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past shows
Performance Place - WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008, 11:23am - Noon
I'll be appearing with The Axe Iron Suns on Performance Place, radio station WAMC's live musical performance program with most excellent host Mr. Michael Eck.
The Chapel + Cultural Center at Rensselaer
Friday, January 25, 2008, 7:00pm
2125 Burdett Avenue
Troy, NY
(518) 274-7793
Free admission
An evening of bold live music by The Beige Channel, Twisted Pair and The Axe Iron Suns with eye-popping projected visuals by Twisted Pair.
This will be the final evening of Loop Sanctuary IV, Dreaming A New Real, an art and music series I curated that features recent works by G.G.Roberts and Matt Tiernan. Other events include:
Artists reception: Friday, January 4, 2008 5-7pm
Film, video and multimedia short works: Friday, January 11, 7pm
The Firlefanz Puppets: Friday, January 18, 7pm
Axe Iron Suns
At The River Street Beat Shop
Saturday, July 28, 2007
2:00 pm
197 River St., Troy, NY
Free admission
Al Kash drums
Sean Mack - bass
Terry Plunkett - guitar
Steve Lynch - saxophone
Sara Ayers - voice/processing
The Axe Iron Suns will play a unique psychedelic fusion of avant-rock-improv-tribal-jazz, including selections from their recently released CD, Lunaberry Soup, at the River Street Beat Shop in Troy, New York, on Saturday, July 28 at 2:00 pm. Admission is free.
And if its not raining, you can expect to hear our hypnotic, experimental grooves reverberating down River Street as they play out on the sidewalk in front of the store. Come on down to River Street and enjoy the scene!
Edison Groove Xchange
Sunday, November 6, 2005
Schenectady Museum
15 Nott Terrace Heights
Schenectady, NY
518-382-7890
www.SchenectadyMuseum.org
Suzanne Thorpe tempted me out of temporary retirement with the promise of recording my music on wax cylinder, a technology I haven't seen since I was a child.
I will be participating in Groove Xchange, the first in a series of related projects under the umbrella of the Edison Media Project, which celebrates the creativity and innovation of the region, from Thomas Edison to today's scholars and inventors. If you’ve never heard a wax cylinder recording, come on out and coo at the technology.
Reno Brother Art Show at Firlefanz Gallery
292 Lark Street
Albany, NY 12210
518-465-5035
www/firlefanzgallery.com
Cathy and Ed of FIRLEFANZ GALLERY at 292 Lark Street in Albany, NY would like to announce the first GALLERY TAKEOVER of 2005. From August 3 to August 20 The Reno Brothers are taking over the curating and day-to-day running of Firlefanz Gallery.
Crossing over from music to the visual arts, four exciting, emerging artists on the Capital Region scene are banding together to exhibit their art, as "RENO BROS: New Works". Internationally acclaimed electronica composer-vocalist SARA AYERS exhibits her captivating super-real digital photographic series, "The Future
Arriving." An exerpt from her brand new CD, "A Million Stories" on Dark Wood Recordings, will also serve as the soundtrack for the outdoor installation.
in the gallery courtyard.
Maximum solo acoustic singer-songwriter and arts writer MICHAEL ECK
showcases his talents in both acrylic and oil paining with a selection of
his powerful, raw portraits of the legends of jazz and blues.
Arts writer and vocalist with the pop culture-skewering rock group Blotto,
G.C. HAYMES breaks new ground with his single-scan digital photograms,
taking a fresh, inventive look at the timelessness of nature.
And DENNIS HERBERT, guitarist-vocalist with such rock bands as AKA/etc, the
Reedies and the Pure Clean Truth, unveils a hypnotic new assortment of
poetic and penetrating dioramas, capturing fantastical worlds in a box.
 
Loop Sanctuary: Recurring Dreams
An evening of ambient and electronic music featuring
Sara Ayers, Embracing The Glass
and Twisted Pair
with stunning, tripping visuals by Twisted Pair
Saturday, November 20, 2004
The Chapel and Cultural
Center at Rensselaer
2125 Burdett Avenue
Troy, NY 12180
(518) 274-7793
 
