SOUND IS AN OPENING: exhalation
Free (RSVP required)
- Rebekah Heller, bassoon
- Weston Olencki, trombone
- Josh Modney, violin
- Jen Shyu
- yuniya edi kwon (eddy kwon)
Jen Shyu — Selected works (solo performance)
yuniya edi kwon (eddy kwon) — Selected works (solo performance)
SOUND IS AN OPENING gathers artists of the International Contemporary Ensemble community with dynamic and varied connections to diaspora, and whose work creates, expands, and reframes spaces of home, transformation, and transgression. This first installment – subtitled exhalation – features three unique composer-performers in an exploration of voice, presence, and ritual.
The show will feature a world premiere by Charmaine Lee commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble, featuring Rebekah Heller (bassoon), Weston Olencki (trombone), and Josh Modney (violin), as well as solo performances by Jen Shyu and eddy kwon.
Please note: RSVPs will be honored on a first come, first served, basis. A reservation does not guarantee entry.
Community Agreements:
- Visitors age 12 or older must present proof of having completed the COVID-19 vaccination series at least 14 days prior to the event, to gain admittance.
- Please wear a mask over your nose AND mouth at all times.
- Maintain 6 feet of distance from others whenever possible.
Please make sure to review our COVID-19 safety policies here.
Accessibility:
One (1) ADA Seating Ticket also includes one (1) seat for a companion, if needed.
To read more about accessibility at Abrons Arts Center, please visit our website here.
About International Contemporary Ensemble
With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the International Contemporary Ensemble – as a commissioner and performer at the highest level – amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced.
https://www.iceorg.org/About Rebekah Heller, bassoon
Rebekah Heller is an artist whose work aims to expand the sonic possibilities of her instrument and the field at large. Called "an impressive solo bassoonist" by The New Yorker, she is dedicated to exploration, experimentation, and a robust collaborative practice.
https://www.rebekahheller.com/About Weston Olencki, trombone
Weston Olencki is a musician, composer, and sound artist currently making work centered around questions of instrumental music and its contexts/constructs, various mediated practices of listening and improvisation, and the technological, material, and cultural histories of rural space/time.
http://www.westonolencki.com/About Josh Modney, violin
Josh Modney—AKA Modney—is a violinist and creative musician working at the nexus of composition, improvisation, and interpretation. A "new-music luminary" (The New York Times) hailed for "jaw-dropping technical skill…" and as "one of today's most intrepid experimentalists" (Bandcamp Daily), Modney is a foremost interpreter of adventurous contemporary music, and has cultivated a holistic artistic practice as a composer, solo improviser, bandleader, music director, writer, arts administrator, and collaborator.
https://joshmodney.com/About Jen Shyu
Jen Shyu is a Timorese-Taiwanese-American multilingual vocalist, composer, instrumentalist, dancer, and producer. As a ritualist, improviser, actress, researcher, educator, and advocate for music traditions worldwide, she plays Taiwanese moon lute, Korean gayageum, er hu, Japanese biwa, Timorese lakadou, violin, piano, and percussion, and sings in improvised languages and existing ones (Indonesian, Malaysian, Javanese, Taiwanese, indigenous Taiwanese languages, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Tetum, Korean, Japanese, etc).
https://www.jenshyu.com/About yuniya edi kwon (eddy kwon)
yuniya edi kwon (b. 1989 – also known as eddy kwon) is a violinist, vocalist, poet, and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Lenapehoking, or New York City. Her practice connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation and transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer space and lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. As a composer-performer and improviser, she is inspired by Korean folk timbres and inflections, textures and movement from natural environments, and American experimentalism as shaped by the AACM. Her work as a choreographer and movement artist embodies an expressive release and reclamation of colonialism’s spiritual imprints, connecting to both Japanese Butoh and a lineage of queer trans practitioners of Korean shamanic ritual. In addition to an evolving, interdisciplinary solo practice, she performs and collaborates with artists of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Du Yun, Tomeka Reid, International Contemporary Ensemble, Kenneth Tam, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Moor Mother, and Degenerate Art Ensemble. She has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Mary Halvorson, Nicole Mitchell, Cory Smythe, Henry Threadgill, Susan Alcorn, Carla Kihlstedt, Jessika Kenney, Lesley Mok, Satomi Matsuzaki, and others. In 2023, she founded SUN HAN GUILD, a sound and performance collective with composer-improvisers Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, DoYeon Kim, and Lester St. Louis. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award in Music/Sound, an Arts Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, a Civitella Ranieri Fellow, a Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, and a United States Artists Ford Fellow.
http://www.eddykwon.net/