Racoco at Women in Motion Salon, April 13, 2024

 

Assemblage. Choreography by Rachel Cohen, music by yours truly. Excerpt from a work-in-progress as seen April 13, 2024 in Brooklyn.

Thank you Racoco Productions and Women in Motion. I look forward to seeing you all in person sooner rather than later!

What Did You Do Today?

This is another sketch for Assemblage, a new, collaborative work-in-progress with choreographer Rachel Cohen and Racoco Productions. Rachel and I are trading music and movement on video back and forth, generating a lot of material, and figuring out how to make a long-distance "virtual collaboration" work.

Becker - Soft Synth, Field Recordings, Toy Samples

Breeze Smith - Percussion

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Jimbo's Lullaby

 

An arrangement of Claude Debussy's "Jimbo's Lullaby" from his Children's Corner suite. I've arranged the solo piano piece for vibraphone, harp, viola, and cello.
Becker - Arrangement, Kalimba, Wind-Up Penguin
This is part of a work-in-progress with choreographer Rachel Cohen and Racoco Productions. 

Misha Penton Collective at the Silos at Sawyer Yards

Photo by Dave Nickerson

Misha Penton Collective is Sculpture Month Houston 2023 music ensemble in residence. Experience voice, guitar, and electronic ambient, textural, and spacious music to accompany the visual art installations throughout the sonorous Silos at Sawyer Yards.

Misha Penton, voice. George Heathco, guitars. Chris Becker, laptop.

Performances at 3pm after curator Volker Eisele leads an exhibit tour from 2pm-3pm. FREE.

Performance Dates, Saturdays:
October 14 & 21 
November 4 & 18

Site Gallery Houston (MAP)
The Silos at Sawyer Yards
1502 Sawyer Street, Suite 400
Houston, TX 77007

Photo by Lillian Warren; sculpture by Jessica Kreutter

Photo by Doris Murdock; installation by Allison Hunter

City Suite (Remixed and Mastered)

This is the full suite, an electronic tone poem inspired by life in the city: Prelude and Invocation, Migration, Industry, and Call to Prayer.
Thank you to everyone who checked out the earlier mixes of this piece and offered support and helpful suggestions.
“You have to be surprised. Anything can be music.” - Ryuichi Sakamoto
released October 12, 2023
Becker - Synths, Rainstick, Tambourine, Field Recordings (including cicadas, Houston traffic, rain, and thunder, crosswalks, car radios, birds, airplanes, and the shore of Spanish River Beach)SPIKE the percussionist - GongMisha Penton - Flute
Sampled Voices - Misha Penton, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Max Olivier
Factory interior recordings - KMRU (Sample Pack)
Mastered by Doug Henderson

Does Humor Belong in Psychotherapy? (Online)

Does Humor Belong in Psychotherapy?

Discover how the music of Frank Zappa, the broad humor of vaudeville stars The Marx Brothers, and the no-filter verbosity of radio personality Howard Stern have inspired the treatment of juvenile patients carrying diagnoses including major depressive disorder, autism spectrum disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and childhood-onset schizophrenia.

Chris Becker & Enrico Curreri
Saturday, July 1
10 - 11:30am CT
Potentially appropriate for 1.5 CEs

Admission: $20.00

Chris Becker is a contributing editor for Houston CityBook. Becker wrote the cover story for the magazine’s premiere issue and continues to provide thoughtful, deeply researched coverage of Houston’s lively and diverse creative community. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women in Jazz, a collection of in-depth conversations with 37 female musicians representing nearly every style of jazz one can imagine. Becker has presented multimedia lectures on jazz history, music therapy, and writing about visual art at Lone Star College at Kingwood, Project Row Houses, The Jung Center of Houston, and Houston Baptist University. He also composes music for dance, experimental video, and mixed-media installations.

Enrico Curreri, MA, is a Licensed Creative Arts Therapist at Elmhurst Hospital Center in New York City where he works with patients ages 10-17 carrying different diagnoses, including major depressive disorder, autism spectrum disorder, PTSD, and childhood-onset schizophrenia. He is a member of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA). Curreri studied music composition at The New England Conservatory of Music and received his degree in music therapy from New York University.

Celebrating Earth Day with A Gift from the Bower

Chris Becker, Rachel Gardner, Patrick Moore, Carlos Canul, and Ruby Surls. 

Photo by Heidi Vaughan.

What a gift it is to be asked to create a new piece of music to herald a new sculpture and poem all created by such talented people. More photos to come from the April 22, 2023 opening of A Gift from the Bower, a group exhibit of incredible outdoor art created by some of Texas's finest artists, included the premiere of my first-ever piece for solo cello "A Gift from the Bower."

A Gift from the Bower was presented by DiverseWorks & Locke Surls Center for Art and Nature. Originally conceived by artists James Surls and Charmaine Locke, the project is co-curated by Jack Massing and Xandra Eden to include newly commissioned works by fourteen artists and artist teams.