bios
fred kennedy: percussion
Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, drummer and sound designer Frederick Kennedy now makes his home in New York City. In the last few years, Fred has completed tours to France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ecuador, Canada, the Southwestern United States, and California. Fred is fortunate to have had the opportunity to perform with many fantastic artists, including David Krakauer, Tim Hagans, JD Walter, Bobby Shew, Sheryl Bailey, Joe LoCascio, Lynn Seaton, Dan Haerle, Philip Glass, Iva Bitova, and Andrew D’Angelo. Fred has also worked extensively collaborating with theatre and dance artists on such projects as Tiger’s Heart (97), The Secret Place (02), Trout Stanley (04), and Brighter Than the Light of the Sun (05), for which Fred received a Robert Merrit Award for Best Sound Design.
As a regular collaborator with New York video artist Pierre St-Jacques, Fred has also written, recorded and edited numerous scores for video, including Clouds and Raindrops (04), featured at the Bronx Museum of Art in April of 2004, Token of My Affection (04), which has been shown in Tokyo and New York, and Project for a Grey Dress (06). Recent projects include the Suite Unraveling, a group blending elements of minimalist chamber music, free jazz, and indie rock; and Randal, a quartet that Fred co-leads with Norwegian guitarist Jostein Gulbrandsen. For more information, visit www.fredkennedy.org.
kevin patton: guitar + live electronics
Kevin Patton is a composer, guitarist, and experimental sound performer who explores the increasingly nebulous borderlands between humans and machines in performance. The integration of interactive electronic music and machine improvisation into traditional performance contexts is at the center of his practice. The Wire magazine described Kevin as genre bending: "Guitar based free playing morphs into feedback avalanches, or vice versa, and labels like jazz, noise, or rock become meaningless." (The WIRE, 11/4/05)
Kevin often performs his own work in both instrumental improvisation and interactive chamber music and has performed in Europe, Japan, and throughout North America. The Aphasia Project, a multi-media performance art duet with visual artist Carmen Montoya, integrates video, interactive and generative environments, and performance art in both a concert and installation setting. "The audio and video components of Aphasia Project from intertwined frameworks for interpretation. Mutually dependent on each other for meaning, the sounds and visuals of Aphasia Project pieces form a semiotic synergy that comes alive in performance" (The WIRE, 11/4/05)
Kevin's music and ideas have been presented at the Electronic Music Studies (EMS) International conference in Beijing, China, and the Visiones Sonoras festival in Morelia, Mexico, among many. See lajunkielovegun.com/KevinPatton for more information.
butch rovan: reeds + live electronics
Butch Rovan is a composer and performer on the faculty of the Department of Music at Brown University, where he co-directs MEME (Multimedia & Electronic Music Experiments @ Brown) and the Ph.D. program in Computer Music and Multimedia. Prior to joining Brown he directed CEMI, the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia, at the University of North Texas, and was a compositeur en recherche with the Real-Time Systems Team at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. Rovan worked at Opcode Systems before leaving for Paris, serving as Product Manager for MAX, OMS and MIDI hardware.
Rovan has received prizes from the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition, first prize in the Berlin Transmediale International Media Arts Festival, and his work has been performed throughout Europe and the U.S. He frequently performs his own work, either with various new instrument designs or with augmented acoustic instruments.
Rovan's research includes new sensor hardware design and wireless microcontroller systems. His research into gestural control and interactivity has been featured in IRCAM's journal "Resonance", "Electronic Musician", the Computer Music Journal, the Japanese magazine "SoundArts," the CDROM "Trends in Gestural Control of Music" (IRCAM 2000), and in the book "Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research: Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies," (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). For more information see www.soundidea.org
Gray Code is a dynamic electroacoustic trio that explores timbre, extended instrumental technique, and the ins and outs of acoustic grooves.