Mario Diaz de Leon curatorial statement & bio
February 15, 2008 – 9:28 pmMyself, Zeljko McMullen, and Doron Sadja have been collaborating on music projects for the last 5 years. The bulk of our work together has been in the form Symbol, a free improvisation group with fluid membership. Despite our long collaborative history, our individual compositions are realized in differing ways, and are rarely heard in context with one another. MATA Interval 1.3 will be a unique opportunity to do just this, in a presentation of common aesthetics, regardless of differing techniques or tools. Using unique fusions of acoustic instruments and electronics, our musical styles are explorations of the psychedelic and otherworldly. As is often the case, this curatorial project leaves out many key figures in our circle, the family of Shinkoyo.
We explore polarities : solitude / togetherness, comfort and fear, new age and noise, sub-bass and ultra-high frequencies, ancient and futuristic….a meditation in the middle of an air raid. The blurring and superimposition of acoustic and electronic, the self and the other, mind and matter, the material and immaterial. Boundaries and boundlessness. Beginning with improvised actions - exploring extended instrumental techniques in a studio, a group improvisation in a chapel, four collaboratively tuned guitars, electronic systems pulsing in feedback with themselves. From this realm of “playful seriousness”, the recordings may become pieces in themselves, or source material for composed works. In the latter case, they are analysed, structured, and re-contextualized, or simply become living cells in the larger body of influences.
Zeljko, in the press release for Red and Blue describes his work as “bardo music, meant to guide you between the states of your being.” While I don’t think it’s necessary (or helpful) to try and pin our approaches to something easily explainable, I find statements like this to be helpful gateways. They may lead us to a discourse about things we undoubtedly share, but become more elusive when using words - the spiritual dimensions of our work. It is these types of things, the visionary, the out of body, the cosmic, the sublime ambiguities, that we seek to channel in our works, and explore as collaborators. A successful Symbol jam might feel like some kind of wild spaceship. These group efforts, with their emphasis on exploration and sharing, deeply influence our individual works, which are part of a larger system evolving in continuous dialogue with itself. From there, our works manifest themselves in a variety of ways.
Since the release of his widely successful debut album A Piece of String, A Sunset (12k, 2003), Doron has moved from studio based computer music to more improvisational, performative work. This has been developed concurrently with Sadjeljko (his duo with Zeljko) and Symbol. His current instrumentation features an array of analog pedals operating in a feedback loop, in addition to saxophone, clarinet, electric guitar, flute, and other instruments. The feedback loop aspect of this arrangement creates a “…dialogue in which the performer must struggle to control (and react to) and unpredictable electronic instrument.” Simlarly, a common approach of Doron’s is to use the instruments on which he is trained and re-configure them in such a way that they cannot be performed traditionally, such as a trombone with a clarinet mouthpiece. Doron will present a solo performance of a new work, “The Guided Guild”, for flombone (any configuration or re-configuration of a clarinet, saxophone, and trombone), live electronics, and 4 channel sound. The work will be his first composition for this performance arrangement!
Zeljko McMullen uses samples of acoustic instruments and improvisations to compose dense walls of electronic sound, which are diffused in immersive multi-channel environments. In Zeljko’s own words, “…I utilize sounds to deconstruct the present physical space of the listener, replacing it with a perpetually shifting acoustic architecture. Intended as a counter-din to the information saturation of present day society, my music serves as a cathartic release, a womb-like shelter of imploding space that allows the listener to have an introverted experience.” The recording process, collaboration, and improvisation are key elements in each step of the composition process. Zeljko’s source material comes from many areas, including solo and group improvisations on acoustic and electronic instruments. These are then meticulously edited, re-layered, and collapsed into each other. Up to 100 layers of sound may be used to create the album versions, which are often improvised in live mixing sessions. On the Red and Blue double album (Shinkoyo, 2006) Zeljko brought his work into a spatial domain through the use of Neumann’s “Fritz” head, a microphone in the shape of a mannequin head, designed to capture stereo sound in the way our ears do. Diffusing his original compositions through multiple speakers and space, Red and Blue highlights the experience of a listener moving through conjoined spaces “a church crammed into a closet poured out on a mountain raining out of the sea…” Each track on the record is monumental, creating multi-layered, multi-temporal evocations of out-of-body experience.
