In the works…
performance: Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh at FUAIM, Cork
Friday, January 29, 2016, at 1:10pm: Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass), Mark Sanders (drums) and Caroline Pugh (voice and electronics) presented by FUAIM Music at UCC, perform at the Aula Maxima (University College Cork, Cork). Admission is free.
Hey! I’ll be performing again with Dom, Mark and Caroline—an exemplary group of crafty, noisy, creative musicians. We just came back from a short tour of England, and I am thrilled to be able to bring this ensemble to Cork. (The tour was presented with funding from Culture Ireland, and support from SLAM Productions.)
See the performance diary for up-to-date info. [FUAIM page…] [Facebook event…]
updates
01–28-16: sadly, Mark’s flight was cancelled. The performance will go ahead as a trio of Han, Dom and Caroline.
Best of 2015
As previously teased, ‘Anomic Aphasia’ (SLAMCD 559) with Han-earl Park, Catherine Sikora, Nick Didkovsky and Josh Sinton makes Avant Music News Best of 2015.
[Avant Music News review…] [All reviews…]
Anomic Aphasia (SLAMCD 559) [details…]
Performers: Han-earl Park (guitar), Catherine Sikora (tenor and soprano saxophones), Nick Didkovsky (guitar), and Josh Sinton (baritone saxophone and bass clarinet).
© 2015 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2015 SLAM Productions.
Plus, A Little Brittle Music by Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Corey Mwamba gets an honorable mention in the same list.
A Little Brittle Music [details…]
Performers: Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Corey Mwamba (vibraphone and flute).
© 2015 Han-earl Park. ℗ 2015 Park/Lash/Mwamba.
I’m honored to find my music standing among such amazing creative work! [Avant Music News Best of 2015…]
Elsewhere, the Birmingham, December 1 performance by Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh makes Niluccio on noise’s Top 20 gigs:
Screeching and scraping in an improv style, this quartet assailed the ears with a pleasing melee of noise, some of it vaguely intelligible. Caroline Pugh jabbered away in what sounded like snatches of Greek, while the guitarist Han-earl Park did impossibly intricate yet percussive stuff on his guitar fret. Mad but entertaining. It was in the backroom of a gloomy back-street boozer. When I tentatively asked the elderly landlord “Where’s the jazz tonight?”, he said “I wouldn’t call it jazz. More like a fookin’ racket.” He was right! [Read the rest…]
Birmingham performance presented with funding from Culture Ireland, and support from SLAM Productions.
Happy New Year: 2016
Original photographs/images © 2015 Han-earl Park; © 2015 Translating Improvisation; © 2015 Peter Fay; © 2015 Caroline Pugh; © 2015 65Fen Music Series; and © 2015 Michael Foster.
thanks: Park-Lash-Sanders-Pugh (Fizzle, Birmingham; BtB, Bristol; and OTO London), Laubrock-Park (New Revolution Arts, Brooklyn) and Didkovsky-Park-Sinton (65Fen, Brooklyn)
Five performance this final month of 2015! A great privilege to have shared the stage with so many awesomely creative, smart and generous people. Let’s get to the hat-tips…
Okay, start with a thanks to my co-conspirators, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh, who consistently created fascinating, difficult, infuriating, confounding and beautiful spaces for interaction. Listening to the music play out in real-time, all I could think was that it sounds great whenever the guitarist shuts-up. (As Josh Sinton pointed out later, that’s really a wonderful position to be in; not knowing how to contribute to—to add to—an already perfect ensemble at play.)
Thanks to Ingrid Laubrock for the play—it was great to come-off a… logistically challenging set of gigs into a relaxed performance where, well, anything might happen… and we ended up in some interesting and unexpected places. (Felt very good about this one.)
To Josh Sinton and Nick Didkovsky, well… That. Was. A. Blast. …Thanks, Josh, Nick, for the Loud Jazz (best possible sense!).
