The duo Shunyata (Brian Moran, electronics; Matt Hannafin, percussion) explores sound sculpture and the meditational aspects of free improvisation, creating an auditory envelope that alternately silences, incorporates, and acquiesces to the performance hall's ambient space.
"In shunyata there is neither movement nor non-movement nor both movement and non-movement nor something other than movement and non-movement. Reality embraces all, includes all, and transcends all."
In addition to pure duo work, Shunyata has collaborated with artists such as Nate Wooley (trumpet), Cynthia Spencer (zen kado flower arranging), Jeffrey Lependorf (shakuhachi), Maria Chavez (turntable), Ravi Padmanabha (percussion), and video artists Benton Bainbridge, Chika Iijima, and Andre Goncalves. Moran and Hannafin are also members of the improvisation trio Chainworks with pianist Dan DeChellis.
Brian Moran has been working in New York since 1981, beginning with experimental dance and expanding out to performance art, live video/sound, improvisation, DJing, punk, and contemporary theater. His career as a psychiatric nurse and his fascination with energy work and body psychology have informed both his movement works, with their body quirks and obsessive gestures, and his music, which channels the tics of Tourette's Syndrome, the rituals of the autistic, the obsessiveness of the addict, and the subtleties of life deviance. His collaborators have included artists as diverse as Lydia Lunch, Ikue Mori, the live video group NNeng, and the Yoshiko Chuma and Stephanie Skura dance companies. Currently, his approach to musical performance employs a variety of circuit-bent electronics, analog synthesizers, field recordings, and processing devices.
Matt Hannafin is a New York-born, now Portland-based percussionist active in both free improvisation and Iranian classical and traditional music. He studied Iranian tombak (classical goblet drum) with master Kavous Shirzadian, Arabic and Indian percussion with Jamey Haddad and Glen Velez, African and Afro-Caribbean percussion with John Amira and Magette Fall, and voice with composer La Monte Young and master singer Pandit Pran Nath. He’s performed at venues as diverse as the United Nations General Assembly Hall, the New England Conservatory, and CBGBs, with collaborators as varied as Turkish multi-instrumentalist Omar Faruk Tekbilek and Borbetomagus guitarist Donald Miller. For improvisation, his approach blends the techniques and timbres of eastern and western percussion with sonorities and ideas borrowed from nature, electronic music, and the urban-industrial soundscape. His MySpace page can be found at www.myspace.com/matthannafin .
Shunyata has six recordings available as part of the Sachimay Interventions series: SubTonic, 9-4-04 (Int01), Bar XVI_Afterparty (Int02), 11-07-04: This Machine Kills Fascists (Int06, with Nate Wooley), Shunyata (Int12), Four Ideas of Stillness (Int22, with Jeffrey Lependorf and Ravi Padmanabha), and 2@NYC:Mar+Apr2007 (Int32, with Nate Wooley).
