Zeerak ahmed / slowspin
Zeerak Ahmed / SLOWSPIN is a US-based Pakistani artist. She explores notions of identity, memory and longing. Ahmed produces sound sculptures, installations, and uniquely fragile sound collages that hold Eastern Classical vocals and ambient soundscapes. For CUSP '23, she will be presenting a three-channel sound installation that echoes folk-music traditions from the women of South Asia. Apnay Mahal Ma composes the immaterial space where sonic memories and oral histories reconstitute a home, and a sense of belonging.
Along with voice-based sculptures and meditative installations, she composes uniquely fragile sound collages. SLOWSPIN has a distinct sound practice grounded in Hindustaani classical vocal traditions, dream-folk, ambient and experimental electronic music. Poetry and melodies in her mother tongue(s)—Urdu, Farsi, Purbi and English—build new textural soundscapes.
SLOWSPIN's latest release is her collaborative album, TALISMAN. It includes contributions by NYC-based musicians Shahzad Ismaily (executive producer), Grey Mcmurray (co-producer), Aaron Roche and Greg Fox. The TALISMAN opens a world of SLOWSPIN's uncanny and heart-wrenching refrains, delivering a balm for the migrant's journey into the unknown: the abyss of love, loss and longing.
Emily beisel
Emily Beisel is a Chicago based improvisor, curator and woodwind specialist. She is known for her visceral performances combining extended instrumental techniques with heavy amplification and timbral effects. Her work draws inspiration from noise music, math-core, free jazz, contemporary classical and doom metal. Emily is a member of the contemporary ensemble Fonema Consort premiering works of living composers including James Dillon, Richard Barrett and Julio Estrada. As a curator, Emily seeks to increase the visibility and involvement of women and nonbinary artists in the creative music community. To this end she founded the monthly Pleiades series based at Elastic Arts in Chicago. Emily holds her Master of Music degree from Northwestern University and is a member of the American Federation of Musicians Local 10-208.
Beisel’s solo bass clarinet performances offer an intimate experience of the interaction between her body and that of the instrument. A unique style of amplification magnifies the combined detail of voice and tube, tongue and reed, breath and keys. Her music moves in a sculptured flow between composed and improvised material that includes both extreme delicacy and powerful, distorted density.
Leo Chang & Alex Zhang hungtai
Duo between multi-instrumentalist composers and improvisers, Leo Chang & Alex Zhang Hungtai.
After retiring his project Dirty Beaches, Zhang has been focusing on explorations of improvised music, Free Jazz, film scores and compositions. Zhang predominantly works with saxophone, synthesizers, percussion and piano, furthering his research on ritualistic music of liminality, and its correlation with the unconscious mind.
Leo Chang is a Korean improviser, composer and performer of avant-garde music currently living in Brooklyn. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai, and then moved to the United States in 2011. Needing to assimilate to different cultures from a young age, Leo expresses rootlessness and multiplicity within identities through his music, while being skeptical of norms and definitions. Leo traces the origins of his fractured identity-formation to colonial legacies that continue to this day. His art is an act of home-making inspired by various musical and ideological movements that have sought to question power dynamics and imagine freedom within egalitarian possibilities.
bob drake
Bob Drake is an improvising musician, composer, and electro-acoustic luthier from Cleveland Ohio. He designs, builds, and plays electronic instruments in the tradition of Don Buchla and David Tudor, performing on these electroniums plus electro-acoustic and extended-technique traditional instruments. His performances span free and structured improvisation, new music composition, noise, and minimalist “lowercase” musics. He is an adjunct professor at Cleveland Institute of Art, teaching classes in sound art, media installation, and electronics. In the past few years, he has been working as a pipe organ technician, repairing and tuning pipe organs at various northern Ohio churches – work that inspires and informs the proposed installation.
“Dröhnen” is the German word for ‘to roar’, “Dröna” is Swedish for ‘to drowse’. Dröhnen/Dröna is a drone-based installation using pipe organ pipes, electronic synthesis, and durational performance. Listeners are invited to visit the installation at any time [insert scheduled hours here]. Sounding will be continuous, with ongoing interventions by the artist throughout.
Douglas Farrand & ryan seward
“Ears may become antennae, instigated by nearly nothing. Between appearance and disappearance I find as a listener the possibility to create by myself.”
—Eva-Maria Houben, “Presence – Silence – Disappearance”
Douglas Farrand and Ryan Seward are musicians and composers living respectively in Newark, New Jersey and New York, New York. Douglas and Ryan will perform a current exhibition, a new work written for them by German composer, organist, pianist, and musicologist Eva-Maria Houben.
