24-HOUR DRONE: EXPERIMENTS IN SOUND AND MUSIC (2015)

Say HELLO to our fifth season with the first annual 24-HOUR DRONE: Experiments in Sound and Music, an adventurous collaboration with the Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht, Netherlands. An immersive event and all-encompassing experience, 24-HOUR DRONE features musicians from the region and beyond experimenting in electronic, psychedelic, classical, non-western and instrumental drone music for a full 24 hours of low-frequency fun, set in-the-round in Basilica’s Main Hall.

The event  will be a fully immersive experience in-the-round with no stage. The circular arrangement is based off of the concept of a “tonal clock,” a visual representation of the chromatic scale, and the harmonic sacred geometry that ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras helped develop.

Admission allows attendees to come and go as they please, but those who make the commitment to this endurance, long-duration work will be rewarded with the intangible feeling of meditative contentment, pure bliss, and communal collaboration.

The talented roster include the following performers, with more to be announced:

• Prurient, one of the most well-known and influential names in noise music.

• SUUNS, Montreal-based futurists

• Bobby Previte, a legendary percussionist and exceptional composer/orchestrator in the thriving jazz and experimental music scene

• Patrick Higgins, of ZS, polyglot NYC composer and out-of-the-box classical guitarist

• Arone Dyer, of musical duo Buke and Gase

• Randy Gibson, a minimalist composer/performer who creates enveloping and ritualistic works in Just Intonation

• Eric Fraser, an emerging exponent of a rare style of North Indian classical bansuri flute playing known for its purity and antiquity

• Brian Dewan, of Dewanatron; inventor, composer and local renaissance man

• Eliot Kessel, co-collaborator of sister and fellow musician Lia Ices, an extraordinaire of production and composition

• Slow Collins, the psych mayhem union of Alexander Turnquist and John Rosenthal

• Lea Bertucci, interdisciplinary artist/composer/improviser and bass clarinetist who is also an artist-in-residence at Issue Project Room

• Greg Fox (Guardian Alien, Liturgy; drummer extraordinaire)

• Jessica Moss (Montreal-based violinist and visual artist best known as a member of Silver Mount Zion)

Adding depth and diversity to the lineup will be local favorites C. Lavender (sound artist and healer), a Sunday morning gong bath with Hariprakash & Theresa Widmann, John Rosenthal (bassist/composer and manager of Second Ward Foundation), Alexander Turnquist (accomplished 12-string guitarist and composer), Ultraam (improvising psychedelic noise rock/jazz band), Logan Visscher (noise/experimentalist of World Lines), Harmonic Frost (Troy-based drone/ambient musician), sound artists Seth Chrisman and Nathan McLaughlin, Evildroners which is comprised of Hudson icons Melissa Auf Der Maur (Hole, Smashing Pumpkins), Dan Seward (Dan Bunny, Bunnybrains of Warren Streets’ The Record Shoppe), and C. Lavender joined by Shannon F.), Peter Aaron (front man of blues punk legends the Chrome Cranks and one half of the Peter Aaron/Brian Chase Duo), and Saviturn (Tibetan sound bowls and participatory vocalizations).
This is 24-HOUR DRONE’s first installment stateside, with plans to hold it annually in the U.S. and Europe, after the idea was sparked during a late-night New Years conversation in 2007 between Basilica co-founder Melissa Auf der Maur and festival organizer Bob van Heur. The first 24-HOUR DRONE was held in tandem with the Le Guess Who? festival in November of 2014.

24-HOUR DRONE occurs in conjunction with a re-creation of what happened when Lincoln’s funeral train stopped in Hudson on April 25, 1865. Organized by local historian Carole Osterink, at 8:45 PM, a reenactment will set forth from the outdoor grounds of Basilica, cross over the train tracks, and honor Lincoln’s passing with a dirge sung by women dressed all in white. Timed to coincide with the very hour of Lincoln’s funeral train arrival 150 years ago, the original event was described by the train commander as “one of the weirdest ever witnessed.” Afterwards, Bobby Previte will conduct an ensemble of Hudson Valley musicians at Basilica, in his re-imagination of Aaron Copland’s masterpiece, Lincoln Portrait, narrated by Brian Dewan.

Basilica will present video work from Second Ward Foundation’s permanent video art collection in the North Hall on Sunday in tandem with 24-HOUR DRONE. Special thanks to John Rosenthal and Second Ward Foundation for collaborating and supporting the event.

In collaboration with Wave Farm, 24-HOUR DRONE will be streamed online in its entirety, with selected hours broadcast on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM radio station in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley.

There will be a spring kick-off feast with dinner for sale on Saturday evening and brunch for sale on Sunday morning prepared by Basilica’s most beloved chef, Nicole LoBue of Alimentary Kitchen. The feast is open to the public with food available for purchase; no concert entry ticket is needed. Kids, families, parents, and any non-droners are welcome.

During the event, a cash bar will be open on Saturday night for event goers. Late at night, Hudson’s own Taste of India Food Truck will be at Basilica to fuel the wee hours.

Because Basilica is a unique industrial setting with limited seating, organizers recommend that drone attendees bring camping pads, yoga mats and/or pillows; sleeping bags/blankets, comfortable clothes, bottles for refill at Basilica’s water fountain, and endurance-enhancing snacks.