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Upcoming performances:

Performance with MAG bassist Jane Wang and cellist Junko Simons. August 15, 2009 at Outpost 186, 186 Hampshire Street, Cambridge, MA. 8PM. $10 obo.

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International Trombone Festival in Arhus, Denmark, June 28, 2009. Solo performance of piece "An Unkindness of Ravens" created in collaboration with MAG performance artist Joanne Rice.

Some Recent Performances:

Raven Music. Tom Plsek, trombone; John Voigt, bass; Jon Damian, guitar and rubber tellie. Church of the Advent, 30 Brimmer St. Boston; Friday, November 14, 8PM.

The Stone, NYC, June 3, 2008, with Joe Morris, guitar and John Voigt, bass. The Stone is John Zorn's space at the corner of Avenue C and 2nd St., that has new music virtually every night. The Stone link

Mobius, March 8th, 8PM. With Joe Morris, guitar and John Voigt, bass. This trio has been performing together for more than 20 years.

March 18, 8PM, Merkin Concert Hall, NY. Performing Mauricio Kagel's; "Der Schall' (1968) for 5 instrumentalists playing 54 instruments. Conducted by Anthony Coleman. Single Tickets:Advance: $25 Day of: $30. Located129 W. 67th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues. Ensemble also includes Greg Kelley, trumpet, etc. and Joe Morris, guitar, etc. For more info: http://www.kaufman-center.org/tc/mch0708/ff_031808.php

"CROSS POLLENIZATION CREATIVE MUSIC FESTIVAL II : From a Whisper to a Scream" Saturday, October 13th. 5pm - 12am. Piano Craft Guild - 791 Tremont Street - Boston, MA 02118.

"(H)ours" by Tom Plsek and Joanne Rice. September 22, 2007: The eight pieces and their times are: Matins, 1:11AM; Lauds, 6:03AM; Prime, 6:31; Terce, 12:37PM; Sext, 4:42PM; None, 6:42PM; Vespers, 7:10PM; Compline, 9:29PM. Mobius, 725 Harrison Avenue. "(H)ours" is a series of eight short (meditative) performance events by Mobius Artists Group members Joanne Rice and Tom Plsek. They are derived from the Canonical Hours of the Christian church and based on specific configurations of the sun and moon. They are a cyclical "seasons of the day" as a paradigm for all the cycles in nature.

photos by Matt Samolis

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Trombone explorer Tom Plsek has been stretching trombones and our concepts of them for years. His compositions include pieces for ensembles and solo trombone often incorporate improvisation, technology, and performance art. Tom has performed with such artists as Jerry Hunt, Malcolm Goldstein, Phill Niblock, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Joe Morris, Marjorie Morgan, and with the Outsider Quartet. He has performed at New Music America in 1983 and 1986. He is a member of the Mobius Artists Group and Chair of the Brass Department at Berklee College of Music in Boston. The Gu series, a monthly performance series created with Marjorie Morgan and based on one of the hexagrams from the I Ching, was selected by the Boston Globe as one of the top ten dance events in Boston for the year 2002. He performed a solo concert at the Forfest Festival in Kromeriz, Czech Republic in the summer of 2004. In May 2005 his piece ?Collateral Damage Noted for 100+ musicians was premiered on Boston city hall plaza to critical acclaim. More recently he performed as guest composer/performer with EnsoArts in Galway, Ireland in November 2005, the Hochschule fur Musik in Trossingen, Germany in May 2006 and the Acoustical Society of America in Providence, Rhode Island, in June, 2006. In November 2006 he collaborated with Joanne Rice to present "Styx" for the Mobius International Festival of Performance Art in Boston. He is a member of the Acoustical Society of America for which he has given many presentations mostly about the use of technology with brass instruments. He is featured on several recording including "Firehouse Futurities," 1999: Rastascan Records (BRD038) and Tautology (005); and "Jump or Die; 21 Braxton Compositions 1992," Music and Arts (CD-843).

Photos from various performances...

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Selected Reviews.............

Plsek has deconstructed the idea of the trombone so completely one marvels at how he keeps finding new purposes for the instrument. Sometimes he played lyrical melodies that wound around Morgan's mournful tenor counterpoint. At other times his trombone served as an archetypal element (when he satirized a marching-band nerd, for example) or a weapon. -- review by Ted Bale in Boston Herald, December 2002.

The playing is spirited and unrestrained. Plsek wrenches some of the most god-forsaken sounds from his instrument. When..Plsek sputters and brays through his instrument, the listener should take cover. (That's a compliment by the way.) --review of Firehouse Futurities in Cadence magazine, October 2000.

Trombonist Plsek (one of Boston's unheralded masters) effortlessly sprayed swooping, whispering, and whinnying lines with masterful understated control against the daring linearity of Norton's reeds. -- review of Autumn Uprising performance, in Cadence magazine, December 1998.

Excerpts from Mobius International Performance Art Festival by Paul Couillard.....

This leads me to the works of Jozsef R. Juhasz (a Czech artist whom I first met six years ago in Poland) and Tom Plsek with Joanne Rice (two Mobius group artists, who were unfamiliar to me until now). Both of these works sit on the productive fringes of other disciplines (in Jozsef's case I will "name" theater; in Tom and Joanne's case, music) which is to say that I am certain that these works could have easily been presented in an event organized under the rubric of those respective disciplines and been received with affirmation, adoration and respect for their technical proficiency and merit. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that they do not fit equally well in the context of a performance art festival! As a performance art audience member, I also affirm and adore their work, and express a deep respect for their technical proficiency and merit!

Tom Plsek and Joanne Rice take an entirely different tact in their work, "Styx". If there is a formality to their physical presence, we recognize it as the self-consciousness of individuals called upon to be looked at by an audience without the mask of a formal actor's or dancer's stance. If an actor is trained to constantly embody the phrase, "Look at me," then perhaps this other mode of performance could be suggested by the phrase, "Look at what I am doing." While I admit to finding a certain pleasure in the conscious task of watching how Tom throws bundles of sticks against a wall, or how Joanne manipulates an oar to move the resulting tumbleweed clumps of sticks through the space, my eye was more readily drawn to the movement of the objects themselves. See how they burst forth and form patterns against the wall. See how they mass into organic balls that resist the force of the scraping oar. See how they gradually disperse and leave a trail like mown hay against the concrete floor.

No doubt this rich visual detail, and the powerful narrative whose story is told not so much by the physical actions of the performers as by the images made by the objects themselves, constitute some of the reasons that this work has not been placed more directly in a musical context. Yet at the same time, even though I have chosen to speak first of the visuals, "Styx" is, for me, most integrally a sound work. It is the sound of the clattering sticks, the scraping of the oar, and Tom's mournful and melodic trombone-playing that I inhabit, or that inhabits me. Despite the random visuality of the sticks' behaviour when acted upon by external forces, the real openness of the work, for me, is in its music. Perhaps it is only that this primacy of sound is less common in performance art works than is a primacy of visual or gestural elements, and so I am more struck by it in this context.

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...and a comment from Abbie Conant

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To contact Tom:

tplsek@berklee.edu