Organized by acclaimed composer Michael Pisaro, the week-long festival is a balance of intimacy and intensity. Starting in 2009 (Dog Star's fifth year), Human Ear signed on to document the concerts, and present them in a free online archive.
Attended by few, and passionately realized by the composer-performers of LA's fervent experimental scene, Dog Star Orchestra's concerts make a breathtaking trip through many adventurous perspectives on the experience of listening.
Many of the pieces are world premieres or rarely performances.
Michael Pisaro is a composer and guitarist from Los Angeles.
His music is frequently performed worldwide, in a great number of music festivals
and concert venues, as well as more intimate and unusual environments like
rooftops, bunkers, the open desert and various living rooms. It is often described as having a transformative effect on awareness of
time and auditory perception, in addition to a surface of intense beauty. His
conception of listenership as an experience of trust and communion holds solid,
throughout his novel use of silence, duration and materials, from live
performance to field recording, despite an ever-changing set of conditions.
The Orchestra:
Casey Anderson, Tara Boyle, Madison Brookshire, Ezra Buchla, Eric Km Clark, Katie Clark, Daniel Corral, Rory Cowal, Rob Esler, Christa Graf, Jason Grier, April Guthrie, John Hastings, Orin Hildestad, Danny Holt, Lewis Keller, David Kendall, James Klopfleisch, Ulrich Krieger, Grace Lai, Rachel Manderfeld, Mari, Adam Overton, Aniela Perry, Michael Pisaro, Isaac Schankler, Gary Schultz, Sam Sfirri, Sepand Shahab, Mark So, Cassia Streb, Greg Stuart, Christine Tavolacci, Lisa Tolentino, Mark Trayle, Douglas Wadle, Brian Walsh and Mike Winter
For a complete list of performers and performances, click here.
Right-click here for the high-res image.
Click each day below to listen online and download free and lossless audio.
Following the (a)rhythmic march by Christian Wolff, is an exploration of what a song might mean in an experimental context: where it is essentially about action (Songbooks), the virtual voice (Holter) or an echo of the surreal vernacular (tombstones). We end with another kind of march, this time emanating from behind a wall.
A concert of chamber music - each piece perhaps implying its own (small) space - the place in (a) town where it might feel most at home. This chamber music, because of its delicacy creates virtual rooms (instead of overwhelming the room in which they may occur).
This concert features music in which simultaneous events (or pieces) occur with only the most discrete kinds of coordination: for example, in deprivation music the musicians can't hear each other (because they noise in their ears and headphones).
Music in the backyard of Daniel Corral's place in Highland Park; music that can be confidently situated out of doors, alongside the freeway: listening outdoors, placing objects in the garden, "listening" to the stars.
An entire day of Composition No. 7, onto which other pieces have been imposed that take the fundamental interval of that piece as a given (with James Tenney's "Swell Piece No.2" as an inspiration and a guide).
A variety of pieces that deal with the field recording or musique concrete (or things related to either of those). A cloud drifting over the plain creates a virtual field through the falling of drops of water on percussion (80 recorded tracks).
Music in which numbers are expressed instead of simply used (actual numbers, numbers of performers, tones as numbers).
The 2010 Dog Star Orchestra occurred between June 2 and 12 in Los Angeles.
With an improved mobile studio, Human Ear and Dublab's Jake Viator captured 2010's concerts in greater detail and clarity.
The recordings are currently being mastered and will appear here soon.
