Non-Event and the Waterworks Museum present MATT AZEVEDO + ERNST KAREL + JED SPEARE performing a site-specific work using sounds recorded at MWRA pumping stations.

MATT AZEVEDO performs and records under the name Retribution Body; his music explores the intersection of sound, vibration, and Zen meditation. He received a Bachelor of Music with emphasis in Sound Recording Technology from UMass Lowell (Magna Cum Laude) in 1999, and then spent the next 11 years as a staff engineer at M Works Mastering studio. He later earned a Masters in Acoustics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Currently, he is a Consultant in Acoustics at Acentech, where he is involved in a wide range of projects and continues his work as a mastering engineer and producer as a freelancer.

ERNST KAREL’s multidimensional audio work includes electroacoustic improvisation and composition, location recording, sound for nonfiction film, and solo and collaborative sound installations. Using analog electronics and location recordings, either separately or in combination, Karel creates audio pieces that move between the abstract and the documentary. Recent installations include the ongoing project Hourly Directional Sound Recordings (with Helen Mirra), instantiations of which have been exhibited in the 2012 Sao Paulo Bienal and at MIT List Visual Arts Center. Together with Pawel Wojtasik and Toby Kim Lee, he made Single Stream, first as a large-scale video and four-channel audio installation for the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, and then as a cinematic work with 5.1 sound.

JED SPEARE is an artist working in a variety of media and settings. Called “a pioneer of multimedia presentation” by Wire magazine, he has presented sound, video, performance and multidisciplinary work, locally, nationally, and internationally in Canada, Ireland, Poland, Belarus, Croatia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, and Taiwan. In 1978 he studied at the Sonic Research Studio of the World Soundscape Project, in Burnaby, British Columbia, an experience that led to his extensive work in field recordings and his advocacy about the sound environment. In the eighties, he was closely associated with San Francisco industrial culture as the creator of the record album Cable Car Soundscapes (1982) on Smithsonian Folkways Records. He was also a founder of the group, Research Library, who recorded on Subterranean Records. During this time, he was active creating numerous sound, collaborative, experimental theater, movement, and multidisciplinary performance works in San Francisco, New York, and Amsterdam, where he taught at the Theatreschool Mime Opleiding in 1986 and 1987. The double album, Sound Works 1982 – 1987, (2008) on Family Vineyard Records, includes several longer-form works from that period.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Brookline Commission for the Arts, a local agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.