Chris Kallmyer

I started working with Chad Clark from Beauty Pill back in 2008 when we were both having some pretty serious health problems – these discussions and late-night meetings fruited into brass tracks for BP’s upcoming release – the first since 2004. Being 2012, a band like Beauty Pill (and a thoughtful guy like Chad) can’t simply release a record. Instead the band (made up of some of my favorite musicians in DC: Jean Cook, Drew Doucette, Basla Andolsun, Devin Ocampo, & Abram Goodrich) – created a project called the Immersive Ideal, finishing the record in 3 weeks of intensive recording inside an artspace-turned-studio, and now have create a sound installation where folks can explore the process of making the record. On top of this, the whole thing is controlled by MONOMES! – an adaptable device that my friend Brian Crabtree designs and builds. This whole project has been a colliding of two distinct worlds. LOVE. Also, as a DC native — it was a total pleasure to work with one of my favorite bands. Check out this track of Afrikaner Barista – with horns by Brian Walsh, Brandon Sherman, Andrew Conrad, and myself. Recorded at CalArts in 2009.

BEAUTY PILL “AFRIKANER BARISTA” by beautypill

SCHEDULE OF INSTALLATION FOUND AT ARTISPHERE’s SITE

PRESS:
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON CITY PAPER
99% INVISIBLE

with andrew tholl at beyond baroque

Great news all around this winter season. I’ve been working with a local modern music collective here in LA called wild Up as a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and member of the creative team (helping to drive the group with programming, and concept with a sound art perspective on things). We recently got a review in the Los Angeles Times, and wonderful write up from Out West Arts for a program of music by Clarence Barlow, player piano, and punk rock covers. The group plays a lot of fun and loud music, but also spends quite a bit of time talking about models of creativity and how the group can engender an experience for the performers and audience alike. wild Up’s next performance is on January 14, 2012 at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA.

In other news, I’ve been given an Artist in Residence Award from the Headlands Center for the Arts. I will be spending a month in the fall of 2012 in the Marin Headlands doing field recordings, and developing a series of indoor and outdoor installation works. This may or may not involve workshopping a trumpet recording project in the incredible, monolithic, concrete military structures dotting the pacific coast.

Happy New Years: for vertical space at MCA Denver as part of a sound installation created to accompany their 2011 exhibition on Fred Sandback. (helium filled balloons turned into floating speakers w/ field recordings and sine tones)

Wow, what a great fall! Performing with wild Up, writing another article for New Music Box, and I’ve decided to finally get a dog. Things are awesome here in Los Angeles.

Above is a video that Machine Project put together about our residency at the Walker Art Center this summer. It includes some performing in the Walker’s beautiful building, their resonant parking garage, and a piece i composed for lawn mowers. I hope you enjoy.

at the walker art center: ‘chris may or may not play trumpet at some time or some place possibly’

I’m in Denver this week working with MCA Denver to create music to accompany their remarkable exhibit on Fred Sandback. The space is stunning. I’m having a great time developing these three projects with the MCA. My time has been spent making field recordings, drinking beer, trading ideas with the extraordinary staff at the MCA, and coming to a greater understanding of Denver. If anyone is around on Saturday, feel free to stop by and check out the installations and exhibit on Fred Sandback’s work.

Oh, and they have Pigeons.

everyone in a place, 2010
everyone in a place is a day-long, public-activated sound installation. All visitors will be issued a small bell to be worn as they move through the museum. This participatory installation works as a design pattern to document in real-time how architecture moves people through a space.

for vertical space (for fred sandback) 2011
With this day-long installation, a balloon becomes a loudspeaker. Tones and field recordings of Denver are sent to these floating, mobile speakers to create an incidental sound piece for the museum’s atrium. The balloons are raised and lowered throughout the day, exploring and revealing the acoustical properties of MCA Denver’s central space.

possible constellations (for amy sandback) 2011
Roger Green and Chris Kallmyer
Roger Green and Chris Kallmyer will perform a 20-minute composition with guitar, banjo and field recordings in one of MCA Denver’s galleries. All field recordings were made in Denver and capture the local sounds that permeate and define the city’s sonic identity. Green and Kallmyer collaborated to develop work that explores light and space, as well as to create a contemplative environment for viewing Fred Sandback’s work.

photo credit: Katie Bergin – CARS

I’ll be at the Getty Center with Machine Project on October 22 to perform a spatialized piece for two alphorns. A dream come true. Here is a photo of our sound check at the Getty. I’m performing on a buchel, a midland cousin to the alphorn.

