AIRWAY sets up: (left to right) Rick Potts, Takuya Sakaguchi, Tom Recchion, Dennis Duck, Vetza Trussell, Ace Ferren Ford, John Duncan, Danny Gromfin.


John Duncan solo. Photo © John Wiese.
THE LOWEST FORM OF MUSIC:
LAFMS at Beaconsfield


22 - 24 October, 2010
Beaconsfield
London

Solo concert with videos in exhibition

Also performing: AIRWAY, Tom Recchion, Extended Organ, Dinosaurs With Horns, Le Forte Four, Smegma, The Tenses, Hijokaidan, Incapacitants, Morphogenesis, Mark Durgan with Spoils and Relics, Raionbashi & Kutzkelina, Bill Kouligas with Joseph Hammer

Produced by Harbinger Sound, Second Layer Records, No-FI and Sound And Music in cooperation with LAFMS.com


















Duncan (center) and Pedro Jimenez (left) move through the audience in the dark.
Photo: Michael Bilsborough



"One of the surprise hits of the show..." Dave Mandl, The Wire

REVIEWS
THE GRATEFUL

21 November, 2009
John Duncan and 30-voice chorus
Gramercy Theater
New York

Included in A Fantastic World Superimposed on Reality: A Select History of Experimental Music
Performa festival 2009
Curated by Mike Kelley
Produced by Mark Beasley for Performa
Performa is directed by RoseLee Goldberg

Chorus included Andria Alefhi, Floanne Ankah, Katherine Bauer, Ed Bear, Lea Bertucci, Miranda Bushey, Amanda Boekelheide, Victoria Cho, Laura Cossa, Tyler Dusenbury, Melissa Guerrero, Pedro Jimenez, Mikey IQ Jones, Sarah Ann Karp, Maria Levitsky, Kelsey McFalls, Leyla Mesic, Billy Miller, Jen Poueymirou, HaQuyen, Melissa Rocha, Chris Rice, Urban Schwegler, Matthew Silver, Jim Thirlwell, Tradon Turner, Sasha Vine, Anna Gurton-Wachter, Randal Wilcox and anonymous audience members.

Unexpectedly, the entire theater goes completely dark.
For several seconds everyone sits in silence, blind.
Duncan and the chorus members, sitting throughout the audience, begin to to whisper to themselves.
In a moment, continuing to whisper, they stand up in the dark and undress loudly enough for the strangers sitting near them to hear. Nude or semi-nude, they turn to the strangers and start screaming.
Some stand up and scream back. Cellphone camera strobes flash throughout the audience. Screaming and strobes continue for several minutes.
Then whispering again, Duncan and the chorus move through the crowd to the exit to end the event.



























NOCTURNAL DENIZENS

20 June, 2009
John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Wilton's Music Hall
London
Included in Cut and Splice festival
Produced by Richard Whitelaw for Sound and Music in association with BBC Radio 3
Participants included Brandon LaBelle (with Matthew Lee Knowles), Jason Lescalleet, Bob Levene, Alvin Lucier (with Anthony Burr), Aki Onda


Photos by Robert Worby




















THE HIDDEN

21 February, 2009
Lampo
Chicago

Cinema for the blind.
4-channel surround solo concert for white noise, distortion, voice and controlled feedback.
Produced by Andrew Fenchel

Photos by Alex Inglizian
Comments from Bryan Lewis Saunders' blog:

This was my first feasible chance to see John Duncan perform live, and it was well worth the 10 hour plus drive.

As "The Hidden" was to be presented in 4-channel surround sound, John instructed Nicole and I to sit as close to the middle as possible. I closed my eyes and as soon as it began, my thoughts became focused solely on my own physical presence and remained so throughout the duration of the performance.

