Modular Church 2 at The Gatherings

The Gatherings Concert Series presents Modular Church 2 with six performances of live Electronic Music within the remarkable setting of St Mary's Hamilton Village on Saturday 5 April 2025.

Using modular synths and samplers to improvise performances building instrumental hip-hop soundscapes and downtempo grooves Atograph started experimenting with recorded sounds at an early age. He has been making beats and playing guitar and bass in various indie rock bands since the early 2000s. Ato views himself as a pattern pusher and noise maker, realizing music to share good vibes with audiences in real time. Making many genuine connections his music acts as a conduit for expression and community building.

-

Chaka Benson plays with an ear for color, motion and texture, forsaking conventional narrative clarity. It is an experience by way of the senses, rather than through pure mental interpretation. Our focus expands beyond sound, to the sources of that sound, to its imminent fragility and a state of un-being. In Benson's work negative space is constantly asking us to define it. Tones flicker lightly across the surface, come into focus, then burrow deep and all but disappear. The gentle descent into incandescent timbres stirs the imagination.

-

Stefano Daddi makes experimental music with modular synthesizers and perform regularly. For the past few years he has co-hosted Modular on the Spot (MotS) events in Philadelphia - a monthly modular synthesizer outdoor free picnic series. The goal of his music is to make the listener question the things they have heard and reflect on them, or at the very least enjoy the aural experience.

-

June Lopez focuses on how cultural and musical influences shape sound. He’s deeply invested in Latin-Jazz-Afro-Roots and in preserving the art of making music meant to inspire and communicate on a spiritual level. More recently, June is exploring an interest in sound design and live improvisational sound performance, collaborating alongside the like minded.

-

The learned listener will find the modular-made realizations by MANNA marked by creative beauty and a meritorious aural adventurousness. The sonic energy level winds its way easily through the resonant and subtly shaded Ambient moods provided by a range of synthesizers of an open-ended voicing architecture. From tuneful fairytale engagement to the enigmatic and uncategorizable, this explorer of the electronic realm absorbs, then plays the world around us.

-

With a warm-blooded wiring this patch cord poet connects to a constellation of charged, storied machines - devices meant to set the inner workings of the mind into motion, as they cast their spell of consonance and
dissonance in alternating currents and continuous voltages. Humming with energy and creativity, Danielle Nia fearlessly imagines a future full of freedom and possibility - a new age hopefully within our reach.

-

This event will also present the work of video artists Neil Cippon + Samara Talki , who will generate projections of original, ever-evolving graphics on the interior features of the St Mary's sanctuary space - all in time with the improvised live musical expressions.

The Gatherings Concert Series presents Modular Church 2 on Saturday 5 April 2025 at 8:00PM. (doors open at 7:30PM) in the church sanctuary of St. Mary's Hamilton Village 3916 Locust Walk (just east of 40th & Locust) on the Penn campus in West Philadelphia. Free Admission/Donation Requested. Advance Registration is available through Humanitix.