery. The performance will be around 5 PM on Saturday January 10. From noon until 6 PM that day is earSnake day with performances by some intrumental / experimental earSnake artists. Check earSnake.com for details.

After the performance, we’ll record the piece and post here and on the forthcoming Pangaea website.

[Image credit (croped image) NASA/JPL-Caltech]