Friday November 8 * 8pm * $10 * TICKETS
Rhizome is pleased to present Night 2 of Asher Herzog's performance residency this fall. Featuring Bowhunter: Derrick Michaels / Zachary McKinney / Walsh Kunkel / Derek Weigmann / Jake Fidler / Asher Herzog
With:
Dances for the Winds - Engaging and daring, this vibrant duo takes you into their journey through music and storytelling. A meeting between two composers and improvisors, Italian cellist Irina Solinas and Palestinian oudist and vocalist Huda Asfour walk the line between their respective classical music trainings, producing music beyond genre and background. In their premier tour in the United States they present a series of new compositions, and older ones brought to life anew. They will follow the winds of the Mediterranean in dances, written and developed in Como, Italy. Huda and Irina met at the Global musicianship workshop held in 2017 in Louisiana.
Irina Solinas Irina Solinas is one of the most sought after young cellists in Italy. A combination of her strength in classical cello playing with her avant garde ideas have propelled her to being celebrated as a musical leader for her generation. Starting her career as the First Cello for the prestigious Italian Youth Orchestra she has now performed at venues all over the world. She has played under the baton of stellar Conductors, including Riccardo Muti, Sir Jeffrey Tate and Gabriele Ferro further enriching and deepening her artistic and personal growth. Solinas is also the Founder and Artistic Director of MAME - Mediterranean Ambassadors Music Experience. MAME is a musical reality, born from the encounter of Irina Solinas and the Silk Road Ensemble: a musical collective, formed by exceptional artists from all over the world, winner of the Grammy Award as Best World Music Album, in 2016. irinasolinas.com
Huda Asfour - Musician, Educator and Social entrepreneur—Huda believes in the necessity of transcending borders in both life and music. She is a natural storyteller whose music, through the tenderness of her oud and the lyricism of her compositions, challenges taboos and stereotypes. Since the establishment of her first band with Tamer Abu Ghazaleh in 2003. Huda has two studio albums; Mars, released in 2011 and funded by The Culture Resouce, and Kouni, released in 2018 and supported by a grant from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture. In the last 10 years, she has collaborated with artists and performed in the Arab region, Europe, The United States, and China. She is also the co-founder of two art initiatives in DC, the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival and the Mashriq Maghreb Jam sessions. In March of 2019, she was nominated for the Aga Khan Music Awards for the Performance category.
Thorn Collaborative (Erin Ethridge and Colleen Marie Foley) questions ideas of shared or composite identity, memory and body. We view these as fundamentally fluid in nature, and strive to incarnate that mutability. We engage both the fictional and the real as equal counterparts, weaving together our actual journeys with story and myth. Taking our relationship as subject and tool, we negotiate separation and intimacy in pursuit of their limits. Our attempts to overcome the obstacles that these poles present are continually frustrated. This struggle highlights a paradox inherent in relationships: distance is a wound that can’t be healed because closeness is never complete, but intimacy threatens the sovereign self. We find pleasure and pain in our separateness and in our union. We began working together as Thorn in 2015 while in graduate school at Alfred University where Erin studied sculpture and Colleen studied electronic arts. Combining our skill sets, we employ sculptural processes such as wax and resin casting, metal work, sewing, and electronic media such as video, animation, and sound.
Stages of Soft is a series of four performances over four days drawing from various types of episodic transformations. Taking cues from insects, alchemists, and ancient mythology, Thorn will posit bodies as sites of transformation and instruments for communication. Each day’s performance will leave traces and artifacts, transforming the space throughout the exhibition. The installation and performances together will be a meditation on softened boundaries of the body, intimacy and distance, and ritual metamorphosis.