Thursday November 14 8:00pm

at Crescent House in Mission Hills

$15 donation requested

ALAN LICHT has released several albums of his own structured improvisations for solo guitar and tape pieces and appears on over 70 other commercially released recordings. He has played with figures in the worlds of jazz, rock and the avant-garde, ranging from Rashied Ali to Tom Verlaine to Michael Snow. He works frequently with sound installation, and has made intermedia collaborations with such artists as Charles Atlas and Gary Panter. He co-founded Text of Light, an ongoing ensemble which performs freely improvised concerts alongside screenings of classic avant-garde cinema, with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo in 2001.

Alan has written extensively about the arts for Artforum, Modern Painters, Rhizome, the WIRE, Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Village Voice, Time Out New York, and other publications. His books include Common Tones: Selected interviews with artists and musicians (Blank Forms), Sound Art Revisited (Bloomsbury) and Will Oldham on Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy (Faber & Faber/W.W. Norton). Licht was curator at the famed New York experimental music venue Tonic from 2000 until its closing in 2007.

Alan’s new album Havens (released by VDSQ) is a sprawling double-disc set of exploratory guitar-based compositions forged from the myriad possibilities arising when strings collide with electricity & space. Licht is masterful and relentless in his negotiation of the often-unknowable intersections that exist between juxtaposing strands of sound. His work is marked by contrast & contradiction: maximalism versus minimalism; rockist inclinations versus avant, expanded-field expression; loose improvisation versus considered performance. What these dichotomies shouldn’t obscure, however, is the simple pleasure that transpires in his refracting of idiom, conjuring expansive pieces that collapse, stratify & convolve competing schools of music to wholly singular ends.

Licht and Curtis have a history of collaborating together. As a trio along with Dean Roberts, their recordings from a European tour in 1999 were released as an album, May 99, by Blank Forms.

CHARLES CURTIS Called by ArtForum "one of the great cellists" as well as "spellbinding and minimal," Charles Curtis has woven a unique career through the worlds of classical performance and musical experimentation.

For more than thirty years Curtis has been closely associated with the legendary avant garde composer La Monte Young. As soloist and as director of Young's Theatre of Eternal Music String Ensemble, Curtis has participated in more performances and premieres of Young's music than any other musician.

Over the last two decades Curtis has developed a unique repertoire of major works created expressly for the distinctive qualities of his cello-playing. In addition to Young, Curtis has regularly performed and recorded works by composers such as Alvin Lucier, Eliane Radigue, Allison Knowles, and Morton Feldman.

Recent recordings include the three-CD set "Performances and Recordings 1998-2018" on the Saltern label, as well as the 80-minute world premiere recording of Terry Jennings' "Piece for Cello and Saxophone" in a new setting in just intonation for cello with pre-recorded cellos, likewise on Saltern. Curtis also writes on music for Blank Forms magazine, the Oxford Handbook on Spectral and Post-spectral music (on Eliane Radigue), in Artforum magazine, as well as in museum catalogs and specialist publications.

Saturday Aug 24 7:00pm

at Brown Building Arts

4133 Poplar St, San Diego, CA 92105

$10-20 donation requested

FRANCISCO EME (1981) is originally from Mexico City and currently lives and works in San Diego, CA. Francisco is a composer, producer and multimedia artist. He mainly works with sound, but various disciplines are integrated into his practice. His work has been presented in museums, galleries and concert halls in Mexico, the United States, Europe and South America. He has released albums as a soloist, in collaborations and musical projects in various genres, mainly electroacoustic, experimental, electronic pop music. Francisco is the current Gallery Director at The FRONT Arte & Cultura, a binational art gallery in the San Diego, US – Tijuana, Mex border region, where he curates art exhibitions, workshops, concerts and performances focused on the transnational artistic life of the region, but also attentive to the international art scene.

PRESTON SWIRNOFF

AKARI KOMURA (b.1996) is a sound/text/visual artist from Japan. Her works center around contemplative and perceptual engagement with listening and soundmaking. She is interested in curating a participatory performance space inviting a multi-sensorial experience for performers and audiences. Akari is a Ph.D. composition student at the University of California San Diego.

ILANA WANIUK is a versatile violinist with interests ranging from improvisation to visual arts. She is a founding member and co-artistic director of Tkarón:to (Toronto) - based ensemble Thin Edge New Music Collective, and in^set (flexible chamber ensemble dedicated to improvisation, creation, and experimentation. Ilana is currently a doctoral candidate in contemporary performance at the University of California San Diego where her research explores collaborative audiovisual practices.

