james-bigbee-garver jimmy-garver james-garver jimmy-bigbee james-bigbee ableton ableton-live sound-design
james-bigbee-garver jimmy-garver james-garver jimmy-bigbee james-bigbee ableton ableton-live sound-design
(not so) Current Events & (less) Recent News
My sound design for “Fishy Business,” an animation detailing the dangers of open-water fish farming, is now online at the Food & Water Watch website. Click the play button below to see a short excerpt. (August 2008)
I created a Sound Design for THE WEIRD SISTERS, a play produced by East 3rd Ensemble at the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York. (December 2008)
Ringtones! I’ve uploaded some new ringtones that you can buy for your cellphone. Check them out on the new page or at Myxer.com
The Tiny Dance Film Series (below) will be installed at the DANCE:FILM09 festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. (May 21-30)
I’ll be working again with East Third Ensemble on their production of Nilo Cruz’s BICYCLE COUNTRY this summer in New York. (June/July 2009)
Lots of new & different-sounding songs have been posted on the sound samples page. (March 2009)
My Sound design for the play MEDEA’S CHILDREN premiered on April 8 at Whitman College. I’ll also taught a workshop titled “Sonic Possiblities For The Stage” for the students there. (March/April 2009)
SECURE THE TRUCK, a collection of five rockin’ tunes that I produced in Los Angeles with the band of the same name will be released in June 2009.
I’m creating a Sound Design for TERRIBLE THINGS, a new theater piece from Lisa D’Amour & Katie Pearl. It premieres in New York at Performance Space 122 in the fall. (December 2009)
My sound design for the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum’s new Intrepid Adventure Website for kids is now online. Click the play button below to watch a short excerpt! (September 2008)
I recently created a new techno song for Johnny Klein’s newest film, “The Moon Says I Love You.” Watch a short excerpt of it below. The film will be screened at Barbes in Brooklyn on June 13, 2009.
Two new tracks! Both with funny names. Click to play:
Here’s the trailer for the latest East Third Ensemble play for which I’m contributing a new sound design. The trailer was edited by the good folks at Brooklyn Films and scored by yours truly! Click to play:
The TINY DANCE FILM SERIES will be installed at a chashama Window Space in Manhattan from July 20-26! Peter & I are super excited for this installation. Party on Monday, July 20, 2009!
Two reviews for A BICYCLE COUNTRY are out. NYTheater.com and OffOffOnline (July 2009)
I’ve relocated to Washington, DC! After 10 years in Brooklyn, Rebecca & I have said goodbye to Gotham and settled in “The District,” home to Fugazi & Bad Brains. But I’ll be traveling back & forth on I-95 for the rest of 2009. Two new theater pieces & a possible TDFS screening are on deck for NY audiences this fall. (August 2009)
I just finished a new track for the Tiny Dance Films installation at chashama. The almighty Jon Cohrs supplied a goodly amount beats on this one. Check it out on the sound samples page. (July 20, 2009)
Work on HAWK MOON has begun! East Third Productions is workshopping four sections of the 1973 Sam Shepard text. We’re planning to present an informal staging of these initial investigations in late Roctober, with the thought of producing a full-on event at some point in the future. (Sept. 2009)
The fantastic theatre-making team of Lisa D’Amour & Katie Pearl have launched a new blog. It’s a conversation between the two of them about their new show, TERRIBLE THINGS. Lisa types and Katie is on video talking about and around the show. It's a trip. They recommend starting from the EARLIEST entries and moving through to the MOST RECENT. But you’ll do what you want.... lisakatietest.blogspot.com (Oct. 27, 2009)
12.05.09
TERRIBLE THINGS is now open to the public at PS-122 for three weeks only. I contributed a sound design for the show, and I must say that it is one of my favorites. Granted, every most recent thing that I make tends to always be my favorite, but I feel that this show will stay up there at the top for quite awhile. There are some beautiful and strange images throughout the show - scenic, light, word-based, and physical.
Music from the show is in the player below. Images and music are here.
12.28.09
The Tiny Dance Film Series - my collaboration with Peter Kyle Dance - will be on view in New York during the 2010 Dance On Camera festival, January 28 - February 4 at the Walter Reade Cinema lobby in Lincoln Center. If you haven’t witnessed the magic that is the Tiny Dance Film Series, this is the best time to do it!
02.15.10
heARTh is an art party that’s happening in my Washington, DC neigborhood on Saturday, February 27 at 8:00. It takes place at the home of Aadika Singh, and will feature new work from New York & DC-based artists - myself included! The new piece is a peripatetic audio & video piece.