Terrain Music: for two alphorns
with Loren Marsteller

The Getty Center is built upon two naturally-occurring ridges that diverge at a 22.5 degree angle. Architectural grids were imposed upon each one of these ridges, and it is through this relationship that I could like to create a piece for two alphorns.

The alphorn is a long, wooden instrument used in mountain regions in Europe for means of communication. The project will feature three, 22.5 minute performances with each alphornist on separate walkways above the grounds of the Getty. Warm melodies will be directed from one hornist to the other. Additionally, gentle sounds will float into the public spaces of the Getty, setting a frame around the closer and more delicate sounds of the many water features, children, the arrival of the tram, etc. . . The vast system of walkways and balconies serve as prime performance spaces, and allow distance between the alphorns and the audience.

from the american lawn, and ways to cut it // Walker Art Center + Machine Project Summer Jubilee

Machine Project is going to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for the last two weeks in July. Please come out for electric melons, personalized music, sheep, pickles, cowboys and angels. Information can be found on the Machine Project site, or the Walker’s site.

I’ll be doing three projects at the Walker!

Music For Parking Garages
July 21, 2011 // 3-8pm
Los Angeles and Minneapolis musicians will partner to create site-specific sound works for the Walker Art Center’s parking garage. These pieces will create a warm ambient environment for visitors as they park their cars, stop in to listen, or even nap to the music. Come pull up a bean bag chair or backseat, and experience the acoustical charm of the parking structure.

Chris may or may not play trumpet at some time in some place possibly. . .
Chris Kallmyer, experimental musician, may or may not be playing a trumpet for some duration of time as an exploration of the spaces inside the Walker. Spaces could also be outside the Walker. Spaces may not be involved. (Trumpet optional.)

Who: Chris Kallmyer
What: maybe trumpet
When: unknown
Where: unknown

the american lawn, and ways to cut it
July 28, 2011 // 6 to 7:30pm
Join us for Machine Project’s grand finale event: a three-part exploration of the American lawn and ways to cut it, via sheep, choreographed gasoline-powered ride-on-mowers with mounted oscillators tuned to the drone of their engines, and push mowers. Come help us examine the sonic nature of the Walker’s Open Field, while giving the lawn a much-needed trim.

Here is the video for FERMENT[cheese]. By Emily Lacy. Thanks again to Cowgirl Creamery, Machine Project, and the Berkeley Art Museum for all of their support on this project. If you’d like to see more information about FERMENT and my method for creating my current work, please check out this interview with Isaac Schankler on the Catalysis Projects Blog.

I’ll be performing at MOCA this Sunday (july 3) with Scott Cazan as part of the wulf at MOCA.

I’m speaking at the Theater Communications Group National Conference, this Thursday July 16 at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. I’ll be talking about the Little William Theater, and what it was like to play music in a coatroom. The talk will also include my experiments with context, architecture, and ample photos of goats.

Also, in important news: wild Up has started a blog called nuance megaphone. Andrew Tholl, Richard Valitutto, Chris Rountree, and myself are writing weekly about culture, art, and music in Los Angeles. We are very excited to share our thoughts with the community here. Check out my first post about a trending twitter topic called #tuxonstage.

I’m working on a giant piece for 100+ minneapolis/st.paul musicians playing brass, percussion, woodwinds and tiny whistles. The site specific performance will take place on the Stone Arch Bridge, stretching across the Mississippi playing overlapping melodies derived from the route of the river. The piece follows the route of the river south past St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans and into the Gulf of Mexico.

The project is sponsored by the Northrop Concerts and Lectures series at the University of Minnesota, and will be performed on June 4 as part of the Northern Spark Festival. If this sounds like fun to you and would like to be involved, please check out our open call for performers here. Also, check out my page on the Northern Spark Site here.

Additionally, documentation from my last Minneapolis project is below: a sound installation in an igloo, site-specific trumpet, and collaborating with Emily Lacy and Joshua Beckman. Thanks for having us, Walker Art Center!