Both performers work with the same categories of various instruments and materials—pitched winds, strings, and percussion; unpitched percussion; objects; and field recordings, radio, and/or electronic devices. Fragments of sound appear and disappear, occasioning a presence that invites the exploration of myriad modes and qualities of listening.
Brandon lopez
New York-based composer and bassist working at the fringes of jazz, free improvisation, noise and new music. His music has been praised as “brutal” (Chicago Reader) and “relentless” (The New York Times).
From the New York Philharmonic's David Geffen Hall to the DIY basements of Brooklyn, Lopez has worked beside many luminaries of jazz, classical, poetry, and experimental music, including Fred Moten, John Zorn, Okkyung Lee, Ingrid Laubrock, Tony Malaby, Tyshawn Sorey, Bill Nace, Chris Potter, Edwin Torres, Tom Rainey, Cecilia Lopez, Sun Ra Arkestra, Susan Alcorn, Mette Rasmussen, and many others.
As a 2019–2020 Artist in Residence at Roulette, Lopez will play with his trio consisting of Gerald Cleaver, & Steve Baczkowski, a 4tet adding Cecilia Lopez, as well as a solo performance and duet with Greg Kelley. This continues Lopez's work as 2018 Artist-in-Residence at Issue Project Room and 2018 Van Lier Fellow at Roulette Intermedium, Recent highlight performances include opening the 2018–2019 season of the New York Philharmonic as a featured soloist in Ashley Fure’s “Filament” and a number of works with John Zorn, including the Zorn’s 35th anniversary of “Cobra”.
Theresa May
Theresa J. May (she/her) is a native of Shaker Heights, Ohio qne holds a Master of Music from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Dayton. Theresa is adjunct faculty at Cuyahoga Community College where she teaches Applied Trumpet and World Music. Theresa enjoys community engagement as a teaching artist with the Roots of American Music organization and is a co-founder of the Chromatic Brass Collective. As an active performer and educator, Theresa maintains private studios in the Cleveland area and performs regularly with Gabriel’s Horns, Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, and Mourning [A] BLKstar. Theresa has performed as a guest solo artist in the Alumni Recital Series at the University of Dayton, was featured in the Rising Stars podcast hosted by Carol Jantsch (Principal Tuba with the Philadelphia Orchestra), and was also a featured guest solo artist at the 2022 International Women’s Brass Conference.
Theresa May is a champion of new music written for trumpet and has a passion for pushing musical boundaries in a way that is palatable and enjoyable. Eris DeJarnett, Jonathan Posthuma, and Shanyse Strickland are the three living composers featured in this program for trumpet and media. From the intriguing and calming fixed media aspects of DeJarnett’s piece, to the classic modernistic energy of Posthuma’s newly commissioned work, to the haunting and energetic melodies of Strickland’s piece, there is sure to be something for everyone in this performance.
Kim Nucci
Kim Nucci is an Oakland/Chicago-based multimedia artist, composer / improviser, and technologist. They perform on saxophones, electronics, voice, and live projection. Nucci's research interests explore the pedestrian cybernetic body through critically examining our relationship with technology and with our instruments. Their solo performance practice is invested in the exploration of ritualism and trance states in improvisation. They hold an M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media, and an M.A. in Music Composition from Mills College, and a B.A. in Visual Arts from Bennington College. They are head of A.C.R.E. Residency's sound department. Their practice is largely collaborative. They are the Technical Director of Driven Arts Collective (DAC), which recently completed the Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency with their projects CELSO: In Utero and CELSO: Digital Milk, a dance/theatre work with live music and interactive technologies. DAC has been awarded the ARCC Residency at Counterpulse where they are creating a new work in the CELSO series. With DAC, Kim directed/filmed the video work “Quarant Time” documenting the collective’s rehearsal process during 2020 and assisted with filming of “Z A G A.” Previously, they did show programming and co-authored music & video elements for DAC's evening length prodution, << KHÔRA >>. They currently work at Art Institute of Chicago doing installing media artworks as part of the Audio Visual Services Team.
