MIDDLEBURY — Guitarist and composer David Torn presents an evening of solo improvised guitar music on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 7:30 p.m., at the Mahaney Center for the Arts in Middlebury. Torn’s layered, textural approach to guitar has graced recordings by David Bowie, Madonna, John Legend, Tori Amos and k.d. Lang. He has also contributed to many film scores both as composer (The Wackness, The Order, Friday Night Lights, Lars and the Real Girl) and as a musician/texturalist (Adaptation, The Big Lebowski, Twilight, No Country for Old Men). Concert admission is free.
David Torn’s improvised solo guitar performances use looping, technology, and unorthodox techniques to create a canvas of sound which he spatters with guitar notes. He describes his performance as “real-time composition, but it’s about relaxing into it, enjoying the flow of sound, letting the music happen in its own time — and being open to the unexpected.”
He began his career with the Ithaca-based, proto-jam group The Zobo Funn Band in the 1970s, and rose to prominence as a member of The Everyman Band and as a sideman to Jan Garbarek and Don Cherry in the 1980s. He has recorded six albums as a leader for the ECM, Windham Hill, CMP and 75 Ark record labels. He earned a Grammy for his mixing and composition for Jeff Beck, Reader’s Poll awards from Guitar Player magazine, and many other honors for his film score work.
This concert is sponsored by the Department of Music, the Department of Film and Media Culture, the Committee on the Arts, the Director of the Arts and the Mahaney Center for the Arts.
For more information, call (802) 443-MIDD (6433) or visit www.middlebury.edu/arts.