(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Experimental and improvisational duos Jill Burton & Jane Scarpantoni and David Grollman & Ryan Krause – who often perform under the ensemble name Lipchitz – will play back-to-back sets at Spotty Dog Books & Ale on Friday, October 17, 2014, at 8pm.

Born in 1952, extended vocalist/holistic/sound/movement/performance artist Jill Burton was a professional ballerina, modern dancer, dance teacher and accompanist, and free improviser in Gainesville, Fla., during the 1970s. In 1978, she traveled to San Francisco where she met for the first time her life-long collaborators Davey Williams and LaDonna Smith, and connected for the first time to a larger, world-wide community of free improvisers. She lived in Manhattan’s East Village from 1981-1991 where she was very active as part of the downtown experimental music/dance/performance art scene; including co-founding, w/Rain Worthington, the band HIZOHI which also included Jane Scarpantoni, Yuval Gabay, and Kumiko Kimoto; and three years in David First’s microtonal orchestra The Flatland Oscillators. She has been privileged to work with and learn from artists of the Peking Opera, the Noh Theater, and Alaska Native Tlingit storytellers. She spent more than 15 years studying and practicing bodywork, hands-on healing, energy-work, and sound-healing modalities, and is perhaps unique in applying these practices and philosophies as an extended vocalist and movement artist working in the field of the art of free improvisation. She currently tours the US several times a year doing solo and collaborative performances and giving workshops and presentations.

 

Jane Scarpantoni is a classically trained cello player who has played on a number of alternative rock albums. She was a member of Hoboken’s Tiny Lights in the mid-1980s, then went on to play with other musicians especially those associated with the Hoboken underground rock scene of the 1980s and early 1990s, including Silverchair, Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, Patti Smith, Richard Barone, R.E.M., Indigo Girls, 10,000 Maniacs, Throwing Muses, Kristin Hersh, Lou Reed, Chris Cacavas, Bob Mould, John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards, Boo Trundle, Train and many others.

 

A graduate of the New England Conservatory, Ryan Krause is a composer and gallery director (1oh9.com) who has been experimenting with extended vocal techniques and narratives in solo and duo performances (recently as Lipchitz with David Grollman). Use of techniques pioneered by Stockhausen and Trevor Wishart are paired with the casual and nonsequitur.

 

David Grollman is a percussionist from New York who performs freely improvised music. He performs in art galleries, tiki bars, and venues of curious ambience made more curious by his mongrel sounds. David bows, scrapes, blows, slaps, rubs, caresses, abuses, and generally tests the limits of his instrument. Anything is game. Anything may be a participant if the musical conversation calls for it. Artist, instrument, audience, and environment become ambiguous terms, conspiring in a theatrical exploration of chance dynamics and serendipitous exchanges.