Cosmic to industrial, RPI electronic arts and adventure
By Greg Haymes
Special to The Times Union

And now for something completely different…
If you’ve got an ear for adventure, the chances are you’ve already discovered the electronic arts performance series presented by iEAR Studios at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Sometimes with a cosmic drift, sometimes with an industrial crunch, iEAR (which stands for Integrated Electronic Arts at Rensselaer) consistantly manages to challenge the status quo of the music world with a cavalcade of serious cutting-edge sounds

Tonight’s iEAR concert at the RPI Playhouse will feature the work of New York City new music composers Lydia Ayers and Brenda Hutchinson in the first of a planned series of annual concerts titled Women Composers in the Electronic Arts.

Exploring a non-equal tuning tightrope between shimmering harmonies and delicious dissonance, Ayers will present her haunting computer music piece, “Bioluminescence,” as well her fiery composition for solo bassoon, “Hot Breath of Wind.” Hutchinson will present “Voices of Reason” ad “Long Tube Solo” using her unique giant music box and source materials gathered at the State Psychiatric Hospital.

TORRID TANGO FEVER: Friday in Valentine’s Day (you didn’t forget, did you?), and if you are looking for a place to take that certain someone special in your life for an evening of richly romantic music, you should give some serious consideration to Pauly’s Hotel.

OK, so maybe Pauly’s doesn’t exactly stir up those roiling feelings of love and lust, but the lush melodies and insinuating rhythm of TangoMan will certainly do the trick.

Led by guitarist-vocalist-Emmy Award composer Jorge Heilpern, TangoMan builds its music around such South American dance rhythms as the chacarera, samba, zamba, mambo and, of course, tango. Heilpern was born and raised in Buenos Aires, and he’s an expert at capturing the cool, silky elegance of love ballad as well as the smoldering intensity of a passionate bolero.

Exotic and intoxicating, TangoMan’s personnel is as fluid as its music but recent performance in Woodstock have featured the Band’s Garth Hudson, bass master Rich Syracuse and Mike Espositio and superb soprano saxman Jim Finn (of Talking With Angels and Doc Scanlon’s Rhythm Boys) in addition to the conga-fury of such stellar Capital District percussionist as David Calarco, Artie Dixon and George Leary. […]