John M. Bennett / Benjamin Bennett / John Also Bennett
A rare public meeting of three members of the Bennett family – John M. Bennett, the legendary American experimental poet and mail artist will give his first ever performance in Greece, joined by two of his sons – Benjamin Bennett (percussion) and John Also Bennett (flute, guitar, electronics). The Bennetts will each perform short solo sets, followed by a performance as a trio, as has only taken place a handful of times before. Join us for a unique night of minimalist and avant-garde music and poetry from this one of a kind family.
An artist on the fringes of American poetry, mail-art and underground music, John M. Bennett has worked as a scholar of Latin American literature and avant-garde writing. His poetry explored the minutia of a seemingly bland existence in the corn walled, strip mall infested landscape of Middle America, using a unique and heady strain of word-mangling steeped in the surrounding monotony. Bennett has published over 500 books and chapbooks of poetry and other materials and contributed to numerous other publications, as well as publishing thousands of limited edition items by writers who compose visual poetry, word art, and other experimental fiction/art/poetry through “Luna Bisonte Prods”, a small press he founded in 1974. During the 1980’s, Bennett began to experiment with newly available home recording technology and electronics. After 1985’s The Spitter, which featured Bennett reading his poems alone, he began pairing performances of his poems with improvised music and vocal processing. From his home studio in Columbus, Ohio, these recordings were released via self-dubbed cassettes alongside formidable chapbooks of visual poetry and traded through the postal service. In 2022, A Flattened Face Fogs Through was released, an LP compiling sound poetry recorded between the years of 1986 and 1995.
www.johnmbennett.bandcamp.com/album/a-flattened-face-fogs-through
Percussionist Ben Bennett has developed a commanding and highly personal synthesis of both traditional and extended techniques which takes the lineage of jazz, free-improvisation, and experimental music as its foundation. Bennett has been performing and touring actively in the US and abroad for the past several years, including several international festivals. He performs often as a soloist, as well as in long-running groups with Zach Darrup, Michael Foster, Evan Lipson, and Jack Wright; and with many other collaborators including Pascal Battus, Tashi Dorji, Sandy Ewen, Travis Laplante, Ingrid Laubrock, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Brandon Lopez, Chris Pitsiokos, Ron Stabinsky, Ben Vida, Jacob Wick, and Nate Wooley. Continuing on a path of dematerialization, some outgrowths of Bennett’s practice have involved no instruments or objects at all. Between 2014 and 2019, Bennett live-streamed 300 episodes of a YouTube series entitled “Sitting and Smiling”, in which he sat cross-legged on the floor, smiling directly at the camera without moving, for four hours each time. His channel went viral in January of 2015, creating an internet/media buzz.
www.youtube.com/@BenjaminBennetttt
John Also Bennett (aka JAB) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who creates music that could be described as avant-garde, atmospheric, or minimalist. His debut solo album Erg Herbe, which used flutes, microtonal synthesis and field recordings, was released on the French label Shelter Press in 2019. His most recent solo work, Out there in the middle of nowhere, adds a custom tuned lap steel guitar and is the result of a year of travel, using simple ingredients to engage with empty spaces, time and resonance on a glacial scale to illuminate a complexity and magic inherent within apparent nothingness. With Christina Vantzou, with whom he has already visited KET, he formed the duo CV & JAB (Shelter Press, Editions Basilic). He has released albums with the groups FORMA (Kranky, Spectrum Spools) and Seabat. He has also collaborated with Jon Gibson, Pauline Anna Strom, Michael Harrison, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) or Jefre-Cantu Ledesma, LEYA, Peter Burr and Zin Taylor. His work as a composer for animation and film has been screened at institutions and film festivals around the world including the Sundance Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, 25FPS, etc. He runs the small private imprint Editions Basilic and is involved in archival work and production for the New York-based music institution RVNG Intl., and has a history of organizing and producing underground performances of experimental music. After over a decade in New York City, he is currently based in Athens, Greece.
www.johnalsobennett.bandcamp.com
artwork: John M. Bennett