John Kiran Fernandes
Fernandes, along with several other members of the Elephant Six Collective, joined the acclaimed psychedelic pop group The Olivia Tremor Control in Athens, GA in 1994. Fernandes was also a member of the side-project Black Swan Network. Upon that band's demise, Fernandes went on to form the Athens-based group Circulatory System with other members of The Olivia Tremor Control, most notably Will Cullen Hart. In addition, Hart and Fernandes started a record label in 2001 called Cloud Recordings, which issued the Circulatory System's self-titled first album. Fernandes frequently contributes to multiple Athens-based bands' live shows and recordings. He currently plays with Circulatory System, The New Sound of Numbers, Old Smokey, Freehand, Lavender Holyfield, Jacob Morris - Moths, and Dream Boat. All of these groups have recordings available. He has also recently been performing his own live solo shows, and has performed as part of the Elephant 6 Collective's occasional tours. He released an album of solo material in February 2011. He released a second album of solo material in November 2015.
i perform shows of ambient/minimalist looped clarinet, as well as collaborations in a variety of contexts. the looped clarinet sets can range from 20 minutes to 45 minutes. i have performed at the morris museum of art (for the william o. golding exhibit), and at athica. i see some parallels (in the looped clarinet sets) with brian eno's discreet music - with the use of nonsynchronous overlapping loops - that i play over. i'm inspired by the looped reed work of terry riley & ariel kalma, as well as birdsong, and the modal nature of indian music (which is part of my ethnic background) - in that i fully explore all the possibilities of the music in a certain musical key. my collaborative works include an ambient-electric-guitar/clarinet duo with david mccoy, an american-primitive-acoustic-guitar/clarinet duo with shane parish, a vintage-synthesizer and effected-clarinet trio with oliver domingo & kyle mackinnel (as oceanic sound research), a modal-jazz/folk-forms trio with laura camacho & davy gibbs, a guembri duet with my son, jeremy kiran fernandes, a clarinet duo with gabrielle daniels, a cello & clarinet duo with arianna petersen, a reed duet with franklin russell, and recently have been performing with organically programmed orchestra. a psych/folk group i perform with, called the rishis, is about 80% done with our second album. i'm open to other collaborations and improvisations as well. past collaborations include the duo with charlie key, as freehand. and the duo with cellist, alec livaditis (we released an album on the acclaimed label, kye).
the most popular group i played with, the olivia tremor control, did many tours with childhood friends, neutral milk hotel & the apples in stereo. we did opening slots for beck (on the odelay tour), stereolab (on the cobra and phases group tour), and even opened for r.e.m. at chastain in atlanta. in the late '90s, we did 7 trips to europe, and even a couple of shows in japan. another band i performed with, supercluster, did a tour opening for the b-52s.
i worked at athens institution, wuxtry records, for 23-years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fernandes
I was born in Boone, Iowa in 1975. My family moved to Ruston, Louisiana when I was a few years old. My dad is from Karwar, Karnataka, India. He is the son of an accountant, then got a scholarship to move to the U.S. to do his post-doctoral work in chemical engineering. He met my mom in church and they had five children together. My mom is an amazing woman who, after losing her sight as a teenager, went to college and taught in public schools for a number of years. After we moved to Louisiana, she started the Louisiana Center for the Blind, where blind people teach other blind people how to live independently. Before that blind people in Louisiana were taken to sheltered workshops where they assembled things factory style and then were led to their rooms at night. At the center, they learned to do anything they wanted to do in life. My mom ended up working in Washington D.C. for a few years, and then in Baltimore where she worked for the National Federation of the Blind. In Ruston, I started taking violin lessons at the age of four from Susan Keen. I then played music with my friends Scott Spillane, John D'azzo, Joel Evans, etc. in Smilin' Joe Fission, and then started the band Sock the Monkey with my friends Beth Sale and Lucy Calhoun. I moved to Athens, GA in the mid-90s after my friends from Ruston, Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart, asked me to play bass for their group, The Olivia Tremor Control. I recorded and toured with them for many years - doing many tours in the states as well as getting the chance to go to Europe seven times and to Japan once (in the late ‘90s). I now perform with The Rishis, perform solo, duo, trio, quartet, etc. shows and played violin, clarinet, bass clarinet, and bass guitar with many groups in Athens such as Circulatory System, Lavender Holyfield, Supercluster, Old Smokey, Jacob Morris - MOTHS, DREAM BOAT, and The New Sound Of Numbers. I worked at Wuxtry Records-Athens from 1999 to 2022, and have run the record label, Cloud Recordings, since 2001. Most of my brothers and sisters work in the health care field, except for my older sister, Jyoti, who owns an organic farm in England, where her and her family live totally off the grid. They have solar panels for electricity, grow their own food, raise animals, and her ex-husband, David Saltmarsh, makes furniture by hand. I am a single father of three wonderful kids: Ravi, who works at El Tesoro in Atlanta. He also DJs, and volunteers to babysit for friends. Sophie, who graduated with honors from Georgia State, now works two jobs in Atlanta, and is a great writer, photographer, and babysitter. And Kiran, who is a wonderful artist, writer, babysitter, farmer, teacher, director, and musician, who plays solo, with an ensemble he leads, called Dhana Jeera, and with the band, Immaterial Possession.