ARTISTS STATEMENT
Ring ing infinite calling summons a listening, and quivers a wish into being.
An action moving forwards and backwards in time to ensorcell the listener.
Sound resides where the mind touches bodies histories futures
In infinite non-disappearance sound transfers its energy, giving life to other forms.
In that liminal space between resonance and decay silence rises to empower the illusion of absence.
(( )) (( ))
With Infinitive, Camille Norment and Craig Taborn are involved with the experience of sound. For Park Avenue Armory, they draw the listener in close to the simplicity and largeness of sounds with singing bell-like qualities, creating a space for the active experience of sonic phenomena. Through touch, pronouncing silence, and evoking sonic feedback as a dynamic instrument, the performance itself oscillates through physicalities and sensibilities of the continuity and infinite nature of sound.
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Paul Hudson, Lighting Design
Joseph Branciforte, Sound Engineer
Meghan VonVett, Production Manager
Aidan Nelson, Technical Director
Steinway & Sons
2022 ARTISTS STUDIO
IN THE RESTORED VETERANS ROOM
INFINITIVE
friday, november 18, 2022 at 7:00pm & 9:00pm
co-created and performed by Camille Norment and Craig Taborn
Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, GRoW @ Annenberg, the Richenthal Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory's Artistic Council. Park Avenue Armory is deeply grateful for Senator Charles E. Schumer’s visionary leadership of the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program.
The 2022 Artists Studio series is supported in part by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Cover photo: James Ewing.
PRODUCTION SPONSOR
2022 SEASON SPONSORS
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
CAMILLE NORMENT
Camille Norment works through forms including architectonic sound installation, intelligent sound systems, sculpture, drawing, recording releases, and live performance. These artworks are all united by a preoccupation with form and space to challenge perception, the physical body of the viewer, and socio-cultural narratives. Sensorial, metaphysical, kinetic, tactile, and generative systems often touch, extend, and connect human and non-human bodies across time and space. Engaging experiences are created from the relationship between the sonic space and the body of the visitor as a physical and psychological participant in artworks that are both cognitive and somatic.
In her performance works, the resonant frequency of the performance venue—its natural “voice”—is engaged as a dynamic collaborator through generative feedback—a sound most typically censored. Alongside her iconic glass harmonica, the “uncontrollable” voice of feedback is used as staple in Norment’s performance instrumentation, and the natural mix of analog and electronic voices, human and generative systems narrate feedback loops of experience through musical sonic languages.
Camille Norment is currently exhibiting a commissioned solo project at Dia Chelsea including two sound installations, through January 2023. She will open a solo museum exhibition in Bergen Kunsthall and premiere a new commissioned ensemble work for the Bergen International Festival in May 2023. She also premieres a new commissioned performance work for the Munch Museum in fall 2023. Solo exhibitions also include Oslo Kunstforening, Norway; Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago; and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin. Several permanent public installations and sculptures of her work are installed in Norway and Italy. She has recently performed at institutions including the Munch Museum, Oslo (2021, commission preview); Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (with Hamid Drake, 2019); and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (with Craig Taborn, 2019). In 2016 she and Craig Taborn also performed together in Park Avenue Armory’s Artists Studio Series. Her albums include Toll (2011) and the soundtrack and special-edition LP for the film The Haunted (2017/20). Norment represented Norway in the 2015 Venice Biennale and has since participated in the Kochi-Muziris (2016), Montreal (2016), Lyon (2017), and Thailand (2018) biennials.
CRAIG TABORN
Born in Minneapolis, Craig Taborn has been performing piano and electronic music in the jazz, improvisational, and creative music scene for over 25 years. He has experience composing for and performing in a wide variety of situations, including jazz, new music, electronic, rock, noise, and avant-garde contexts.
Taborn has played and recorded with many luminaries in the fields of jazz, improvised, new, and electronic music, including Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Lester Bowie, Dave Holland, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Evan Parker, Steve Coleman, David Torn, Chris Potter, William Parker, Vijay Iyer, Kris Davis, Nicole Mitchell, Susie Ibarra, Ikue Mori, Carl Craig, Dave Douglas, Meat Beat Manifesto, Dan Weiss, Chris Lightcap, Gerald Cleaver, and Rudresh Manhathappa.
