We’re thrilled to announce our next gallery show at Crystal Bridges will feature experimental percussionist Jon Mueller with clarinetist Craig Colorusso. The performance will take place from 4-5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome.
Jon Mueller’s The Future is Unlimited, Always is an examination of time, meditation and loss. In this piece, released in 2022 on the Virtues label as a CD/book, the Wisconsin-based percussionist’s usual bombast of repetitive rhythms and textures are replaced with fluid, calm tones, overlaid with otherworldly wails. In live performances of the piece, Mueller employs a variety of gongs, percussion and electronics to create an atmosphere equally as easy to get lost in as it is to be propelled by.
“Mueller’s music is usually completed by the overtones and feedback that arise from the interaction between his playing and the space where it occurs, but for this recording he has drawn those elements into the foreground. Long vocal and metallic tones stretch over subliminally rumbling drums, directing the listener’s attention up and out.” – Bill Meyer, The Wire
“The Future is Unlimited, Always captures Mueller at his most spacious: layers of frequencies and tones that are as engaging as they are mysterious, and capturing more than just audio, but a deeper sense of existence.” – Creaig Dunton, Brainwashed
Mueller’s aim has long been to move drums, percussion and rhythm from its anticipated backbeat to a central musical focus, something more intuitive and natural than usually imagined. Audiences throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and the United Kingdom have experienced this idiosyncratic point of view as, paradoxically, both ‘cathartic’ and ‘meditative’. Notable solo performances have taken place at the Guggenheim Museum, New Museum, Issue Project Room, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Alverno Presents, SXSW, Big Ears Festival, Hopscotch Fest and Witching Hour Festival.
His solo work has been released by Table of the Elements, Type Recordings, Important Records, Taiga Records, SIGE Records, American Dreams, and others.
Craig Colorusso was born April 18th, 1970 in Mount Vernon, NY. With a guitar and some inspiration from the Punk Rock movement of the 1980’s he began to write his own music. By the 1990’s he was in touring bands and started his own record company. After touring the United States tirelessly Colorusso found himself in one too many bars. His music began to expand and incorporate composition and improvisation and the instruments bass clarinet and clarinet. This expansion caused his music to evolve, resulting in the pieces Tagmusik (24-hour performance in Bethel CT) and Maschine (a composition for instruments and off-set printing presses). Slowly, these explorations extended beyond music and investigated light and sculpture. First with MB 89 and then with CUBEMUSIC, both of which have toured the US. In the last decade Colorusso has combined his interests to create his latest works Sun Boxes (solar powered sound installation), Moon Pod (a structure that plays music based on the fullness of the Moon) and Sound Swings (three swings that play music when activated).