7:30pm Doors / 8pm Sound
Tickets $18 (discounted or free for members)
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Canadian sound artist crys cole and Australian polymath Oren Ambarchi carve out an intimate and human sonic space across a diverse array of compositional approaches, sound sources, fidelities, and textures. Partners both creatively and romantically, this unique duo reimagines electro-acoustic music, not simply as “abstract” sound, but as a diary, a love poem, a dream. 

Oren Ambarchi is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and musical polymath who has been releasing records with the frequency of someone who prefers studio time to sleep. His remarkably prolific and diverse oeuvre since the 90's has included releases such as Grapes From The Estate (2004), Audience Of One & Sagittarian Domain (both 2012), Quixotism (2014) & Hubris (2016). A voracious collaborator and musical explorer Ambarchi has worked with an endless stream of notable artists including Alvin Lucier, Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke, Ricardo Villalobos and many more. For the past 10-years Ambarchi has run the Black Truffle label, releasing his own projects and those of his close collaborators alongside important historic works. Ambarchi was the cover artists of the August 2019 issue of the Wire magazine (UK). His latest solo release is Simian Angel (Editions Mego 2019).

crys cole is a Canadian sound artist working in composition, improvised performance and sound installation. Generating subtle and imperfect sounds through haptic gestures and seemingly mundane materials, she creates texturally nuanced works that continuously retune the ear. Cole has performed worldwide both solo and in an array of collaborations, and has ongoing duo projects with Oren Ambarchi and James Rushford (Ora Clementi). She has been published by Black Truffle (AU), Penultimate Press (UK), Ultra Eczema (BE), caduc. (CA), Bocian (PL), Another Timbre (UK), Students of Decay (US) and Infrequency editions (CA/DE). Her work has been exhibited in Canada, Russia, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the UK and Thailand.

7:30pm Doors / 8pm Sound
Tickets $15 (discounted or free for members)
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Composer, vocalist, multi-instrumental electronic musician, and multimedia artist Christina Wheeler’s sonic explorations include forays in a myriad of styles and forms. She blends an amalgam of improvised electronic music from an array of sources: processed vocals, vocal loops, hand-triggered sampler, theremin, Q-chord, autoharp, and electric mbira.

For this evening’s concert, she will perform Tres Es un Número Mágico: Kaleidoscopic Triptychs, a three-part, solo composition in audience-generated, chance order and direction, for voice, electric mbira, electric autoharp, Q-Chord, delay loops, and electronic effects processing.

A Los Angeles native, Wheeler is a graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges and Manhattan School of Music. She has performed and recorded internationally with many artists, including John Cale, Talvin Singh, Marc Ribot, Chris Whitley, Zeena Parkins, John Carter, Fred Hopkins, and Andrea Parkins. Wheeler was a featured artist with David Byrne: the band toured internationally and performed on The Late Show with David Letterman, and on PBS’s Sessions at West 54th Street. Wheeler performed at Central Park Summerstage's Joni’s Jazz concert, featuring the music of Joni Mitchell, with Chaka Khan, PM Dawn, Ravi Coltrane, and Vernon Reid.

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Rodolfo Córdova is a vocalist, composer, and improviser. They possess a BMus in Composition from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and a MA in Composition from Mills College in Oakland, California. Their music has been described as "slow-boiling, apparently timeless" with "an odd momentum of its own" (The Washington Post). Their work fuses diverse influences with electronic media, chance operations, gradual processes, noise, improvisation, extended vocal and timbral techniques of composition. Córdova also explores intersections with literature and visual arts and engages with issues of colonialism, gender, geopolitics and migration. As a touring vocalist and improviser with The Art Ensemble of Chicago, they have performed nationally and internationally in Washington D.C.; Chicago, Illinois; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Paris, France. They're also an active member of the improvising bands Monopiece and Temoleh, with whom they have toured in the United States and Mexico. Other collaborators include Dirt and Copper, Kris Force, Theresa Wong, Nicole Mitchell, Timothy Russell and GeraldCaselDance.

