Animal Hospital Ensemble

Sat Dec 03, 2011 - Sun Dec 04, 2011

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please see below for venues

Artists Jane Wang

Animal Hospital Ensemble

KEVIN MICKA UNVEILS THE ANIMAL HOSPITAL ENSEMBLE.
30 PIECE BAND TRANSFORMS HIS LOOP-BASED EPICS INTO LIVE SURROUND-SOUND;
SHOWS IN BOSTON AND PAWTUCKET ONLY.

December 3rd at Machines with Magnets w/ Big Digits
400 Main St Pawtucket, Rhode Island 8pm $8.00 All Ages

December 4th at MassArt's Pozen Center w/ Beautiful Weekend
621 Huntington Ave Boston, Massachusetts 6pm $10.00 All Ages
Produced by SIM and Joseph Wight

Click here for PDF of poster design

After six years of crafting vast, unforgettable works of aural experimentation by himself and an arsenal of looping hardware, Animal Hospital's Kevin Micka is announcing the first ever live performances of his music by an ensemble of seasoned local guitarists, string players, and drummers.

This fall, audiences in Boston, MA and Pawtucket, RI will experience pieces from 2009's "Memory" album in full surround sound, with a platoon of musicians encircling the audience. The ensemble will be a diverse collection of musicians from bands like garage popsters Hallelujah the Hills, microtonal droners Neptune, and Ethiopian pop group Debo Band.

"Early on in the process of recording 'Memory,' I'd hoped to perform the material like this," says Micka. He was first inspired by the idea after attending a performance of Rhys Chatham's "Guitar Trio" in 2007 at the ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn, NY, a former grain silo where Chatham's guitar orchestra performed circumscribed around the audience. After Micka completed his own recording, he fantasized about what it might sound like if, instead of recording and looping all the parts, to have a musician execute each element, each layer.

The thought of surrounding an audience with live sound further intensified when Micka performed in Rhys Chatham's 200-guitar orchestration of "A Crimson Grail", conducted at New York's Lincoln Center in 2009.

Over the course of three albums and years of touring, Micka has built acclaim in North America and Europe for his patient use of layered guitars, live-sampled drumming and lush, adventurous song structures. His music unfolds into shimmering waves or thunderous drones, and each song can morph from delicate chamber music to pounding walls of sound. Pitchfork wrote of Animal Hospital, "Often starting with a bare skeleton of a song, he adds skin and muscle until it becomes a full, dense soundscape, in a process that feels more like sculpture than songcraft."

"The idea of performing this music with a lot of good friends in an ensemble always put a huge smile on my face," Micka says.

The Ensemble

Emily Arkin (violin) - Shepherdess
Frank Aveni (drums) - Geoglyphs
David Bentley (cello) - Hallelujah The Hills
Adam Brilla (guitar) - Broken River Prophet / Tiny Amps
Scott Craggs (guitar) - Old Colony Mastering
David Michael Curry (violin) - Empty House Cooperative
Eric Dill (guitar) - Thunderhole
Farhad Ebrahimi (guitar) - Summerduck
Mike Gintz (guitar) - Hex Map
Doug Harry (guitar) - Battlehouse
Michael Hutcherson (drums) - Owlfood / Your Reflection
Ernie Kim (guitar) - Malibu Gaze / Magic People
Luke Kirkland (guitar) - Marconi / Intials B.R.
John Kolodij (guitar) - High Aura'd / Spectral Rehab
Seth Manchester (guitar) - Machines with Magnets
Greg Moss (guitar) - Summerduck / The Common Cold
Brendan Murray (guitar) - TAPS / Paper Summer
Rob Noyes (guitar) - Bloody Gears
Kristina Johnson Parish (guitar) - Roh Delikat / Ho-Ag
Matt Parish (guitar) - Ho-Ag
Mark Pearson (guitar) - Neptune
John Perotti (guitar) - Battlehouse / Malibu Gaze
Joel Roston (guitar) - Beautiful Weekend
Jonah Sacks (cello) - Empty House Collective / Steve Walther Orchestra
Keith Souza (guitar) - Machines with Magnets
Alec Tisdale (guitar) - The Red Heroine / Volcano Kings
Jane Wang (double bass) - Mobius
Nicholas Giadone Ward (guitar and double bass) - Hallelujah The Hills / The Red Heroine
Brendon Wood (guitar) - Devil Music / Debo Band