Ivan Cunningham/M. A. Tiesenga/Kourtney Jackson Smith/Greg Miles Lewis
Thursday October 23
doors at 7:30pm | performance at 8:00pm
$15 sliding scale tickets at the door
We'll be playing a series of new works by Ivan Cunningham. Things emerge, hang in the air too long, then leave before they explain themselves. The room keeps changing shape depending on who’s listening. Someone said it sounded like a memory trying to whistle.
Ivan Cunningham
Composer/bandleader/saxophonist/arranger Ivan Cunningham is of course interested in music, but he is even more interested in the people who create music. As a composer, his primary concern is the musical personalities of the performers involved, portraying a "universe of garish colors and bilious time signatures, inhabited by strange characters whose speech borders on nonsense” (The Wire Magazine, 2023).
Kourtney Jackson Smith
Kourtney Jackson Smith is a Los Angeles-based vocalist, composer, and interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores the entanglement of voice, body, and technology. Through extended vocal techniques, movement, installation and sound, her work considers the poetics of intimacy, belonging, and embodiment in an age of fragmentation. She has performed in various music and performance projects across Southern California including Dynasty Typewriter, the Glass House Concert Hall, the Largo, the Coach House, PDA Theater of Altadena, and Genghis Cohen. She holds an MA in Aesthetics & Politics from CalArts where her thesis examined the stutter, scream, and glitch as radical vocal gestures in avant-garde performance.
M. A. Tiesenga
M.A. Tiesenga is an artist working in collaborative, improvisatory, and indeterminate performance contexts in Los Angeles. As a composer, visual artist, sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser, Tiesenga merges these creative identities by embracing the potential of expanded/open notation systems and improvisation as an inquisition into new sonic possibilities. Tiesenga’s collaborations include work with the LA Phil, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Wild Up, Long Beach Opera, Ensemble Ipse, Brightwork New Music, Volta Collective, Heidi Duckler Dance Company, Théâtre Musical Tokyo, Kunsthalle for Music, SPEAK Percussion, Dog Star Orchestra, Ensemble Supermusique, Euler Quartet, the New Century Players, ensembles at the Eastman School of Music, New England Conservatory, CalArts, and Yale University.
Gregory Miles Lewis
Gregory Miles Lewis is a Los Angeles–based drummer, composer, educator, and international recording artist. An alumnus of CalArts (M.F.A.) and the University of Nevada, Reno (B.M.), he has worked with a wide range of acclaimed artists and labels including Angela Muñoz (Stones Throw Records), Red Leather, Takoda (Minaret Records), Larry Koonse, Bennie Maupin, Nels Cline (Wilco), Xiuhtezcatl, and Tonina. He is the drummer for Lauren Elizabeth Baba’s theBABAorchestra and performed on Vinny Golia’s Even to This Day…Music for Orchestra and Soloists – Movement Two, which earned a five-star review in DownBeat Magazine. He is also a core member of the math rock duo Rob Ford Explorer, with whom he has released five EPs and toured internationally, including performances at Mathcore Index Festival, 924 Gilman, and Arlene’s Grocery (NYC). As a composer, Greg’s work has been featured on Cartoon Network and in national campaigns for Tillamook (Super Bowl 2023), Costa Brazil, and Miu Miu. His original projects have been supported by the Nevada Arts Council, the Lillian Disney Foundation, and MusiCares.