7:30pm Doors / 8pm Sound
Tickets $12 (discounted or free for members)
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As a solo performer, Theresa Wong takes the listener into the molecules of the materials at hand, revealing a relentless digging to unearth the raw vibrations of the cello and voice. Her work draws upon the questions: how can I rediscover the core of the cello as wood and string and hair, or even simply as a tree; and how can the voice take flight in all its infinite possibilities? Like a microscope set to an object, Wong focuses on the elemental qualities of her instruments through amplification, extended techniques and the interplay of improvisation and composed forms. Drawing upon sounds of the natural world, pure harmonies, transient melodies, noise and sensations of genetic sonic memory, Wong offers a timbral merging of the voice and cello, giving birth to new acoustically synthesized sounds. 

Wong will also perform O Horizon, an improvised performance in which audience members are invited to bring objects of any kind (common or otherwise) as instruments for her sound making. She will perform a sonic ritual that brings awareness into the sensual microcosm and fantastic qualities of everyday materials. O Horizon refers to the nutrient rich area of a forest floor, where fallen materials are transformed into new ones through decomposition.

Theresa Wong is a composer, cellist and vocalist active at the intersection of music, experimentation, improvisation and the synergy of multiple disciplines. Her works include The Unlearning (Tzadik), 21 songs for violin, cello and 2 voices inspired by Goya's Disasters of War etchings, O Sleep, an improvised opera for an eight-member ensemble exploring the conundrum of sleep and dream life and Venice Is A Fish, a collection of solo songs. Wong's commissioned pieces include works for Vajra Voices, Splinter Reeds, Del Sol String Quartet and pianist Sarah Cahill. She has collaborated with many singular artists, including Fred Frith, Ellen Fullman, Chris Brown, Luciano Chessa, dance pioneer Anna Halprin and filmmaker Daria Martin. In 2018, she founded fo’c’sle, a record label dedicated to adventurous music from the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, featuring inaugural releases by Ellen Fullman with David Gamper and Stuart Dempster, Chris Brown, Powerdove and the Lijiang Quintet.  She has performed internationally in venues including: Fondation Cartier, Paris; FOCO Festival in Morelia, Mexico, Cafe Oto in London, Fabbrica Europa Festival in Florence, Italy, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and The Stone and Roulette in New York City among many others. She currently works and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. www.theresawong.org & focslemusic.com

DunkelpeK is Japanese born percussionist Nava Dunkelman and Canadian-American guitarist Jakob Pek. This iconoclastic duo creates an experimental improvised music that reimagines the possibilities of the duo and music itself. Visceral, organic, and spontaneous in nature, DunkelpeK’s sound transfigures and transmutes, offering listeners a holistic exploration into the essence of listening and musical experience. At times cathartic and pronounced, meditative and serene, the music of DunkelpeK is unlike anything else. dunkelpek.bandcamp.com

9pm Doors / 9:30pm Sound
$18 Tickets (discounted or free for members)
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Throughout his 15 year career Darren J. Cunningham (aka Actress) has established himself as one of the pre-eminent and singular voices in UK electronic music. His work has been released by a variety of different recording labels, which most prominently include Ninja Tune, Honest Jon’s Records, Nonplus Records, and Werkdiscs, a label he co-founded in 2004.

In addition to his recorded work, Actress has been photographed by Wolfgang Tillmans, and the late celebrated photographer Lord Snowden. He has worked collaboratively on projects with White Cube artist Eddie Peake, Mehdi Lacoste, Dan Emmerson and Belgian visual artist Pierre Debusschere, as well as fronting campaigns for Fashion brands Acne and Cav Empt, during which he has performed sell out shows at The Barbican Center and Tate Modern London, Sonar Tokyo and Berghain Berlin.

8ULENTINA is a DJ, producer and interdisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California. 8ULENTINA’s work focuses on the use of non Western sounds and traditional Middle Eastern instruments within the genres of dance music, ambient, noise and sound design. 8ULENTINA is the co-founder of Club Chai, a Bay Area based event series, record label and curatorial project that highlights diasporic narratives and queer and trans people of color.