This next week and a half, I’m on tour to the Bay Area. From 4/29 to 5/6, I’ll be participating in concerts, workshops, and cheese-tastings!

The first is a music//cheese collaboration with Cowgirl Creamery co-founder, Sue Conley. FERMENT[cheese] is at the Berkeley Art Museum from 6-9pm on 4/29. I’m doing a 4 channel sound installation with field recordings from John Taverna’s Chileno Valley Dairy, curd draining at Cowgirl Creamery’s Petaluma facilities, storage refrigerators aging cheese, and latino dairy workers wrapping cheese. All of the sound materials were sourced in 2010 and 2011 from the locations that produce the milk and cheese folks are tasting. The cheese tasting that pairs with the sound goes from milk, to fresh cheese, to aged cheese. All of this is paired with a three channel video installation by myself and the extremely talented Emily Lacy.

The second event is a Hydrophone Workshop at the Exploratorium on May 1. The workshop will happen at Pier 3, their new Observatory on the Embarcadero. Participants will make a hydrophone and record the San Francisco Bay itself. The recordings will be installed at the Berkeley Art Museum on the night of May 6. I’m really excited for this workshop because the only thing cooler than hydrophones is the exploratorium. More information about the Hydrophone Workshop can be found here.

The third event, I’m producing for Machine Project, also at the Berkeley Art Museum. This event is called the Triway Hyperlecture Cage Match (with musical accompaniment): Join Machine Project for an experimental three way lecture blowout with musical accompaniment. Jason Brown, Colin Dickey, and Jason Torchinsky will simultaneously deliver presentations covering some or all of the following topics – phrenological graverobbing, pre 1860 automobiles, the lizard people and their tunnels under Los Angeles, mechanical televisions, a paranoid history of San Francisco, ergotism, demonic possession, the scourge of masturbation and its relationship to capitalism, and Flaubert’s very complicated feelings about images, photographic and otherwise. These presentations will be accompanied by incidental musical performances, including j.frede and his wine-glass drone ensemble, and underwater recordings of the San Francisco Bay.

photo credit: Debi Del Grande // LA Record

The last two weeks have a been a glut of great music! — In early March, I played with DeVotchKa at the Music Box to a sold out crowd. A huge thanks to Shawn King, their drummer and chief operator of the trumpet for inviting me along for such an incredible night. You can find photos of the event at the LA Weekly, and the LA Record. Going between sound art and working with bands like DeVotchKa and Beauty Pill has been a real joy for the last few years. I hope to to it more.

Wild Up, a new music collective played at the Bootleg Theater a few nights ago — performing works by Tom Johnson, Art Jarvinen, Ravel, Andrew McIntosh, and Andrew Tholl; I filled in on electric bass, electric guitar, and trumpet.

Coming up!
– I’ll be giving a lecture on architecture, context and musical explorations in space at Pomona College on 3/23. This lecture will include a number of site-specific performances with the percussionist Colin Woodford.
- On 3/25, I’m curating and performing at a concert of feedback music by Mark Trayle paired with a lecture on the use of feedback in landing systems for spacecraft. You can find more information on Machine Project’s website.

In late February, I published an article with New Music Box, a “web-based advocacy magazine and portal dedicated to the music of American composers and improvisers and their champions. . . sponsored by the American Music Center.” The article is a thesis on how architecture and context help to define how music functions. Check out Place, Space, and Music: Experiments in Context here.

Additionally, I published a piece for two contrabasses with the Experimental Music Yearbook, which can be found here. Check out the score and a recording of the piece here!.

This weekend will prove busy with three really cool performances and workshops in LA:

The Walker Art Center Residency was a blast, installing a four channel sound piece in an igloo, serving tea to the people of Minneapolis, improvising to works by Sol LeWitt, and exploring the sonic architectures of the Walker. It was a very satisfying collaboration with Emily Lacy and Joshua Beckman who presented thoughtful work within my igloo-installation. I will have documentation of the piece in the coming weeks, so look out for video and more photos.

The next two weeks will prove to be busy, with a performance of Workers Union with Wild Up on Feb 5, our final Little William Theater event on Feb 6, and a performance at Perhspace with Scott Cazan and Dylan McKenzie on Feb 19.

