Wednesday January 24 * 7pm * TICKETS
Sam Wenc (Post Moves) is a composer, improviser, and interdisciplinary artist working with sound, text, performance and installation. As a multi-instrumentalist, he utilizes guitar, pedal steel guitar, vibraphone, electronics, field recordings, and found objects to compose structured and formless work that is curious about the themes and parameters of “folk" music.
Wenc has released music on Where to Now, Moone Records, Noumenal Loom, Sweet Wreath, and Obsolete Staircases. He has performed throughout the US, Canada, and Peru. He’s been artist-in-residence at Elektronmusikstudion EMS (Stockholm, Sweden) and Art OMI (Ghent, NY). In 2022, he composed the score for artist Sophia Giovannitti’s short film “A Monopoly of Violence” presented at Duplex Gallery NYC. He received an MFA in Music & Sound at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.
"the singular music of pedal steel guitarist, Sam Wenc...takes an instrument that is usually associated in a cliche way and turns it into something very atmospheric and expansive" - John Schaefer, WNYC
African Song Cycle, is a growing body of work composed by Thokozani Mhlambi for baroque cello and voice. Although using a European instrument, the work is emphatically African in inspiration--reminiscent of the minimalism turn in America. “Having struggled with the Western classical archive of music and understood its intentions and having also struggled with African performance traditions and understood the gestures, I felt the need for something that it is integrated at a deeper level.” African Song Cycle is Thokozani Mhlambi’s answer to this creative calling. He explains that the song cycle is widely associated with the German lieder form pioneered by composers such as Schubert, Weber and Beethoven. “Unlike the large-scale works typified in forms such as opera, the song cycle is an intimate one driven a lot by the lyricism of the words sung. Given the fact that Zulu is a tonal language, it makes it a language very suitable for this kind of form, along with its nuanced gesture,” he says. African Song Cycle is, in part, a compilation of songs that draw on the spirit and cultural legacy of the KwaZulu-Natal region (in South Africa) through the fusion of the old and new.
Alma Laprida (born in San Miguel, Argentina) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose creative pursuits encompass composition, improvisation, performance, installation, and radiophonic pieces. Her artistic journey began with formal training in piano at the Julián Aguirre School of Music, followed by studies in Arts Management and Electronic Arts at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero.
Armed with unconventional instruments and objects such as the trumpet marine, field recordings, synthesizers, megaphones and the lyre, her explorations traverse diverse realms in the pursuit of creating captivating sonic experiences. Her artistic endeavors have taken her across continents, as she has played, performed, and exhibited installations in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Italy, Mexico, and the United States. Alma has released three solo albums, collaborated on two other albums, and contributed to various compilations.
In her hometown of Buenos Aires, she founded and curated the concert series Ciclo Hertz. Additionally, she initiated the project «Estrépito y contemplación,» which fostered collaborations between visual and sound artists. She also served as the Curator-In-Chief at the Centro de Arte Sonoro, an institution under the purview of the Ministry of Culture in Argentina. Furthermore, she shared her expertise as an Assistant Professor in the BA in Electronic Arts program at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero.
In 2021, after a decade of creative work and life in Buenos Aires, Alma relocated to Maryland, USA.