Night 1 (May 9) | Night 2 (May 10)
Doors 8pm / Show 8:30pm
$17 adv / $20 door / free or discounted for members
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Scales for the Living under Duress: 2020-2025 arranges selections from Carla Harryman’s poem-dialogue trilogy written in “pandemic time” for voices and improvised music under the direction of Harryman and composer Jon Raskin. The multi-instrumental performance with speaking and singing voices features Ben Davis (cello and voice), Carla Harryman (speaking voice), Darren Johnston (trumpet, vocals), Jon Raskin (alto saxophone, concertina, electronics, and vocals), and Roham Sheikhani (movement and vocals).

Begun in spring 2020 during sequestration, Harryman’s trilogy (Good Morning, Cloud Cantata, and “Scales for the Living”) is comprised of improvised, comic-tragic conversations between unnamed entities within their dwelling usually during the morning; although time is a fluid substance in the pandemic time-melting world and thus morning is a relative concept. The dialogues can variously be thought of as representations of one person’s interior thoughts or as literal exchanges between people. Pliable also are the distinctions between self and other, dream and reality, memory and fantasy, and proximity and distance. As the work develops the bubble-time of sequestration frays and disperses into new forms that occupy the atmosphere of our current calamitous moment.

Known for her boundary breaking investigations of genre, non/narrative poetics, and performance writing, Carla Harryman is the author of twenty-six books.  Her plays and text-based performance scores have been presented nationally and internationally,  including at dOCUMENTA 13 and The Hölderlinturm in Germany; The Stone, New York; Light Box, Detroit,  BAMFA, and The Renaissance Society, Chicago. A number of her performance works have been developed in collaboration with composer Jon Raskin.  Recent books include Cloud Cantata (2021) and A Voice to Perform: One Opera/Two Plays ( 2020). Her honors include an award for poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, New York and a Distinguished Faculty in Creative Activity award from Eastern Michigan University

 Jon Raskin explores the relationship of improvisation and composition, developing and honing the language of ensemble music and researching linguistic possibilities of the saxophone. He has been a member of the Rova Saxophone Quartet since 1976 and has performed and/or recorded with Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Sam Rivers, Tim Berne, Steve Lacy, Leo Smith, Frank Gratkowski, Philip Greenlief and Tim Perkis. Jon has collaborated with the poet Carla Harryman on many different projects including the recording Open Box for the Tzadik label and Gardener of Stars, an Opera, most recently performed at the Torn Page Theater in New York City. He is also a member of Shinichi lova-Koga multi-media work “Clouds from a Crumbing Giant.”