The first 10 minutes were loud and caused an unsettling swelling pressure in my upper torso. It felt like I was being "acted upon" as Nicole put it, but unlike an assault, the sense of imminent danger was somewhat limited. Within a short amount of time the physical pressure began to move slowly but fluidly, and it felt as if the empty spaces between my organs were being filled with plaster, bonding my heart, lungs, liver and diaphragm into one solid mega-organ. The correlation between the physical sensations and the sound was really strong, and as the loud sound moved around and dissipated, so too did the enormous tension in my chest, but the now heightened awareness of it never left. In the beginning, I opened my eyes for a split second several times, but because the main part of the audience was divided into two closely seated sections, facing each other, it became impossible for me to keep my eyes open. The sonic experience at times seemed to warrant me opening my eyes, but whenever I did so, I saw the squadron of seated strangers facing me, and I found myself trapped in a psychological space that was unnerving to say the least and I would look down and close them again instantly. So back into the dark I went and back into the body (Afterwards, Nicole noted a similar experience with the seating, so I know that it wasn't just me).

The next wave of sound brought the tension to my spine and it rapidly advanced up the back of my neck through the base of my skull, uniting the spinal chord and lower brain into a single entity. Surprisingly, the forebrain remained separate and seemingly unaffected, oblivious to any stress, feeling light and even delicate. I say "surprisingly" here because it was extremely unusual to feel such a thing, in only the back half of my brain.

Then a narrative of instructive vocals was introduced. By now I was entirely preoccupied with what was happening to me physically, so the words were for the most part disregarded, though certain words did jump out at me from time to time only to enhance the physical awareness of my body. For example, upon hearing the word "temperature", I became conscious of the heat that this sound/stress had been generating. The upper torso was hot, my Central Nervous System was now hot, and the third and final wave of stress/sound had localized itself in the pit of my stomach, and now all three regions seemed to be burning. Having suffered from debilitating stress for most of my life, I welcomed a new idea that such a dreaded phenomenon could actually be interpreted in a


positive light, as a heat generating source of vitality and energy and life, and my thoughts then turned even more positive and to that of the chakras, and I so hoped that the remaining groin and forebrain regions would be "acted upon" next and quickly and I now resigned myself to yield to a grand spiritual experience.

But all that was thwarted when the word "cold" snapped me back and I was instantly drawn to the fast dropping temperature loss in my extremities, skin, legs and arms and then a great thermostatic battle ensued within me. The heated Inner parts remained isolated, disconnected and thriving unto themselves, yet caught up in competition with the surface and outermost parts of my body which were now amalgamating to form a cold and lifeless shell around me. I remember thinking, "If the hot parts lose I'll be dead". I then began to take in some of the push/pull repetitive directional words I was hearing like "forward" and "back" and I heard a footstep, and thinking that it came from right next to me, I tried to make some of my own footsteps but couldn't, I even tried lightly stomping and became frustrated that I was deaf to my self.

So my mind continued to be pushed and pulled around, confined to the inside and outside of my body and then a wonderful surprising cascade of white noise rained down upon me, giving me chills and a much welcomed spectacular pressure release unifying my entire physical self, leaving me with a warm extremely pleasurable feeling of well being, as if I had just had a Turkish Bath.

Looking back now I see even more similarities between the two. In the context of a social gathering, the awkwardness of being nude amongst strangers and the urge to not look or be looked at in a Turkish Bath, was replaced by the uncomfortable, to not look or wish to be looked at "face off" seating arrangement during "The Hidden". I can also see similarities in that both could be thought of as a sort of ritual cleansing. There are several stages to the process of a Turkish Bath: First, one enters a sauna like "warm room", then an almost unbearable "hot room", and then the splashing of cold water over one's self followed by a full body wash, and a "push/pull" type of massage, and lastly one spends time in a relaxing "cooling room". Throughout the performance I experienced these same rooms in almost precisely the same order, the only difference being that these rooms came in the form of sound waves and never once did I have to move. I don't regret forfeiting the majority of dialogue presented, the physical journey I undertook was by itself enlightening and the parts of dialogue that did get through in fact made "The Hidden" that much more enriching.















