It’s important to have the facts, first:

Tue 8/16 8:00 PM $6-10
Artists’ Television Access [992 Valencia Street @21st SF]
Strangelet + Grale
Improvised sound and 16mm film from
Lucio Menegon‘s Strangelet [with Valerie Kuehne, Paul Pinto and Jeffrey Young (NY), Suki O’Kane and Michael Zelner with films by Alfonso Alvarez]
and
Brale.co [Bruce Anderson, Dale Sophiea, Gregory Hagan and Nico Sophiea with films by Lorin Murphy]

And then the story behind them:

Local filmmakers and musicians convene at ATA to welcome Lucio Menegon, King of Tone, back to town and with a gaggle of NY artists in tow:  Valerie Kuehne, Brooklyn-based cellist and impresario,  Paul Pinto and Jeffrey Young of the performing composers collective thingNY. They are joined by inveterate performative projectionists and improvisers Alfonso Alvarez, Lorin Murphy, Bruce Anderson, Dale Sophiea (MX-80, O-Type), Gregory Hagan (Pale Reverse, Common Eider King Eider), Nico Sophiea, Suki O’Kane and Michael Zelner, who continue to conspire and inspire sound and vision throughout the Bay Area in likely and unlikely spaces, and in most recently in collaboration with the Oakland Underground Film Festival, the Illuminated Corridor, and the now-defunct Ivy Room Experimental Noise Improv Hootenanny & Social Club (founded by Menegon).

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

Lucio Menegon is a guitarist, composer and sonic artist with over 25 years of performing experience and many more recorded releases and credits. His music ranges from intense free-improvisation to ethereal soundscape to more traditional, melodic song structure & composition. He performs solo, in collaboration with interested artists, bands and self directed projects – often in tandem with projected image and film. Currently based in NYC, he was an active member of the SF Bay Area music scene for 15 years, a founding member of The Bodice Rippers, Ramona the Pest, Zebu and curated the Ivy Room Hootenanny Creative Music series. His project Strangelet has involved over 25 artists across the North American continent, convening with and without him to realize the conversion of the universe into a hot, large lump of strange matter.

Paul Pinto is a composer, vocalist and founding artistic director of the thingNY. As a multi-instrumental and vocal improviser, Paul has lent his talents to collaborative projects in theatre and film. His music has been performed in the International Istanbul Film Festival, Glasgow’s Shakespeare in the City Festival and by ensembles and performers around the world, including Pauline Oliveros, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Ensemble loadbang, The Royal Scottish Academy Chamber Chorus, the Carnegie Mellon Concert Chorus, the ai Ensemble and IKTUS Percussion Quartet. Paul has studied composition at Carnegie Mellon with Leonardo Balada and Nancy Galbraith and at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with John Maxwell Geddes. Paul is also a conductor and advocate of underrepresented experimentalists in classical music. At the helm of thingNY (called an “inventive new music cabal” by Time Out New York) Paul has premiered hundreds of works from emerging composers in thingNY’s five year existance. Paul has also led premieres of more established composers like Pauline Oliveros, Paul Burnell, Art Jarvinen, Kyle Gann and Gerard Grisey. In addition to thingNY’s experimental opera ADDDDDDDDD, scenes from his ballet, Miseke are available on DVD and CD through the educational UK label, Learning and Teaching Scotland. Paul has also released three solo albums: The Gentlemen (2009), a suite for vocals and electronics, and Every Note on the Piano (2010) and For Stefanos Tsigrimanis (2011) an elegy for turntables, voice, guitar and electronics.

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.