Scholar Adam Tinkle to present "A Mess of Things"
A Mess of Things, “an illuminated radio play about family, memory, and having too much stuff,” will be performed by Alan Tinkle at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25, in the Arthur Zankel Music Center. Admission is free to all members of the Skidmore community.
After a June 2011 performance of A Mess of Things, Steven Leigh Morris wrote (in the LA Weekly): “Adam Tinkle's solo performance features himself by an electrical guitar he plays (and, briefly, a saxophone he also plays) and the projected image of a kind of archaic, helix-like invention that his grandfather concocted. That image occasionally dissolves into a stream, along which origami boats float. The primary narrative is recorded, against which Tinkle riffs on the guitar, sometimes with accompanying lyrics. This recording consists of audio-documentary clips from an interview by Tinkle of his grandfather, an inventor, and upbeat fellow who, as he aged, needed to move and remove the "junk" he accrued over the years. The interviews include the voices of the old man's daughters—Tinkle's aunts. Time passing means looking back on things we no longer know, or need to know. Tinkle is a stoic yet passionate performer, and his lovely performance is a kind of evocation to the essences of history on the verge of extinction.”
According to his web site, Tinkle is an artist, educator, and scholar active in music, sound, interdisciplinary performance and media arts. After studies in cultural theory, intellectual history, musicology and experimental composition at Wesleyan University, where his composition teachers included Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton, he came to the University of California, San Diego, where he continues both scholarship and music-making while simultaneously working to build a farm and homestead in the Cuyamaca Mountains.
He performs on reeds, numerous stringed instruments, electronics, and voice, and his work is heard in contexts ranging from rock to free improvisation, electro-acoustic to avant-classical, as well as in theater, dance and film. His recent work has focused on performances of extreme duration and in unusual spatial contexts, leading him to create site-specific music in the desert and build a portable sound sculpture that functions as both a listening room and giant microphone. When not making music, he might be found teaching, curating concerts, researching the relations between art and social change in the 20th century U.S., or leading one of his many ensembles, one of which, the Universal Language Orchestra, features kids ages 8-12 improvising on and composing for unique, home-built instruments.
Tinkle’s performance is sponsored by the First-Year Experience, the Department of Psychology, the Moore Documentarily Studies Collaborative, and Project VIS.