03.01.10
The heARTh party was a huge success! Rebecca and I are really happy with the first iteration of SILOSPHERE (aka The Big Moon Head); we learned a lot from all the guests who walked around the party with it. More pictures are here.
03.25.10
You can listen to some of my design for METAMORPHOSIS in the player below. It’s a new imagining of Kafka’s story adapted and staged by director Derek Goldman. My design incorporates 14 live microphones, some Dvorak songs, a hint of Curtis Mayfield, and a bunch of freaky bug sounds made manifest by John Milosich’s processed voice.
Tickets can be purchased here.
04.05.10
Some really great photos of the METAMORPHOSIS rehearsal process are on the Web here. The show opens this Friday, April 9!
04.21.10
METAMORPHOSIS opened on April 9, and it’s earned some nice reviews and citations. The show is Helen Hayes Recommended and it’s an Editor’s Pick at The Washington Post. Tim Treanor at dctheatrescene.com calls my sound design “among the best I have ever heard, any theater, any place, any time.” It still makes me blush. More reviews are here:
05.05.10
The SILOSPHERE is making an appearance in Baltimore at the MEGAPOLIS Audio Art Festival!!. Rebecca and I are psyched to share the weirdness that the silosphere has become. It all goes down in Charm City May 15 and 16. From the looks of the schedule, a whole lot of kooky (but potentially KILLing) stuff is happening all weekend. Don’t miss the fun!!
05.19.10
Megapolis was an absolute BLAST this past weekend. Photos & video of the silosphere as worn by the megapeeps are here. Maria Papadomanolaki of free103point9 has posted a great interview with us here.
05.23.10
MARY ESTHER, a new play produced by East 3rd Productions is showing in New York for 3 nights only, May 27-29. I’ve been working on this show for a few months with one of my best friends, Chris Petit. He’s an amazing director, and I feel that we’ve crafted a beautiful and complex new play with playwright Nick Zagone and actors Bethany Caputo and Clark Gookin. Tickets & Info.
You can listen to music from the show in the player below.
Images and music are here.
06.06.10
I made some theme music for 32 TEAMS - THE REAL FANTASY FOOTBALL SHOW. It’s a podcast that my friend, Heath Kelts hosts every Tuesday night at 7pm Eastern. Tune in!
06.15.10
A Tiny Dance Film Series kiosk will be on view during the Dance/USA 2010 Annual Conference. This is the first opportunity for the DC community to experience the Tiny Dances in person. So, if you're affiliated with the professional dance field in any way, you're invited and welcome to attend the conference. It's being held through June 19 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Pentagon City, VA. The Tiny Dance kiosk will be on view each day until 6:00pm Saturday, June 19.
06.17.10
I’m going to DJ a set of soul and funk (sunny, good-time) music outdoors at the brand new Columbia Heights Community Marketplace! It takes place every Saturday from 9am-2pm at 14th Street and Park Road, NW in Washington, D.C. (next to the Col. Heights Metro stop). I’ll be there this Saturday, June 19.
07.08.10
New SILOSPHERE documentary!! Check it out on the Megapolis site or just a few pages away on the very same site you’re lookin’ at now.
08.02.10 August.
August is typically the laziest month, right? It's the only month of the year without an official holiday in it, yet everyone I know stops working for a week or so and vacates their day-to-day. My August is pretty busy. Three different plays in three different places!
From August 23-September 12, SINK THE BELGRANO! plays in Washington, DC at the H Street Playhouse. This show is produced by Scena Theater and directed by Robert McNamara. It's a nasty little play by Steven Berkoff about the British adventure in the Falkland Islands circa 1982. I made the sound design, with an assist from the Atari 2600 chipset. Info and tickets are here.
On August 28, I'll be in Ridgefield, CT to perform MARY ESTHER, my collaboration with Chris Petit and East 3rd Ensemble. The show has been invited to open the second annual Michael Chekhov Theatre Festival. Ridgefield is just over one hour north of Manhattan and the festival is populated by students and teachers of Michael Chekhov, one of the greatest actors to ever live. Info and tickets are here.
From August 29 - September 4 Johnny Klein's newest play called AUTO GRAPHIC NOVEL plays in New York at Theater For The New City's Dream Up festival. I worked with Johnny on an early incarnation of this show a few years ago; my music and freaky sci-fi soundscapes are being used in this world premiere production. Info and tickets are here.
That's my August. Also, I'm going camping in the Olympic National Park on the 24th to celebrate my birthday!
09.08.10
I’m working with Irish theatre company Solas Nua on their next play in DC: IMPROBABLE FREQUENCY. Set in Dublin during WWII, the production will be staged in an as-yet-unoccupied office building, 111 K Street NE. (fun!)
