Open House Plays The Kitchen This Week

Using Richard Brautigan's novella In Watermelon Sugar as a guide and the lens through which material is developed, director/choreographer Steven Reker collaborates with Ryan Seaton, Matt Evans, and Eliot Krimsky to form the experimental noise rock band Open House. At The Kitchen, Open House will premiere an evening of songs, compositions and performance work, this week, June 25-27.

With shared musical influences that range from Suicide and Wire to composers like Meredith Monk, the group creates compellingly strange pop songs using sprawling sonic landscapes. Through sound, light and movement, Open House conjures and reworks the poetically dense world that Brautigan created in his 1968 book and creates a space for a "collective imagination" to emerge during the performance. Instrumentation will be comprised of various analog synthesizers, guitars, drums and voices as well as digital sound design. Universal themes of boredom, community, sex, loneliness, beauty, loss and longing will be explored throughout the performance.

The concerts will begin at 8pm. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased online at www.thekitchen.org; by phone at 212.255.5793 x11; or in person at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street), Tuesdays - Saturdays, 2:00 - 6:00 P.M.

Steven Reker founded the band and performance ensemble People Get Ready in 2009 after a string of shows at The Kitchen's Dance and Process series. The group's future performances were described by The New York Times as "an experience beyond hearing music in a club or viewing a dance; it is a moving meditation that suggests dreams." NPR's All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen said of their last piece, Specific Ocean, "no single show took my breath away the way this one did. Part rock concert, part performance art, part dance, all perfectly melded together." People Get Ready has also released multiple recordings with the Brooklyn based label Brassland Records. Steven has presented his work with People Get Ready or as a solo artist at New York Live Arts (and Dance Theater Workshop), Baryshnikov Arts Center, Death by Audio, The Invisible Dog, Clocktower Gallery, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Skirball Center (LA), New York City Center, Duke University, Performance Space 122, Glasslands Gallery and many other venues and performing art centers in the US. He has worked as a dancer­choreographer and/or musician­composer with artists Yoshiko Chuma, David Byrne, Robert Wilson, Jodi Melnick, Zac Pennington, Bill T. Jones, Yasuko Yokoshi, Miranda July, Fred Thomas, and Annie­B Parson.

Ryan Seaton is a composer, guitarist and saxophonist living in New York City. His band, Callers, has released three critically acclaimed albums and toured extensively throughout Europe, Canada and the United States with Dirty Projectors, Wye Oak and Here We Go Magic among others. Dubbed "stark in execution, dazzling in effect" by Pitchfork, Callers has often been featured on NPR and has appeared in various local and international festivals including Tanned Tin, Primavera, Hillside and Ottawa Blues Fest. In addition, Seaton has been commissioned for sound design, horn arrangements, vocal works and electronic compositions by many recording and performing artists including Dark Sky, Joanna Kotze, Ictus and Lance Gries.

Praised by The New York Times as "meticulous and expressive," percussionist and composer Matt Evans performs and creates while living in Brooklyn. Matt is a co­founder of the percussion charged trio Tigue, whose debut album Peaks will be released later this year. He performs regularly with contemporary music groups such as Contemporaneous, Bearthoven and Ensemble Signal while creating work with bands Rokenri, Man Forever, and Private Elevators. He has been a featured performer on the Bang on a Can Marathon, the MATA Festival, the Tribeca New Music Festival and the Big|Brave Ears Festival; and has performed at acclaimed venues such as The Kitchen, the Kennedy Center and MoMA. Matt received an M.M. in Percussion Performance from the Eastman School of Music and a B.M. from the Ohio State University before moving to New York in the summer of 2012.

Eliot Krimsky is a musician/composer, co-founder and lead singer of the band Glass Ghost, and media artist. Glass Ghost has been called "weird and mournful, yet highly rhythmic" by Time Out New York, and "delicately brave" by Andy McCluskey of the pioneering electronic group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Krimsky blends his love for composition with media art as artistic director for LYFE -- a multimedia Glass Ghost performance which had its Performance Space 122 world premiere at Lincoln Center in May of 2015. Krimsky's collaborators have included Meshell Ndegeocello, artist/dancer/musician Steven Reker, the band Here We Go Magic, choreographer Beth Gill, and director Dustin Guy Defa. His film compositions have been featured at festivals worldwide including Sundance, South By Southwest and Zinebi Bilboa. Krimsky has performed locally and internationally at venues as diverse as Lincoln Center NYC, Montreal Jazz Festival, O2 Arena in London, and DIY spaces.

Funding Credits

Open House is made possible with support from Jerome Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and The Harkness Foundation for Dance, and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

About The Kitchen

The Kitchen is one of New York City's most forward-looking nonprofit spaces, showing innovative work by emerging and established artists across disciplines. Our programs range from dance, music, performance, and theater to video, film, and art, in addition to literary events, artists' talks, and lecture series. Since its inception in 1971, The Kitchen has been a powerful force in shaping the cultural landscape of this country, and has helped launch the careers of many artists who have gone on to worldwide prominence.

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