Saturday July 27 7pm

at Crescent House in Mission Hills

$10-20 donation requested

RSVP required

BEN BENNETT is a Philadelphia-based improvising percussionist who plays a compact pile of self-made drums, stretched membranes, and other objects which are continually rearranged in the course of playing, and sounded with techniques of the hit, rub, and blow varieties. A branching path of musical de-materialization has led to other forms of performance, including self-vitiating monologues, and the long and repetitive YouTube series, Sitting and Smiling and Walking and Talking. His work tends toward themes of pointlessness, paradox, and stupidity. 

“The enigmatic musician and artist Ben Bennett has a mind-bogglingly wide variety of fascinating work that covers both poles of extremes. As a percussionist, his improvised performances are wild, exciting and constantly changing, using an arsenal of drums, cymbals, homemade instruments and found objects that are struck, rubbed or vibrated using air from his lungs, unlocking hidden universes of unfamiliar sounds.”  -Ernie Paik

PRESTON SWIRNOFF is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician, and writer based in San Diego, California. Over the past 25 years he has worked in a wide range of genres and mediums to create an extensive discography, with a long history of performances and exhibitions worldwide. Working with live performance, sound sculptures, light, natural materials, and textiles, Swirnoff creates immersive environments that center on the primacy of ritual and the intimacy of physical presence.

The common thread that runs through Preston’s work is the unbroken chain between our forgotten history and the challenge of being present today. His music engages the phenomenological aspects of sound and body, an exploration of sonority on different instruments, and the practice of structured improvisation cycles, sustained tones, and rhythmic repetition found in traditional cultures. Preston’s solo and collaborative projects have toured across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. He has composed music for film, art installations, and dance.

Monday March 11 7pm

at Crescent House in Mission Hills

$20 donation requested

RSVP Only with limited capacity

A very special and rare intimate cello performance by Charles Curtis, featuring works from his upcoming 4-night residency at Cafe Oto in London. We are also happy to welcome Marcia Bassett and Samara Lubelski for their first duo performance in San Diego with color gel slides by Barry Weisblat.

Called by ArtForum "one of the great cellists" as well as "spellbinding and minimal," CHARLES CURTIS has woven a unique career through the worlds of classical performance and musical experimentation.

For more than thirty years Curtis has been closely associated with the legendary avant garde composer La Monte Young. As soloist and as director of Young's Theatre of Eternal Music String Ensemble, Curtis has participated in more performances and premieres of Young's music than any other musician.

MARCIA BASSETT is a NYC-based artist working in the areas of sound collage, improvisation, and visual creations. She frequently joins others in collaborative multimedia projects. Recent collaborations include BEMI improvisation with Ted Gordon and light experiments by Jeffrey Perkins; Margarida Garcia, Manuel Mota, and improvisations with Samara Lubelski.

SAMARA LUBELSKI is a player of multiple instruments within the broad waters of song, and abstract improvisation, she has also been involved in various art-music provocations; Hall of Fame, The Tower Recordings, MV/EE, duos with Marcia Bassett and Bill Nace, Thurston Moore’s band (Chelsea Light Moving), and German collective Metabolismus.

BARRY WEISBLAT is a Sound Artist/Improviser and Electronic Instrument Builder. Extensive experiments with electro-magnetic devices, solar technology, homemade and modified circuits for application in sound generation/manipulation, audio engineering and photography.

The address and directions to Crescent House, our intimate location in Mission Hills San Diego will be included with RSVP confirmation.

Saturday March 9 3:30pm FREE

Digital Gym Cinema 1100 Market St. San Diego, CA 92101

Presented by BLACKTRONIKA and INTERVALS ARTS

We are honored to present 3 short films by Grammy Award winning director and visionary JENN NKIRU. Born in London of Nigerian decent, Nkiru has established herself as one of the most powerful forces in contemporary visual art. Nkiru is an alumnus of Howard University with an MFA in Film. From her first short film En Vogue to her Grammy winning Brown Skin Girl by Beyonce, Nkiru has captivated audiences with her powerful examples of unapologetic Blackness.

____________

SEE AND HEAR NO EVIL

Curated by Preston Swirnoff and King Britt

Each month we will present from visionary directors (or multiple short films) that represent the ideas of freedom and possibility. The films will be followed by surprise guest musicians who will improvise a response to the film for a full circle experience of souce and influence.

