pt.fwd's second performance for 2022 will feature Door County, Wisconsin-based percussionist Jon Mueller. The live, free, in-person performance with Mueller will take place on Thursday, March 17 at 7:00 p.m. at the McLean County Museum of History. Registration is required and attendance is limited to 40 people.

Jon Mueller's "Afterlife Cartoons" are solo acoustic percussion performances that use repetitive tom patterns and subtle shifts in grid-like pulsing to instigate overtones, phasing, and choir-like acoustic phenomena that transform the work from mere drum solo to the sonic illusion of a small orchestra. Rhythmic minimalism, contemporary phrasing, and energetic sustain drive Mueller's improvisations into a space somewhere between modern electronic music and primal drumming, inspiring audiences toward movement and contemplation.

Jon Mueller’s aim has been to move drums, percussion and rhythm from its anticipated backbeat to a central musical focus, something more intuitive and natural than usually imagined. Audiences throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and the United Kingdom have experienced this idiosyncratic point of view as, paradoxically, both ‘cathartic’ and ‘meditative’. Notable solo performances have taken place at the Guggenheim Museum, New Museum, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Alverno Presents, SXSW, Big Ears Festival, Hopscotch Fest and Witching Hour Festival.

From 2013-15, Mueller created and directed the multi-disciplinary project Death Blues. The project issued four critically acclaimed recordings. Rolling Stone cited non-fiction as one of the ‘20 Best Avant Albums of 2014’. Ensemble, created with multi-instrumentalist William Ryan Fritch, was featured on NPR’s ‘First Listen’.

Outside of his solo work, Mueller has performed and recorded with Mind Over Mirrors, was a founding member of the bands Volcano Choir, Collections of Colonies of Bees and Pele, and has worked in depth with artists Aaron Turner, Faith Coloccia, Dawn Springer, Chris Hefner, Jason Kahn, Asmus Tietchens, Z’EV, Andrew McKenzie, Rhys Chatham, Jarboe, James Plotkin, Duane Pitre, and Raymond Dijkstra. His solo work has been released by American Dreams, Table of the Elements, Type Recordings, Important Records, Taiga Records, SIGE Records and his own imprint, Rhythmplex.

You can hear Mueller's music here: https://rhythmplex.bandcamp.com/

The Museum continues to monitor the conditions that surround the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and how these conditions will impact our ability to hold future in-person programs. As long as current health and safety guidelines from the CDC and State of Illinois allow for in-person programming at that time, we plan to host this program in-person at the Museum. Please RSVP for tickets here, and visit mchistory.org for updates on this and other upcoming programs.

Live stream available at: ESS on YouTube

All pt.fwd concerts are free and open to the public. pt.fwd is an independent non-profit program that organizes contemporary music and sonic arts performances in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois.