Hub New Music performs Dai Wei's "How The Stars Vanish" November 16, 2022 Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center Asheville, NC 28801 More info: https://hubnewmusic.org/

Inaugural BMC Prize recipients Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian join us to discuss their interdisciplinary work. The artists trace connections to Black Mountain College from their creative origins in post-revolutionary Iran, to the diffusely collaborative and experimental practice of generating "landscapes". More info: https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/inaugural-bmc-prize-announcement/

“The Glyph” – Commissioned in 2015 by ICA/Boston Directed by Richard Colton July 30th at 3PM + 7PM BMCM+AC {120 College Street} Dancer and choreographer Polly Motley and pianist Yukiko Takagi perform “The Glyph,” a playful work created by dancer Katherine Litz and composer Lou Harrison. The original performance at Black Mountain College was part of a Glyph Exchange with poet Charles Olson and painter Ben Shahn in the Summer of 1951. The program will also feature Lou Harrison’s “Six Sonatas...

Laura Steenberge - Devil Works for Idle Hands - Live At BMCM+AC June 9, 2022 by Black Mountain College Radio

Weston Olencki - a vine that grew over the city and no one noticed - Live At BMCM+AC June 9, 2022 by Black Mountain College Radio

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and UNC Asheville present the Southeast premiere of Black Mountain Songs, an expansive choral and visual work performed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and curated by Bryce Dessner (The National) and Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire). Eight composers in total, including Dessner and Parry along with Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Aleksandra Vrebalov, John King, Tim Hecker, and Jherek Bischoff, collaborated with filmmaker Matt Wolf to...

This recording was included as a performance in Works of John Cage, which was presented as a part of Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center's ReVIEWING 12 in November, 2021. Carl Patrick Bolleia’s performances and recordings have been acclaimed and featured by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Gramophone, New York Classical Review and more. He has performed as pianist, keyboardist, and conductor throughout North America, Europe, and China at venues including Carnegie Hall Stern...

This recording was included as a performance in Works of John Cage, which was presented as a part of Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center's ReVIEWING 12 in November, 2021. Thomas Moore has received acclaim throughout the US and Europe for his performances, lectures, and recordings. His repertoire includes works by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, James Tenney, Philip Glass, Erik Satie, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and others. Cage wrote, “I am...

Recorded by Elizabeth Lang. Gamelan Yowana Sari has been a performing Balinese Art Ensemble since 2011. The group is currently in residence at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. This recording is from a collaboration with the Asheville Purcussion Festival.

Members of the Philip Glass Ensemble, Michael Riesman (music director, piano), Ryan Kelly (sound), Mick Rossi (piano), Andrew Sterman (flute, piccolo, saxophone), with Ann Cecil-Sterman on flute, performed a repertoire for amplified pianos and woodwinds. The program included selections from Music in Twelve Parts (Parts 9 and 10), Façades from Glassworks, Music in Similar Motion and Spaceship from Einstein on the Beach. In 1968, Glass founded the PGE in New York City as a laboratory for his...

Starting with Erik Satie’s Gymnoèdie No. 1 and using Musique Concrète techniques, Zazie pays tribute to "Cheap Imitation," John Cage's homage to Satie. Zazie Kanwar-Torge (they/them) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist living in Asheville, North Carolina, where they are a rising tenth grader at the School of Inquiry and Life Sciences. Zazie has been interested in sound art and avant-garde music production since age nine and it was actually Black Mountain College's experimental...

Rooted in Alvin Lucier’s 1969 work I am Sitting in a Room, Sitting in a Room With Friends is a semi-random sound collage of voices and sounds extracted from interviews, performances, and sound works. It evokes the anxiety of pandemic isolation and the uncertainty of post-pandemic life. Voices include extracts from: Alvin Lucier’s (I am Sitting In A Room, 1969) John Cage (interview with reporter Marcus Jones) Bruce Nauman (Get Out Of My Mind, Get Out Of This Room, 1968). Sounds: Full...

3:33 Public Service Announcement is a commentary on the authority and self-control possessed by the voice of the radio announcer. There is a nod towards the famous Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” radio drama in regards to the ultimate trust that is placed on the radio announcement as a voice of authority. However, during this announcement the voice is interrupted by the human compulsions of the anatomical construct of “voice”, cracking the veneer of superiority and revealing the...

Welding Tones with Distant Drones A collection of quickly recorded raw auxiliary percussion sounds on homemade cassette loops to be composed and improvised amidst an array of portable Walkmans to immerse the listener with sound artifacts of surprise and chance encounters within the arcane medium of tape. Similar to a DJ creating a mix with a tightly curated collection of records, but with cassettes and specifically chosen percussion elements. --- Thom Nguyen is an Asheville, North...

Nostalgianoid is Asheville native Mike Holmes (he/him), a man of many coats who has established himself as an unpredictable artist with his emphasis on keeping every live set fresh and new. He’s been involved with a myriad of music scenes in this town since finishing college in 2014, whether it be producing for other artists, photographing shows, or playing in various bands of different genres. Now, he focuses on pushing his own craft and sound while also being a member of the local...

Preview an exciting new project, led by BMCM+AC’s first Active Archive resident podcaster Piers Gelly. Gelly, a collaborator on such programs as 99% Invisible and creator/host of Cellar Door, presents a sneak peek at a new Black Mountain College podcast, currently in development. Gelly is in conversation with Black Mountain scholars Julie Levin Caro, Thomas Frank, and archivist Heather South, breaking down preconceived notions of BMC’s history and setting the stage for the eight-part...

How are Ruth Asawa’s hanging wire sculptures a form of activism for racial justice? Just a few years after leaving Rohwer internment camp, Asawa started making her signature hanging wire works at Black Mountain College at precisely the moment that she started to think about how cellular biology could demonstrate racial equality. In the sculptures, lobes of wire mesh interpenetrate, just like the dividing cells that she studied in classes. Do Asawa’s sculptures gesture to the fundamental...

Our 5th episode is an interview with interdisciplinary artist Martha McDonald, who’s the curator of our current permanent collection exhibition titled “ACTIVE ARCHIVE: Martha McDonald.” Martha will also be creating an installation and performance in response to Bauhaus and BMC artist Xanti Schawinsky’s experimental theater piece “Spectodrama."

Our fourth episode is an interview with conceptual artist Mel Chin, who will be giving a keynote address at our upcoming ReViewing 9 conference. We discuss the social and political side of his works, the process of dismantling personal and societal delusions, and how art can facilitate the creation of a more just and invigorating society.

Episode 3: Make Noise + Hursh by Black Mountain College Radio

Our second episode has three segments, the first being an interview with choreographer and performer Meg Foley, who will be giving a performance at BMCM+AC on Saturday, July 8th. The second segment explores the life and works of Robert Motherwell, a notable Abstract Expressionist who taught at Black Mountain College. Discussed is his use of automatism in painting, the influence of psychoanalysis and literature on his work, and a heated debate between he and Ben Shahn during the Cold War. The...

This debut episode begins with Carmelo Pampillonio's interview of Julie J. Thomson, the curator of our current exhibition "Begin to See: The Photographers of Black Mountain College." It also features a segment dedicated to composer Lou Harrison, who taught at BMC. Lou Harrison would have been 100 today on May 14th, and we celebrate his life and works.