BALTIMORE -- A pedal-powered sewing machine altered with magnets and a big, spinning wheel plays two drums simultaneously, creating strange industrial beats. Nearby, two delicately rigged duckpin bowling balls bounce and tap a tiny cymbal against a tin high-hat, sending out a quiet tingling. Both installations are projects of Baltimore-based sound mechanic Neil Feather.
About a half-dozen other interactive sound sculptures are scattered about Baltimore's Current Space gallery, including one that transforms human words and voice patterns into whispers and music for worms. The little guys, in a piece called "Frequencies for Darwin," apparently hear vibrations through their skin. They slowly rise from the bottom of their large, dirt-filled glass jar, sitting atop a bar stool, moving toward the tiny speaker playing through the lid of their temporary home.
Along with the installations, live improvisational performances by local musicians featuring pre-recorded sounds, "former guitars" and traditional instruments like the violin, cello and peddle-steel guitar (albeit played in a very unconventional style) are also scheduled. Welcome to opening night of the ninth edition of Charm City's renowned High Zero Festival of experimental music. — — — " A large nondo grows in Baltimore John Berndt, the driving force behind High Zero, remembers first meeting Feather in the late 1980s.
Their early informal partnerships sparked what's become an annual two-week celebration of abstract sound art, street theater, guerilla noise installations and sold-out concerts with international musicians. Last year, High Zero, whose main concerts run Sept. 27, 28, 29 and 30 at the Baltimore Theater Project, was a New York Times "Weekend Pick.
" It's received rave reviews in the Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore Sun and Washington Post. Nonetheless, it's still somewhat under the radar. Definitely off the radio.
"I just kind of fell into this music scene, with guys a little bit older than me, like Neil, and John Sheehan," Berndt said, standing next to Feather outside the Current Space show titled "Gallery As An Instrument." "They were building their own instruments, creating new sounds. Neil had already invented his first instruments, the large nondo and the former guitar.
" The large nondo, for those unfamiliar, is considered Feather's "grand piano." It's a broad sheet of steel bent in a shallow U curve and strung lengthwise with music wire. The strings are struck with mallets and can be softened with finger manipulation.
Typically rolling a heavy steel rod on top of the strings while occasionally striking the rod with a soft mallet, Feather produces a bright, bell sound that dissolves into a lush, unfurling harmony. The former guitar is more difficult to explain. "He had this whole unusual, idiosyncratic vocabulary that I guess he had begun developing in Denver and Pennsylvania (before moving to Baltimore)," Berndt said.
"We got together and played music. Neil and John Sheehan, another guy and myself ended up forming an experimental music quartet," Berndt continued. "It was called, 'The Thing that Dissolved the Shadow of Something that was Once Burned Twice'.
" "No, that's wrong," Feather said. "It was, 'The Thing that Dissolved the Shadow of Something that was Next to the Thing that Once Burned Twice'." Oh.
It's hysterical, of course, to watch this two-decade old debate about the worst band name ever at 10:30 p.m. on South Calvert Street.
Berndt is the CEO of a successful web design company and Feather's a 51-year-old, married, adjunct professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. But out of these initial projects with Feather, Berndt, John Dierker, Scott Larson, Jason Willett and others grew The Red Room collaborative, a modest 50-seat music venue at Normal's Books and Records. Fifteen years and going strong, they've put on more than 500, $5, Saturday night shows.
The term "experimental music" is generally credited 50 years ago to American composer John Cage, denoting new, difficult to categorize music. When improvised like at High Zero, it's best described as avant-garde, free jazz. Much like artists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko shattered conventional notions of painting, experimental music challenges conventional ideas of what constitutes music.
"Pop music is familiar and we're kind of told how to feel -- sad, angry, happy, in love," Chiara Giovando, curator of the opening Current Space exhibit said. "That's okay. But what I like about experimental music is that the meaning is left open.
Your emotions, what you feel, are for your own interpretation. Your own imagination." Experimental music can be frustrating, boring, meditative and wildly exhilarating.
For players, too, Feather said, it's risk-taking. It's exciting. "You really have to develop into a good listener to improvise well," Feather said.
Daniel Higgs, of Baltimore's best known band, Lungfish, lives near The Red Room and has been a regular there and at High Zero over the years. "You never know when you're going to get your mind blown," Higgs said. — — — Failed trumpet player Feather, the self-described sound mechanic, grew up in a small town, Sharon, in Western Pennsylvania.
"I wasn't into sports, so I spent a lot of time by myself growing up," he said. Feather was into music though, singing in school and church choirs. Later, he began trumpet lessons in middle school.
They didn't go well. "My musical education was fairly traumatic," Feather said. "It all happened when I was 14.
I think I had a couple of bad teachers. I hated playing the trumpet. I quit.
" Turns out it wasn't an end, but a beginning. After bagging the trumpet and traditional lessons, Feather had an epiphany at the public library. "In one week I found three albums that changed my life," Feather said.
'Harry Partch, 'Delusions of the Fury," John Cage's 'Radio Music,' and Captain Beefheart's 'Trout Mask Replica'." Partch, another groundbreaking American composer and instrument builder, developed his own musical system of scales. Cage, also a writer and philosopher, pioneered improvised music, electronic music, and the non-traditional use of conventional instruments.
Beefheart was closer to rock 'n' roll. Feather listened then to Frank Zappa, Cream and Black Sabbath as well. "Part of it was rebellion," he said.
But the search for new sounds never faded away. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics from Penn State in 1978 and a Master of Fine Arts in ceramics from the University of Maryland in 1980. For two decades afterward, however, Feather spent little time at the pottery wheel, preferring to keep building strange-looking noise machines.
The search for interesting music led to Coltrane and other free jazz artists. "Not playing with expectations changes everything," he said. Eventually, Feather's became an acclaimed improviser of experimental music in his own right, and now performs around the world.
Perhaps most importantly, the 51-year-old is a leader amongst a growing community of artists that's taken Baltimore into the forefront of experimental music. Home to eccentric artists like Zappa, John Waters, Philip Glass and Edgar Allen Poe, Baltimore still has a knack for growing unique artists, writers and musicians from its hard-scrabble, cheap-rent living. With venues like The Red Room and High Zero, plus players like Feather, other top experimental musicians like Giovando, from San Francisco and Susan Alcorn, from Houston, have relocated specifically because of the avant-garde music scene.
"I came here in 2004 to play High Zero," Alcorn said. "If you told me I'd be moving to a city like Baltimore, I'd have told you, you were crazy. But here I am.
" Alcorn grew up on the country and western pedal-steer guitar. It's still her instrument of choice, but the nature of her playing has changed dramatically. Feather, meanwhile, said he never went back to trumpet, but did admit to picking up a saxophone occasionally.
He still has a deep appreciation for more mainstream jazz. "I played a little saxophone in college, but when I saw Jack Wright (a free form jazz star) play the sax, I decided I should really try something else," Feather said. "I realized I was never going to do anything that new there.
"It was like, okay, you've got that covered. Let me go and see what I can do over here.
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