Dear friends and listeners,

Following the truncated, partial premiere last Saturday as part of the 2012 Avant Music Festival, William Lang and I are very excited to present the Full World Premiere of The Third Pillar in Primal Imperfect Palindrome with The Souvenir of The Second Pillar, The Floating Cirrus over the Pumping Slush, and The Highest Moving Chordal Motif from Apparitions of The Four Pillars on Monday, February 27th, 2012, at 8PM at The Wild Project.

Anyone that was at the performance on the 18th, is invited back as our guests to this premiere, and I’m hoping that this last minute change in schedule will allow even more people to experience Will’s transcendent playing as it was intended.

Tickets to this special premiere are now available through Avant Media

In harmony,

Randy

This whole campaign culminates in a one-night-only preview performance and thank-you party on Monday December 19th. I'll be performing a new solo vocal work: The First Pillar Appearing in Palindrome with The Harbinger of The Second Pillar under the 27/28 Triple Primal Region from Apparitions Of The Four Pillars that acts as an introduction into this year's realizations of Apparitions Of The Four Pillars. Please consider making a pledge on kickstarter and coming to hear this special performance. Plus there will be free food and drink and performances from The Pierrot Project and Eve Beglarian. Plus, if you donate $25 or more, you get a copy of the 2012 Avant Music Festival EP featuring my own Third Pillar recording from Voices + Sine Waves (previously only available on the CD version) as well as works by Eve Beglarian and Jenny Johnson.

In February, the festival will open (February 10th) with Circular Trance Surrounding The Second Pillar with The Highest Seventh Primal Cirrus, The Utmost Fundamental, and The Ekmeles Ending from Apparitions of The Four Pillars performed and commissioned by Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble.

Here is a clip from the November 2011 World Premiere at Music At First:

The festival will close (February 18th) with a new work written for trombonist William Lang: The Third Pillar in Primal Imperfect Palindrome with The Souvenir of The Second Pillar, The Floating Cirrus over the Pumping Slush, and The Highest Moving Chordal Motif from Apparitions Of The Four Pillars - This work takes the same basic idea as what I'll be performing on December 19th and transforms it into a one-man symphony of dense droning pure textures.

Full information on the 2012 Avant Music Festival, including ticketing, can be found here.

Limited copies will be available during the 2011 Avant Music Festival: Feb. 11-19, in New York City.

Below, check out the lovely cover artwork created by Oscar Henriquez

On Monday January 10th, the Kickstarter Campaign to fund the release of Aqua Madora closes. This nearly fifty minute piano solo is one of my favorite works, and I'm really looking forward to finally making the recording available.

I hope you'll consider pledging to make this CD a reality

Then, also next week, tickets for the 2011 Avant Music Festival will go on sale. In addition to curating the festival with Megan Schubert, this year will see the premiere of a new version of my major work, Apparitions of The Four Pillars, the recent London performance of a section of which was described by Liminal's Scott McMillan as "a moment of relative calm, of stillness, and of pleasingly soporific and mind-emptying purity."

The full title for this new version is Apparitions of The Four Pillars with Their Lowest Additive Primes as limited to the 3rd, 7th, 9th, and 11th New Primes chosen Cyclically, The Toll of Premonition, The Memorial Connector over the Outlying Primal Abyss, and The Mid-Winter Ending - I'm being joined in the performances by Will Lang, Drew Blumberg, Catherine McCurry, and Mariel Roberts.

I also have new commissions in the works for Ekmeles, bassoonist Annie Lyle, and The Guidonian Hand, but more on those to come.

Here's to a happy and creative 2011

It's 60 minutes of dense, swirling, droning cassettes, and i'm truly, deeply proud of it. It's being released in a limited edition of 250. More details can be found here.

I was joined on the recording by Drew Blumberg and Laine Rettmer, and the beautiful cover illustration was done by Oscar Henriquez.

Get your copy today

Click here to join my email list and stay up to date on all my goings on.

Plus, I've started a mailing list, which you should join, I'll only email for new and exciting things.

So here's what's coming up.

On October 4th, my tape, Analog Apparitions, will be released by The Tapeworm. I spent the summer recording a ton of cassette layers with Drew Blumberg and Laine Rettmer of music for Just Intonation Toy Organs, Voice, and Sine Waves. I'm really proud of how it turned out, it's some deep, droning music. Much more info to come on this very soon.

On October 12th Avant Media is hosting a special Fundraiser and performance for the 2011 Avant Music Festival. I'll be performing with Drew Blumberg a version of my piece The Third Pillar with its Lowest Primes and Memories of The Second Pillar from Apparitions of The Four Pillars with video by Oscar Henriquez which is available on the limited edition version of Voices + Sine Waves. Tickets are on sale now for as low as $20

In late October we'll be launching a Kickstarter campaign to release a special limited edition of my major Just Intonation piano piece, Aqua Madora.

On December 9th I'll be performing The Third Analog Pillar with video by Oscar Henriquez in London alongside Philip Jeck, Zerocrop, and Cathi Unsworth as a part of The Tapeworm's Unleashed in The East night at Cafe OTO. Tickets are on sale now for just £6

Then in January, we're scheduling the release of Aqua Madora as a digital download and limited edition CD.

