November 15 | workshop 6

Join us for workshop 6 at PWNW featuring new and in-process works by Brandon Conway, TJ Thompson, and Midnight Variety Hour.

Saturday, November 15th 
doors 7p, show 7:30p 
$10-15 sliding scale
$5 Arts for All

workshop is a series for musicians and artists working in sound to present new and in-progress works and compositions. workshop supports experimentation, improvisation and composed sound and noise, maybe even “songs”. it is an informal showing, a moment to work through new ideas, or old ideas in a new way.

curated by stephanie lavon trotter and presented by PWNW, the space supports acoustic and electronic works, as well as work that includes projection, lighting and movement.

About the Artists:

Brandon Conway
I started playing guitar when I was twelve so I could be in a Christian rock band with some of my older friends. My parents bought me an acoustic guitar on the condition that I took classical lessons.
So I took lessons with this long-haired, college-aged, hippie guy who lived with his parents and taught out of his bedroom. I would sit on his dirty bed and he would sit across from me giving feedback on my halting attempts at the classic “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” while also rolling a rather meager spliff. 
He taught me how to maintain your fingernails, how to play a proper rest stroke, and he humored me when, asked what song I would like to learn, I brought in the sheet music for “All I Ask of You” from The Phantom of the Opera.
Several years later I had moved on to electric rock guitar and started lessons with a different teacher. He was a Christian body builder/model with a bleach blonde center part – and he had a Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute band. He would sit across from me in tiny sweat shorts critiquing my stilted efforts at the classic “The Wind Cries Mary” while also recounting his prophetic and holy dreams.
He taught me how to wrap your thumb, how to play a proper half step bend, and he humored me when, asked what song I would like to learn, I brought in the official Toad the Wet Sprocket Guitar Tab Songbook.  
Sometime I’ll tell you about the jazz lessons and the overwrought string quartets, the years I swore off the guitar, and my early, clumsy flounderings in free improvisation. And sometime I’ll share how I found my way back to the guitar and found a sort of uneasy peace with the instrument. I may be close to finding that.

Founded in 2017, Midnight Variety Hour (MVH) is a performance collective of interdisciplinary dancers, performers, musicians, and filmmakers. Through the build-up of layers, patterns, imagery, and sound, MVH engages in immersive world-building that distorts time and space. Distinct sections of improvisation emerge through the tension and release of accumulated instrumentation, movement, and video.
Each individual artist within the group has focused disciplines, but through encouraging each other to step into the less familiar, they discover connection and authenticity, finding prompts in the circumstances and dissolving the concept of the individual by uplifting the collective. MVH values acts of play as liberatory practice.

Current members include:
Sean Christensen (he/they): sound and vision, drawing
Fern Wiley (she/her): movement, object inventing and reinventing, sound
Lee Wilmoth (they/them): movement, voice and sound, facilitation
With special guest accompaniment from Vanessa Johnson (she/her)

TJ Thompson is an active composer & performer based in Portland, Oregon. He is
inspired by subconscious ideas that flow through movement, active listening, and the
collaborative nature of music. With an ear towards experimenting, he especially enjoys
composing for specific people & getting to work directly with musicians on a project.
Excited by the endless explorations of sound, he is interested in composing works for a
diversity of instrumentations, pursuing the unique combinations of timbre. As a
performer he has long term collaborative partnerships with writer Diana Oropeza, in the
experimental voice & drums project The Social Stomach, the bass & drums duo Two Crows
Fighting, and the koto centric chamber group Multiverse Ensemble with members of the Oregon
Koto Kai respectfully.