Although they live in three cities (Missoula, Butte, and Blacksburg) in two states (Montana and Virginia), the five members of the band Modality practice every Thursday evening.
Modality is:
Jay Bruns
Jay grew up in the northwest and was born in Butte Montana. Jay's background in music has been a life-long exploration in making music with friends and using technology in creative ways. Jay currently plays percussion and digital instruments such as iPads, synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines. He is one of the founding members of Modality, and has a few side projects (nojayart.com, a solo musical act also named nojay, and Philip Glasshole with Ben Weiss and Patrick Christianson). Jay has filled many rolls during the course of Modality, including percussion, technology engineering and support, poster and album art, and electronic instruments. Jay's day job is solving problems for the university and small businesses through creative uses of technology). Jay, Clark and Ben also have a side-business named House of Watts where they record other bands and DJ events and weddings.
Clark Grant
Clark Grant formed Modality with Jay Bruns in 2009 when he was a student employee at Montana Public Radio in Missoula. After 6 years of radio work at MTPR and the University of Montana’s college radio station, KBGA, Clark moved to Butte to construct and manage KBMF-LP, a new non-commercial community radio station licensed to the Butte America Foundation. His love of recording and broadcasting came largely from his band mates Jay Bruns and Ben Weiss, both of whom have also been heavily involved with broadcasting in Montana. Clark plays guitar and keyboards and has engineered the majority of the Modality recordings with the help of his band mates.
Ben Weiss
Ben Weiss makes strange, sometimes beautiful sounds come from synthesizers. He bugged Jay and Clark long enough that in 2010 they let him join Modality. Ben now plays in several other ensembles around town, including: weirdo dance ensemble Philip Glasshole with Jay and Patrick; Avant Garde Alliance, a group that performs live scores to experimental cinema; and Glass Spiders, a David Bowie tribute band. In all of his musical pursuits, Ben manipulates textures, embraces chaos, and hones melodies from the madness.
Charles Nichols
Composer, violinist, and computer music researcher Charles Nichols explores the expressive potential of instrumental ensembles, computer music systems, and combinations of the two, for the concert stage, and collaborations with dance and video. His research includes motion capture for musical performance, telematic performance, datasonification, and haptic musical instrument design. He teaches Composition and Computer Music at Virginia Tech, and is a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Creativity Arts and Technology. He has earned degrees from Eastman, Yale, and Stanford, and previously taught at the University of Montana, where he directed the Mountain Electroacoustic Laptop Ensemble and Composers Workshop Pierrot Ensemble. He has conducted haptic musical instrument research as a visiting scholar at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast, taught computer music workshops at the Banff Centre, Charlotte New Music Festival, and the University of Rome, and composed as a resident at the Ucross and Brush Creek artist retreats. His recent premieres include Il Prete Rosso, for amplified violin, motion sensor, and computer, that controls audio effects with a wireless motion sensor on the bow hand of the violinist, Sound of Rivers: Stone Drum, a multimedia collaboration, with sonified data, electric violin, and computer music, accompanying narrated poetry, dance, animation, and processed video, based on scientific research into the sound of rivers, and Nicolo, Jimi, and John, a three movement concerto, for amplified viola, orchestra, and computer, inspired by the virtuosity of Paganini, Hendrix, and Coltrane.
Patrick Christianson
is bio-less
