RED DESERT is the duo project of clarinetist Katie Porter and composer/percussionist Devin Maxwell. We have been performing, commissioning, creating and championing interesting music for over 17 years. Based in Brooklyn, NY and a remote cabin in the mountains of Utah, our repertoire consists primarily of living composers, especially ones that strive to challenge and enrich our understanding of what music is and can be. We are currently working on several upcoming Red Desert shows and recordings, in addition to being Artists-in-Residence at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah for the 2019/20 school year.
Our History:
Our first duo piece was written for us by composer Michael Pisaro while MFA students at CalArts. The piece, Turning (2002), for bass clarinet and percussion was followed by Averer Local, an evening length piece that took 7 years somehow to finally perform live at Listen/Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 2009. We had been performing as a duo or inside of NYC-based ensembles such as OXO (together with composer/saxophonist Travis Just and composer/pianist Quentin Tolimieri), Four Trio (together with composer/bassist Kevin Farrell and composer/bassist Joe Davancens), Roman Catholic Church (together with guitarist Ryan Maxwell), A New Low (together with composer/bassist James Ilgenfritz and percussionist Jonathan Singer), Listen/Space Minifest (together with composer Harris Wulfson, composer/violinist Eric KM Clark, composer/trumpet Aaron Meicht) and Morton Feldman's Bass Clarinet and Percussion (together with percussionist Lawson White), cementing a love of creating of new sounds for clarinet and percussion.
Other influential performances and pieces included a duo performance of Christian Wolff's Pairs as a duo alongside the duos of Beat Keller/Christian Kobi and Craig Shepard/Travis Just, and the premier of Larry Polansky's Christian Music both at Experimental Music at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater at St. Marks Church, NYC in September of 2009. We premiered Canadian composer Andre Cormier's Sommeil at Rocco's in Hollywood, CA in 2002 and subsequently at Kenyon College 2004, Sonic Boom Festival in Vancouver 2006, Spectrum NYC 2013 and LeHum Moncton 2013. Composer Craig Shepard's On Foot:Brooklyn project and recording features our performance of Sheepshead Bay called "beautifully forlorn and wistful" by Brian Olewnick on Just Outside. We have been part of the premiers of many new pieces by composers including Didier Aschour, Jonathan Marmor, G. Douglas Barrett, John Luther Adams (SILA premier at Lincoln Center 2014), David Reeder, Molly Thompson, Larry Polansky, Quentin Tolimieri, Travis Just, Steve Horowitz, Craig Shepard, Daniel Goode, Tim Parkinson, James Saunders, Peter Gordon, James Ilgenfritz, Mike Fink, William Craft, Antoine Beuger, Johnny Chang, Jurg Frey, Radu Malfatti, Dan Joseph and many others.
Devin Maxwell wrote several pieces for our duo, including many for clarinet and guitar (played percussively or with a bow) and clarinet, percussion and others. These pieces: Love in an Elevator and Untitled 17 (two clarinets, bass clarinet, percussion, piano), PH3 and PH4 (bass clarinet, marimba, double bass), Ridgewood, NY (clarinet and guitar), American't (bass clarinet and bowed guitar), 4th of July (bass clarinet, percussion, guitar and film), were premiered in NYC at Columbia Unversity, the Brooklyn Lyceum, the Stone, Abrons Arts Center, and the Ontological Theater at St. Marks Church.
In 2012, realizing the large volume of work we had done together, we set out to archive and record pieces for clarinet and percussion at a remote cabin in Utah. We named our ensemble RED DESERT, inspired by the soil under our feet and the isolation reminiscent of Antonioni's film of the same name. The summer of 2013 we toured NYC, Texas, and Moncton, NB performing a new piece of Devin's Chord Toss 3 for bass clarinet, percussion and live electronics at a record release show for Double Mono at End of an Ear Records in Austin, Texas and pieces by Pisaro, Cormier, Stockhausen, Lucier, Tim Parkinson, Wolff, Earle Brown and MV Waller at Spectrum NYC and LeHum Moncton.
In 2016 we started another series of tours and concerts. RED DESERT's recording of Chord Toss 3 was released on the Infrequent Seams label (NY) 2016 on an album dedicated to Devin's orchestral, chamber and electronic works - Devin Maxwell Works 2011-14. We commissioned composer Lucie Vitkova who wrote us a beautiful piece for bass clarinet and our electric vibes that was premiered at the Infrequent Seams Festival in Brooklyn, NY.
In the fall 2017 we programmed a giant 3-hour concert Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, played Morton Feldman's Bass Clarinet and Percussion at Westminster College (SLC) and were in residence at Casper College in Wyoming performing works by Lucie Vitkova, Andre Cormier, Devin Maxwell and Morton Feldman.
