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Performances+Herb Talk: Rose and Sam Burt, Relaxing 5 Minute Videos with Willie Gussin, Calming Herbs with Holly Poole-Kavana

 

Bari Sax and Bass Clarinet from Rose and Sam Burt - Transplanted to Baltimore through her studies at Peabody, Rose Hammer Burt quickly found the local experimental music scene and took root. Rose is an active organizer and performer, playing straight ahead soul covers with the Bellevederes and helping organize shenanigans of all sorts with the Red Room Collective. Rose has taught electronic media at Goucher, JHU, MICA, and BSFA, and currently is living the startup life with her co-founders at Yet Analytics. Primarily a reeds player, Rose will play most anything she can get her hands on, but she is best known for her work with the Bari Sax.

Samuel Burt is a composer in Baltimore, Maryland and a teacher at Goucher College. He is a board member and concert organizer at the High Zero Foundation. He received M.M. degrees in Composition and Computer Music from the Peabody Institute and a B.Mus from the University of Georgia.

Since 2005 as part of the High Zero Foundation, he has helped to curate the High Zero Festival, the Red Room series, and Worlds in Collusion at Artscape. In 2007, he helped found After Now, a series of performances of compositions by Baltimore Composers. Other notable activities include the Illusory Correlations tour with C.R. Kasprzyk, Speakeroids with John Berndt, and performances with Mobtown Modern including Lucier's Music for Solo Performer.He performs regularly in many groups, including Geodesic Gnome, Second Nature, and Death in the Maze.

His electronic music focuses on interactivity, guided indeterminacy, and non-linear control systems. He primarily works with Pure Data to create brand new effects, spectral manipulation, granulation, pitch tracking, and more. Notable work includes the Rhythm Prism which allows composer John Berndt to realize a unique new form of music called Relabi.

His sound pallet ranges from electronic manipulation and synthesis to clarinet and bass clarinet. In order to expand this pallet, he has been building, playing, and selling daxophones. He's been experimenting with other homemade instruments like scatchboxes and the trombloon.

Relaxing 5 Minute Videos with Willie Gussin - Willie Gussin creates Relaxing 5 Minute Videos in order to contribute daily to the internet’s psychedelic, soothing, and unnecessary content. He will improvise a textural and sparse ambient piece live to accompany videos he has created sharing views of his home in Putney, VT and tour. r5mv.com

Willie Gussin is a Putney, VT based experimental musician and arts organizer. He is a member of The Future Collective, an organization dedicated to supporting under-represented arts in and around Brattleboro, VT, and a board member of The Brick House, a teen center, family support organization, and community/show space in Turners Falls, MA. During the day, he works at a non-profit organization helping families with young children access local resources. He plays in a variety of noisy and improvisational ensembles based in Southeastern Vermont and Western Mass.

Willie started Relaxing 5 Minute Videos after deciding to take a break from solo performance and as a challenge to produce art daily. Despite being skeptical of the internet, Willie is interested in the many ways it allows us to distribute and consume art and is especially interested in the “relaxing” and “psychedelic” corners of the internet. In practice, Willie takes inspiration from more traditional Youtubers. In product, he takes inspiration from the New England scenery and the musicians that exist in the area surrounding I-91 and the Connecticut River.

Calming Herbs with Holly Poole-Kavana - Plants have powerful healing properties. They cultivate the body’s inherent ability to heal itself. Plant medicine allows people and communities to have more control over our own health and healing and deepens our relationships with the plants around us. These underlying values have informed Holly’s journey as an herbalist and medicine maker.

Holly was a budding botanist at a young age, and followed her interest to earn a BS in botany from Cornell University. She started studying herbal medicine in 2005 at the Pacific School of Herbal Medicine in Oakland, CA after her experiences with health care work led her to seek out new option for healing.  She went on to apprentice with herbalist 7song at the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine, participating in medicine making, free clinic consultations, and wildcrafting in addition to classroom learning. She also completed the Sacred Plant Traditions Clinic II program in which student herbalists see clients in a free clinic under the supervision of experienced mentors. She practices herbal medicine in Washington DC.

In addition to her work as an herbalist, Holly works as an out-of-hospital birth assistant, and provided wellness education and clinical support at a Washington DC birth center for just under ten years before leaving to focus on herbal work.

Holly is deeply committed to growing the herbs she uses in her practice and herbal CSA. She is able to tailor herbal remedies specifically for each individual from high quality locally grown and wild-harvested herbs. She is careful to grow and gather herbs in ways that protects the futures of the plants she uses and the places they grow.

littleredbirdbotanicals.com/