09.23.10
Lots going on this fall. The most “impactful” of which is the now-official trip to China that I’m making with Tiny Dance Film Series collaborator Peter Kyle. The 4th Jumping Frames dance video festival is installing our series in Hong Kong, Macau, and Guanzhau November 8 thru 22. While we’re there, Peter and I will be creating a new film and working with the City Contemporary Dance Company. China!
10.02.10
IMPROBABLE FREQUENCY opens tonight!
111 K St. NE DC
7:30pm thru Oct. 24
I made some sounds of the “probability adjustment tank” featured in the play; a few examples are below.
10.13.10
BLOOD WEDDING opens tomorrow, Roctober 14. The play is directed by the super-charged Nadia Mahdi; I’m contributing a sound design. Much of the sonic world of the play consists of a fantastic acoustic guitar player and some incredible singers, all students at Georgetown. Nadia has arranged some beautiful music, culled from medieval French and Spanish sources. Here’s the info:
BLOOD WEDDING
By Federico García Lorca
Based on the translation by Langston Hughes
Directed by Professor Nadia Mahdi
Thursday-Saturday, October 14-16 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, October 17 at 2 p.m.
Wednesday-Saturday, October 20-23 at 8 p.m.
DAVIS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DEVINE STUDIO THEATRE
37th St. NW & O St. NW, Washington DC
11.09.10
I’ve been in Walla Walla Washington for the past few weeks working with my old friend Chris Petit on a play called KID-SIMPLE, A Radio Play In The Flesh. After many many hours of recording, sourcing, mixing, and sweetening dozens of different sound effects, the show will open tomorrow, November 10 at Whitman college.
Chris and I recruited a talented student named Nick Budak to play the Foley Artist. He’s triggering about 90 recorded cues using Ableton Live and a bunch of others behind a Foley table comprised of bells and whistles.
Below is a example of what Chris and I started calling Sound Salads: short sections of the play which call for 5-seconds each of specific voice recordings. This one is describing “chasm”.
If you’re passing thru Walla Walla this weekend, come see the show!
11.10.10
I’m leaving the tranquil, smalltown easiness of Walla Walla tomorrow morning for the completely unknown-to-me city of Hong Kong. It will be my first trip to Asia. While I’m there I’ll travel to Guangzhau and Macao.
The occasion is the 4th Jumping Frames Dance Video Festival presented by City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC). My collaboration with Peter Kyle, the Tiny Dance Film Series, will be on view at the festival; 10 kiosks in three cities. Peter and I are also shooting two new tiny films, giving a series of workshops, and a lecture about our filmmaking philosophy.
The video below is a pretty amazing trailer for the festival. It’s going to be fun!
12.20.10
My trip to Hong Kong and China was amazing. Peter and I made some great friends at City Contemporary Dance Company, and we’re cooking up new projects to take there next year.
It’s the end of the year and bigbee.org is getting an archive overhaul. Check out the the new sound design and compositions page and the new songs page.
02.05.11
A few colleagues from the DC Listening Lounge and I did a workshop with members of the Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) today. I presented some ideas and the participants played with hue as it relates to timbre.
02.16.11
Met with Ben Wegman and Sarah Levitt today, resident dancers in the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. An in-progress sketch of their new duet, Hammock, with my score was presented at The Flea Theater in New York on February 5.
03.08.11
Peter and I installed the Tiny Dance Film Series at the 2011 Northeast Regional Conference of the American College Dance Festival a few days ago. The conference takes place at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. Four kiosks are on view March 8-16. Here’s a quick look at the installation process!
03.31.11
The Studio Theatre in DC is producing a fantastic festival of Enda Walsh plays and calling it NEW IRELAND. Two of the plays are staged by director Matt Torney with sound designs by Martin Desjardins, whom I assisted. “The Walworth Farce” opens April 6 and “New Electric Ballroom” opens April 13.
04.08.11
Rebecca and I are helping to organize a fundraising party called KITCHEN OF INNOVATION. It goes like this:
A group of people pay $16.50 each for dinner and entertainment. After dinner they listen to a series of artists give presentations about their work and a current project. The dinner guests vote for the artist they like the best. The winning artist takes home all the money from the ticket price, promising to use it for the project they presented, and report back at the next dinner party.
It’s a crowd-sourced, micro-financing fund for DC-based artists:
The second ever Kitchen is happening tomorrow night, April 9! Tickets.
