Comets, Meteors and Things that Fly by Us: An Electronic Music Event

Join us for this live multi-media performance outdoors below a dark North Fork sky at the peak of the Perseid Meteor shower!

By Custer Institute and Observatory

The Axolotl Ensemble will bring their extraordinary talents to Custer Observatory, creating an event filled with sonic richness and visual surprises. Artists, Cliff Baldwin and Rob Shepperson will perform works composed and designed specifically for this event, that reveal the unique sound of the Perseid meteors, icy asteroids and other such celestial visitors past and present using live electronics, amplified satellite dishes, percussion, live celestial video and other treats. The Perseids will be in full view during the show, weather permitting, and will be visible to the naked eye.

Following the concert, guests will have a chance to view the Perseid Meteor shower, visible to the naked eye. Observatory staff will also provide guided tours of the night sky (weather permitting) through the many telescopes on site, including the apochromatic Zerochromat telescope in our historic observation dome.

$30 Adult, $20 Observatory Member, Children Under 16 FREE. Attendance will be limited so advanced registration is strongly encouraged. A rain date for this program is scheduled for August 19 at 8:00pm.

Please bring a blanket or chair to enjoy this outdoor presentation.

About the Artists

Cliff Baldwin is a resident artist, composer, designer, and filmmaker on the North Fork and has been creating electronic music for over 45 years. He is the founder of the Aquebogue Contemporary Music Ensemble [ACME], a group devoted to contemporary electronic music, that was featured in the Rites of Spring Music Festival from 2016-2019 on the North Fork of Long Island.

Some of Cliff's compositions include "The Kepler Music" performed at Custer Observatory in 2016, "ASTRI" and "LIGO-A-GOGO", outdoor sound and video mixes that debuted at the Observatory in 2020, and "Voicing the Caldwells", live 4-channel electroacoustic video piece which debuted at the Observatory in 2021. Cliff's "Damn Epic Pandemic" live mixes streamed throughout 2020 from his studio garden. And he recently composed and debuted "BLACK LOCUST: Solo for Locust Tree and Electronics" at Guild Hall in East Hampton.

As an artist, Cliff founded the large format artist publication AQUI! in the early nineteen eighties working with artists like Barbara Kruger, Gilbert & George, Les Levine and General Idea. For 17 years he orchestrated large scale installations and created multiples with Fluxus artist Davi Det Hompson as the artist duo Baldwin+Hompson. His latest architectural project, SHAVILION was built in 2022 in Aquebogue.

Cliff's work has been exhibited in Tokyo, Cologne, Berlin, Mexico City, Los Angeles, and New York, and is in several major museum collections around the world including collections at the The Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, The Museum of The Art Institute of Chicago, The National Gallery of Canada and The Museum of Rhode Island School of Design. 

Drummer Rob Shepperson is a founding member, along with Mikel Rouse and Jeff Burk, of the pop group Tirez Tirez, which was active in the 1970s and 80s. When Rouse formed the new music ensemble Broken Consort, Rob contributed percussion and drum set parts. Currently, he is a member of the improv music group Strange Pools, based in Croton on Hudson, N.Y. Rob and Cliff Baldwin have been collaborating musically and visually ever since they met at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1978.

The Rites of Spring Music Festival presents New Music Under the Big Sky

Christopher Morrongiello

GALILEO’S LUTE

Although Galileo’s scientific achievements are widely known, the legendary "father of modern science" was a member of a distinguished family of musicians and was himself an accomplished player of the lute, the most important household instrument of the Renaissance.

In celebration of Galileo's musical family and upbringing, world-renowned lutenist Dr. Christopher Morrongiello will perform a magnificent recital featuring works composed by Galileo's father and brother (Vincenzo and Michelangelo Galilei, respectively), and their distinguished contemporaries (Francesco da Milano, John Dowland, and Emmanuel Adriaenssen). His recital will be played on an authentic, gut-strung Renaissance lute and presented in the unique acoustical splendor of the Custer Observatory dome. This intimate recital promises to be a most memorable experience. Not to be missed! Come hear the instrument that Renaissance humanists thought was perfectly able to evoke the harmony of the spheres.

Lutenist Christopher Morrongiello, a former British Marshall Scholar, is a graduate of the Mannes College of Music, Royal College of Music, and University of Oxford, where he earned a doctorate in musicology. As a recitalist, he has performed to critical acclaim throughout Europe and the United States. In 1993 he was a prizewinner in the BBC Radio Two Young Musician of the Year Competition, and in 1996 awarded a Marco Fodella Foundation Scholarship for studies and research in Milan, Italy.  

Morrongiello is a professor in music history at Hofstra University and teaches lute and related historical plucked instruments in his private studio in Long Island. He is a member of the Venere Lute Quartet and directs the New York-based Bacheler Consort. He is a frequent guest artist of many leading early music groups. He is also Artistic Director of the Long Island Early Music Festival, now entering its 4th season.

Morrongiello has recorded for EMI, Avie Records, Gamut Music, the Lute Society of America, Visionaire, and the BBC. Recently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art produced several video recordings of his playing on a gut-strung, sixteenth-century lute, as well as on copies of lutes, in its renowned musical instrument collection. Stargazing (weather permitting) will follow the concert.