My works for acoustic instruments and electronics fuse the two elements into unified “meta-instruments”, and often use recordings of our group improvisations as electronic source material. Like many other works from this period (2002 - present), I envision the form of the work as a progression between vision states, culminating in a kind of ascent. As the title might suggest, the work explores darker, occult energies, with a latent meditativeness and melancholy. My overall language is based on open strings, harmonics, and noise derived from extended instrumental techniques, on both bowed strings and electric guitars. These are used to create gestures and spaces that are both intimate and immersive. My piece was realized through a combination of structural and improvisational approaches. In an early stages of the piece, I presented semi-improvised versions of this work featuring the electronics, violin, viola and myself on electric guitar. Recordings from these performances became the impetus for further development, and many elements in the final score are interpretive transcriptions from these improvisations. The sound research component was key as well - many of the electronic sounds are taken from studio sessions with bowed strings and electric guitar - the final section of the piece is built around a loop from a viola improvisation, performed by Zeljko.
-Mario Diaz de Leon
Mario Diaz de León (b. 1979 in St. Paul, Minnesota) is a composer and performer. His growing body of works for small ensembles with electronics bridge a range of stylistic influences. They include composers and genres such as Scelsi, Ligeti, Maryanne Amacher, Iancu Dumitrescu and Romanian spectral music, black metal, drone/doom metal, shoegaze, as well as American noise bands such as Metalux, Sejayno, and Symbol. He performs in solo and group settings on electric guitar, voice, zither, and electronics.
Mario grew up playing in punk and metal bands, and began composing notated music in 2001. He has been collaborating with Jay King on multimedia works since 1995. Other projects include the band Symbol (also featuring Doron Sadja and Zeljko McMullen) and a duo with Severiano Martinez. He is a member of the Shinkoyo music and art collective. He has performed and exhibited work internationally, at locations such as Roulette, The Stone, Paris London West Nile, Rose Studio at Lincoln Center, Merkin Concert Hall, PS1 Contemporary Arts (NYC), Franklin Art Works (Minneapolis), Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), Pavillion XXI (Romania), and Espace Demeer (Brussels). He has toured the US several times with Symbol, Sejayno, and as a solo performer. Compositions have been performed in the USA by the International Contemporary Ensemble and in Europe by the Hyperion Ensemble. Received his B.M. from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and currently pursuing his doctorate at Columbia University in New York. Teachers include George Lewis, Maryanne Amacher, Fabien Lévy, Randolph Coleman, and Tom Lopez. He is a recipient of the 2005 Meet the Composer/Van Lier Fellowship, Columbia University’s Faculty Fellowship, and a winner of ICE’s 21st Century Young Composers Project.
Doron Sadja is a sound/visual artist originating in Los Angeles and ending in New York by way of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, London, and Berlin. Co-founder of Shinkoyo music and art collective, he currently lives in Williamsburg where he runs ParisLondonWestNile, an experimental performance space and gallery. His releases include a solo album, A Piece of String, a Sunset, as well as a collaboration with Motion (both on 12k), a collaboration with Zeljko McMullen called Sadjeljko, a solo album (Sotto Voce) on Shinkoyo, and a compilation on Atak (Japan).
Nathan Davis makes music as a percussionist and composer. He plays original and commissioned works with cellist Ha-Yang Kim in the duo Odd Appetite, touring the US, Europe, Russia, Bali, Turkey, Cuba, appearing at the Bang on a Can Marathon and as a soloist at Carnegie Hall. He has worked with Evan Ziporyn, Lee Hyla, and Christian Wolff, and recorded for Tzadik, New Albion, Bridge, and Cold Blue records. His electroacoustic music is released on a solo cd, Memory Spaces.