04.08.11
Also this weekend: Peter Kyle Dance is presenting a new duet at the Triskelion Arts Spring Gala in WmsBrgh., BKLYN. on Saturday. I created the score. Go! Say hello to PK & Holley! Then tell me what you think!
05.10.11
One entire month and no recent news!? Not really. Two plays which I assistant designed just closed at the Studio Theatre in DC. And I designed “Strange Snow” for East 3rd Productions, currently running in New York. And here’s a song for that play which I dusted off recently.
06.18.11
08.24.11
A quick look at the Tiny Dance Film Series.
09.28.11
Two projects which I'm a part of open tonight, one with a whole lot of speaking and one without any speaking at all. LUNGS is the talkie play, a world premiere at the Studio Theatre in DC; I contributed a short piece of music. DANCES FROM THE STEP DOWN ROOM is the wordless work, an evening of new and revived chamber dances exploring the philosophical, the fantastical and the physical. I scored two of these dances for Peter Kyle Dance; it's presented by Triskelion Arts in BKLYN. Below is a piece called Mai Bild that will be featured.
10.20.11
Scena Theater’s GREEK by Steven Berkoff opens tonight at the H Street Playhouse in Washington, DC. There are some fantastic performances in it, full of filthy language and raunchy depictions of the Oedipus story. Robert McNamara directs. A selection from my sound design is below.
12.05.11
I’m putting the finishing touches on my sound design for Chekhov’s THREE SISTERS at the Atlantic Acting School in New York. The production design is magnificent and the acting is superb.
Dec. 7-10 at 8pm
646-216-1186 for tickets
330 W. 16th St. NY, NY
Directed by Matt Torney
Sets, Lights by Gabe Evansohn
Costumes by Nicole Wee
Sound by James Bigbee Garver
12.20.11
I was selected by the Cultural Development Corporation of DC to take part in the 2012 Source Theater Festival’s Artistic Blind Date program. I’ve been paired (tripled, actually) with Visual Artist Kristy Simmons and Choreographer Sarah Ewing. The three of us will work together over the next five months to create a new piece of theater which will have its premiere in June during the festival. Very exciting stuff!
01.09.12
Peter and I are speaking on Edward Henkel’s MovementTalks panel at the 92 St. Y in New York next Friday, Jan. 27. This iteration of the ongoing series is called “Dancing in the Cloud / Dance for Small Screens.” We’ll be sharing our Tiny Dance Film philosophy, and even screening a few of the films on a humongous screen in the gigantic Buttenwieser Hall at the 92 St. Y. Click the image at right for all the details.
03.21.12
I just finished producing a story with my good friend, Johanna Stoberock. It’s called “Will Help Be Given?” and we’ve entered it in The Missouri Review’s annual audio contest. You can listen to it here.
04.30.12
Peter Kyle, Holley Farmer, and I shot a new Tiny Dance film this weekend with our new best friend, Paul Moon directing. Here’s a still image from the day’s work.
05.25.12
FILTER, a new multimedia performance will make its debut in a few short weeks. I created the show with choreographer Sarah Ewing and artist Kristy Simmons, and my sound design is primarily accomplished with help from the good folks at Silent Storm Sound System, Check out all the amazing stuff they do at silentdis.co (and come see FILTER June 13-July 1 in DC!)
06.11.12
The FILTER show has its premiere on Wednesday. I’m very excited for lots of folks to see and hear this performance. I’ve been thinking about and working on it for many months and I feel that we’ve created something kind of beautiful and definitely unique. It’s a strange experience to have 1 performer on the street and 1 performer inches away from the front row. It’s strange that the room will be totally silent, yet the entire 45-minute production is heavily scored with my music, soundscapes and live sound. It’s strange that everyone involved in the production - performers, our projection designer, me, the audience - will objectively see and hear and smell the exact same thing, but everyone will be functioning and experiencing the thing from their own, absolutely unique perspective. I keep telling myself that this “unique perspective” thing is true of all performance, regardless of genre, type, and talent. But somehow the FILTER show continues to put it front and center for me and I love that it does because it’s something that only live theater is able to accomplish.
Five performances only in this current iteration. Tickets are here.
06.26.12
DCTheatreScene.com gave the FILTER show a very nice review. "It's magic," they say. And "The cumulative experience is thrilling." Here are a couple pieces from the show, fruit from my humbling sessions with renowned Las Vegas guitarist Don Creebo. TICKETS.
08.21.12
Fresh Visions! I’m making a piece of music for S.J. Ewing & Dancer’s newest work which will premiere at Strathmore on Sept. 8 and 9. It’s part of a weekend of world-premier dance works by the staff and faculty of CityDance. Tickets.