Taborn is currently occupied creating and performing music for solo piano performance (Shadwo Plays), piano trio (Craig Taborn Trio), electronic ensemble (Junk Magic), the Daylight Ghosts Quartet, a piano/drums/electronics duo with Dave King (Heroic Enthusiasts), and a new trio with Tomeka Reid and Ches Smith as well as piano duo collaborations with Vijay Iyer (The Transitory Poems), Kris Davis (Octopus), and Cory Smythe. He is also a member of the instrumental electronic art-pop group Golden Valley is Now and performs frequently on solo electronics. His conceptual work 60 x Sixty is now available worldwide. Taborn lives in Brooklyn.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS STUDIO
“…it was a block of music that made you think as the room does: Take Note. Listen deeply. The rest of the world is not like this…that sublime and exclusive room, almost too opulent for this world.”
— The New York Times
Launched in March 2016 alongside the inauguration of the revitalized Veterans Room, the Artists Studio is curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Jason Moran and serves as a space for artists to experiment, collaborate, create, and push the boundaries of their craft. Previous Artists Studio programs have featured performances by: jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran; Dutch contemporary composer Louis Andriessen with pianist Jason Moran; American composer and accordionist Pauline Oliveros and noted author, director, and dream specialist IONE; pianist and composer Conrad Tao and multifaceted percussionist, instrumentalist, and composer Tyshawn Sorey; seminal drummer and acupuncturist Milford Graves and drummer and musician Deantoni Parks; artist Lucy Raven; groundbreaking sound designer Ryan Trecartin with his primary collaborator Lizzie Fitch, music producer and DJ Ashland Mines (aka Total Freedom), and composer/producer Aaron David Ross; acoustic ensemble Dawn of Midi; composer Ryuichi Sakamoto; tenor Lawrence Brownlee with pianists Myra Huang and Jason Moran; multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome; vocalist Dominique Eade and pianist Ran Blake with composer Kavita Shah; experimental composer Alvin Curran; internationally renowned composer, saxophonist, sound experimentalist, and mixedmedia practitioner Matana Roberts; pioneer of experimental music Charlemagne Palestine; art icon and DJ Juliana Huxtable; composer and saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell; experimental composer, improviser, and performer Miya Masaoka; My Barbarian collective founders Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade; cutting edge visual artist Rosa Barba; Dominican accordionist Krency Garcia (El Prodigio); and the late trumpeter jaimie branch and visual artist Carol Szymanski
NEXT IN THE SERIES
For the 2023 season, the series expands to spotlight the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Inc. (AACM). For nearly 60 years, this revolutionary collective of artists, musicians, and creators from a range of backgrounds have been blending art forms and pushing boundaries. Their body of work has achieved lasting significance across borders of musical genre and geography and plays a critical role in the ever-evolving process of music creation. The collective’s in-depth residency at the Armory will include performances of newly composed works, workshops and open rehearsals, exhibitions of historic artifacts and photographic surveys, and engagements with students from the Armory’s arts education programs.
JASON MORAN AND HENRY THREADGILL:
AACM LISTENING SESSION
february 18, 2023
Hailed as “perhaps the most important jazz composer of his generation” by The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Henry Threadgill is joined by Artists Studio curator Jason Moran for an intimate discussion and listening session spotlighting the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and their creative impact on American music. This insightful event explores the creative practice of some of the most forward-thinking composers and multi-instrumentalists who have been blending art forms and pushing boundaries since the collaborative’s inception more than 60 years ago.
DOUBLE BILL: THURMAN BARKER / ADEGOKE STEVE COLSON & IQUA COLSON
april 22, 2023
A versatile drummer and percussionist, Thurman Barker has performed with countless singers and artists from many worlds of music. His ensemble performs excerpts from three of his orchestral scores—South Side Suite, Pandemic Fever, and Mr. Speed-str—on a special double bill with “musical power couple” (The New York Times) Adegoke Steve Colson and Iqua Colson and their longtime collaborators Chico Freeman and Douglas R. Ewart. The Colsons’ vast body of work focuses on many facets of the human experience, illuminating social issues while taking listeners inside the aesthetics of art.