Swoon (Chris Williams/gabby fluke-mogul/Joanna Mattrey/Patrick Shiroishi) + Alex Smith, Karen Smith & Pete Dennis trio & Zosha Warpeha
Event description
Comprised of Joanna Mattrey, viola, gabby fluke-mogul, violin, Chris Williams, trumpet, and Patrick Shiroishi, saxophone, Swoon's collaboration is rooted in kinship, joy, and a love of improvisation.
Joanna Mattrey is a violist working in free improvisation, new music, and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches, and electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Joanna creates an embodied performance practice centered on ceremony and ritual. Recent and upcoming releases include, 'Soulcaster' (Notice Recordings, 2023) 'Strider' (Dear Life Recs, 2023) 'Oracle' (Relative Pitch Records, 2022) ‘Dirge’ (Dear Life Recs 2021). Mattrey has performed with icons Tyshawn Sorey, Henry Threadgill, Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Mary Halvorson, Billy Martin, Elliott Sharpe, Miya Masaoka, and the International Contemporary Ensemble.
Chris Williams is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Brooklyn, NY and is most at home collaborating with contemporary improvisers and experimentalists. He has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe. His work explores the dyad of ancestral trauma and power existing in all Black Americans. Williams has been commissioned by WasteLAnd and International Contemporary Ensemble and has been in residence or with BANFF Centre for the Arts, Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Musik Installationen Nürnberg and others. He has collaborated with creators including Eyvind Kang, Joanna Mattrey, Miriam Parker, Patrick Shiroishi, Bennie Maupin, Nicole Mitchell, Fay Victor, Wendy Eisenberg, Luke Stewart, Pink Siifu, and Marjani Forte-Saunders.
gabby fluke-mogul is a New York based violinist, improviser, composer, & educator. fluke-mogul exists within the threads of improvisation, free jazz, noise, & experimental music.Their playing has been described as “embodied, visceral, & virtuosic" & "the most striking sound in improvised music in years..." gabby is humbled to have collaborated with Nava Dunkelman, Joanna Mattrey, Fred Frith, Daniel Carter, Ava Mendoza, Luke Stewart, Zeena Parkins, & Pauline Oliveros among many other musicians, poets, dancers, & visual artists.
Patrick Shiroishi is a Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Los Angeles who is perhaps best known for his extensive and incredibly intense work with the saxophone. Over the last decade he has established himself as one of the premier improvising musicians in Los Angeles, playing solo and in numerous collaborative projects. Shiroishi may well be considered a foundational player in the city’s vast musical expanse.
Alex Smith is a speculative fiction writer, collage artist, and vocalist, keyboardist, and lyricist in avant-garde bands Spectral
Forces, Rainbow Crimes and Solarized. He draws from influences like science fiction, Dadaism, and comic art, bending their conventions to frame the creativity, survival, and hopefulness of queer and Black people. He curates two recurring series: aqueer sci-fi reading series titled Laser Life, which he also founded, and what Smith describes as a “retro-futurist electro mash-up art-jam,” Chrome City.“I want space to create worlds,” Smith notes, “within the minds of people searching for reflection of themselves, and in the practical world as well; active spaces embodied, emboldened and empowered by a cyberpunk retelling of our past, stitched together with whatever resources are available to grant us—queer Black people—access to the future.” Smith has lectured and held workshops on the practical application of Afrofuturism and sci-fi and fantasy tropes in art at Moogfest, Moore College of Art & Design, the Tyler School of Art andArchitecture at Temple University, Vox Populi, and Swarthmore College.
KarenSmith is the proud recipient of a 2023 Pew Fellowship grant. A New YorkNative/Philadelphia Transplant, Karen is a percussionist, playwright, director, producer, and poet. She is also the founder and leader of two musical collectives: The Karen Smith Experience, and Sistahs Laying DownHands (SLDH). "I create spaces where other artists can join in a spirit of trust and improvisation.”
PeteDennis (he/they) is a bassist, composer, improviser, visual artist and teacher. After growing up in Richmond, Virginia, he moved to Philadelphia where he has been inspired by the creative music and art of his vibrant community. Other inspirations include his teacher William Parker, his partner Abigail Swoboda, and the fine vibrations of the sacred sound. In 2019, Dennis released his first two recordings, Killing a Dixie Hummingbird and Look at My Roses, under his main project name Search for the Infinite Light. Since then has continued to release music under this moniker, and with the ensembles Spectral Forces and 99 Futures. Dennis considers himself fortunate to create with many close friends and collaborators in bands such as Mitamu and
Deliriant. He believes that sound is the foundation of healing and wants to acknowledge all master improvisors of the past and present, we standon the shoulders of giants.
Zosha Warpeha is a composer-performer working in a meditative space at the intersection of contemporary improvisation and folk traditions. Using bowed stringed instruments alongside her own voice, her long-form compositions explore transformations of time and tonality. She performs primarily on Hardanger d’amore, a sympathetic-stringed instrument closely related to the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, as well as five-string violin. Her current acoustic and electro-acoustic work is informed by the cyclical forms, rhythmic elasticity, and the physical momentum of Nordic folk music.
accessibility: ramp into lobby, then 7 stairs into theater