And finally, on February 11th I will open the 2011 Avant Music Festival with a new, world premiere, Apparitions of The Four Pillars with Their Lowest Additive Primes as limited to the 3rd, 7th, 9th, and 11th New Primes chosen Cyclically, The Toll of Premonition, The Memorial Connector over the Outlying Primal Abyss, and The Mid-Winter Ending with video by Oscar Henriquez and performed by Will Lang on trombone, me on Just Intonation Toy Organs, and The Apparitions String Ensemble. There will be a second performance on February 19th, and on February 12th, Will Lang and I will play John Cage's marvelous Two⁵. A limited number of deeply discounted five night passes will be available at the October 12th Fundraiser.

So that's what's in store in my world for this year. I hope you'll join my email list, follow me on twitter, and come to the fundraiser on October 12th, there will be free beer and food.

R

Individually hand-numbered and signed copies are available now for only $10. Click here to purchase your copy

Voices + Sine Waves is a collection of short works by Randy Gibson written over the last 10 years. These works represent the most primal and basic of materials; voices ethereal and guttural; sine waves pure and distorted. Most of these pieces have been scores for short films or dances, but exist on their own as recordings of a single performance.

Exclusive to this CD release, and not available for download, is the raga influenced The Third Pillar with its Lowest Primes and Memories of The Second Pillar from Apparitions of The Four Pillars III-iii-2010 20:02:56" - 20:20:17" (Brooklyn). Following the world premiere of Apparitions of The Four Pillars, The Third Pillar immediately struck us all as the most melodic and raga-like of the Pillars, and thus the most readily suitable for a short-form recording. The third take of the evening recording session, The Third Pillar..., is a single improvised performance by Randy Gibson on toy organ, William Lang on trombone, and Drew Blumberg on violin.

There will not be a second printing of this CD, and The Third Pillar will only be available on this recording. Don't miss the opportunity to own this remarkable collection of works.

It's 17 minutes of droning raga-inflicted melodies all drawn from The Third Pillar. The physical version of Voices + Sine Waves is going to be limited to an edition of 100 signed and numbered units, and this will be the only place this piece will be available.

There's no release date yet for the album, but it should only be a couple of weeks.

I've uploaded a bunch of the photos to Flickr here and this is one of my favorites:

Drew Blumberg and Tom Chiu - Photo by Travis Dubreuil

The projection created by Oscar Henriquez is a true psychedelic pleasure to perform in.

The avant-premiere, with Will Lang on trombone, will take place on February 27th at 8PM at Wild Project, 195 East third street - as a part of the Avant Music Festival,

I hope you can join me for another immersive meditative experience.

Ever since I got my first toy organ in early 2009 I've been brewing a piece that would involve a number of organs, sine waves, and performers. Something modular, and maybe a little tiny bit more portable than the behemoth that is Doleo Æternus.

My basic process whenever I write a new piece is as follows: a kernel of an idea will come to me - it may be the tuning, or a sound, or a texture, or even (rarely) a feeling or emotion; that idea then percolates in my brain for a long time, popping up here or there unnoticed or considered, until the right moment comes along; then the piece tends to sort of tumble out quickly, nearly fully formed - being refined through the rehearsal process into the shape it will be in its first performance.

When, shortly after the premiere of Doleo, I approached Wild Project about the possibility of returning to do a festival of sorts, I never expected it would happen so quickly. I'm glad it did, because Apparitions came tumbling out in a matter of days, almost ready to go.

As soon as I had the tuning structure in mind (it's based on the idea of four pillars of tuning, stacks of 5ths, 7ths, 9ths, and 11ths) - the actual piece structure came very naturally, and I sketched out my first score to begin working on the electronics

Early Score Image for "Apparitions of The Four Pillars"

The realm of sine waves (an intense series of related prime harmonics inspired by the dense prime-harmonic sine-wave compositions pioneered by my mentor La Monte Young), and the delay lines (a rhythmically / harmonically linked process) quickly put everything into perspective, not only about this iteration, but how future smaller or larger iterations could be formed, and how this tuning structure could act as a basis for a series of interconnected pieces.

This performance will carry the full title: Apparitions of The Four Pillars with Their Lowest Primes, The Premonition of The Second Rung, and The Third Rung Connector

In addition to the violinists Drew Blumberg and Catherine McCurry, who make up The Apparition String Ensemble, I'm very excited to be joined in the World Premiere by Tom Chiu, the brilliant experimental violinist ; and in the Avant-Premiere by William Lang, the avant-garde trombonist. The projection that Oscar Henriquez is creating for us to perform in is truly breathtaking and hypnotic and will be the perfect foil for the droning shimmering wall of sound that characterizes this piece.

Here is a short sample from our most recent rehearsal - this should give you an idea of the sound world I'm heading towards -

Tickets to Apparitions of The Four Pillars and all of the events on the Avant Music Festival are now on sale from avantmedia.org

Update:

Dress Rehearsal photo by Travis Dubreuil:

Organs in the glow of the projection