Steve Roach’s Ambient Lounge: Ben Neill & Tony Obr
($10-$15 | 6pm doors / 7pm show) Ambient pioneer Steve Roach hosts the monthly “Ambient Lounge”with rotating performers and DJs. This month features artists Ben Neill & Tony Obr.
“The June 6 Ambient Lounge is going to be next encounter with unexpected on the front side of innovation and genre defying sonic expression
The born from the breath theme of the night expresses the essential function of life – breathing – as the core of the nights music. ”
-Steve
**Ben Neill**
Composer/performer Ben Neill is the inventor of the Mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument, and is widely recognized as a musical innovator through his recordings, performances and installations. Neill’s music blends influences from electronic, jazz, and minimalist music, blurring the lines between digital media and acoustic instrument performance.
Neill has recorded eleven albums of his music on labels including Universal/Verve, Thirsty Ear, Astralwerks, and Six Degrees. Performances include BAM Next Wave Festival, Big Ears Festival, Lincoln Center, Whitney Museum of American Art, Bing Concert Hall at Stanford, Getty Museum, Cite de la Musique Paris, Moogfest, Spoleto Festival, Umbria Jazz, Bang On A Can Festival, ICA London, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Vienna Jazz Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival, among many others. Neill has worked closely with many musical innovators including La Monte Young, John Cage, John Cale, Pauline Oliveros, Rhys Chatham, DJ Spooky, David Berhman, Mimi Goese, King Britt, and Nicolas Collins. Neill also leads concerts of La Monte Young’s The Second Dream of the High Tension Stepdown Line Transformer with an international brass ensemble; performances have recently been presented in New York, Amsterdam, Paris, Amsterdam, Huddersfield, Den Bosch, Oslo, Krems, Koln, Los Angeles, Warsaw, and Hannover.
Neill began developing the Mutantrumpet in the early 1980s. Initially an acoustic instrument (a combination of 3 trumpets and a trombone combined into one), he collaborated with synthesizer Robert Moog to integrate electronics. In 1992, while in residency at the STEIM research and development lab for new instruments in Amsterdam, Neill made the mutantrumpet fully computer interactive. In 2008 he created a new version of his instrument at STEIM, and returned there in 2016-17 to design Version 4.0 which made its debut 2019
**Tony Obr**
Tony Obr (b.1980) is a musician, sound designer, composer, visual artist and educator. He often works at the confluence of art, technology, and performance, focusing on innovative uses of sound in musical and non-musical contexts. His work frequently centers on the development of interactive systems for electronic music performance, dance performance, and art installation. He plays live electronics and woodwinds in the performance art, experimental noise and free-improv ensemble Datura, as well as with saxophonist Keith Kelly in their duo Slender Loris. Since 2013 he has worked as chief sound designer, and has developed interactive sound systems for Grisha Coleman’s echo::system.
His visual design has been featured in album artwork and poster design, most notably for the record label txt recordings. As an educator he has taught electronic music and sound design courses at Paradise Valley Community College since 2014, and music technology courses in the ASU Popular Music program since 2021. As a composer he works under the moniker tsone. His compositions can be characterized as ranging from warm, gauzy, electronic detritus to blast of impenetrable walls of sound. In 2021 his work was featured in Steve Roach’s SoundQuest Fest. His work has been released on a number of international recording labels including: Home Normal, txt recordings, Schematic Music Company, Sunwarped, Tessellate Recordings, Stereoscenic, Tsuku-Boshi, Audiotalaia, Dark Era Tapes, and Pocket Fields.