The seventh iteration of the False Harmonics series will feature the NYC premiere of Nat Baldwin’s new solo upright bass work, AUTONOMIA, as well as a new trio formation by veteran noise violinist C. Spencer Yeh with Charmaine Lee’s uniquely oblique vocal improv and Chris Corsano’s dimension shattering drum work.

Nat Baldwin
Nat Baldwin is a musician and writer living in Portland, Maine. He began playing double bass in high school and studied jazz performance at the Hartt School of Music before dropping out to pursue his own musical interests outside the confines of academia. In 2001, he moved to Middletown, CT to immerse himself in the Wesleyan experimental music community, studying with Anthony Braxton and performing with such artists as Mary Halvorson, Charlie Looker, Nate Wooley, Tatsuya Nakatani, Daniel Carter, Jack Wright, and Jessica Pavone. His first solo album, Solo Contrabass, appeared in 2003 on Peacock Recordings, featuring studies in extended bowing techniques ranging from aggressive noise to lowercase minimalism. In 2005, Baldwin’s solo music took a turn toward linear melody and form, shaping a unique voice in the singer-songwriter tradition and releasing several critically acclaimed albums while touring extensively.

AUTONOMIA I: Body Without Organs represents a departure from the rich body of solo work Nat Baldwin has amassed as a songwriter and core member of the band Dirty Projectors. It instead marks the return to his roots as an improvisor equipped with a unique arsenal of extended techniques, picking up where his potent, albeit little known, first album Solo Contrabass (Peacock Recordings, 2003) left off.

C. Spencer Yeh / Charmaine Lee / Chris Corsano Trio
C. Spencer Yeh is a musician recognized for his interdisciplinary activities and collaborations as an artist, improviser, and composer, as well his music project Burning Star Core. After immigrating to the United States from Taiwan when he was a child, Yeh looked towards drive-in movies, local and public television, “Mom-and-Pop” video stores, and genre movie magazines as early guides in his developing interests. Though Yeh studied violin at a young age, as a teenager he forwent his training, considering his encounter with the 4-track tape recorder as his first real revelation in working with sound and music.

Charmaine Lee is a New York-based vocalist. Her music is predominantly improvised, favoring a uniquely personal approach to vocal expression concerned with spontaneity, playfulness, and risk-taking. Beyond extended vocal technique, Charmaine uses amplification, feedback, and microphones to augment and distort the voice. She has performed with leading improvisers Nate Wooley, id m theft able, and Joe Morris, and maintains ongoing collaborations with contemporaries Conrad Tao, Victoria Shen, Zach Rowden, Eric Wubbels, and Leila Bordreuil.

Chris Corsano is an upstate New York-based drummer who has been active at the intersections of collective improvisation, free jazz, avant-rock, and noise music since the late 1990s. He began a long-standing, high-energy musical partnership with saxophonist Paul Flaherty in 1998. Their style, which they occasionally refer to with (semi-)tongue-in-cheek humor as “The Hated Music,” combines modern free-jazz’s ecstatic collectivist spirit and the urgency and intensity of hardcore punk.