Tom Recchion

Tom Recchion has been a artist/composer/art director in Southern California since the 1970’s. He is the co-creator of the legendary Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). At the time he discarded object making (though he employs it now) and concentrated on the ephemeral nature of sound. His early practice in low-tech sonic exploration presaged many of the genre's exciting developments of the last quarter-century: record manipulation, live tape loops, free improvisation, found and invented instruments, installation, and more. In the LAFMS his group, The Doo-Dooettes, became one of the 3 anchor points for the collective's endeavors as well as playing in AIRWAY, and many other groupings of the collective. He’s collaborated with Half Japanese, Jad Fair, David Toop, Christian Marclay, Mark Trayle, Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino, Max Eastley, to name a few, as well as plays in the improvisational group Extended Organ (Paul McCarthy, Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen and Mike Kelley). Currently and most proudly he is a secret member of Smegma, under the name Victor Sparks, and has formed a 'spin-off' group, The Rodney Forest, with fellow Smegma members, Ju Suk Reet Meat, and Oblivia/Rock and Roll Jackie, who will have a record on Qubico sometime this year. He’s remixed for Oren Ambarchi, The Electric Company, Sun & Jim Thirwell. He also occasionally writes for WIRE magazine and has many recordings released. The solo releases “Freak Show” (cassette only), “Chaotica”, “I Love My Organ” and “Soundtracks To A Color: Gold & Black” (which accompanied a large scale installation), were released in 2004. In 2006 a new solo CD came out in Italy on Giuseppe Ielasi’s Schoolmap label as their innagural release and a Christmas 7” single was recently released by Meeuw Muszak in Belgium. His work has led him to many fruitful collaborations with film makers such as Janie Geiser. The result of which ended up being selected in the New York Film Festival of 1999 & Kirby Dick, as well as video artists Bruce & Norman Yonemoto and Branda Miller and has done work for the theatre, dance and performance artists. He has recordings on Birdman, Touch, PSF, RRR, Pinokoteka, Barooni, Sub Rosa, Idea, Staubgold, Tigerbeat6, sound. and the Cortical Foundation. He was awarded a 2004 COLA Fellowship in the visual arts. In the summer of 2004 he was awarded Best New Genre/Uncategorizable Artists by the LA Weekly Music Critics Poll. MOCA commissioned him to design and produce a listening room in support of their current exhibition “A Mininmalist Future?” which lead to the production of a 6 hour DVD survey overview of minimalist musicians, and curated 3 concerts which helped give birth to MOCA’s Immersion Concert series curated along with Robert Crouch. He is developing a collaboration with monologist David Greenberger, another with sound artist John Weise. His most recent work was part of MOCA’s Visual Music exhibitions concert series, ‘See Hear Now!’ is an improvisation of sound and image with artist, filmmaker Jonathon Rosen. He also just completed work with film maker/puppeteer Janie Geiser on a theatre piece called “Invisible Glass” for Cal Arts that made it’s premiere in April at the Redcat. Afterwards he participated in SASSAS’ 'summer sound.' series in an evening of film makers and composers where he premiered 3 older video and film works from the 1970’s that had never been shown. Following that he has performed with the ROVA Saxophone Quartet along with Fred Frith, Nels Cline, and Mark Trayle performing a version of John Coltrane’s 'Ascension', also at the Redcat. He is also a recipient of a Pasadena Cultural Arts grant for visual artists for which he will release a project called ‘78’, which is a 78rpm vinyl 10” lp that will be circulated in public spaces. Most recently he performed at the Getty Museum. As an art director/graphic designer Recchion has created CD packages for Robert Wyatt, Terry Riley, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, David Lynch & Julee Cruise, Los Lobos, Prince, The Carl Stalling Projects, Lou Reed/John Cale, The Band, Merle Haggard, Alanis Morrisette, The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks, Hermann Nitsch, TamTam Books and many others and a quartet of Grammy® Nominations for Packaging Design. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.