Big thanks to all the venues and promoters, DIYers and supporters: to the indefatigable Andrew Woodhead at Fizzle; to Seth Cooke and everyone at Bang the Bore for an awesome event; to Fielding Hope, Oli Barrett and everyone at Cafe OTO for their support, and for their patience with all the ups’n’downs; to Josh and everyone at 65Fen Music Series; and to Cisco Bradley for inviting me to perform at New Revolution Arts (a beautiful space—socially, musically).
Thanks to Tom Durham the gentleman who lent me his amplifier in Birmingham (sorry, can’t remember your name!), and to Andrew Drury and Chris Welcome who did the same in Brooklyn—y’all made my travels so much more pleasant!
The tour by my ensemble with Dom, Mark and Caroline was made possible with funding from Culture Ireland, and I am extremely grateful for their support.
I am also grateful to Franziska Schroeder, Elspeth Murray, Helen Petts, ODD7’s Towards the Margins, London Korea Links, and Alma Ní Choigligh of Embassy of Ireland (London) who all helped to spread the word of the performances. A special thanks to Cath Roberts of LUME, Avant Music News, and George Haslam of SLAM Productions for their continued support. Similarly, thanks to Editor Laurence Donohue-Greene for tying-in a review in The New York City Jazz Record to coincide with my Brooklyn performances.
Thanks to Dom Lash and Kate Hendry, and to Josh Sinton and family, for offering a place for this itinerant musician to crash a night (or three). Kudos to Nasc Ireland for helping me navigate some border… technicalities 😉
And a very special thanks to the Best Sound Engineer in the Known Universe, Alex Fiennes, for taking time to make the music sound great in London.
Finally, as always, thanks, thanks, thanks, everyone, for listening.
Next up…
Performing again with Dom Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh, this time in Cork, January 2016. See the performance diary for up-to-date info.
Birmingham, Bristol and London performances presented with funding from Culture Ireland, and support from SLAM Productions.
updates
12–20-15: add Tom Durham’s name (thanks, Andy).
tonight: Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders plus Caroline Pugh at Café OTO, London
Tonight (Thursday, December 3, 2015), at 8:00pm: final performance of the tour by Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass), Mark Sanders (drums) and Caroline Pugh (voice and electronics)! Also performing are John Russell, Terry Day and Billy Steiger. The event takes place at Cafe OTO (18–22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL). Tickets: £10 (£8 advance) [get tickets…].
Presented with funding from Culture Ireland, and support from SLAM Productions.
tonight: Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders plus Caroline Pugh at Bang the Bore, Bristol
Tonight (Wednesday, December 2, 2015), at 8:00pm: Bang the Bore presents Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass), Mark Sanders (drums) and Caroline Pugh (voice and electronics). Also performing are Casey Hale, and Dsic. The event takes place at Cafe Kino (108 Stokes Croft, Bristol BS1 3RU). Admission is £6.
Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh will also be performing in London, tomorrow (December 3). See the performance diary for up-to-date info.
Presented with funding from Culture Ireland, and support from SLAM Productions.
reminder: Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders plus Caroline Pugh at Fizzle, Birmingham
Tomorrow (Tuesday, December 1, 2015), at 7:30pm: Fizzle presents Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass), Mark Sanders (drums) and Caroline Pugh (voice and electronics). Also performing are Lee Griffiths (saxophone) and Olly Chalk (piano). The event takes place at The Lamp Tavern (Barford Street, Birmingham B5 6AH). Admission is £5.
Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh will also be performing in Bristol (December 2) and London (December 3). See the performance diary for up-to-date info.
Presented with funding from Culture Ireland, and support from SLAM Productions.
frightening atmospherics (New York City Jazz Record review: Anomic Aphasia)
“Plucky heroine faced with rebellious robots”? “ingot-like density”? “human triumph”? “electronically plugged in as well as pointedly blended”? Ken Waxman, writing in The New York City Jazz Record, reviews ‘Anomic Aphasia’ (SLAMCD 559) by Han-earl Park, Catherine Sikora, Nick Didkovsky and Josh Sinton:
Guitarist Han-earl Park joins those improvisers who conceive of a playbook for interactive tactics….