Friday Jan 26 7pm

at Crescent House in Mission Hills

$10-20 donation requested

Intervals Arts is proud to present an evening of Tuvan Shamanism and Throatsinging with Chingiz Kam and Arrington de Dionyso, with an opening set by New Tongues. Chingiz Kam is an initiated hereditary shaman from Tuva now living in New York City. He will conduct an authentic ritual for powerful healing adapted for the space while sharing his personal "Algysh" an ancient genre of spirit-song used by Tuvan shamans in every sacred setting.

Arrington de Dionyso will present “Voice Mask” a musical performance ritual utilizing improvisatory structures to showcase an entrancing virtuosity with a variety of extended vocal techniques such as traditional Tuvan throatsinging combined with simple elements such as aluminum foil and PVC pipes to enchance the “soul” of vocal sound.

As a “punk ethnomusicologist gone rogue”, Arrington has traveled the world in search of primordially potent sounds. He’s worked extensively within the Jathilan trance music traditions of East Java, the Master Musicians of Jajouka (Morocco), and is a devoted student of Siberian shamanism.

New Tongues is a collaborative sound art and music collective based in Baja, Mexico and San Diego, California. Founded in 2023 by artist and musician Preston Swirnoff, New Tongues is an adventure in interdisciplinary collaboration. With an emphasis on live performance and immersive sound environments, the group uses sound sculptures, field recordings, and traditional instruments to craft electroacoustic song forms that celebrate intimacy, relationship ecologies, and structured cycles for improvisation.

This performance will feature Zane Alexander S.B., a composer, performer, and community music organizer living in San Diego whose work has been featured at Mingei Museum, Project [BLANK], Art Produce, the Athenaeum Art Center, San Diego New Music, San Diego City College, and CalArts.

The address and directions to Crescent House, our intimate location in Mission Hills San Diego will be included with RSVP confirmation.

Intervals Arts & Blacktronika present See and Hear No Evil

A Monthly Film and Music series w/ secret musical guests

Curated by Preston Swirnoff and King Britt

Beginning Jan 20 7pm

at Digital Gym Cinema SOLD OUT

Each month we will present a film from visionary directors (or multiple short films) that represent the ideas of freedom and possibility. The films will be followed by surprise guest musicians who will improvise a response to the movie for a full circle experience of source and influence.

For the series premiere, we are excited to present SUN RA- SPACE IS THE PLACE (1974) directed by John Coney and written by Sun Ra and Joshua Smith. Long regarded as a seminal work of Afrofuturism, Space is the Place is an experimental film about the liberation and transcendence of Blackness, with music as the vehicle. Through the interstellar world of Sun Ra and his vision for the expanded possibilities of a soul merged with musical freedom beyond earthly constraints, featuring a legendary soundtrack by The Sun Ra Arkestra.

2024 is the 50th Anniversary of this important film.

Free Admission with RSVP. 18+ More info soon!

Fri Sept 22 8pm-1am

INTERVALS is happy to host this Particle FM event!

Particle FM is proud to present Josh Cheon (he/him). Josh is a San Francisco-based artist and founder of the influential label Dark Entries. It’s hard to overstate Josh’s influence in the electronic music world, exposing a younger, queer generation to the lost era of 80’s analog music. The label has a dedicated bin in nearly every major San Diego where you’ll find Patrick Cowley’s gay porn soundtracks, obscure Italo disco, new age ambient, and contemporary dance music. Josh’s dedication to documenting and exhibiting work from forgotten synthesizer pioneers and important figures in LGBTQ+ music history is inspiring for many of us DJs on the station and we’re delighted to have him perform at our next event.

About Particle FM:

Particle FM is a DIY community radio station based in San Diego and established in 2021 by a diverse group of artists, DJs, and music nerds. The station represents an intersection of cultures, identities, and musical styles. Particle FM’s focus is on building a platform for women, LBGTQ, black, latino, asian, indigenous, immigrant, and underrepresented artists to showcase their work.

Tickets $10. 21+ event

Opening Sat Aug 19 7:00pm

Gallery Hours by Appointment Aug 20-Sept 15

join us for the opening of DENJA HARRIS at INTERVALS! Denja will present a site-specific installation, including new large-scale pieces interacting with space and light. The opening night will feature live music, DJ’s, a special pop-up experience in the loft, and a selection of rare natural wines. Details to come!

The show will be on display through Sept 15, with select gallery hours throughout the month by appointment.

Denja Harris is an emerging artist from South Bay, San Diego creating experimental fiber art and soft sculptures. Intentionally sourcing second-hand and dead-stock yarn, she creates layered, free-form abstract patterns and works that take shape in an organic process.