Persephone & the Phoenix
Persephone & the Phoenix is a wildfire of creative plenty. Through their playful curiosity, the duo taps into the synergy between composition, curation, and technology by expanding the boundaries of genre, stage, and storytelling. Nicole Brancato, keys, and Teagan Faran, strings, invite the world to join in on their collaborative energy exchanges. Formed on the tropical island of Manhattan, P&tP create to connect our larger social consciousness with the realities of our modern human experience. Together, Nicole and Teagan’s credits include the Guggenheim and Lincoln Center (NYC); Bellas Artes Centro Cultural(Mexico); Gesellschaftshaus Magdeburg (Germany); and the Kennedy Center (Washington D.C). In July 2022, they created “Fire in which we Burn” for Canada’s Banff Centre of the Arts, featuring live adaptive visuals and fixed media. In the coming ‘22/’23 season, they are premiering "9 Ways to Destroy a Violin" while in residence at the cell theatre in NYC.
Laura Potter & Ina mccormack
Laura Potter is dedicated to realizing the possibilities of the tuba in a variety of settings. Laura has a particular interest in Nordic compositions and received a Fullbright Fellowship to study at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. She recently curated a program with tuba and string quartet for CityMusic Cleveland’s chamber series, and previously participated in an interdisciplinary glass performance at the International Glass Context on the island of Bornholm. Additional performance credits include the Indianapolis Brass Choir, the Billings Symphony, the Lafayette Symphony, Kansas City Brassworks, the University of Kansas Faculty Brass Quintet, and the Appalachian Brass.
Classical harpist, Ina McCormack, is an active orchestral musician and performs regularly with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra. She frequently serves as guest principal harpist for many ensembles in the greater Cleveland area. Since her selection in 2016, she has also played as substitute harpist for Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony in Miami. Her extensive involvement with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble generated a sustained interest in new music performance. As a progressing chamber musician, Ms. McCormack was a member of the Oberlin based flute, viola, and harp trio, Ensemble TMT, which incorporated both standard and contemporary works into their repertoire.
TAK ensemble
TAK ensemble is Laura Cocks, flute; Madison Greenstone, clarinet; Charlotte Mundy, voice; Marina Kifferstein, violin; Ellery Trafford, percussion. TAK ensemble, described as “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music" (I Care if you Listen), plays three works: Empty and/or Church of Plenty by Brandon Lopez, Second Nightmare for Kiku by Natacha Diels and The Empress Negligee and Leopard Queen Dream by Charlotte Mundy. Lopez is noted across the US and Europe for his highly innovative and often intensely visceral approach to music making. Empty and/or Church of Plenty (2019) is a democratic work created collaboratively with TAK, with each individual playing a part in the work’s creation. The resultant sound-world is iridescent and murky, ecstatic and foreboding. Natacha Diels is one of the key visionaries behind the ‘New Discipline’ aesthetic in contemporary music. Her Second Nightmare for Kiku (2013/2021) blends absurd electronic sounds and physical gestures with relentless rhythmic pulses to create a truly mind-bending musical experience. Mundy’s The Empress Negligee and Leopard Queen Dream (2022) is a surreal blend of experimental theater and microtonal art song.
Terminal moraine
Terminal Moraine is an experimental noise duo founded by Abigail Johnson and Andrew Dyet. Terminal Moraine performs improvised noise sets influenced by deep listening techniques and uses a variety of synthesizers, acoustic instruments, and field recordings. These performances have been described as meditative and range from ambient and calm to aggressive and overpowering experiences.
As a Sound Artist, Abigail’s work spans many mediums including instrument-making, sound installations, field recording, interactive installations, and experimental performance. Her sound sculptures merge the world of sound installation with fiber art, utilizing found materials to create sculptures which are both graphic score and instrument. Each sculpture in this collection employs various fiber techniques to create unique textures and patterns that bring out the natural sound of each material when manipulated, drawing the audience to activate the piece by touch.
abigailjohnsonmusic.com/terminal-moraine
abigailjohnsonmusic.com/sculpture
John wiese
Los Angeles-based composer and sound artist John Wiese is a key participant in the American noise scene, working in abstract electronics, abrasive textures, radically experimental editing techniques, and other challenging sounds since the early 2000s. Wiese's discography is staggeringly long, with plenty of completely solo work like 2007 standout album Soft Punk, but also extensive collaborative efforts. In addition to being part of the grindcore-informed noise project Sissy Spacek, over the years Wiese released multiple joint efforts with various configurations of the Wolf Eyes camp, Merzbow, Kevin Drumm, C. Spencer Yeh, and countless others. In 2022, Wiese continued his collaborative streak with the release of The Echoing Shell, an EP made with No Age drummer Dean Spunt.
John Wiese will present an 8-channel diffusion of his musique concrète piece, Concord, commissioned by Ina/GRM and debuted at Présences Électronique, April 2022.