Austin's Museum of Digital Art Presents Keith Rowe & Rick Reed

Keith Rowe has been astounding audiences for decades with his unusual style of free-form jazz guitar techniques inspired by early American jazz greats and other less likely influences such as Jackson Pollack and an old art instructor.

Rowe took small steps over the years as a guitarist to attempt a completely individual approach to the instrument, embracing free jazz and various prepared guitar techniques (eg. a New Year's resolution to never tune his guitar again), and eventually deciding to abandon traditional techniques entirely, opting to only play a flat-laying guitar. His performances are described like observed surgical procedures, as he manipulates short wave radios and other noise elements along with his instrument. The guitar's pickups, for example, grab radio stations and play them through the amplifiers along with his playing. Although he recorded and performed in relative obscurity for many years, he has gained some notoriety in the last decade, opting to record with a small army of other abstract-loving musicians, including Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff, Sachiko M, Oren Ambarchi, Christian Fennesz and Peter Rehberg.

Austin native Rick Reed operates in an underground music scene not unlike Rowe's: he's been composing and improvising music in the area for over 25 years, embracing sine waves, short wave radio, noise and field recordings paired with Moog solo and with groups like Frequency Curtain and the Abrasion Ensemble. We know him best as the host of KOOP's weekly program, Commercial Suicide, and as curator of Toneburst, a local collective dedicated to promoting unheard and unusual music in the Austin area.

Rowe and Reed will be performing as part 8 of AMODA's on-going performance series. In case you weren't aware, AMODA is a non-profit organization whose mission is to mission is to engage the public, educate the community and support artists in the creation, understanding and appreciation of digital art, so you know it's going to be awesome.

[Keither Rowe Discography]
[Richard Reed MySpace]
[AMODA Performance Series Information]
[Commercial Suicide @ KOOP]

AMODA Presents Keith Rowe & Rick Reed
Saturday, April 21st
Ceremony Hall (4100 Red River)
8pm-10pm
$10 for AMODA Members, $12 general
All ages