Friday 13 May 2022, 8pm
Excellent double-bill with Montreal-based saxophonist and electro-acoustic composer, Jason Sharp, alongside New York sound artist and musician, Sydney Spann.
A mainstay of Montreal’s avant-jazz, experimental and improv music community for many years, Jason Sharp is a saxophonist and electro-acoustic composer whose increasing focus on solo work since 2015 has yielded an intense and immersive corpus of music that fuses technology and the human body. Sharp blends a mastery of extended saxophone technique with customized microphones and electronics that translate his horn, breath and physical pulse into an array of triggers, samples and modular synthesis – resulting in formidable, visceral, highly evocative and unfailingly musical works of electroacoustic biofeedback. Across three albums for iconic experimental music label Constellation, Sharp has been charting a singular soundworld embedded in his unique compositional processes, which rely on a combination of exceptional instrumental performance on baritone and bass saxophones, prefiguration/configuration of bespoke technology, discipline/control of corporeal bloodflow, and responsiveness to the stochastic variability of each performative iteration.
Sydney Spann, originally from Baltimore, MD, is a sound artist and musician based in New York. She works with synthesis, chance operations, recursive compositional processes and voice to intervene within a personal archive of field recordings, culminating in long form compositions and improvised performances. Her music engages the private experiences that shape public spaces, and the affective dynamics within childcare work. She has released albums with Ehse Records (Baltimore), She Rocks! (NYC), and Reading Group (NYC), with a full-length release forthcoming on Recital in 2022. She has performed at the High Zero Festival of Experimental Free Improvised Music, The Walters Art Museum, Bar Laika by e-flux, and in diy spaces and galleries throughout the US. Recent works for streaming include Sending up a Spiral of on Montez Press Radio and Attached/Detached (partial disappearance) for ISSUE Project Room’s With Womens Work Series. She is a 2022 Artist in Residence at ISSUE Project Room and an MFA candidate in Music/Sound at Bard College.
Li Yilei is a Chinese artist and composer working and living in London.
With a background in fine art and sound art, Li’s body of work sought to investigate alternative modes of listening, reflecting upon the tacitness and transience of existential occurrences.
Li’s work often incorporates with sound, body, found materials, poetry, events, daily objects and broken/damaged instruments.
Investigating serendipitous encounters between beings and their environment, the muted state, the unheard, the disabled and untrained voices.
The overarching dialogue around the tacit and the disabled state stems from Li’s idiosyncratic relationship with the outside world as a person on the autistic spectrum.
Their early classical training in violin sparked an interest in the physique of instruments, and the interests in the alternative use of conventional instruments due to the rejection of the Eurocentric formalities of classical music.
In 2016, Li founded Non Dual Collective, focusing on curating live events for ESEA emerging artists. Li has been releasing records and performing internationally since 2018.
Website: liyilei.me
Instagram: li_yi_lei_
