Experimental music concert and conversation: Michael Pestel In-Person
Strategy of Lakes:
Experimental music concert and conversation featuring composer Michael Pestel. Pestel will present Catalog of Extinct Birds (Library Edition 2025). The Catalog, inspired by Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d'oiseau, is a composition destined to increase considerably in duration during this and subsequent centuries. Though originally scored for solo piano, this iteration features a small ensemble of both acoustic and electronic instruments channeling the sounds of birds we can no longer hear.
Over the past thirty years, Pestel has focused on bird sound via live performances in aviaries and on diverse bird-inflected instruments. These instruments have been invented or hybridized out of a need to communicate with a wide range of avian sounds. They include the Birdmachine, Birdrawingtable, Pianotable, Cardewcart, Violaire, Shengslider, Avianflute, Broominette, Windspinner, Flarinet, and Dopplermarimba. An account of Pestel’s many years performing at Pittsburgh’s National Aviary are celebrated in David Rothenberg’s book and BBC program, Why Birds Sing. For more information, please see www.michael-pestel.com
Strategy of Lakes is a concert series to support a tacit network of experimental musicians and composers working in the New England region, with a particular focus on New Haven and Hamden as a central hub of activity. The interests are diverse - ranging from homemade instrument building, birdsong, social practice, dead media, and ritual performance - but the artists share a perspective unified by geography and spirit of independence, often sharing their work through self-publishing and semi-private performances conducted, after hours, in homes, cafes, galleries, and bookstores - largely all within a 200-mile radius.