Bowerbird is pleased to present Ghost Ensemble performing works by Catherine Lamb and Ben Richter.  Based in New York the ensemble fosters groundbreaking music that blurs borders of genre, style, and scene, expanding perceptual horizons through shared immersive experience.

Ben Richter’s Rewild, inspired by nonhuman perspectives and distant orders of magnitude in the universe of life, explores the thresholds at which pitch becomes rhythm, harmonic interval becomes beating rate, and timbres morph over time. By offering an aural metaphor for the interacting gradual processes of quantum and cosmic systems, Rewild’s pulsing, breathing sonic ecosystem aims to auralize the vast and infinitesimal timescales we do not experience in everyday life. Catherine Lamb’s interius/exterius explores multi-dimensional harmonic space, investigating how collective intentions or focal points allow various and sometimes unusual pathways to emerge. As the group links together in phase, the greater web of activity aligns intention and desire within a community of musicians sounding together, the initiation of sound constantly shifting, unfolding new sonic dimensions.

PROGRAM

Ben Richter: Rewild

Catherine Lamb: interius/exterius

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ghost Ensemble fosters groundbreaking music that blurs borders of genre, style, and scene, expanding perceptual horizons through shared immersive experience. Collaboration with living composers is its primary focus. Since its 2012 inception, the ensemble has performed over 100 works and commissioned 34 new compositions by a diverse range of highly original composers who share a belief in music’s potential for individual and community transformation. Rethinking the norms of composer/performer collaboration, Ghost Ensemble conducts innovative workshops to nurture adventurous new music over the course of multiple seasons. The resulting work often draws from contemporary classical, experimental chamber music, avant-garde jazz, environmental sound art, and territories in between. Critics have praised Ghost Ensemble performances as “prodigious … a thrilling listen” (Christian Carey, Sequenza21), “wonderful work … both exhilarating and a bit scary” (Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily), “beautifully performed and recorded … a body-felt sound mass … a multifaceted texture that evokes the primeval” (Meg Wilhoite, Sound Meets Sound), and “cloudy, mysterious, and dark … Beckettian in its slow spread … certainly a group to keep an eye on” (Brian Olewnick, Just Outside).
www.ghostensemble.org

Ben Richter is a composer, accordionist, and founding Artistic & Executive Director of Ghost Ensemble. Inspired by nonhuman consciousness, Ben’s immersive, gradually evolving compositions seek new orders of magnitude in musical parameters to mark humanity’s transient yet vital role within the immensity of geologic time. A student of Pauline Oliveros, Ben also explores the extended microtonal and timbral potential of the accordion in solo works such as Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean, hailed as “likely to offer a profound impact on the very nature of listening” (Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio).
www.benrichtermusic.com

Catherine Lamb is an active composer exploring the interaction of tone, summations of shapes and shadows, phenomenological expansions, the architecture of the liminal, and the long introduction form. She began her musical life early, later abandoning the conservatory in 2003 to study Hindustani music in Pune, India. She received her BFA in 2006 under James Tenney and Michael Pisaro at CalArts in Los Angeles, where she first developed her research into the interaction of tone. She mentored under the experimental filmmaker/Dhrupad musician Mani Kaul until his death in 2011. In 2012 she received her MFA in music/sound from the Milton Avery School of Fine Arts at Bard College in New York. She toured Shade/Gradient extensively and was awarded the Henry Cowell Research Fellowship to work with Eliane Radigue in Paris. In 2013 Lamb relocated to Berlin, Germany where she lives currently, and has written for ensembles such as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Konzert Minimal, Dedalus, Ensemble neoN, the London Contemporary Orchestra, as well as the JACK Quartet, while collaborating regularly with Marc Sabat, Johnny Chang (Viola Torros), Bryan Eubanks, and Rebecca Lane. In 2019 she co-founded the collectively oriented Harmonic Space Orchestra. She is a 2020 recipient of the Ernst von Siemens Composer’s prize, a 2018 recipient of the Grants to Artists award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, a Staubach Fellow for the 2016 Darmstadt Summer course, and a 2016-2017 Schloss Solitude Fellow.

Ghost Ensemble’s concerts with premieres by Catherine Lamb, Sky Macklay, and Miya Masaoka are presented
with the friendly support of