Karl Pestka

ThinkTank Projects

Bio

Karl Pestka, a composer, video artist, and violinist out of East Lansing, Michigan, strives to create a pointedly visual kind of music. His quadridexterous performances as The Airelectric, however- in which he operates live electronics with his toes, while both hands engage the electric violin- are not primarily intended to draw the eye. It is also the sound, like the cinematic music of Clint Mansell or Philip Glass, which encourages the listener to enkindle a personal story, aurally planting the imagination in a fertile bed of orchestral layers, sown with evolving, danceable beats. Arrangements often encompass live improvised video, either generated from toe-operated, homemade software, or spun from collaborations with Airelectric video artists Colleen Lynne Cox and Andrea Steves. Other collusions include the progressive rock group Sexual Pantalones, as well as the Oberlin-based new media/video ensemble The Night, with whom he has toured extensively through East Coast art galleries and noise collectives.

Karl holds Bachelor of Music degrees in both Composition and Performing Arts Technology, having studied at the University of Michigan under Mary Simoni, Virgil Moorefield, Evan Chambers, William Bolcom, Susan Botti, Erik Santos, and Karen Tanaka, as well as violin under Yehonatan Berick. His aural and visual work has received prizes from the 2008 Lake Michigan Film Competition, the 2007 Michigan Lightworks Film Festival, and a special mention in the 2006 Drunken Boat Panliterary Awards, judged by Paul D. Miller. In 2004, his piece Devastation Sandwich, for solo electric violin with toe-operated electronics, won an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer award, the first of its kind to receive such recognition. Karl's music and videos have been featured at the Kennedy Center, NYC's Richard Rodgers Theatre and the Tank, Detroit's 555 and Zeitgeist galleries, the 700IS Experimental Film and Video Festival in Iceland, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the Klappei Filmhouse in Belgium.

Albums

The Airelectric: X.I.

2008

As the premiere release of The Airelectric, the concise X.I. EP establishes a new, cinematically-conceived compound of American post-minimalism, Icelandic rock, and Hindustani-influenced electric violin virtuosity. A project of Karl Pestka, with original artwork by Colleen Lynne Cox.

Available from: CD Baby