Practice Bo Bactice Vol 1 Released

March 29, 2020

Last year when we started filming episodes of Practice Bo Bactice, we could never in our wildest dreams have envisioned where we would be right now. We started 2019 wanting to create a series of conversations with artists, musicians, composers, writers, and more about their artistic vision, practice, and habits. Our goal was to make a series of videos about creative work. What emerged over the course of our filming and editing in this past year has far surpassed our highest expectations. But right now, the series feels more important than ever. 

In the past week, we’ve been thinking a lot about something the great Peter Sellars said in a workshop Anthony once took with him: “You teach to create the world you want to live in; not to recreate the one in which we currently are.” As our world is changing before our eyes with unforeseen paradigm shifts, forging new terrain seems more crucial than ever. 

With this in mind, we bring you the first finished episode of Practice Bo Bactice: “Claire Chase: The Punctum In The Sound.”

All best to you in these strange strange times

Anthony & Rebecca

Practice-Bo-Bactice

There’s so much to catch up on. It’s been months. It’s been a busy busy 2019 with individual and collaborative projection. But one of our biggest things has been realizing a dream of ours called" “Practice-Bo-Bactice”. We’ll tell you a lot more about this soon.

Alphabet Overdrive!

To say that things have been busy would be an understatement. In the last five months we've been to several continents, performed in galleries, schools, and at summer music festivals; up and moved our entire life to NYC; started new teaching jobs; oh, and made this rad music video with the help of Ben Semisch Photo in Omaha. It's an incredible new piece written for us by composer Mathew Fuerst featuring texts of Anthony's from a series of poems written in 2008 called "Apple Silence." In which Becca sings while playing violin, whistles while playing the violin, and wears a pretty sweet "text dress". Link here and in our media section. 

2017-18 Season, Spells, Lullabies, Water and More

October and November have been an incredibly busy, but incredibly exciting couple of months. We've launched a full-fledged season of performances and a series of residencies in Nebraska, Kansas, North Dakota, Massachusetts and more. We're taking over the amazing Fiendish Plots in Lincoln, NE to create an installation and group of performances called "The Book of Spells"; the last of these performances is Friday November 3rd and features videos by the incomparable Nat Castañeda (she's the best). "The Book of Spells" has been a lovely opportunity as it's allowed us to expand our performance practice, start developing a lot of original content, and perform more together "on stage." It's allowed us to live by our principle of "going further afield" in all sorts of new ways. L. Kent Wolgamott wrote a great piece on this project; check it out here. 

We just got back from Wichita where we performed in Anthony's installation "Another Figure of What". One of the "chapters" from "The Book of Spells" is "Spells for Dictators and Borders." This chapter grew out of Anthony's daily "Drawings for Donald"--a drawing a day, everyday for 365 days for Donald Trump. We performed some of these as sort of "lullabies for Donald" with amazing soprano Abigail Fischer at Fiendish and then together in Wichita at Harvester Arts. Wichita is rad, weird, and there were great audiences. Kristin Beal, Kate Van Steenhuyse, and Ryan Gates are the fabulous founders of this great non-profit rocking the Great Plains. Here's a piece produced during the live performance in Wichita using an overhead projector, cut-up transparencies and fossilized sharks' teeth. 

We've been thinking a lot about text, image, collaging the two in live performances, singing violinists, found footage, 13th century laude, projections, and what it means to mix all these to effect a certain tone. We finish "The Book of Spells" this week at Fiendish Plots, then head to the North Dakota Museum of Art and Mayville, ND for two more performances directly after. 

In October, we started a year-long residency at Aster Montessori School in Cambridge, MA working with young children and pioneering an interdisciplinary arts program loosely based around composer Byron Au Yong's incredible "Water Partitas." The enthusiasm, interest, and insight from these young minds at Aster has been amazing. 

We're introducing students to ideas blending sight and sound, working with color, liquid, video, some simple instruments from found objects and more. More on this soon. Here's Becca playing while a student paints, each taking turns "conducting" and imitating the other. 

HIFA!

It's hard to convey how incredible our experience at HIFA (Harare International Festival of the Arts) in Harare, Zimbabwe was. The festival, the audiences, the students, the artists! The people! The City! Wow. What an life-changing time. HIFA is in its 18th year. An enormous amount of work goes into making this endeavor happen. We're so grateful to have been part of this. Here are a few images of our performance, some super students we worked with for our "artistic collaborations: between sight and sound" workshop, and us with our wonderful artist liaison/guide, Nothando. 

Bay Chamber video

Guys, we're very excited to share this really well-put together promo video of our project and work at Bay Chamber Concerts in Maine. Check it out!

Ferus Festival at National Sawdust!

We had an incredible time performing at #NationalSawdust in Brooklyn for the #FerusFestival wow! It was an honor to share the stage with @NelsonPatton and @LonnieHolley. It was the NYC premiere of videos and works for violin by #PaolaPrestini, #ByronAuYong, #NicoMuhly, and #LisaBielawa. #art #performance #interdisciplinary #musicfestival. Thanks to all who came out!

The Afield and DesignInquiry

We're very excited. And you should be too. It's our first post. 

Here's a little entry about the very special @DesignInquiry and @Rebeccafischerviolin's and my work at their Vinalhaven Residency this summer and what we're doing with this new #interdisciplinary collaboration with great pieces from composers like #ByroAuYong. Thanks to @RanaYoung for this excellent photo.

Here's a link to the post: the afield and design inquiry