2018 saw RED DESERT explode, with duo performances at Center for New Music in San Francisco, the Indexical Series in Santa Cruz, CA, Fridman Gallery in NYC, Calhoun School in NYC, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and a featured concert at UMFA. Devin Maxwell's epic 30 minute Cloudseeding 4 for bass clarinet and electronics was performed by Katie Porter at BYU Crosstalk, WSAC in Boston, MA, Next Ensemble Ogden, C4NM San Fran, Indexical Santa Cruz and the Estelagam do Ponta Do Sol Residency for Contemporary Music and Electronics in Madeira, Portugal. Our live recordings from Santa Cruz of Lucie Vitkova's FIVE and Pauline Oliveros Single Stroke Roll Meditation were released on the Essential Indexical: Early MMXVIII.
In the spring 2019, we presented another giant concert at the UMFA: Red Desert and Radical Quiet, featuring Terry Riley's In C, Feldman, Maxwell, FLUXUS and Oliveros. Our concerts at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts were hailed as “one of the most imaginative concerts of the year”, “mezmerizing”, “engrosing” and highlighted as "audacious, experimental, unflinching" and one of the top ten performances of the Utah enlightenment in 2018 by Les Roka of the Utah Review.
Most importantly, we received an Artist Residency at Westminster College in Salt Lake City for the 2019/20 school year. The Red Desert Artist-in-Residency includes a series of workshops aimed at how music technology, music entrepreneurship and creativity can lead to a fantastic career in the arts with presentations by Ableton Live; workshops entitled You live in the now! Being an artist and musician in the 21st century, Failing Upwards: How we learn and grow when we fail, spring 2020 premiere commissions by composers Judith Berkson and Carolyn Chen, a Music Technology Pedagogy Summit featuring Dr. Linda Antas, and the 4th annual VU Symposium on experimental, electronic and improvised music, and three evening-length Red Desert concerts starting Oct 28 on the Chamber Music Series.
We are working on releasing our first album on James Ilgenfritz's Infrequent Seams label in New York, and a record release tour - US dates and Europe dates 2020. Katie Porter's solo project at Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, involving land art, experimental clarinets, electronic music and 4 channel audio/video, is also beginning to tour.
In addition to our work as Red Desert, we host the yearly Listen/Space Commissions the VU Symposium for experimental, improvised and electronic music in Park City, Utah and founded the Young Composer Project with Utah Youth Symphony and Ensembles.
Katie Porter's performance website: fromkp.wordpress.com
Devin Maxwell's composer website: devinmaxwell.net
Our History:
Our first duo piece was written for us by composer Michael Pisaro while MFA students at CalArts. The piece, Turning (2002), for bass clarinet and percussion was followed by Averer Local, an evening length piece that took 7 years somehow to finally perform live at Listen/Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 2009. We had been performing as a duo or inside of NYC-based ensembles such as OXO (together with composer/saxophonist Travis Just and composer/pianist Quentin Tolimieri), Four Trio (together with composer/bassist Kevin Farrell and composer/bassist Joe Davancens), Roman Catholic Church (together with guitarist Ryan Maxwell), A New Low (together with composer/bassist James Ilgenfritz and percussionist Jonathan Singer), Listen/Space Minifest (together with composer Harris Wulfson, composer/violinist Eric KM Clark, composer/trumpet Aaron Meicht) and Morton Feldman's Bass Clarinet and Percussion (together with percussionist Lawson White), cementing a love of creating of new sounds for clarinet and percussion.
Other influential performances and pieces included a duo performance of Christian Wolff's Pairs as a duo alongside the duos of Beat Keller/Christian Kobi and Craig Shepard/Travis Just, and the premier of Larry Polansky's Christian Music both at Experimental Music at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater at St. Marks Church, NYC in September of 2009. We premiered Canadian composer Andre Cormier's Sommeil at Rocco's in Hollywood, CA in 2002 and subsequently at Kenyon College 2004, Sonic Boom Festival in Vancouver 2006, Spectrum NYC 2013 and LeHum Moncton 2013. Composer Craig Shepard's On Foot:Brooklyn project and recording features our performance of Sheepshead Bay called "beautifully forlorn and wistful" by Brian Olewnick on Just Outside. We have been part of the premiers of many new pieces by composers including Didier Aschour, Jonathan Marmor, G. Douglas Barrett, John Luther Adams (SILA premier at Lincoln Center 2014), David Reeder, Molly Thompson, Larry Polansky, Quentin Tolimieri, Travis Just, Steve Horowitz, Craig Shepard, Daniel Goode, Tim Parkinson, James Saunders, Peter Gordon, James Ilgenfritz, Mike Fink, William Craft, Antoine Beuger, Johnny Chang, Jurg Frey, Radu Malfatti, Dan Joseph and many others.
