Ordinary Affects ensemble with Magnus Granberg

Friday, April 5, 2019 - 9:00pm to Saturday, April 6, 2019 - 8:55pm
Prentis Hall Room 318, 632 W 125th Street, New York, NY 10027     map

After the Sound Art MFA exhibition opening at Fridman Gallery come up to Prentis Hall for a FREE CONCERT

Ordinary Affects ensemble with Magnus Granberg
Columbia University Computer Music Center
Prentis Hall Room 315
632 W. 125th Street
New York, NY 10027

Ordinary Affects is a Boston-based experimental music ensemble. Experimental composer/performers J.P.A. Falzone, Laura Cetilia, Luke Martin, and Morgan Evans-Weiler make-up the ensemble, performing on piano/organ/percussion, cello, violin, and guitar/electronics (respectively). The ensemble was formed as a group of musicians seeking to workshop, commission, and perform experimental music. Their work is often aligned with the tradition of John Cage and the Wandelweiser Collective. While the group frequently focuses on the performance of commissioned compositions of living composers, it also serves as a laboratory for improvisation and the compositions of its members. Whenever possible, Ordinary Affects involves the commissioned composer as a performer in the ensemble. Ordinary Affects has commissioned and premiered pieces by Eva-Maria Houben, Christian Wolff, Michael Pisaro, Antoine Beuger, Sarah Hughes, Eva-Maria Houben, Ryoko Akama, Doug Farrand, Patrick Farmer, and Jurg Frey, in addition to performing works by Joseph Kurdika, John Lely, and all ensemble members. In summer 2017, Ordinary Affects attended the Avaloch Residency. Ordinary Affects has recordings on elsewhere, Another Timbre, and forthcoming recordings on Ftarri and Editions Wandelweiser.

Magnus Granberg is a composer and performer working at an intersection between contemporary chamber music and improvisation. He is based in Stockholm, Sweden.

Born in Umeå in 1974, he studied saxophone and improvisation at the University of Gothenburg and in New York in his late teens and early twenties. Self-taught as a composer, he formed his own ensemble Skogen in 2005 trying to integrate experiences, methods and materials from various traditions of improvised and composed musics into a new modus operandi. Now mainly working with the ensemble Skogen and the newly formed Skuggorna och ljuset, while increasingly also writing music on commission for different ensembles and projects. He is also active as an improvisor in different contexts, mainly playing the clarinet.

His music has been performed in Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, England, Austria, Hungary and Slovenia, broadcast by public radio channels in England (BBC Radio 3 and 6), Germany (SWR 2), Sweden (SR P2), Estonia, Slovenia, Serbia, Hungary and the United States, and has been published by the renowned British record label Another Timbre.

Recent work includes a commission from Another Timbre and Ensemble Grizzana and collaborations with musicians such as David Sylvian, Christoph Schiller and the Swiss duo Diatribes.

He has in the last decade also, more or less regularly, collaborated with musicians such as Angharad Davies, Tisha Mukarji, Tetuzi Akiyama, Toshimaru Nakamura, Anna Lindal, Kristine Scholz, Rhodri Davies, Simon Allen, Christoph Schiller and Ko Ishikawa.

Selected press quotes:

”Granberg´s achievement is immense. Drawing on this 17th-century source, au courant art cuts across allegiances of style while the spectre of John Dowland is never too far from the surface”.
Philip Clark, The Gramophone

”Granberg’s stated aim is to create a music and performance practice which draws no clear distinction between composition and improvisation” … ”But in contrast with the spontaneity and excitement of improvisation, there’s a sense of inevitability and organic unity that belongs to the most compelling composition. It creates a singular atmosphere of drama and mystery, with an ethos that’s totally involving.”
Andy Hamilton, The Wire

”Across its duration, Ist gefallen in den Schnee creates its own rules and logic, resulting in a composition that demands to be heard again and again. Sublime.”
John Eyles, All About Jazz

Directions: Take the 1 train to 125th Street and Broadway, walk west toward the river, Prentis Hall is on the left halfway down the block across from the Lenfest Center for the Arts