Owen Gardner premieres Where Is My Hand in Space? — a new suite of pieces for microtonal electric guitar and fixed media.

Here, he continues his project of defamiliarizing traditional musical grammar. Gardner treats sound equally as matter and as an articulation of time, while perception is a means to soften the boundaries between performer, audience, and their environment.

Owen Gardner (b.1985, Annapolis, Md.) is a Berlin-based composer, performer, and improviser. His work is guided by the generative tension between experimental and traditional approaches, in solo and ensemble settings, primarily as a guitarist in the leaderless quartet Horse Lords. In addition to his own music, Gardner has performed works by Catherine Lamb, Jackson Mac Low, and Julius Eastman, and has worked with Matmos, Dan Deacon, the Harmonic Space Orchestra, and Future Islands. He also sings early American choral music with Sacred Harp Berlin, studies the theory and instrumental technique of Mauritanian classical music with Sidi ould Ahmed Zeidan, and has programmed and promoted experimental music for many years, both as a member of Baltimore’s High Zero collective and at Berlin’s KM28.

Since 2010, the Graham Foundation has partnered with Lampo to produce an international performance series held at the Madlener House. Lampo, founded in 1997, is a nonprofit organization for experimental music and intermedia projects.

Lampo, established in 1997, supports artists working in new music, experimental sound and other interdisciplinary practices. The Chicago-based organization's core activity has been and remains its performance series. Rather than making programming decisions around tour schedules, Lampo invites selected artists to create and perform new work, and then the organization provides the space, resources and curatorial support to help them fulfill their vision. Lampo also organizes artist talks, lectures, screenings and workshops, and publishes written and recorded documents related to its series.

Note: This event will be held in the ballroom on the third floor of the Madlener House, which is only accessible by stairs. The first-floor galleries and bookshop are accessible via outdoor lift. Please contact us at 312.787.4071 or info@grahamfoundation.org to make arrangements.

Photo: Hansueli Schaerer