#17: Chris Newman & Miss Moth

Chris Newman presents videos & songs (live!) both date either from the mid-1980s or from the last couple of years (or months). They are existential in nature and have to do with making specific the phenomenon of the act of perception. The songs are performed by Miss Moth in their first public Berlin performance

Study No. 1, 1983, 11:07 min
Easy Piece 5, 2010, 23:55 min
Superimposed Sad, 2009, 3:14 min
Small Limp Unit, 2009, 23:34 min
3 Rock Videos No. 3, 1987, 5:21 min
Everything I See In London, 1984, 0:58 min
Mini-Zone, 2010, 1:25 min

MISS MOTH is informed by New Wave & Post Punk, but also classical music such as Schubert, Hugo Wolf and literary issues.Rather than eclectic, the songs are a meltdown of material and loves, using personal, but not private, existential words that extend the every day, pushing into the surreal. Some of the songs were written in the 80’s in the band “Janet Smith” but they have been more than rearranged, now they have a fresh and hard edged contour.

Bill Dietz, piano | Chris Newman, voice | Seth Josel, electric & bass guitar

 

Chris Newman (b. 1958 in London) is an experimental interdisciplinary artist using the medium of music, painting, video, drawing and literature. From 1976 to 1979 he studied music at King’s College London, taking a Bachelor of Music. During this time he met the Russian poet Eugene Dubnov and started to translate Russian poets (Osip Mandelstam, Velimir Khlebnikov), this process of translating proving important for his later work (e.g. from one medium to another / from life to art). He moved to Cologne, Germany, in 1980 to study with Mauricio Kagel (New Music, Theatre / Video) at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. First public performance singing own songs in 1982. He founded chamber-punk rock band Janet Smith in 1983; met Morton Feldman in 1984. First concerts and video showings: Institute of Contem-porary Arts, London; Theater am Turm, Frankfurt; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; Cooper Union, New York.

Since the beginning of the 80’s Newman’s music pieces have been performed at concerts and festivals and re-corded for radio productions (also orchestral commissions, e.g. BBC, Hessischer Rundfunk). These include songs, piano pieces and two piano concertos. He has published books of poetry and prose and issued a number of CDs, his latest one ‘Piano Sonatas’ with Mode Records, New York. After the first phase in Cologne, he lived in Paris, London, again in Cologne and now in Berlin.

Chris Newman’s web site: www.chris-newman.org