Brooklyn's Soapbox Gallery Presents The SONIC VISION LOOPING FESTIVAL

Soapbox Gallery, the intimate Prospect Heights' performance space that grew out of the studio of sculptor Jimmy Greenfield, will present three nights of live streaming performances, each dedicated to adventurous electronic looping sounds paired with video narratives, The Sonic Vision Looping Festival, August 26 - 28 at 8 PM.

Globe- and genre-trotting percussionist Will Calhoun (LIVING COLOUR, McCoy Tyner, Phillip Glass, Wayne Shorter, etc.) will headline and close out the festival The lineup will also feature the acclaimed sound painting jazz saxophonist and film composer Hayes Greenfield and Guitars A Go Go, the ambient guitar duo of Sal Cataldi (aka Spaghetti Eastern Music) and Rick Warren, who are supporting the release of their buzzed about debut disc, Travel Advisory.

One of the true cultural oases of the COVID-19 quarantine, Soapbox Gallery has been presenting a series of almost daily streaming live performances since mid-March, all to sate the souls and psyches of live music starved citizens here in New York and around the globe. The above and other streaming performances can be accessed by visiting www.soapboxgallery.org

According to founder Jimmy Greenfield, the festival grew out of the success of the Immersive Surround Sound Experiences performed by his musician brother, Hayes Greenfield, since the beginning of the COVID quarantine. With these, Hayes employs his saxophone, flute, kalimba, harmonica, voice and a plethora of delays, synths, effects pedals and loopers to create meditative sound environments reminiscent of Brian Eno's ambient works. In early April, Hayes embarked on a series of Meditation Performances taking place at 3 PM nearly daily, over 30 performances total to date. Here are the details on the festival's lineup:

August 28 - Will Calhoun - With an array of indigenous and electronic percussion instruments, flutes (some sacred) and his drum kit, Calhoun weaves together ever more densely packed rhythms, ones that conjure an alternate reality no less transcendent than the multi-layered sounds of nature, people, thoughts, and relationships. Performed along to images he's taken on his journeys to places as far flung as Mali, the Australian outback, and the heart of Brooklyn, Calhoun's compositions unify the pulse of the ancient and modern worlds, revealing the hidden and underlying connections between the sacred and the everyday. A graduate of the Berklee College of Music, Calhoun is a 2-time Grammy winner best known as a member of the rock band LIVING COLOUR and for his work with artists as diverse as Mick Jagger, Herb Alpert, B.B. King, McCoy Tyner, Phillip Glass, Wayne Shorter, Public Enemy and many more. He is also well known as an early adopter of new music technologies and for his work with pioneers in the medium like Roger Linn and Jaron Lanier. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq8EmKJz9G0&feature=youtu.be Website: https://willcalhoun.com

August 27 - Hayes Greenfield with Ikuo Nakamura - With electronically tweaked sax, flute, kalimba, and voice, Hayes Greenfield creates lush lines and emotionally charged melodies layered into compositions that are both healing and liberating. Accompanying images of sometimes collaborator 3-D filmmaker, Ikuo Nakamura, Greenfield enhances the visual thematic explorations of the human connection to nature by creating sound waves that stop time, and inspire fields of memory and a collective awareness, unlocking a sense of the natural world at once from above, below, inside, and out. Since the late 1970s, Hayes has been performing jazz with his own bands, recording 10 albums and serving as a sideman or leader with notables including Jaki Byard, Rashied Ali, Paul Bley, Dave Liebman, Tom Harrell, Barry Altschul, Tony Scott and many more. Greenfield has also scored more than 70 films, documentaries and TV programs earning prestigious Emmy and Telly Awards and been an active adopter of music technology beginning with the Synclavier in the 1980s. Website: https://www.hayesgreenfield.com/ Video: With Ikuo Nakamura video https://vimeo.com/224740378/d75ac01151 solo: https://vimeo.com/443817123

August 26 - Guitars A Go Go - This is the edge-pushing improvisational partnership of two very "switched-on" Hudson Valley-based guitarists, Sal Cataldi (aka Spaghetti Eastern Music) and Rick Warren. Armed with a plethora of effects pedals and a quest for meditative and melodic adventures that span a galaxy of musical influences and attitudes, the duo has swung for the fences with the June 2020 release of their debut album, Travel Advisory. On the album and in live performances, often with fractal-based video projections, the duo conjures everything from the contemplative soundscapes of Fripp and Eno and wandering proto-electronica of Krautrockers like Tangerine Dream to genre-defining experimental/avant of six-stringers like David Torn to electronic classicists like Pauline Oliveros. Woodstock and NYC-based guitarist Sal Cataldi may be best known for his style-jumping solo project, Spaghetti Eastern Music, where he fuses hypnotic Eastern beats, blues, jazz and electronica-influenced guitar instrumentals with gentle acoustic vocal tunes and looping straight out of the John Martyn/Nick Drake songbook Time Out New York writes: "Cataldi's largely instrumental, Eastern-influenced jams are infused with some delicate guitar work and hauntingly moody atmosphere," while The New York Times proclaims he has "a beat unmistakably his own." Originally from Kingston, Hudson-based Rick Warren has been deeply involved in the improvisational and experimental music scene fostered by renowned vibraphonist Karl Berger at his Creative Music Studio in Woodstock. Rick is also active with the Hudson-based Slink Moss and the Magic Stones, the improvisational duo The Warren-Ver Straeten Half Quartet and the popular acoustic folk duo, Rick and Marilyn, with songwriter Marilyn Miller. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTRaKRseoaA Website: www.guitarsagogo.bandcamp.com

Soapbox Gallery is located at 636 Dean Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11238. For more info, contact info@soapboxgallery.org.

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