2015: Tender Buttons

Tania Chen: piano, small instruments
Gino Robair: modular synthesizers
Tom Djll: modular synthesizers & circuit bent instruments
Bill Thibault: live interactice video

Tender Buttons taps sound worlds of complexity and lush emptiness, using grand piano framed by two setups of modular electronics. At times evoking sound worlds reminiscent of early Stockhausen, Cage/Tudor and new wave bands of the 1980s, the trio interplays compatibly with an intensity wrought from focused concentration – sometimes evoking a meditative “composed” sound world, at other moments setting up impossible musics in side-by-side coexistence, shimmering and translucent. For the Outsound Summit, Tender Buttons will augment their performance with live interactive video projections. Tender Buttons came together out of a shared passion for the practice of free improvisation as informed by contemporary musical disciplines, with a dash of intuitive and absurdist literatures (having borrowed their name from the 1914 book by Gertrude Stein). Individually, the members have worked with a range of artists from Tom Waits and Pauline Oliveros to Derek Bailey and Lol Coxhill.

Artist (photo by Photographer)