This week, I’ll be presenting a sound installation in an igloo at the Walker Art Center. Machine Project is sending poet Joshua Beckman, singer Emily Lacy, and myself to perform in a ‘Bigloo’ created by Minneapolis-based artist, Sean Connaughty. My piece is a four channel installation utilizing teakettles as speakers. A fifth teakettle will be used to make tea for visitors while they listen. Come visit and drink some tea with us from 1-4pm on Jan. 22nd and 23rd inside the giant igloo, on the lawn, at the Walker Art Museum.

On Wednesday, Dec 1, I’ll be documentation of the Fence for the Amargosa Desert on Alan Nakagawa’s experimental music webcast: Ear Meal. You can tune in at 9pm PST and check out a small interview and video about the installation I created while living in Nevada this past June.

photo by Alex Stephens

Just returned from an excellent week at MCA Denver as part of Art Meets Beast, a three day nose-to-tail bison roast. Documentation to come! – for now, rest easy knowing that I sound-designed a bison stampede that interrupted dinner, and knocked silverware off tables thanks to Colin Bricker and his 10,000 watt 5-channel PA system. Thank you, saint of saints.

Additionally, I made a set of bison horns from both American Bison, and Vietnamese water-buffalo for dinner music. Much thanks to Adam Lerner, Sarah Baie, and the staff at MCA that welcomed me with open arms, and put on one of the best food/art events I’ve been to. And a big thank you to Mark Allen and Machine Project who sent me out to represent the gallery with my projects.

I’m going to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver representing Machine Project. I’ve been collaborating with Sam Meister, and Mark Allen on creating a Bison Stampede (via quadraphonic sound and MAX/MSP) for the BEAST ROAST on Thursday, November 11. It will periodically interrupt the bison dinner. Additionally, I’ve been altering bison horns to create instruments for the dinner. (think shofar) I’ll have a group together in Denver performing on Bison parts for our guests in honor of the most special guest: the bison.

I really enjoy projects like this because they bring me into greater awareness of where our food comes from. Thank you, bison.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

Bison Butchering – Wednesday, November 10
Bison Butchering Workshop with Jimmy Cross
Vegetarian Option: Roger Green on guitar
Music of Buffalo Springfield on flugelhorn
Drinks 6PM
Event 6:30PM
$15/$10 Members

Art Meat City – Thursday, November 11
Foodprint Denver: Art Meat City
A conversation about Denvers relationship with meat – and how meat has shaped the city.
Drinks 4PM
Event 4:30PM
$15/$10 Members

Beast Roast – Thursday, November 11
Bison Dinner with performances by Machine Project, L.A.
Presented by Marczyk Fine Foods, Three Tomatoes Catering, Jamey Fadar/Lola, Troy Guard/TAG, Goose Sorenson/Solera, Tyler Wiard/Elways Cherry Creek, Sean Yontz/El Diablo & Sketch, and more.
Performance 7PM
Dinner 8PM
$50/$45 Members

My new piece, winter strengthens the happiness of inhabiting // for jules loh will be performed by James Klopfleisch and Brendan Carn (contrabasses) on Sunday, October 24 at 5pm at the Wild Beast at CalArts. The performance is part of the Experimental Music Yearbook’s annual journal. I will also be performing a new work by John Hastings during the same concert.

ABOUT THE YEARBOOK
“The Experimental Music Yearbook is a repository for composers, performers, and the public to glean the methods and styles of various artists working in the experimental music tradition. As the modes of experimentation in the arts change from year to year, the Experimental Music Yearbook’s annual issues will build into a comprehensive, and varied, database of experimentation in music/sound.” – from their website.

http://adagio.calarts.edu/~experimentalmusicyearbook/

I’ll be guest teaching at Pomona College this week in Mark Allen’s Sound Art class working on basic piezo electronics. Later in the day, Mark and I will be interviewed about our 2010 work on experimental, ambulatory, and incidental music at the Hammer Museum. Listen in on KSPC, Pomona’s college’s radio station at 88.7 if you happen to be in the area.

HELICOPTER (L to R: Brendan Carn, Brandon Sherman, Rory Cowal, and John Armstrong), performing and answering questions for patrons at the Hammer: May 2010 as part of AIR Machine Project//Hammer Museum.