Shelley Hirsch: And So It Was & Was & WaAAass
Free
- Cleek Schrey, violin
- Joanna Mattrey, viola
- Alice Cohen, keyboard & voice
- Ka Baird, piano, flute, voice, & electronics
- Lindsey Wilson, voice
- Dafna Naphtali, voice
- Luisa Muhr, voice
The celebrated composer and vocal artist/performer Shelley Hirsch returns to Roulette to present her new NYSCA-commissioned work, And So it Was And Was and WaAAassSSssSss: a night of compositions, improvisations, and texts anchored by her automatic writings generated in response to musical experiences. The texts are empathic, provocative, erotic, surreal, and based on both true and imaginary events with themes that contrast in focus, humor, timbre, arrangements, emotion, and personnel. The performance will include Hirsch's suite of songs called Sext Tongs, featuring sample-infused accompaniments — Joanna Mattrey and Cleek Schrey on strings, Alice Cohen on keyboards and voice, Ka Baird on piano, and Lindsey Wilson, Dafna Naphtali, and Luisa Muhr on vocals — illuminating her stream of consciousness writings with synchronized animated video projections of text and images by Scott Kiernan. Lighting consulting by Eric Muzzy.
The second part of the evening includes "trance-like" language improvisations and collaborations, with video images, Greek chorus and a featured duet with Ka Baird on flute, voice, and electronics.
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm Eastern on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXtCJ8s0OV4
About Cleek Schrey, violin
About Joanna Mattrey, viola
About Alice Cohen, keyboard & voice
About Ka Baird, piano, flute, voice, & electronics
Ka Baird is a musician, performer, composer, and sound designer based in New York City. They are known for their live performances which include extended voice and microphone techniques combined with electronics and psychoacoustic interplay of flutes and other woodwinds. They create a present tense sound with a vigorous, ritualistic delivery that seeks extreme release through physical exertion and psychic extension. They have worked/collaborated with many other musicians, artists, filmmakers and choreographers, both in structured compositions and in their dedicated practice of improvisation and interdisciplinary work. They have performed extensively throughout the USA and Europe including: Unsound (Krakow, PL), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL), MoMA PS1 (Queens, NY), Issue Project Room (Brooklyn, NY), The Kitchen (NYC), KRAAK (Brussels, BE), and Le Guess Who (Utrecht, NL). They have been an artist-in-residence at We Jazz (Helsinki, FI), Sonoscopia (Porto, PT), Inkonst (Malmo, SE), Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago, IL), and Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY). They have been a recipient of the Foundation of Contemporary Art's Emergency Grant, a Jerome Foundation Artist-In-Residence through Roulette Intermedium, and is currently a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow through 2023-25.
https://www.kabaird.com/