The Talkhouse site has published a podcast featuring JG Thirlwell in conversation with David Harrington of Kronos Quartet. JG has written several compositions for Kronos. You can listen to it here.
Category: News
"The Swamp" On The Brooklyn Bridge
On Nov 5 2015, the video projection exhibition Decomposing Hierarchies,will take place in Dumbo, Brooklyn, projecting film on the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage. There will be a screening of The Swamp, an installation film by Anne Senstad which includes a soundtrack by JG Thirlwell. The exhibition is curated by Sarah Walko and runs between 7pm and 10pm. The program also includes works by Jeannette Ehlers, Orit Ben‐Shitrit, Margeaux Walter and Catherine Page‐Harris.
JG Thirlwell in score of Guy Maddin documentary
The 1000 Eyes of Dr Maddin is a new documentary about Canadian film director Guy Maddin which features the music of Manorexia / JG Thirlwell in the score. It was directed by Yves Montmayeur and recently won Best Documentary on Cinema at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival.
Adrianna Mateo plays JG at the Metropolitan Museum
Violinist Adrianna Mateo will play a violin and piano version of JG Thirlwell‘s classic Manorexia compositon “Armadillo Stance” in a solo concert at the Metropolitan Museum in New York on October 23 and 24 2015. The shows will occur between 5pm and 8pm in several sets, and are at the Balcony Bar. Admission to shows is free with entrance to the museum.
The piece was rearranged for Ms Mateo by Thirlwell himself, at her request. The concert will also feature Mateo playing selections from Brahms, Ravel, Debussy, Phillip Glass and Schumann
Ilgenfritz plays JG in Indiana
James Ilgenfritz will be playing JG Thirlwell‘s composition for solo contrabass, “Xigliox”, at the Wounded Galaxies Festival of Experimental Media in Bloomington, Indiana on October 8 2015. Ilgenfritz will also play pieces by Elliott Sharp and Miya Masaoka with live video from Yuri Zupančič. The concert will take place at the Bishop Bar and tickets are $15.
JG Thirlwell pens new composition for Burroughs opera
James Ilgenfritz has commissioned JG Thirlwell to compose a composition for an opera with the text based on William S. Burroughs cut ups of Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess. The piece will form part of a larger opera entitled The Travel Agency is on Fire, drawn from a book of Burroughs cut-up experiments, where he re-appropriates everyone from William Shakespeare and Arthur Rimbaud to William Wordsworth and James Joyce. The other composers contributing to the opera include Jason Cady, Natacha Diels, Anne Guthrie, James Ilgenfritz, Travis Just, Lukas Ligeti, Charlie Looker, Elliott Sharp, Aaron Siegel and Katie Young. The opera will premiere on October 16 2015 at John Zorn‘s club The Stone in NYC as part of James Ilgenfrtiz’s residency. It will be performed by the Anagram Ensemble, consisting of Megan Schubert, Amirtha Kidambi, Nick Hallett and Michael Douglas Jones (voices) PK Harris and Sarah Bernstein (violins), James Moore (guitar), Jonathan Singer (percussion), Brian Chase (drums), James Ilgenfritz (basses) and Nathan Koci (conductor)
JG in rare DJ set with Liturgy
JG Thirlwell will make a rare DJ appearance at the Trans Pecos Sunday afternoon series of concerts with Liturgy, Sir Richard Bishop and Kill Alters on Sunday September 13, 2015. Trans Pecos is at 900 Wyckoff Ave in Ridgewood, Queens NY. Doors are at 1pm at tickets are $12.00
The Pizz RIP
It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of Thirlwell collaborator and friend, pioneering lowbrow artist The Pizz. Thirlwell and Pizz made two records together under the name Garage Monsters and they collaborated on a couple of comics. He created the artwork for the Steroid Maximus album Quilombo! and for a compilation JGT put together for Big Cat Records called Mesomorph Enduros.
The Pizz bio in his own words : “It’s been the definitive long and strange trip from hashing out those notebook masterpieces in the back corner of the classroom to rightfully assuming the title of Lord of Lowbrow. From doing Rat Fink comix for the legendary Big Daddy Roth hisowndamnself, transforming the lowly skateboard deck into an artistic canvas in ways unforeseen, splashing flash on the walls of tattoo shops the world over,
delighting the kiddies and authorities alike with a set of trading cards featuring your favorite mass-murderers, burrowing into record collections around the globe via Sympathy For The Record Industry cover art, conquering the realm of canvas and paint, packing’em in for shows at the world HQ of lowbrow art galleries, La Luz De Jesus in Los Angeles, no less than 6 times, to foisting his tome Atavistic Avatar upon the masses, the fuzzy-chinned one has been quite the industrious vermin gnawing at the cheese of established convention.”
JG said, “He was a solid, brash, generous guy. A stone cold beatnik, hilarious and a cartoon come to life.” Rest in peace.
Thirlwell on John Carpenter remix LP
Earlier this year, legendary film director John Carpenter released his first album of non-soundtrack recordings, Lost Themes. On October 16, Lost Themes Remixed will arrive on vinyl via Sacred Bones. It collects reworks from JG Thirlwell, Zola Jesus, Blanck Mass, ohGr, Bill Kouligas, and Silent Servant that originally appeared on the deluxe edition of the album, plus two new tracks. The new remixes are Prurient‘s take on “Purgatory” and Uniform (the Men’s Ben Greenberg and ex-Drunkdriver Michael Berdan)’s remix of “Vortex”.
Lost Themes Remixed:
01 Purgatory (Prurient Remix)
02 Night (Zola Jesus & Dean Hurley Remix)
03 Wraith (ohGr Remix)
04 Vortex (Silent Servant Remix)
05 Vortex (Uniform Remix)
06 Fallen (Blanck Mass Remix)
07 Abyss (JG Thirlwell Remix)
08 Fallen (Bill Kouligas Remix)
freq_out Skandion LP release
The new freq_out LP contains the studio mix and a live recording of the first permanent installation of a freq_out piece called freq_out 1.2 ∞ SKANDION. The multi-channel work is up and running in the entrance garden at the Skandion Klinik, a new hospital for cancer treatment in Uppsala, Sweden.
The freq_out project has existed since 2003, when Carl Michael von Hausswolff was invited to Copenhagen to invent and install a sound-art installation. He divided up the audible sonic register into 12 parts and asked 12 artists, musicians, composers, and architects to each accept one of the 12 parts and compose a sonic piece from it. The result became 12 compositions/artworks that were simultaneously played on 12 different sound systems in the art space of Charlottenborg, thus becoming one piece. Since then, freq_out has also been installed in Oslo, Berlin, Paris, Budapest, Chiang Mai, Kortrijk, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Marrakesh.
The artists who contributed to the work are Jana Winderen, Maia Urstad, Christine Ödlund, Brandon LaBelle, JG Thirlwell, Petteri Nisunen, Tommi Grönlund, The Sons of God, Franz Pomassl, Anna Ceeh, Mike Harding, Finnbogi Pétursson, BJ Nilsen, Jacob Kirkegaard, PerMagnus Lindborg, and Carl Michael von Hausswolff. It’s released on Sep 25 2015 by Ash International and you can order it from Touch in Europe or Forced Exposure in the US.