Larkfest,
Saturday, September 18
12:50pm - 1:20pm in the Multimedia Tent
Lark Street
Albany, NY
(Ed Atkeson took these photos with his spiffy new camera.)
Re:Soundings presents The DownTown Ensemble Upstate
Potluck concert and dinner
the old Catholic church on 12 Emily Street
Valley Falls, NY
Saturday, June 26 at 4 pm
free and open to the public.
Featured composers:
Sara Ayers
Monique Buzzarte
Daniel Goode
"Richard Lainhart
Mary Jane Leach
The DownTown Ensemble
Live solo performance, The
North Pointe Cultural Center
62 Chatham St., (Route 9), Kinderhook, NY
Friday, August 22, 2003
Twisted Pair had originally been slated to perform with me here
but had to cancel, so we came up with a slide show to add some
visual interest. It worked most of the time and the abstract images
were intriguing, although I think the upside down image of Peter
Pan probably had some people baffled.
Live solo performance at The Philadelphia
Fringe Festival
Philadelphia, PA
Saturday, September 6 - September 7, 2003
also appearing: Kaktus
The Fringe Festival is a collection of cutting-edge and edgy
performances with intelligent and adventurous audiences, and is not
be missed. I was really flattered to have been chosen to perform,
and despite some technical difficulties (considering what I do,
it's astonishing this kind of thing doesn't happen more often) I
had a really wonderful time.
Ambitention
Live solo performance with Embracing The
Glass
Worcester, MA
Saturday, September 13, 2003
Another great art gallery show, with good sound and inspired
music -- we played separately and then together at the end of the
night. We all agreed we hope this magic occurs again, hopefully in
the not-to-distant future.
Loop Sanctuary: The Art of the Dreamscape
Live solo performance with Mindspawn and dreamState
and video by Twisted
Pair
The
Chapel and Cultural Center at Rensselaer
Troy, NY
Friday, April 25, 2003
What a great show in a beautiful resonant space! We kept telling
the audience that they could get up and walk around but everyone
sat open-mouthed and hypnotized by the music and by Twisted Pair's
visuals. It was fun to meet up with dreamState (well, just Scott
this time) and Mindspawn again, and at the end of the night we
played a tiny set together.
Albany Public Library, Thursday, July 18, 2002
With Visuals by Twisted Pair,
 
Twisted Pair did a great job on the visuals, which were
alternately spacey, spooky and beautiful.
With Mara's
Torment.What a great evening this was -- Rik from Mara's
Torment and and I collaborated on a few pieces and they came out
really well -- we're in the process of recording them together. A
wonderful space to perform -- great sound in a cool little club
with great food and drinks -- attended by friendly people, and
Scott M2 consistently books really interesting performers. There's
a truly happening scene here and if you ever get a chance to go you
should definitely see what all the buzz is about. If I lived just a
little closer, I'd probably haunt this place. These photos were
taken by Dreamstate's Jamie Todd.
 
Here's a photo of me with performing with Rik and a sock monkey
whose name escapes me right now.
 Gate
To Moonbase Alpha, March 22, 2002
The Rotunda, 4012 Walnut Street, Philadelphia (Right side
entrance)
Another great evening of cutting edge music, good food (thanks,
Chef Jeff!) and adventurous performance put together by the
incomparable Gina Renzi.
INSTRUCTION SHUTTLE v. MERCY_KILLAH (Astromass/Undercity/Deep
Unda Brooklyn) Controlled chaos... schizophrenic
spelunking...subharmonic experimentation... near life
experiences...unoriginal sin... Aural remote viewing to worlds
where even robots fear to tread. http://www.astormass.com/
HELENA ESPVALL-SANTOLERI and GLORIA JUSTEN: Having collaborated
in the past, these two sirens delicately wove new, dreamy and
tempting ribbons throughout waves of bare sound and complicated
melody. Helena played her cello amped with effects. Gloria played
her violin, also amped and with effects. The two stringed creatures
conversed in high voices and low moans.
THE GREAT QUENTINI (sweaty Yeti): "Quentin Davis a.k.a. The
Great Quentini is a mental health magician. Using alien
technologies scavenged from deep in our future race memory, he
transforms space into a "childhood disinhibition zone". These
technologies are constructed today by the Great Quentini and use
materials salvaged or trash picked to enhance their powers. For
upcoming performances and more, contact Quentini@earthlink.net.
Undercity at Haycyon, February 24, 2002
Brooklyn, NY.
Halcyon is a combination cafe/record store/living room -- a
really comfortable place to hang out and discover new music.
The Eighth Step Coffee House Presents Music From A Fishbowl
(A Benefit For The Eighth Step)
February 3, 2002:
The Fishbowl works like this: sixteen or so musicians show up,
eat a supper together and have their names drawn from the fishbowl
in pairs, resulting in some very unlikely combinations of talents.
Each pair then has two hours to come up with a fifteen minute set
of music, which they then perform for the audience. I was paired up
with young, wild and beautiful Paddy Kilrain, a talented
singer-songwriter who performs her achingly honest songs with a
sharp edge and a voice that rises from girlish to avenging Valkyrie
in a heartbeat.
Caffe Lena,
January 11, 2002
47 Phila St., Saratoga Springs, NY
This was an exquisite evening, appearing with Jupiter Circle We had a grand
time, and even managed to fit everyone on the stage. Lena's is a
wonderful place to perform and an even better place to see a show,
so if you ever have an opportunity to see someone interesting
there, GO! We recorded the performance,
but somehow managed to get more of the sound of silverware rattling
in the kitchen than the music from the stage.
2001 Multimedia Festival, December 11, 2001
337 Essex St., Lawrence, Massachusetts
with TerrEtroN, Rock'it Society, and
Zero Times Infinity vs. Jekyll Island vs. Seratonin vs. Walter
Wright
I have a theory: the louder/weirder/harsher/scarier the music
is, the nicer the performers are. This was a great night of very
loud and harsh music performed by some really sweet guys, and then
me at the end of the night to calm everybody down and send them
home. The highlight of the evening, for me, was Deftly-D's electric
grinder on a car wheel, which sent showers of sparks flying halfway
across the room. I would have gotten a little closer but my hair
looked pretty good that night and I didn't want to set it on
fire.
Soundscape at Openair, December 4, 2001
121 St. Marks Place, New York, New York
 
