Sander Roscoe Wolff

Ain Soph Aur performed at {open} on May 15, 2008 as part of their 3rd Thursday series. Joining us for our set was 15 year old Nial Morgan (Deer Tear).

Hear a board recording of the performance, or view two 10 minute video excerpts.

[Please note that the audio quality of the videos is greatly diminished due to YouTube’s proprietary compression system.]

Part 1:

Part 2:

On April 5th 2008, Ain Soph Aur performed at Zero Point Space as part of Thee Dung Mummy 5th Anniversary Experimental Music Festival. In keeping with the organic fluidity of the group’s performance philosophy we, at the last minute, included a third artist in our performance. The artist known as ‘Catastrophic Mermaids on Parade’ joined us.

Here’s a flyer I made for the show:

I am offering up a room recording of our performance, which I decided to call “The Quality of Volition.” It is actually an excerpt, but a fairly long one. (About 15 minutes) The entire performance was about 25 minutes long.

The Quality of Volition

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Raindog Armstrong is a poet, publisher, and pied piper for poetry. With his Lummox Press, he published the Lummox Journal as a monthly magazine, which showcased artists from around the country, and around the world. Publishing both poetry and in-depth interviews, the Journal has now moved onto the internet. This has freed him, at last, to publish the first of several volumes of his own work, the first of which is called Fire & Rain. It reaches back to some of his earliest work, and spans nearly 15 years of creativity.

Raindog joined me for a free wheeling, and wide ranging, conversation that includes three poetry recitations, discussions of 9/11, and his past and future musical efforts. It is 50 minutes of honest talk with one of our fair City’s creative icons.

If you can’t commit to listening to an hour-long conversation, you can hear all three of his poems:

Pinto

Traveling Man (an homage to Charles Kuralt)

The Poem Will Save You

Also, you can see a brief video of Raindog reciting Eyes Like Mingus:

Ain Soph Aur (A Live Video Excerpt)

Before the gig:

During my many years as a musician, I’ve performed in a variety of contexts. In 6th grade, for example, I sang a solo in Hebrew as part of The Chitchester Psalms, a piece for chorus and organ, written by Leonard Bernstein. In rehearsals, the feeling of singing with so many voices was thrilling and euphoric. I felt myself open up in a way I’d never experienced before.

The night of the performance, I was filled with confidence. I remember walking out onto the stage in my new electric blue wide-wale corduroy pants, feeling the enthusiasm and support of the musicians behind me. The choir director remembered that the translated words were in the program and asked that the house lights be brought up so the audience could read along.

All of a sudden, hundreds of people emerged from the darkness and, much to my surprise, they were staring at me. In an instant, all that joy and confidence evaporated and, in its place, arose a new feeling: Terror. The music began, and I felt a bit heartened but, as my moment to sing approached, my body felt like it was going to split in two.

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