Todd Barton, Bruce Bayard and special guest artist Michael Vannice perform an improvised audio soundtrack to a randomly composed video collage.
This performance made possible in part by a grant from Haines & Friends.
Michael Vannice is a saxophonist and electronic musician with a deep passion for free improvisation.
Michael has a degree in music composition from the University of Oregon, but his performance experience has been primarily in blues and jazz. He played in the Robert Cray band, appearing at Carnegie Hall, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Milwaukee Summerfest, and many other festivals and venues. On Cray’s Bad Influence album, Michael played tenor saxophone and organ, contributed arrangements, and collaborated on writing some of the songs, which were later covered by Albert King, Eric Clapton, and others. Michael also toured Europe with Lowell Fulson, appearing on Fulson’s One More Blues album, recorded in Paris. Michael’s jazz playing is documented on a live album with Anthony Braxton. He also played gospel music at the Holy Rock Baptist Church in Los Angeles.
As a composer, Michael wrote soundtracks for over twenty educational films about drug abuse. He wrote the music for two Oregon Shakespeare Festival productions, Crumbs From The Table Of Joy and Oo-Bla-Dee.
Currently, Michael is involved in free improvised experimental music, much of which utilizes microtonal tunings. He plays blues and jazz with local musicians, is a member of the band Duke Street, and arranges harp music for his wife, Mary.
Todd Barton is a sonic adventurer, composer, educator and performer of abstract, freely improvised electronic music specializing in Buchla, Serge and Hordijk electronic musical instruments. For four decades he was Composer in Residence for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and also taught Music Composition and Electronic and Computer Music at Southern Oregon University.Besides electronic music Todd has composed for the KRONOS Quartet, The Oregon Symphony, The Rogue Valley Symphony and San Jose Chamber Orchestra. His music can be heard on all major internet platforms. He widely shares his electronic music explorations, demos and tutorials via Youtube and Instagram as well as offering private online sessions for clients and students around the world.
He recently released his solo album, Below this Time Does Not Exist.
Bruce Bayard is a self-taught visual artist who is also creating soundcapes with the Buchla Easel and other modular audio systems. His visual work has spanned many styles including painting, collage, printmaking and assemblage sculpture. He created The Weekly Press, a one-thousand image series which forms the basis of Triptychs, a continuous image collage written with javascript, where images, video, animations and word lists are randomly composed and presented with improvised audio soundtracks.