Devin Maxwell wrote several pieces for our duo, including many for clarinet and guitar (played percussively or with a bow) and clarinet, percussion and others. These pieces: Love in an Elevator and Untitled 17 (two clarinets, bass clarinet, percussion, piano), PH3 and PH4 (bass clarinet, marimba, double bass), Ridgewood, NY (clarinet and guitar), American't (bass clarinet and bowed guitar), 4th of July (bass clarinet, percussion, guitar and film), were premiered in NYC at Columbia Unversity, the Brooklyn Lyceum, the Stone, Abrons Arts Center, and the Ontological Theater at St. Marks Church.
In 2012, realizing the large volume of work we had done together, we set out to archive and record pieces for clarinet and percussion at a remote cabin in Utah. We named our ensemble RED DESERT, inspired by the soil under our feet and the isolation reminiscent of Antonioni's film of the same name. The summer of 2013 we toured NYC, Texas, and Moncton, NB performing a new piece of Devin's Chord Toss 3 for bass clarinet, percussion and live electronics at a record release show for Double Mono at End of an Ear Records in Austin, Texas and pieces by Pisaro, Cormier, Stockhausen, Lucier, Tim Parkinson, Wolff, Earle Brown and MV Waller at Spectrum NYC and LeHum Moncton.
In 2016 we started another series of tours and concerts. RED DESERT's recording of Chord Toss 3 was released on the Infrequent Seams label (NY) 2016 on an album dedicated to Devin's orchestral, chamber and electronic works - Devin Maxwell Works 2011-14. We commissioned composer Lucie Vitkova who wrote us a beautiful piece for bass clarinet and our electric vibes that was premiered at the Infrequent Seams Festival in Brooklyn, NY.
In the fall 2017 we programmed a giant 3-hour concert Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, played Morton Feldman's Bass Clarinet and Percussion at Westminster College (SLC) and were in residence at Casper College in Wyoming performing works by Lucie Vitkova, Andre Cormier, Devin Maxwell and Morton Feldman.
2018 saw RED DESERT explode, with duo performances at Center for New Music in San Francisco, the Indexical Series in Santa Cruz, CA, Fridman Gallery in NYC, Calhoun School in NYC, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and a featured concert at UMFA. Devin Maxwell's epic 30 minute Cloudseeding 4 for bass clarinet and electronics was performed by Katie Porter at BYU Crosstalk, WSAC in Boston, MA, Next Ensemble Ogden, C4NM San Fran, Indexical Santa Cruz and the Estelagam do Ponta Do Sol Residency for Contemporary Music and Electronics in Madeira, Portugal. Our live recordings from Santa Cruz of Lucie Vitkova's FIVE and Pauline Oliveros Single Stroke Roll Meditation were released on the Essential Indexical: Early MMXVIII.
In the spring 2019, we presented another giant concert at the UMFA: Red Desert and Radical Quiet, featuring Terry Riley's In C, Feldman, Maxwell, FLUXUS and Oliveros. Our concerts at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts were hailed as “one of the most imaginative concerts of the year”, “mezmerizing”, “engrosing” and highlighted as "audacious, experimental, unflinching" and one of the top ten performances of the Utah enlightenment in 2018 by Les Roka of the Utah Review.
Most importantly, we received an Artist Residency at Westminster College in Salt Lake City for the 2019/20 school year. The Red Desert Artist-in-Residency includes a series of workshops aimed at how music technology, music entrepreneurship and creativity can lead to a fantastic career in the arts with presentations by Ableton Live; workshops entitled You live in the now! Being an artist and musician in the 21st century, Failing Upwards: How we learn and grow when we fail, spring 2020 premiere commissions by composers Judith Berkson and Carolyn Chen, a Music Technology Pedagogy Summit featuring Dr. Linda Antas, and the 4th annual VU Symposium on experimental, electronic and improvised music, and three evening-length Red Desert concerts starting Oct 28 on the Chamber Music Series.
We are working on releasing our first album on James Ilgenfritz's Infrequent Seams label in New York, and a record release tour - US dates and Europe dates 2020. Katie Porter's solo project at Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, involving land art, experimental clarinets, electronic music and 4 channel audio/video, is also beginning to tour.
In addition to our work as Red Desert, we host the yearly Listen/Space Commissions the VU Symposium for experimental, improvised and electronic music in Park City, Utah and founded the Young Composer Project with Utah Youth Symphony and Ensembles.
Katie Porter's performance website: fromkp.wordpress.com
Devin Maxwell's composer website: devinmaxwell.net
