Performed and recorded by Tim Feeney in Berkshire, NY, and Tuscaloosa, AL, 2010-2013.
Tim Feeney seeks to explore and examine the timbral possibilities inherent
in everyday found and built objects. He treats his percussion setup as a
friction instrument, using bows, scrapers, and rosined drumheads to capture
and amplify frequencies that go unheard when an object is struck with a
traditional mallet. He supplements this acoustic console with an electronic
instrument, arranged from mixers, contact microphones, and effects pedals,
that synthesizes and alters the spectral characteristics of low-fidelity tones,
feedback, and noise.
Tim worked for years within Boston’s timbral improvising community, a group of
musicians interested in unstable sounds and silences, exploring austere
combinations of sound and the otherworldly ripple effects that pulse through
a silent space and alert ears. He has performed with musicians including
thereminist James Coleman, cellist/electronic musician Vic Rawlings, pianist Annie Lewandowski, tape-deck manipulator Howard Stelzer, trumpeter Nate
Wooley, sound artists Jed Speare and Ernst Karel, saxophonist Jack Wright,
the trio Meridian (with percussionists Nick Hennies and Greg Stuart), and
the trio ONDA (with vocalist Ken Ueno and violinist Hillary Zipper. His
concerts have been held at experimental spaces such as the Red Room in
Baltimore, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, Firehouse 12 in New
Haven, Connecticut, the Knitting Factory New York, and the Stone, as well as
the Center for New Music and Audio Technology at UC-Berkeley, the Stanford
Art Museum, Princeton University, and Dartmouth College.