THERE MUST BE A WAY ACROSS THIS RIVER:
A Valentine's Day Dedication


14 February, 2009
Sant'Andrea degli Amplificatori
Bologna

Solo concert for voice, controlled feedback, 2-channel open-reel tape and active room refrigerator
Produced by Luciano Maggiore, Dominique Vaccaro and Domenico Grenci

In the coldest season of the year with subzero temperatures outside, an industrial room refrigerator steadily turns the air of the windowless basement space from cold to colder. The room is lit by a single candle, extinguished when the audience has finished moving in to sit on the tile floor. In total darkness, they hear these words repeat and fade from the tape looped across the ceiling:


There must be a way across this river

A corridor leads to a descending ramp,
to a larger chamber,
to another corridor,
always sloping downward.
The temperature grows colder as we descend,
moving deeper underground.
The cold becomes unbearable.
We turn around to go back --
but the corridor has changed,
turned into larger rooms that lead
to a vast, cavernous sanctuary,
a place of worship,
much larger than any structure we have ever imagined.
The entire hall is deserted.
The air is warm but the devotion to worship feels naïve;
to grow it is necessary to move on.

Now I find myself with a woman I know and do not know,
my tongue sliding slowly inside her,
taking pleasure from giving her pleasure.


Photos by Melissa Pasut
Poster design by Domenico Grenci















THE CARNIVAL

Premiered 07 February, 2009 at Area Sismica, Forlì

Manuel Zurria, piccolo
John Duncan, oscillators

Composed by Manuel Zurria and John Duncan

Based on the inner-ear effects of tinnitus, amplified and interwoven to interact aggressively with the acoustics of the performance space.

Photo © John Duncan

Photos © Claudio Casanova















Photos of Basel premiere © Melissa Pasut
PHANTOM BROADCAST acoustic

Arranged for and with the musicians of
Ensemble Phoenix Basel


Premiered 05 June, 2008 at Gare du Nord, Basel
Performance at Dampfcentrale, Bern on 6 June, 2008
Produced by Daniel Buess

Composed and conducted by John Duncan

Christoph Bösch, flute
Daniel Buess, perussion
Michael Büttler, trombone
Rafael Camenisch, saxophone
Aleksander Gabrys, double-bass
Maurizio Grandinetti, guitar
Jürg Henneberger, prepared piano
Thomas Peter, electronics
Toshiko Sakaibara, contra-bass clarinet
Beat Schneider, cello

DVD video of the concerts being produced by Studio Allquestions, Bologna



Performance 16 May, 2009 at Teatro San Leonardo, Bologna
Included in Angelica Festival 2009
Produced by Massimo Simonini

Conducted by John Duncan

Christoph Bösch, flute
Daniel Buess, perussion
Aleksander Gabrys, double-bass
Maurizio Grandinetti, guitar
Jürg Henneberger, prepared piano
Thomas Peter, electronics
Toshiko Sakaibara, contra-bass clarinet
Beat Schneider, cello
Samuel Wettstein, Hammond organ

















John Duncan and Extended Organ

14 July, 2007 at Five Thirty Three, Los Angeles


Extended Organ:
Joseph Hammer, tape, electronics
Mike Kelley, perussion, voice
Paul McCarthy, voice
Tom Recchion, laptop, zither
Joe Potts, optagon

John Duncan: solo

All: percussion jam

Photos by Wild Don Lewis























SOMETHING LIKE SEEING IN THE DARK

25 January, 2007 at Palazzo Re Enzo for Netmage 07, Bologna

John Duncan: 4-channel surround audio, 4-screen video projections, voice
Leif Elggren: voice

All texts written by Leif Elggren and John Duncan

DVD video of the event produced by Studio Alquestions, Bologna


Photos by Luca Ghedo























John Duncan and Alfredo Costa Montiero

John Duncan: 4-channel surround audio
Alfredo Costa Montiero: harmonica, turntable

Premiered 27 May, 2006 at the Musica Generica festival, Szczecin
Also performed on 26 November, 2006 at the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London for the Atlantic Waves festival

Photo at Atlantic Waves by David Maranha






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