Antarctica

For The Fidget Fall Experimental Music Festival Nora Gibson and myself were asked to create a music and dance work. We decided to show a work-in-progress for a large media project Antarctica. Antarctica is the story of the end of human data, the end of history, the end of information. It was presented as a 20 minute film projected on three translucent floating screen and with singing by Steve Quaranta.

Below is an excerpt from the film:

ANTARCTICA Development Preview from Michael McDermott on Vimeo.

Live at CCP

Live piano and iPad set from Community College of Philadelphia.

Recording below:

Event Horizon

This live film score was performed on piano and iPad using the application Samplr to process the sounds from the piano. The mix was recorded from the house sound board by Frank Bellina. The performance was part of the Event Horizon experimental music series at the Rotunda in Philadelphia on June 14, 2013.

video sources are from archive.org and treated by Mikronesia

Full audio recording of concert:

Tomas

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Flute Quartet by Michael McDermott entitled Tomas. Performed by Danielle Brosious, Bob Carpency Heather Fortune, Jacquelyn Howell on flutes and Michael McDermott on electronics. This was part of a performance at Nexus Gallery, ParaphraseNexus and made possible by a grant from the Argosy Foundation. 

Below a live recording of the piece:

GATE (2008)

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2008 GATE performance of piano and electronics. This performance had visuals by VJ Marge.

Art@Sophi Piano Improvisation

For the POST (Philadelphia Open Studios Tour) in October of 2007 I did a four hour long piano + electronics improvisations at Art@Sophi. Our friends and frequent collaborators Monica Turtle and Mike Murray invited me to create a living soundscape in the foyer of Art@Sophi. It was a fun and challenging night to play for four hours straight!

Don Brewer taped some of my performance and posted an 8:00 compilation which you can view below:

GATE (2006)

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During the mid-2000s I played Gate (or Gate to Moon Base Alpha) every year as so. Coming off our Canadian tour, Ben Fleury-Steiner, William Fields, Aidan Baker and myself did a show in Philadelphia at GATE. I was experimenting with live looping using Casio SK-1, flute, melodica, effects pedals and Ableton Live. I was very happy with the results from this show. One of the pieces of this show became the track “Gate” from 2009’s vxvii which was then featured in Nora Gibson’s 2010 dance piece VESTED SOULS. Photo by William Fields.

Below is a recording from the performance that night:

City of Horns Duet

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When my friend and collaborator Bilwa asked me to do a live set at his photo and media event, I thought it was a standard Mikronesia “cocktail hour” type set. During these set (of which I’ve done plenty) I do background ambient music and people mill around, drink, talk and (sometimes) listen, which is fine. For these events basically a DJ, but instead of playing other people’s music, I’m usually there with a keyboard and laptop looping sounds and creating a soundscape on the fly.

However when I got to Mascher Space Coop (a venue that would lead me into a whole new field of composing and improvising with dancers and choreographers) I found out I would be doing a live improvisation with dancers and local experimental musician City of Horns (Rick Henderson). The whole event was really fun and like I said opened me up to a whole new world of collaboration.

Below is a live recording of our improvised set:

Ambient Ping

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In April of 2006 Gears of Sand label mates Ben Fleury-Steiner, William Fields and myself went on a mini-tour of Canada. It was a very fun trip. We made a stop at the legendary ambient music series “Ambient Ping” to do a show with the three of us, Pholde and Aidan Baker. Below is a recording of my set from The Ambient Ping. Mikronesia photo by William Fields, more photos from our trip can be found over at his page.