BLOW UP HOLLYWOOD presents DUST FROM THE STARS

This critically-acclaimed group will perform works from their newest, unreleased album which reflects on the cosmos and our journey and genesis from stardust to our current state of being.  Fittingly, this concert occurs as the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower nears, when the Earth passes through the dust left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle.  This dramatic meteor shower can be viewed with the naked eye.  Following the concert (weather permitting), guests will have the opportunity to catch a glimpse at the burning dust from Comet Swift-Tuttle as it passes through the Earth's atmosphere (bring a blanket or chair) and to look through the many telescopes on site, guided by expert staff.

Blow Up Hollywood is an underground American ambient art-rock collective.  Their eclectic sound, built over a decade of recording, incorporates many different styles, diverse as progressive rock, post-rock, experimental, pop, classical, jazz and ambient soundscapes.  Blow Up Hollywood has created an expansive and adventurous body of work that manages to be both highly emotionally charged and majestically anonymous.

Grammy-award winning flutist Tim Munro performs a solo flute concert with electronics accompaniment in the theme of finding comfort in a world of craziness. The first five short-ish pieces will be like prayers (calm, meditative), preparing the audience for composer Christopher Cerrone's final piece 'Liminal Highway', which takes the listener on more dramatic journey.Christopher Cerrone conjures sonic environments. His magnetic music surrounds listeners, painting landscapes, bringing to the surface raw emotions. This program provides a snapshot of the composer through new and in-progress works. In the course of one hour performance, the audience will hear the flute, guitar, beer bottles and song.Liminal Highway, written by Cerrone for flutist Tim Munro, evokes the sensation of this moment. Layer upon layer of flute sounds shimmer, pulse and glow, creating a radiantly beautiful sonic mirage.

Program 

Chris Cerrone Memory Palace (excerpt) 3' 

Eve Beglarian I will not be sad in this world 7'

Chris Cerrone Memory Palace (excerpt) 3'

Tim Munro love/game 7'

Chris Cerrone Memory Palace (excerpt) 3'

Intermission 

Chris Cerrone Liminal Highway 22' 

Tim Munro is a Chicago-based, double-Grammy-winning musician. His diverse work as a flutist, speaker, writer and teacher is united by a single goal: to draw audiences into an engrossing and whimsical musical world.Winner of a 2015 Rome Prize and a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, the Brooklyn-based composer Christopher Cerrone is internationally acclaimed for compositions which range from opera to orchestral, from chamber music to electronic. Throughout, his music is characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations.

Stargazing (weather permitting) will follow.$25 Advance/$30 at the door. $10 Student 13-18. Children under 13 - Free.

learn more about the Rites of Spring Music Festival visit www.ritesmusic.org.

celtic harp recording artist

(percussionists) @ RoSMF 2018

STEINWAY & STARGAZING featuring CHAMBEROSITY

This musical program is the first in the Steinway & Stargazing summer series.  Following the concert will be a reception and private evening of stargazing (weather permitting) through the Custer Observatory's powerful telescopes and guided by Observatory staff. 

Program:

Trio for Piano, Violin and Horn - Eric Ewazen

Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano - Peter Winkler

Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano, Op.28 - Joseph Holbrooke

Enjoy an outdoor reception under a beautiful star-themed tent following the concert with wine tasting sponsored by Laurel Lake Vineyards and passed hors d'oeuvres by Grace & Grit Catering. Stargazing at nightfall.

Chamberosity began its existence as the Long Island Chamber Players in the early 1990s, when Linda Sinanian, Jeffrey Forden and Christine Doré started playing chamber music together. Chamberosity was quickly recognized for the joy-giving communicative quality of its playing. The critically acclaimed trio has been the ensemble-in-residence at the Stony Brook Summer Music Festival, the Music At Greenlawn concert series and the Siena Spirituality Center in the Hamptons. Over the years, Chamberosity has organized travel around the globe for students of Protégé International, a traveling summer music festival based on the “work- hard- play –hard- while –creating- lifelong -memories” mantra by which the group’s members have always lived. Chamberosity is dedicated to the vast and rich chamber music repertoire. The ensemble frequently expands its roster with guest artists, which creates a unique instrumental flexibility. This allows the group to present varied and diverse chamber music programs, from standard repertoire to often overlooked and rarely performed treasures. Chamberosity has commissioned two trios, one from Eric Ewazen and one from Peter Winkler which will be performed as part of the evenings program.

Tickets: $75 in advance / $95 at the door

The Music Project is an arts and humanities program within the organization trusted with nurturing and embracing community diversity and uniqueness, with a special focus on musical and performing arts. Through a series of concerts and performances the Music Project provides a threefold educational purpose: 1) to provide firsthand experience of music, songs and dances of other cultures, 2) to explore the inextricable connection between music and science and 3) to offer a glimpse at the stars through the many telescopes on site with assistance from expert staff. The Music Project allows the entire community to join in the educational experience where culture, music and science meet.

ROB SCHWIMMER PERFORMS ON THEREMIN AND HAKEN CONTINUUM

Theremin virtuoso, Rob Schwimmer, will educate, demonstrate and perform works

on the theremin and a relatively new instrument called the Haken Continuum.

Guests will be invited to try the theremin at the end of the performance.

Star gazing (weather permitting) will follow.