It’s important to have the facts, first:
Wed 8/17 9:00 PM
$5-10 sliding scale
Subterranean Arthouse
[2179 Bancroft Way between Shattuck and Fulton Berkeley]
Daniel Popsicle vs Brooklyn
A night of banter-based musical performance, narrative and opera-in-progress when composer’s collective ThingNY violinist Jeffrey Young and cellist Valerie Kuehne come to town accompanied by her band DreamZoo.
Daniel Popsicle hosts, and plays, and, with any luck, recites banter composed for the band by Dan Plonsey, who has an amazing ear for turning overheard comments idly thrown into the universe of a rehearsal into not simply absurd, but touching, and, yes, sometimes searing portraits of humanity secretly concerned with identifying planes from their wing shapes, Wire Magazine, surviving the inevitable hurt of making art that garners no regard, and Norton-esque proclamations.
About the Artists
Valerie Kuehne is an electrically charged virtuoso of all purpose cello. Dynamic performer, fearless improviser, songwriter, vocalist, and classically trained connoisseur of Bach and Britten, Valerie can be found playing incessant shows in NYC, where she devotes formidable heart, intellect, creativity, and time to cross-pollinating sundry genres. Armed with finesse, Valerie is impressively present on stage, rendering poignant punctuations of changeable emotional weather. In any setting, her instrument aches with human implications and fiendish alien fuel. -Lizzy McDaniel (poet, phrenologist)
Read about her most recent brainchild, Dream Zoo discussed in an interview
Jeffrey Young is a composer and violinist from Brooklyn, NY who specializes in experimental classical music and rock music. Jeffrey’s recent accomplishments include the December 2010 premiere of Travels with Fascists and Pure-Hearted Souls, a piece written for his ensemble thingNY with himself as soloist. He has worked with Pierre Boulez during two summers at the Lucerne Festival Academy in Switzerland (to which he will return in summer 2011) and with Steve Reich and Julia Wolfe at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival in North Adams, MA. He has toured the U.S. and Canada with experimental chamber music/performance art group thingNY, psychedelic folk band Manson Family Picnic, indie rock band Food Will Win the War, minimalist chamber-rock band Slow Six, Pogues cover band Streams of Whiskey, and experimental singer/songwriter/cellist Valerie Kuehne’s Dream Zoo project. With the Oberlin Orchestra and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, Jeffrey has performed in New York’s Carnegie Hall and Merkin Hall and Cleveland’s Severance Hall, as well as in China. He has been a featured blues soloist with the National Repertory Orchestra. In addition, Jeffrey is a first place winner of the 2003 Berkshire Lyric Theatre’s Emma Blafield Instrumental Award, and he has been elected into the National Music Honor Society, Pi Kappa Lambda. Jeffrey performs throughout New York City, with around 100 appearances per year at venues such as The Highline Ballroom, B.B. King’s, Music Hall of Williamsburg, Mercury Lounge, Galapagos, The Bitter End, The Tank, and The Stone. He has been featured on albums of classical music, indie rock, prog rock, hip-hop, kids songs, and more. He has also appeared on The Rachael Ray Show, FOX’s Fearless Music, and Bravo’s The Fashion Show. He graduated with a B.M. in violin and composition from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 2007.