Museum of Arts and Design, NY 2017-2018

The band Muscle Memory features At Play performing artist-in-residence Steven Reker with Matt Evans and Dan Foley. For this / visitor, the trio will use an array of amplifiers as modular units as they add physical and spatial dimensions to their compositions, inspired by Sonic Arcade: Shaping Space with Sound. Having collected over a dozen amps from friends and collaborators, MM will simultaneously create a dense sonic landscape while arranging, and rearranging, the amps in a number of sculptural formations in conversation with custom interactive lighting design.

MM will explore the reciprocal nature between their musical compositions and the arrangement of the amps through a sequence of temporarily inhabitable moments. This process reveals how the physical organization of the equipment builds and affects sonic experiences. Ever-changing and producing multiple shifts in perception, this / visitor features acts of adaptability and endurance inspired by the physicality and instability of live performance.

Marking the culmination of Reker’s At Play residency at MAD, Saturday night’s showing of this / visitor will feature additional performances by multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ka Baird and psychedelic sci-fi trio War Bubble.

Rememberer @ BAM Next Wave Festival 2016 + LUMBERYARD (formerly ADI)

Architecture doubles as instrument in this compelling collage of offbeat pop songs and live construction from the band Open House, inspired by Henry Miller’s novella The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder. Building as they play, the band members, led and directed by Steven Reker (People Get Ready), coax an array of uncanny sounds from a set of amplified eight-foot-long sheets of Styrofoam wall insulation, erected into teetering structures that vibrate, hum, squeak, and seem destined to collapse.

The Kitchen 2015

Using Richard Brautigan’s novella Watermelon Suga as a guide and the lens through which material is developed, director/choreographer Steven Reker (People Get Ready) collaborates with Ryan Seaton (Callers), Matt Evans (Tigue), and Eliot Krimsky (Glass Ghost) to form the band Open House to premiere an evening of songs, compositions and performance work. With shared musical influences that range from Suicide and Wire to composers like Meredith Monk, the group creates compellingly strange pop songs that sprawl out into sonic landscapes. In the spirit of Brautigan’s deceptive simplicity, the heart of the performance emerges from layered interactions of uncomplicated, repetitive elements. Through sound, light and movement, Open House conjures and reworks the poetically dense world that Brautigan created in his 1968 book and creates a space for a “collective imagination” during the performance.

American Songbook Festival 2015 @ Lincoln Center

Evening-length performance featuring the band, Open House.