February 15th, 2020 at 7pm
585 E Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, CA 91101
(map)
As our return to Los Angeles coincides with a new decade, we bring a rare performance by legendary synthesist Malcolm Cecil (b. 1937), playing selections from his albums Zero Time (1971) and Radiance (1981).
Born in London and formally educated in both music and physics, Malcolm Cecil is the developer of TONTO, the world's largest synthesizer, and Grammy award-winning co-producer & engineer for Stevie Wonder's Talking Book, Music of My Mind, Innervisions, Fulfillingness' First Finale.
Malcolm has released four albums of his own compositions featuring TONTO, both solo, and as Tonto's Expanding Head Band with one-time musical partner Bob Margouleff.
In addition to his work with Tonto's Expanding Head Band and Stevie Wonder, Malcolm has produced, engineered, and created unique electronic sounds across genres with artists such as Richie Havens, Gil Scott-Heron, Quincy Jones, The Isley Brothers, T-Rex, Joan Baez, Minnie Riperton, and designed sound effects for the first Star Trek film. He has 5 Platinum and 21 Gold records as a producer and/or engineer.
Malcolm built, owned and operated his own recording studio, TONTO's, in Santa Monica, California ('76 - '82). He currently owns and operates his own studio near Woodstock, New York.
Cool Maritime and Yialmelic Frequencies join us in opening the night.
“...intensely sensorial communal gatherings, filling each church's cavernous arches with vast lighting installations and projections from exhibiting visual artists.”
- Time Out New York
“...pausing in a beautiful space for a few hours, thinking about your place in the universe and getting lost in music with a deep history of imagining a better world.”
- LA Times
The interior of Pasadena Presbyterian Church (est. 1976) will come alive on this evening with an architecturally-mapped video performance.
Born in London, England to artistic parents and formally educated in both music and physics, Malcolm Cecil became a musician, arranger, composer, record producer and audio engineer, while simultaneously pursuing his career as a technical consultant to numerous film and recording facilities throughout the world. He engineered and co-produced Stevie Wonder's "Music of My Mind," "Fulfillingness' First Finale," "Innervisions," and "Talking Book," for which he was awarded the Grammy for Best Engineered Non-classical Recording ('73) as well as awards for engineering the "Album of the Year" two years running ('73 & '74).
After emigrating to the USA in 1968 he became a pioneer of electronic music. He built TONTO - The Original New Timbral Orchestra - the world's first and still largest multi-timbral, polyphonic analog audio synthesizer which now finds its home at the National Music Centre in Calgary, Canada. A full chapter is devoted to TONTO in the book "Analog Days" by Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco (Oxford University Press). With TONTO, Malcolm has released four albums of his own compositions.
In addition to his work with Tonto's Expanding Head Band and Steve Wonder, Malcolm has produced, engineered and created unique electronic musical accompaniment across genres with Minnie Ripperton, The Isley Brothers, Weather Report, Little Feat, Richie Havens, Gil Scott-Heron, Quincy Jones, T-Rex, Joan Baez, Steven Stills, James Taylor, Randy Newman and numerous other recording artists. He has also provided recording, sound editing, mixing, sound FX and scoring for numerous documentaries, shorts and feature films including designing many of the sound effects for the first Star Trek movie and composing the music score for the TV series "Firehouse". He has earned 5 Platinum and 21 Gold records as producer and/or engineer and in '97 received Q Magazine's "Unsung Hero" award for lifetime achievement. He was recently honored by the Smithsonian Institute along with Bob Moog and Keith Emerson for a three day special event "The Keyboard Meets Modern Technology" commemorating the 300th anniversary of the invention of the piano.
An expert in archiving and restoration, Malcolm recently discovered and restored a rare and valuable 1957 live recording of Miles Davis in concert, released in '05 on CBS Records ("Miles Davis - Round About Midnight-Legacy Edition"). He currently owns and operates his own recording studio near Woodstock, New York.
Cool Maritime is the work of Sean Hellfritsch, an active mixed-media visual artist, and modern modular electronic composer living and working in North East Los Angeles with his wife, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.
His most recent work, Sharing Waves, is an all-expansive environment and fully-realized world to lose oneself within. A persistent sense of adventure and excitement is baked into Sean's music, illuminated by his practice of recording in inspiring and remote outdoor locations using a nomadic studio including a "lunchbox" modular system. The narrative flair of Sean's instrumental music comes naturally, as in addition to music his work in film includes credits with artists such as Björk and Panda Bear. Cool Maritime is a synthesis of musical ideas captured in moments of awe, happiness and inspiration. The sounds are largely electronic, the feeling is organic, and the arrangements are lush, breathing and breaststroking their way gracefully through the open air.
Yialmelic Frequencies is a project born from the exploration of alien origins in its producer, Diva Dompé. Receiving visions of another dimension since childhood, and meeting these visions with conflicting feelings of wonder, desire, and fear, Diva began to create Guided Meditations as a safe space to explore this cosmic relationship. Yialmelic Frequencies harvests the collection of instrumentals originally made to accompany these meditations, now to be enjoyed as their own sonic journeys.
What Diva found from creating these meditations was Yialmel: a place that radiates with Love and Harmony, where Matter, Energy and Consciousness exist along one gradient of manifest form. Where all manifest matter has consciousness and all of these consciousnesses collaborate in interaction. Where desire, attention, and love are valuable units of exchange. This is a place where Diva simultaneously exists while also fulfilling the role of Human on Planet Earth. In her role on Yialmel, she is a guardian of the Infinite Love Source and creator of Resonant Frequency Sculptures, similar to her role of manipulating frequency on earth in the form of sound.
Location: Pasadena Presbyterian Church
Date: Saturday, February 15, 2020
Time: Doors 7pm, Show 8pm
Street Parking Available
and Paid Lot Entrance one block away
on S Oakland Ave