As the guitarists clip staccato whines with ingot-like density from below the bridges and along the necks, her [Sikora’s] wistful soprano saxophone variations preserve the linear form, eventually making common cause with offbeat folksy strums from one string player. Hear Sikora’s final unaccompanied cadenza as potential human triumph over, or coexistence with, the widening machine-produced tremolo pumps. A folk-like overlay also makes its appearance on the concluding “Stopcock”, although the tenor saxophonist’s concentrated upwards snarls and magnetic near-string-tearing pops from guitar strings make the track so atmospheric as to become almost frightening.
The wailing vigor of Sinton’s bottom-pitched horns adds to the reeds’ aleatoric strategies on the other three
tracks. Nearly verbalized reed tones are so euphonious on “Flying Rods” that the subsequent layered lines nearly move into songbook territory. But Park’s parallel flanges and hard thumping keeps the results electronically plugged in as well as pointedly blended.Sardonically printing a faux questionnaire about Metis 9 application in the CD booklet shows that Park champions music over theory. With associates like Sikora, Didkovsky and Sinton, it appears he can have it both ways. [Read the rest…]
— Ken Waxman (The New York City Jazz Record)
In a few weeks, I’ll be performing in New York with Josh and Nick on December 14, and with Ingrid Laubrock on December 12. See the performance diary for up-to-date info.
[About this recording…] [All reviews…]
Also from SLAM Productions…
io 0.0.1 beta++ (SLAMCD 531) [details…]
Performers: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone). [About this project…]
© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.
Mathilde 253 (SLAMCD 528) [details…]
Performers: Charles Hayward (drums, percussion and melodica), Han-earl Park (guitar) and Ian Smith (trumpet and flugelhorn) plus Lol Coxhill (saxophone). [About this ensemble…]
© 2010 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2010 SLAM Productions.
performance diary 11-24-15 (Birmingham, Bristol, Brooklyn, Cork, London)
| date | venue | time | details |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 1, 2015 | The Lamp Tavern Barford Street Birmingham B5 6AH England |
7:30pm | Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums) [about this trio…] with Caroline Pugh (voice and electronics) presented by Fizzle. Also performing: Lee Griffiths (saxophone) and Olly Chalk (piano). Admission: £5. [Details…] [Fizzle listings…] |
| December 2, 2015 | Cafe Kino 108 Stokes Croft Bristol BS1 3RU England |
8:00pm | Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums) [about this trio…] with Caroline Pugh (voice and electronics) presented by Bang the Bore. Also performing: Casey Hale, and Dsic. Admission: £6. [Details…] [Bang the Bore page…] |
| December 3, 2015 | Cafe OTO 18–22 Ashwin Street Dalston London E8 3DL England |
8:00pm | Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums) [about this trio…] with Caroline Pugh (voice and electronics). Also performing: John Russell, Terry Day and Billy Steiger. Tickets: £10 (£8 advance) [get tickets…]. [Details…] [OTO page…] |
| December 12, 2015 | New Revolution Arts Series 7 Stanhope Street Bushwick Brooklyn, NY 11221 |
8:00pm | Ingrid Laubrock (saxophone) and Han-earl Park (guitar). Also performing: Joanna Mattrey (viola), Leila Bordreuil (cello) and Sean Ali (bass); and James Ilgenfritz’ Trio Caveat.$10 suggested donation. [Details…] [New Revolution Arts listings…] |
| December 14, 2015 | 65Fen Music Series 65 Fenimore Street Brooklyn, NY 11225 |
9:00pm | Nick Didkovsky (guitar), Han-earl Park (guitar) and Josh Sinton (saxophone). Also performing: Jon Irabagon (saxophone).$10 suggested donation. [Details…] |
| January 29, 2016 | Aula Maxima University College Cork Cork, Ireland |
1:10pm | Han-earl Park (guitar), Dominic Lash (double bass) Admission free. [Details…] [FUAIM page…] |
| 2016– | Europe | I am based in Europe as of 2014, and I am seeking performance opportunities for, in particular, my Europe-based projects including Numbers (with Richard Barrett), Mathilde 253 (with Charles Hayward and Ian Smith), and my trio with Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders. Interested promoters, venues and sponsors, please get in touch! |
Birmingham, Bristol and London performances presented with funding from Culture Ireland, and support from SLAM Productions.
