Wednesday May 26, 2010, 8:00 pm

At the Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N Fairfax

Los Angeles Filmforum, Newtown and Cinefamily present

Blast Phemy 5:  A Midweek Music/Media Mashup

Featuring Transvalue, Gregg Johnson, Steve Shoffner, films by James Whitney, and more!

**NOTE THE CHANGE IN PRICE, TIME AND LOCATION**

Tonight, our Blast Phemy! residency draws to a dynamic close. First, experience the contemplative mastery of "visual music" maestro James Whitney’s exquisite abstract experimentations Yantra and Lapis  (presented in new digital transfers supervised by the Whitney Estate and the Academy Film Archive), wedded to the award-winning percussive sounds of the legendary Gregg Johnson in a rare SoCal appearance with Montino Bourbon. We conclude with Transvalue, the prodigious brainbaby of trombonist/composer Michael Vlatkovich, percussionist David Crigger and spoken word artist Chuck Britt, melding virtuosic musical settings for L.A.’s finest jazz musicians supporting, surrounding and interacting with Mr. Britt’s growling, hissing, warbling and verbal dances, all graced with the visual explosions of Steve Shoffner. A show never again to be replicated anywhere on the planet!

Tickets $13 general; $9 for Cinefamily, Filmforum, and NewTown members.  Advance purchase recommended, available at BrownPaperTickets.com.  Click here to purchase!

About the Artists:

Gregg Johnson is an innovator in modern hand drumming and percussion, synthesizing the musical traditions of India within contemporary classical contexts of ‘junk’ and ‘found object’ percussion. Gregg is an award winning composer for theatre and film, having received a Dramalogue Critic's Circle award for sound design and performance in a score for Steven Berkoff's adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis at the Mark Taper Forum.  He composed and performed for multiple seasons of the LA Music Center’s Improvisational Theatre Project and for THEATREWORKS’ Pericles, Prince of Tyre and A `Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Montino Bourbon: was born in Rome in 1942, and has been a musician all his life. In 1967 he started studying with Ali Akbar Khan, considered the greatest Indian musician of the 20th century. He finished his studies in 1979, and since then lives in Santa Barbara, where he teaches, gives concerts, and composes original music.

James Whitney was born in Pasadena, California and lived all his life in the Los Angeles area. In the early 40s, while still in his teens, James began collaborating on abstract films with his older brother John (1917-95). Their series of Film Exercises, produced between 1943-44, are a remarkable achievement - visually based on modernist composition theory (like Schoenberg's a-tonal and serial music) with carefully varied permutation of forms manipulated with cut-out masks so that the image photographed is pure, direct light shaped, rather than the light reflected from drawings of objects in traditional animation. The eerie and sensuous glow of these forms is paralleled by a pioneer electronic music sound score composed by the brothers using an elaborate pendulum device they invented to write out sounds directly onto the film's soundtrack area, with precisely controlled calibrations. At that time, before the perfection of recording tape, these sounds - with exotic "pure" tone qualities, mathematically even chromatic glissandos and reverberating pulsations, were truly revolutionary and shocking. The brothers won a Grand Prize at the 1949 Brussels Experimental Film Competition for the Film Exercises.

After the Film Exercises, John began to pursue technological, theoretical, mathematical, architectonic and musical ideas which eventually led him to his masterful pioneer work in Computer Graphics. Meanwhile, James became increasingly involved in contemplative, spiritual interests - Jungian psychology, alchemy, yoga, Tao, Krishnamurti and consciousness expansion - which became the subject matter of the four films on which he has worked for over 30 years. James shares this spiritual preoccupation, by the way, with Kupka, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Rothko and many other non-objective artists.

Between 1950 and 1955, James constructed an astonishing masterpiece, Yantra, by punching grid patterns in 5" by 7" cards with a pin, and then painting through these pinholes onto other 5" x 7" cards images of rich complexity and dynamism. Yantra is a Sanskrit word meaning "implement" or "machine." It can refer to a variety of systems, from simple meditational aids like mandalas, to the flux of cosmic energy that defines the essential flow of life and reality ... But you do not need to know anything about these esoteric philosophies to see directly, and appreciate, the majestic visual transformations that happen in the film - from gentle flickers between frames of pure white and black with no "image" at all, to seething masses of hundreds of points of light, each seeming to revolve in its own circuit.  -- William Moritz, excerpted from 1984 Toronto Film Festival catalogue.  Read the full Moritz piece at iotacenter.org.

Transvalue:  Since 1980, under the name Transvalue, trombonist/composer Michael Vlatkovich has been, with his unique brand of improvisationally-friendly compositions, creating musical settings to support, surround and interact with the writings and vocal performances of spoken word artist Chuck Britt.

Over the years, Transvalue has grown into a sort of repertory company of West Coast experimental jazz artists with the instrumentation and personnel varying with the needs of the material. Beyond Michael and Chuck, one mainstay of this repertory company has been drummer/percussionist, David Crigger, whose role as recording engineer/mixer has grown beyond mere capturing of performances, but the editing, shaping and extending those performances to match Transvalue’s current vision of itself.

Transvalue’s latest recording, “Book III” also features Glenn Horiuchi on piano; Jay Hutson and Bill Plake on woodwinds; Mark Underwood on trumpet; George McMullen on trombone; Bill Roper on Tuba; Melanie Cracchiolo and Chuck Sabitino on lead vocals; plus many other guests.

Steve Shoffner is a native artist born in Redding California. He traveled out of state to obtain his BA in Art from Linfield College in McMinnville Oregon where he focused his interests on photography and mixed media.  He returned to California to earn his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2003 where he explored the combination of performance, video, and installation.  After graduate school, he began his career exhibiting and teaching in the Los Angeles area where he now resides. Steve is currently teaching art courses at Santa Monica and Pierce College.

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.

Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.