Essential Repertoire :: Thursday, December 3 through Saturday, December 5, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. :: ISSUE Project Room (at the Old American Can Factory), 232 3rd Street (at 3rd ave), Brooklyn NY 11215 :: Tickets $20/at the door, $15 in advance (available online at http://www.issueprojectroom.org or for cash purchase at Other Music) F, M, R to 9th Street-4th Ave

Brooklyn-based music series Darmstadt: “Classics of the Avant Garde” presents its second-annual Essential Repertoire festival of cherished compositions from the experimental canon. This year’s iteration celebrates the 30th anniversary of the seminal New Music New York concerts curated by Rhys Chatham and held at The Kitchen (then on Broome Street), which put the still-burgeoning Downtown Scene – at the crossroads of minimalism, interdisciplinary performance, and various strains of post-punk – under a mainstream spotlight and redefined the presentation of experimental music.

Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. :: Connie Beckley – “Sound Split” (1976), “Tiptoe” (1979), “Showdown” (1976); Performed by the composer

“Blue” Gene Tyranny – “Harvey Milk (Portrait from ‘How to Do It’/A circuit to help generate the feeling of meaning)” (1978), Electronic sound pieces prepared by the composer (in attendance), special guest performers Katie Eastburn and Danny Johnston

Petr Kotik – Excerpt from There is Singularly Nothing (1973); Performed by the S.E.M. Ensemble with special guests Gelsey Bell, Gisburg, and Megan Schubert

For more information on Connie Beckley, visit: http://conniebeckley.com/ConnieBeckleyBIO.htm
For more information on “Blue” Gene Tyranny, visit: http://www.bluegenetyranny.com/bio.html
For more information on Petr Kotik, visit: http://www.semensemble.org/pk.html

Essential Repertoire is a new, annual festival curated by Darmstadt that celebrates the canon of avant-garde music via various means of historical inquiry. Its goal is to create a regularly occurring repertory of cherished performance work. For a video sampler of last year’s festival, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6NN7dSjAp8

“Yes, we’re prone to hyperbole on occasion, but trust us when we say that Darmstadt’s Essential Repertoire series…is one of the most significant musical presentations of the season” – Time Out New York