Soundscape is billed as the only true "ambient" event in NYC,
developed by the Agriculture's Jameson and Undercity's Mercy_killah
& Hazmaat. Staged at Openair, a sleek bar on St. Marks, it's an
oasis of calm in the bustling frenzy of New York City's East
Village. I played here on December 4, 2001 and had a grand time.
They liked me. Also appearing was Mercy_Killah, who enveloped us in
waves of warm noise, whale songs and gamelan chimes as we drank our
martinis and stared at images of clouds and oceans on the video
monitors in the walls. A very special evening. Steph took these
photos.
The Larkin,
September 23, 2001
Lark Street, Albany, NY
by Ann Morrow, Metroland Magazine
If it wasn't for the tragic connotation of recent events, it
could be said that Sara Ayers' one-woman show at the Larkin Lounge
on Sunday was as close to a New York City performance as can be had
in these parts. The combination of Ayers' adventurously electronic
music, the lounge's audio-visual excellence, and a small but raptly
attentive audience gave the evening an air of cosmopolitan
sophistication. For a while, anyway -- until Ayers' hypnotic
soundscapes took many listeners out of the room and into another
dimension.
For the first time, Ayers performed her shape-shifting
compositions as a whole, without demarcation between songs except
for the occasional pause while she adjusted levers, pedals and
dials, or exchanged instruments. Yet despite the busyness required
by a solo rendition of densely layered, effects-drenched ambient
music, Ayers never came off as a knob-twiddler; Her minimalistic
stage presence was far too graceful for that. Barelegged in a black
cocktail dress, she let the otherworldly mood build, uninterrupted
by stage patter, and with her graceful hand gestures supplying all
the communication necessary. She seemed to regard her voice as
simply another instrument, effortlessly pitch-shifting from almost
guttural lows to silvery, trilling highs. The performer's reserve
only heightened the drama of her often rapturous phrasing.
When speaking of Ayers' voice, however, the plural must be used,
since her vocals were looped, doubled and trebled by digital
reproduction and echoed, reverbed and "boomeranged" by pedal
effects. But as enchanting as her console sorcery was, no effect
could top her live coloration. At times the Albany artist sounded
like she'd been possessed by a tribal high priestess, or a sacred
wind, or a woodland sprite. For "Every Day We Die A Little" (for
1997's Voices release), the juxtaposition of disembodied (sampled)
interpersonal dialogue with quiveringly impressionistic (live)
verse was both seductive and unnerving. Occasionally, snippets of
word imagery ("Days go by...") added a climatic brushstroke to her
aural paintings.
In addition to the clattering strum of an electric guitar, Ayers
punctuated her dreamy synths by striking found objects or a temple
bell. Although the performance (including interludes from last
year's Sylvatica and her soon-to-be released Interiors) did not
recreate the tidal impact of her 24-tracked CDs, it wasn't meant
to, and the ethereal quicksilver of her hour-long collage was
warmer, more accessible and somehow just as lush as the recorded
experience. Listeners floated back down to their seats just in time
for sustained round of applause.
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