Nathan's first newsletter!
Emergence
This is my first newsletter! I'm not engaging with social media much any more, so I thought I'd use this as a method to inform y'all about my goings-on. I set all of this up almost a year ago, but it's taken a while to use it... I hope it works! You early folks may notice a shift in tone as I figure out what I want this to look like. I appreciate your patience. I'll probably send updates every other month or so, because that's the pace of things at the moment.
Of course, if you ever decide you'd rather not receive these any more you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email.
Future issues will feature updates on performances and showings of my work -- which admittedly are a little infrequent, so I also want to share interesting projects that catch my eye, cool work from cool friends, and resources for building connections and community.
Putting the "news" in newsletter
I closed out 2024 with a performance with Scott Stobbe at Zeitgeist Theater here in New Orleans. We are lucky to have such a generous hub for art and activism. Here's a lil pic:
I've since played a couple more shows there and it's always great.
I also launched a new website. I'm still working on the landing page but it's been fun to go through my archive and collect everything in a cohesive and publicly available place. I'm going to make a "links" section soon that has... links... to my friends and other projects that I think are interesting or worthwhile, let me know if you'd like to be included!
I spent a week at Winslow House Project in Vallejo, CA in February working on a piece I started when I was last there, in January of 2023. I highly recommend checking out the project -- the residency is wonderful, they have an online radio station, beautiful chickens, an extremely old pepper tree, and tons of events for fostering artistic community in the Bay Area.
The composition is for 4 instruments and electronics (a variation on a chamber ensemble established by a weird Viennese guy named Arnold Schoenberg in his controversial song cycle "Pierrot Lunaire"). It's inspired by my experience staying in such a historic house, field recordings I made around the area, and setting aside time specifically to focus on making music only for myself.
I've been helping my friends here in New Orleans build out their new coffee shop, Junk Drawer! (sorry for the IG link but it's what we've got at the moment). I built out a 4-channel speaker system with the potential for surround sound electronic music, so we're thinking we might start hosting performance events there soon. It will most likely open for coffee next month.
In March I'm scheduled to perform at the MOXSonic festival at University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. I'll be performing a short composition for Joshue Ott's superDraw live drawing audiovisual software. I am also writing a score every day that uses text to guide improvisation in some way. I did this a couple of years ago to get in the mindset for writing some larger compositions and it's always fun!
In April, I will return to UT San Antonio to work on my piece with Mark McCoin, Robotic Resonance! We're having Michael Theodore (my old prof!) come in from Boulder to improvise along with the machine, and we may or may not have some generative composition material to try out... updates coming forthwith.
Some things I've been listening to these days, in order from least to most adventurous:
Azymuth - Azymuth (Brazilian jazz-funk)
Akiko Yano - To Ki Me Ki (Jazzy/groovy early 80s Japanese pop)
Olli Aarni - Yö näkyy (Finnish contemporary ambient musician)
NTS Radio - True As Few with Mark, Grazyna Bacewisz focus(Post tonal classical music from Poland)
Otherwise, I'm here in Nola working at our singular and very cool rock climbing gym (teaching beginner bouldering is a joy), sitting at Mid City Zen Center ("Upright, but not uptight!") and hopefully soon volunteering with Common Ground Relief, a local organization devoted to (among other community things) fieldwork restoring Louisiana wetlands with native flora. It's Mardi Gras right now so the city is abuzz with energy. Today we watched a canoe parade in Mid City, and I can currently hear a drumline playing off in the distance.
Thanks for reading! You can visit the newsletter archive if you want to read things I've posted before. I mean in the future. Because this is the first one. Keep an eye out for exclusive tracks, playlists, and other ephemera I might feel like sharing.
Liberation for all beings,
-- Nate