Kaufman Music Center – Ecstatic Music: Holland Andrews & Darian Donovan Thomas with Methods Body
$25 ($15 student)
- Holland Andrews, voice
- Darian Donovan Thomas, violin
- Methods Body
The Ecstatic Music collaboration between these two innovative, multidisciplinary Brooklyn-based musical artists includes the world premiere of Blue Alchemy.
Blue Alchemy will explore the longform transmutation of sonic material. Pulling inspiration from the color blue and its historical contexts, Andrews and Thomas will shift the audience through spaces of extreme oceanic density to cloud-like openness. By shifting the texture of the space, they will also terraform emotion, investigating: what is the discomfort of being held? What is the relief of flight? Is weightlessness freedom – and is drowning defeat?
Andrews and Thomas are honored to be joined on stage by the Portland, Oregon-based experimental percussion and electronics duo Methods Body as they collectively water this synesthesia-like realm of sound.
Holland Andrews is a vocalist, composer, and performance artist whose work is based on emotionality in its many forms. Andrews focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build soundscapes encompassing both catharsis and dissonance. Frequently highlighting themes surrounding vulnerability and healing, Andrews arranges music for voice, clarinet and electronics.
Brooklyn-based composer, multi-instrumentalist and interdisciplinary artist Darian Donovan Thomas is interested in combining genres and mediums into a singular vocabulary that can express ideas about intersectionality (of medium and identity). Necessarily, he is interested in redacting all barriers to entry that have existed at the gates of any genre – this vocabulary of multiplicity will be intersectional, and therefore all-inclusive.
Methods Body is a performance duo that creates original sound art and music using custom tunings systems, polyrhythms, and the cadences of language. Longtime collaborators Luke Wyland (keys, electronics) and John Niekrasz (drums, percussion) use bespoke live-sampling technologies to create compositions that inhabit waves of subliminal melody and deep, uncanny grooves. They're currently working on the follow-up to their critically acclaimed self-titled debut record (New Amsterdam Records/Beacon Sound 2020), forthcoming in 2022.
$15 student tickets are available. Call the box office at (212) 501-3330.
Please review Kaufman Music Center's COVID-19 policies before attending this event: https://www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org/covid/
About Holland Andrews, voice
Holland Andrews (they/them) is a vocalist, composer, producer, and performer whose work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build soundscapes encompassing both catharsis and dissonance. Frequently highlighting themes surrounding vulnerability and healing, Andrews arranges music for voice, clarinet, and electronics. By blending together live processing of voice and clarinet along with synth and based electronic music produced by Andrews, they create a realm of live performance that is boundlessly present and expansive. Notable musical collaborations include Nils Frahm, Son Lux, Christina Vantzou, William Brittelle, West Thordson, Peter Broderick, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste. Andrews also develops and performs soundscapes for dance, theater, and film, and their work is toured internationally with artists such as Bill T. Jones, Sonya Tayeh, Dorothee Munyaneza, and Will Rawls.
https://www.hollandandrews.com/About Methods Body
METHODS BODY (Portland, OR, USA) creates original sound art and music using custom tuning systems, involuted polyrhythms, and the cadences of language. John Niekrasz (Ecstatic Peace, ESP-Disk') and Luke Wyland (The Leaf Label, Hometapes, Crammed Records) use bespoke live-sampling technologies and meta-cognitive compositions to inhabit waves of subliminal melody and deep, uncanny grooves.
Methods Body builds on the non-traditional tunings of Terry Riley, the experimental energy of Éliane Radigue and Silver Apples, and the refracted electronics of Aphex Twin to create a sonic language completely their own. Together, Wyland and Niekrasz have been pushing the bounds of rhythm and melody for more than a dozen years. Their duos, AU and Why I Must Be Careful, were lauded as groundbreaking and breathtaking. Both Niekrasz and Wyland are idiosyncratic innovators on their instruments and use performance as an arena for legitimate connection and energetic exchange. Methods Body’s first full-length album is born from long-term composing and recording sessions held in old-growth forests and remote deserts.
https://www.methodsbody.com/