Probability and a Requiem

[Larnie Fox]

Good morning everyone,

Believe it or not I am soldering as I write this. Bodil has made a switchboard, with traditional Scandinavian fiber art motifs on it, and I am soldering wires with connectors onto the switches. The switches control three interactive sound sculptures on one of the seven walls of Pro Arts gallery. We made sound sculptures for all the walls in the space during three years of a satisfying collaboration that is finally coming to fruition. HERE is one of them. We very much would like you to come and play with this work. Here’s how: 

Probability will be on display at Pro Arts gallery, 150 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, CA, from March 5 through April 2, 2022. Email <bodil...@gmail.com> to reserve a time to interact with the work and meet the artists, Fridays through Sundays, 2-5pm. Masked, vaxxed and boosted only!

We will have a bit of a performance for the opening reception: 

The opening reception will be March 5th, 6-9pm, and will include a performance. Bay Area sound artists Sudhu Tewari and Jen Boyd will join Bodil and Larnie in “playing the room”; creating semi-random soundscapes produced by the low-tech machines and interactive sound sculptures. 

And a dicewalk! 

The gallery will also serve as the starting point for a dicewalk, Sunday March 20, 3-5pm. A dicewalk is a way of moving randomly through an urban environment; participants roll a die each time they come to an intersection. Using a die to determine direction allows for surprising discoveries. Gather at 3pm, depart at 3:10pm. Wear good walking shoes and dress in layers. 

We will have a closing reception for the show, and the gallery. It’s the last Pro Arts exhibition on Frank Ogawa plaza in the foreseeable future. The organization will continue, but use of the space is another victim of the pandemic. The event will feature a reunion of the Crank Ensemble, which has not performed since 2015. It won’t be a grand reunion, as some of our members are in Hawaii, Switzerland, and skiing in Utah, but ~ we have a quorum, and enthusiasm, and most of the instruments still work. Our fun will become your fun. 

The closing reception will be Saturday, April 2, 6-9pm. Pro Arts will celebrate its long, storied occupancy of its space on Frank Ogawa plaza. Refreshments will be served, and the Crank Ensemble will perform. 

Then we can relax.

For a minute ~

Another endeavor that is very much on our minds right now is Verdi’s glorious Requiem, to be performed by the Golden Gate Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, (GGSOC) including its Benicia Chapter, including us, on May 22 at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco (and hopefully in Benicia as well). The Requiem will be conducted by Maestro Urs Leonhardt Steiner and will be dedicated to our friends and loved ones who have passed away from whatever cause over the last two years. This includes our friends from the Benicia Chapter Chorus, the poet Desmond Rutherford and former Ygnacio Valley High School Principal and local literary figure Carolyn Plath and our Maestro's mother Katharina Steiner. 

The GGSOC will collect names and short reminiscences of friends and family who have passed away so that they can be remembered during the performance of the Requiem. They invite the public to send the names and reminiscences to <ad...@goldengatesymphony.org> to be included. 

We (the Benicia Chapter) would like you to sing with us. If you live in or around Benicia, and have any interest in singing, whether you doubt your abilities or not, please come and join us. It’s rewarding, and we need a few more people. We will be rehearsing in historic Saint Paul's Church on 1st St, Tuesday nights at 6 pm starting in March. Masked, vaxxed and boosted only! Contact our “Ringmaster” Susan E. Lauenstein at <ad...@goldengatesymphony.org> if you are at all curious about this. 

And for next year, our Maestro Urs is making plans to possibly bring our organization to his native Switzerland to perform Beethoven’s majestic Ninth Symphony. Bodil and I visited there last year, and I can assure you it is worth the trip. We will also be hosting Swiss musicians who will perform the Ninth with us both in Switzerland, and in the Bay Area. We will get to know them well as they will be staying in our guest bedrooms and on our couches.

Oh ~ and Arts Benicia is looking for teaching artists for a new afterschool program, starting this month. Great organization ~ and now in a beautiful new home. Good opportunity for someone. 

Bodil and I both have work in Arts Benicia’s current exhibition Art of a Community. HERE is mine, a new hand-cranked instrument, dedicated to another friend we lost recently, the artist Mike Kendall ~ maybe you’ll see it at the Crank Ensemble show on April 2. HERE is Bodil’s Nonfunctional Mask. 

Ok ~ well, I just finished soldering, and it’s no longer morning ~ so Good afternoon everyone!

Larnie Fox

projects

Choice - Chance

Bodil/Larnie Recent Works

Works in Progress