Continue reading “performance diary 11-24-15 (Birmingham, Bristol, Brooklyn, Cork, London)”
reminder: Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash and Mark Sanders plus Caroline Pugh (Birmingham, Bristol and London, December 2015)
An SUV-sized violin tailgating, a No Wave guitarist desperately trying to survive in the Appalachian Mountains, someone dropping sheets of metal during a Jazz Session, an evolutionary biologist finding themselves speaking in tongues (Awash In Blue).
December 2015: a short tour by Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh:
- Birmingham, December 1, 2015: The Lamp Tavern (Barford Street, Birmingham B5 6AH) presented by Fizzle.
[Performance diary entry…] [Fizzle listings…] [Facebook event…] - Bristol, December 2, 2015: Cafe Kino (108 Stokes Croft, Bristol BS1 3RU) presented by Bang the Bore.
[Performance diary entry…] [Bang the Bore page…] [Facebook event…] - London, December 3, 2015: Cafe OTO (18–22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL).
[Performance diary entry…] [OTO page (get tickets)…] [Facebook event…]
See the performance diary for up-to-date info. [Details (performer bios, images, etc.)…]
I am beyond pleased, and feel extremely privileged, to be taking this group of stupendously creative, and unique crafty, people on the road. It’d be only a small exaggeration to say that this ensemble, more than any other, embodies the kinds of interactive creativity—an at times discordant tension between autonomy and collectivism—that get me fired up. Excited? Yes. And you should be too 😉 Hope you can make it to a performance; I guarantee it will be something special.
‘character’ posters
© 2015 Han-earl Park. Click to view PDFs…
trailer
Presented with funding from Culture Ireland, and support from SLAM Productions.
updates
11–20-15: add Bang the Bore page.
performance: Nick Didkovsky, Han-earl Park and Josh Sinton at 65Fen Music, Brooklyn
‘Free’ is barely sufficient to describe this approach…. The vocabulary of sounds here is as broad as it is unconventional…. While an occasional interlocking harmony might emerge from all of this innovation, it is quickly shattered by unexpected Möbius twists…. An exercise in texture as much as it is in melody, Park, Sikora, Didkovsky, and Sinton don’t just break molds here – they disintegrate anything that resembles the ordinary with authority and prejudice. [Read the rest…]
— Mike Borella (Avant Music News)
Monday, December 14, 2015, at 9:00pm (doors: 8:30pm; our set: 9:00pm): Nick Didkovsky (guitar), Han-earl Park (guitar) and Josh Sinton (saxophone), plus Jon Irabagon (saxophone), perform at 65Fen Music Series (65 Fenimore Street, Brooklyn, NY 11225). $10 suggested donation.
We never got to kick Anomic Aphasia into the world, so, although Catherine Sikora sadly cannot make the gig, I’d like to consider this an unofficial record launch event. See you there!
See the performance diary for up-to-date info. [65fen listings…] [Facebook event…]
Above video playlist of the November 2013 Gowanus Company. Videography by Scott Friedlander. Featuring a stellar cast (seriously worth watching the whole thing for its breadth and depth, and unexpected turns and corners)… yet somehow Josh, Nick and I never managed to all be onstage at the same time! We’ll fix that this time.
By Han-earl Park, Nick Didkovsky and Josh Sinton
Anomic Aphasia (SLAMCD 559) [details…]
Performers: Han-earl Park (guitar), Catherine Sikora (tenor and soprano saxophones), Nick Didkovsky (guitar), and Josh Sinton (baritone saxophone and bass clarinet).
© 2015 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2015 SLAM Productions.
updates
11-20-15: change set time, and add Facebook event.