Uptown Nights: Convent to Wythe
$25
- yuniya edi kwon (eddy kwon), violin, voice, & small percussion
- Laura Cocks, flutes, voice, & small percussion
- Jessie Cox, percussion, & voice
- Lester St. Louis, cello, voice, & small percussion
- Luke Stewart, double bass, voice, & small percussion
SUN HAN GUILD — even in the shadow of a retching fog (world premiere)
Aligned by a mission to foster artistic experimentation and champion voices that are reshaping the landscape of new music for this century, Harlem Stage and National Sawdust band together in a cross-borough collaboration to present yuniya edi kwon, SUN HAN GUILD, and Bora Yoon.
On February 16, 2023, Harlem Stage presents silver through the grass like nothing, a work in progress solo by yuniya edi kwon, and even in the shadow of a retching fog, a new work by the SUN HAN GUILD.
About SUN HAN GUILD
SUN HAN GUILD is a performance collective led by yuniya edi kwon. Inspired by the Spirit Worshipers' Guild of early 20th-century Korea, SUN HAN GUILD uses sound, improvisation, movement, and ritual performance to create spaces of intense presence and transformation. SUN HAN GUILD is composer-improvisers yuniya edi kwon, Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, Lester St. Louis, and Luke Stewart, with lighting designer Maggie Heath.
About yuniya edi kwon (eddy kwon), violin, voice, & small percussion
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/About Laura Cocks, flutes, voice, & small percussion
Laura Cocks is a New York-based flutist who works in a wide array of creative environments as a performer and promoter of contemporary music. Laura is the flutist and executive director of TAK ensemble, and a member of the Nouveau Classical Project and the Association of Dominican Classical Artists. They can be heard with TAK, International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea, Wet Ink Ensemble, and others on labels such as Carrier Records, ECM, Centaur Records, New Focus Recordings, Sound American, Denovali, Orange Mountain Music, Chambray Records, Amplify, TAK editions, Double Double Whammy, Winspear, Supertrain, and Gold Bolus.
http://www.lauracocks.biz/About Jessie Cox, percussion, & voice
About Lester St. Louis, cello, voice, & small percussion
Lester St. Louis (b.1993) is a New York-born and -based composer, improviser, cellist, sound designer, and curator. His work traverses through performance, installation, curation, artistic research, and recording. His works are rooted in dynamic environments of improvisation both sonically and socially, ecstatic sound worlds. flow and interaction. He has performed internationally throughout the U.S, the E.U, Canada, China, and in South America; and collaborates with artists such as Chris Williams [under the moniker HxH], Edi Kwon Jaimie Branch, Dre A. Hočevar, Charmaine Lee, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Emeka Okereke, Tortoise, Yo La Tengo, TAK Ensemble, The International Contemporary Ensemble, Random International, Superblue, Terrence Nance, Found Sound Nation, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many more. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists such as The JACK Quartet, RAGE THORMBONES, Jennifer Koh, String Noise, and Ghost Ensemble, among others. He is deeply excited to see what new ventures and collaborations the future may bring and those that will be made.
https://metropolisensemble.org/artists-collection/lester-st-louis