HOT! Festival at Dixon Place presents Nick Hallett and Mikael Karlsson :: July 19 at 8pm :: Dixon Place, 258 Bowery below Houston, 2nd Floor :: TIX: $10.

An evening of original electroacoustic compositions by composer Mikael Karlsson and his collaborator Rob Stephenson, alongside vocalist Nick Hallett’s interpretation of Meredith Monk’s 1972 song cycle for voice and glass, Our Lady of Late. Projections completed at the Experimental Television Center by Brock Monroe add a touch of synesthesia. The works will be woven together to create a fluid journey between expressions of old / new, original / interpreted, poetic / prelinguistic, visual / sonic, and organic / mediated. Contributions from percussionist Sara Marcus and cellist Jason Wingate complete the bill.

Nick Hallett: Nick Hallett is a musician and avid curator working in the intersections of sound, moving image, and live performance. His projects encompass performing various genres of new music—from opera to cabaret to pop, composing for film and theater, developing audiovisual installations, DJing, writing, and filmmaking. He originated the band PLANTAINS, which from 2000 until 2003 operated as a live multimedia act, incorporating electronic music and video, playing on bills with Le Tigre, and Scissor Sisters. Their posthumous cover of “I Feel Love” (commissioned by Matt Wolf for the soundtrack of his 2004 film of the same name) recently appeared in compilations from Colette and They Shoot Homos Don’t They. He has performed his original songs at many an Earl Dax-produced event, including Weimar New York and Off The Cuff (with Ann Magnuson). He made his New York opera debut at The Kitchen in Susie Ibarra and Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Shangri-La” and continues to interpret works by other contemporary composers.

As a curator, he has developed multimedia events for The Kitchen, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Ocularis, Monkey Town, Aurora Picture Show and Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s TBA festival, along with film programs for New York Underground Film Festival, Artists Television Access, Pacific Film Archive, MassArt Film Society, Chicago Filmmakers and All Tomorrow Parties rock festival. He regularly hosts the series Darmstadt (contemporary music, with Zach Layton), Harkness A/V (time-based media salon), and Maison Du Chic (multimedia “cabaret”) in various venues around New York City.

Mikael Karlsson: Mikael was born in Sweden in 1975, and moved to New York in 2000 after abandoning a stalled career in liquor retail. Mikael holds a masters degree in composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music and graduated Summa Cum Laude with departmental honors in June of 2005.He has received numerous awards for his compositions and his music has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Galapagos Art Space, LeFrak Concert Hall and many other lovely venues in New York. His music is on the soundtrack of films by acclaimed experimental filmmakers Barbara Hammer (History Lessons, 2001 - an Official Sundance Selection that year) and Christopher Young (Orpheus and Eurydice 2001 - released by Please Records as a separate soundtrack cd). He is currently working on three major soundtracks for 2 films and the next installment of the xbox game Battlefield – Bad Company, for Electronic Arts together with Tobias Wagner and Roman Vinuesa. Mikael is the personal representative of celebrated composer Tobias Picker and was recently awarded an Extraordinary Talent Visa for the US. He teaches at the Aaron Copland School of Music NYC.

In 2003, he co-founded film scoring collective Please MusicWorks LLC, which has grown to include 5 composers and more than 100 of New York’s best classical performers. In 2006, he released the cd “dog” with Rob Stephenson, and he is currently finishing recordings for his next cd, “Privacy”, which will be released in the fall of 2007. Another project, “Versioner”, will involve a re-thinking of all his pieces for new instruments and will also include remixes by a varied slew of musicians. The project will run hand in hand with a visual part provided by photographer Niklas Alexandersson, and will mean a batch of new “versions” every three months. “Versioner” starts on October 1, 2007.

About Our Lady of Late: Our Lady of Late is a cycle of 18 songs for voice and glass, completed in 1972 by interdisciplinary composer, Meredith Monk. It is a haunting work in which the singer accompanies herself by running a finger along the periphery of a water-filled goblet. As the instrument drones, the voice creates landscapes, invents languages, demonstrates psychoacoustic phenomena, and unearths raw consciousness.

This performance is generously enabled by a Presentation Funds grant from the Experimental Television Center, which is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.