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Artists for World Peace - the flying particles

Artists for World Peace: The Flying Particles



 Composers/performers Robert
Nasta, Kevin O’Neil, and Michael Pestel will present an evening
of adventurous, spirited musical conversations between three seasoned contemporary
improvisers.  Coming together under the banner of “The Flying
Particles.” they will also be celebrating the release of their new CD.



Performers: Robert
Nasta: koto, modified koto, found objects; Kevin O’Neil; electric guitar;
Michael Pestel: woodwinds and whatnots

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ROBERT NASTA  is a composer,
performer, multi-instrumentalist and educator.  He studied music at The
Berklee College of Music, The State University of New York ( B. A., Music),
Wesleyan University (M.A., Ethnomusicology, Experimental Music), and The Hartt
School of Music (D.M.A., Composition, Music Theory). Additional “schooling”
came from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Harry Partch, Allen Watts,
Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Lao Tzu, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Anthony
Braxton, Edgard Varese, and John Cage. Like many composers of his generation he
has composed and performed in a wide variety of musical settings, and his work
has been influenced by the whole of European/American concert music, as well as
blues, jazz, and various musical traditions from around the world. In addition
to composing for “traditional” instrumentation, Dr. Nasta has developed a
repertory of work based on his exploration of the sonic properties of various
found objects.



He has performed his compositions at
numerous venues throughout the United States and has received grants from Meet
the Composer, The New York Foundation for the Arts, The New York State Council
on the Arts, and Arts In Education.  His music is recorded on The Sonic
Utensil label, with additional recordings on Heffley Records, Didjeridu Planet,
and World In One labels.  He has received commissions from the town of
Otego, NY, and The Foreman Gallery, Hartwick College. In addition to his own
work, he has featured the music of John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Morton Feldman,
Earl Brown, Iannis Xenakis and James Tenney.

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He has taught at the high school and
middle school levels, The State University of New York, The Hartwick College
Music Camp, and was a teaching fellow at the Hartt School of Music. A Lecturer
in Music at Middlesex Community College, Middletown, CT since 1999, Dr. Nasta
also serves as the musical director for Artists for World Peace.



 



MICHAEL PESTEL: For the past 18 years he has built architectural sound
installations related to bird song and bird extinction. He has performed in
those installations on flutes and various invented hybrid instruments and sound
devices such as the birdmachine, pianotable, and birdrawingtable (please see
glossary in the Fellowship Project Plan for a complete description). This work
has been inspired and informed by his performances with living birds in
aviaries, forests, parks, shrines, and bird preserves in North America, Europe,
Japan, and Australia. …



With his increasing focus on bird
sound and bird extinction as the center of gravity for my artistic projects, a
more seamless world of thought and experiential practice has opened up. Catalog
of Extinct Birds – a Binomial Requiem both extends the minimalist and
contextual strategies of earlier work, and points him in a new direction of
structured performance. This direction emerges not only from his thematic
appreciation of birds, but also from a general insight best communicated
through aesthetic experience. Our words — the very words that help us convert
live experience into tame objects — can also serve as a profound and sensual
vehicle for reconnecting us with the lost and the sublime
.   



 







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