Denja’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions, group shows, and workshops at Mingei International Museum, Art Produce, Mortis Studio, and others.

Find Denja on instagram at @brownacidgoods and her website brownacidgoods.com

Curator Statement:

I’ve been admiring Denja’s work from a distance since I first saw her installation in the window at Mortis Studio in Golden Hill a few years ago. Her creative energy and keen spirit shines through the colorful, tactile, multidimensional pieces that she crafts with both skilled precision and just the right dose of wild freedom that comes from following her own rules. While Denja’s work is unique and different in substance, its spirit immediately reminded me of the joyful environments of colorful textiles created by Swedish artist Moki Cherry, one of my favorites!

When I began considering which visual artists I’d like to invite to do site-specific work at INTERVALS, Denja was the first person who popped into mind because I could already see and feel the many ways she would enliven the room when given the opportunity to make larger scale pieces that can interact with space and light. I also know that gallery visitors will have an immersive experience because of how we will present her work in the space. Interaction and three-dimensional viewing will bring people closer to the pieces as they become part of the room, not just a wall display. I’m excited to have Denja on board and look forward to presenting the new work she is dreaming up for this special show!

-Preston Swirnoff / INTERVALS

Due to the tragic death of musician and artist Rick Froberg, who was part of the QUADRA group for this performance, this event will be rescheduled to a future date TBA.

Points of Action and INTERVALS present QUADRA: a site-specific quadraphonic sound environment designed by San Diego musician Jason Soares. With some of SD’s most revered underground musicians playing multiple sets of long-form improvised music using modular synthesis and traditional instrumentation.

The lineup for this iteration of QUADRA includes Soares with Rick Froberg (Drive Like Jehu/Hot Snakes), Mike Egington (Earthless), and Arturo Ulloa (Physics).

The evening will include an elaborate modular synth pop-up installation in the warehouse space, limited edition screen prints of QUADRA artwork, a donation bar, and other surprises!

Free RSVP required for entry. $10-20 donation requested upon arrival to support artists and space.

Sat Apr 15 8pm

Our opening night is sold out!

Live Performance by NEW TONGUES sound/\art trio (Preston Swirnoff, Kathia Rudametkin, Xareni Lizarraga)

DJ’s Laurie Piña, Alejandra Frank, Pablo Dodero

Lang Books Loft Pop-Up

Curated Selection of Natural Wines from Central Europe

21+ RSVP Required

Sat Apr 29 7:00pm

Joseph Keckler, NY’s operatic songsmith, trickster performance artist, raconteur poet, and many other things performs his San Diego debut! Called New York’s “best performance artist” by Village Voice and acclaimed by everyone from the New York Times to Artforum to Bomb and the Wall Street Journal, Keckler‘s Tiny Desk on NPR and several other mind blowing performances have been attracting fans and audiences quickly. For his performance at INTERVALS Joseph will perform a solo set with video, voice, spoken word, and probably other things we haven’t been told about.

San Diego New Verbal Workshop is a newly-formed community choir that specializes in experimental works showcasing extended vocal techniques. For their upcoming performance at Intervals, they will present Cornelius Cardew's "The Great Learning, Paragraph 7." This piece features a paragraph from Confucius that has been translated by Ezra Pound and is performed as a cloud of slowly evolving pitches. Cardew places emphasis on communal singing, where performers listen and match each other, a technique also observed in Pauline Oliveros' Sonic Meditations. With its Cageian influence, the work provides both structure and freedom to the performers, creating a unique experience for each performance due to the element of chance.

Mystery Cave is composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer John Christopher Harris II. Mystery Cave has released 4 LP’s and 4 EP’s of electronic music with roots in classical, ambient, dub, new age, club, and LA beat music. Mystery Cave has performed over the past 13 years at venues such as Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The Casbah, and Che Cafe.

Mala Forma Dance, led by Justin Morrison, will perform with music by improvisers Everything Will Be Okay.

RSVP to attend.

$10 donation requested at the performance to support artists and the space. Thank you.

Sat May 20 7:00pm

Screening of Wreckmeister Harmonies, dir. Béla Tarr (Hungary 2000) 2hr 25min.

INTERVALS secret library: Laszlo Kraznahorkai’s Melancholy of Resistance.

Hungarian wine, beer, mineral water.

Loft: DEMOKRATA magazine covers - Budapest 1980’s flyers + samizdat literature. Hungarian underground cassettes.

Tickets $10 general / $15 with ltd broadsheet