b.p.m. is an acoustic and electronic imrpovisatory trio comprising artists Barry Sharp (b), Miles Jefferson Friday (m), and Piyawat Louilarpprasert (p). Using an array of instruments such as trombone, voice, speaker cones and feedback loops, the three composers add a different flavor to a sonic landscape that can evolve from gentle fabrics of sound to cathartic explosions of noise. Joining them are musicians Carlos Cotallo Solares (guitar and electronics) and Will Yager (double bass) who explore the sonic limits of their instruments within a duo, influenced by their joint experience in contemporary music, jazz, metal, and noise. Join us for an evening of exciting and wild music that will surely tickle the ear.

For ages 21+ only

Health & Safety

Audience members may choose to wear masks at this event, but they are not required. Vaccination cards will not be checked.

About the Artist

Barry Sharp is a Philadelphia-based composer and musician with a love for industrial ambiences and sounds in stretched time. His improvised solo-show, Sounding Spaces, integrates drone versions of these sounds with acoustic instruments in a cathartic and psychedelic performance experience. He is a founding member of the Song Sessions Collective, a group of four improvisors who perform an ever-changing work based on the structure of whale songs. The collective won a grant from New Music USA in 2019 and a residency at MISE-EN_Place, Bushwick in 2018. His accolades include a New Music USA Project Grant, Cornell Council for the Arts Biennial Grant, ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award, The American Prize, Cornell Council for the Arts, New Music on the Point, Henry and Parker Pelzer Award in Composition, and the Barbara Cochran Breazeale Fellowship. Barry has been performed by ensembles including JACK Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, TAK Ensemble, Amalgama, Bienen Early/Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, [Switch~ Ensemble], sTem, The Princeton Singers, OSSIA Ensemble, Un/Pitched, Ithaca New Music Collective, Cornell Orchestras, Cornell Wind Symphony, and Cornell Chamber Singers.

Piyawat is a Thai composer, performer, and curator who works with the interweave of music composition, visual art and sound installation. Piyawat has been awarded and commissioned by Südwestrundfunk (SWR) Experimental Studio, MATA Festival, Lucerne Festival, Gaudeamus, Mizzou Composer Festival, ASCAP, Pro Helvetia, British Council, Japan Foundation, Sergei Slonimsky Award, Matan Givol Prize, Léon Goossens Prize and Kultur Kontakt Residency. In 2019, his “Smelly Tubes” was featured in CNN News World: “Young and Gifted”. In 2021, “Ohm-Na-Mo” was commissioned by Donaueschinger Musiktage for 100 years celebration. Graduated from Cornell University (D.M.A.), Royal College of Music (M.M.), Piyawat is currently a program curator for Int-Act Festival (Thailand) and Taceti(i) ensemble.

Miles Jefferson Friday is a composer who works with a wide range of instrumental, electronic, installation, un/notated, and building-based compositional practices. Through his music, Miles aims to explore the personal subjectivities of auditory reception, rethink objects and/as instruments, and propose ways in which the field of music composition can operate more dynamically. Ensembles such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Tönkunstler Orchestra, Dal Niente, Yarn/Wire, Wet Ink, the TAK ensemble, the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, the GAMEnsemble, Ensemble Garage, the Momenta String Quartet, the Fifth House Ensemble, Ensemble Suono Giallo, the Tacet(i) Ensemble, the AIR Contemporary Music Collective, and the Unheard-of//Ensemble have played Miles’ works. Miles is currently a doctoral candidate at Cornell University and also holds a MA from the Eastman School of Music and a BM from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Carlos Cotallo Solares is a Spanish composer and improviser currently living in Philadelphia. His work deals with subjects like quotation, meter and tempo polyphony, improvisation, and the relationship between music and language. His pieces often focus on a single concept or technique that is interpreted in multiple ways. His music has been performed in the US, Colombia, Spain, the UK, Germany, Poland, Greece, and Finland. He is a member of the free improvisation trio Wombat and creates audiovisual works with the video artist Timothy David Orme. He also performs as a solo improviser and makes experimental rock music under the name “Black Stork”. In 2019, Carlos finished a PhD in composition at the University of Iowa, completing previously a Master’s degree at the Universität der Künste in Berlin and a Bachelor’s degree at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg.

Will Yager is a double bassist committed to experimental music, improvisation, and collaborating with composers in the creation of new solo and chamber repertoire for the double bass. Yager has worked directly with such composers as Michael Gordon, David Lang, Miya Masaoka, Scott Wollschleger, Sivan Cohen Elias, Mary Jane Leach, Jean-François Charles, and Amy Williams among others. He is a founding member of both LIGAMENT, a duo with soprano Anika Kildegaard, and the experimental trio Wombat with Justin Comer and Carlos Cotallo Solares. Performance highlights include appearances the University of Iowa Center for New Music, High Zero Foundation’s Red Room in Your Room series, Experimental Sound Studios’ Quarantine Concerts, 2022 SEAMUS Convention, 2021 International Society of Bassists Convention, Open Air Media Festival, Oh My Ears Festival, MOXsonic, Big Ears Festival, Feed Me Weird Things, Nief-Norf Summer Festival, New Music on the Point, Cortona Sessions for New Music, and the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival. In addition to his varied performing activities, Yager previously held teaching positions at Maryville College, the University of North Alabama, and is currently on faculty at the North Carolina Governor’s School West. He is currently based in Baltimore, Maryland.