What: Artists weaving the sacred and the profane into an electronic / human spectrum of artifacts, voices, cultures, and tradition.
When: Wednesday, February 14, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $15 Online $20 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368
Brooklyn, NY — Two distinct sets that conjure the divine, on the most sacred of days. First up, vocalist Daisy Press collaborates with composer-performer Nick Hallett for a concert of new material that traverses medieval plainchant, ambient techno, Indian raga, spectral music, tintinnabuli, and other extended techniques for voices and electronics. The following set will see Rachika S using A/V work, synthesizing light and video, to premiere music from her 2016 Loveless Records album Themes for a Film and an unreleased follow-up album.
Daisy Press is a prominent interpreter of modern and experimental classical music in the US and Europe. She has worked closely with influential living composers, including Steve Reich. For her recording and performance of Morton Feldman’s Three Voices, the New York Times hailed Press as “intrepid” and “passionate.” Press is a specialist in the music of 12th-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen, and she incorporates aspects of North Indian (Hindustani) ragas into her unusual and extraordinary interpretations of Hildegard’s Medieval chants. As the principal vocalist at House of Yes, a Bushwick performance venue, Daisy regularly collaborates with the creative directors and performance artists to arrange, improvise, and perform works which embody ecstasy, holiness, and the occasional taste of profanity. Daisy is the High Priestess of “Voice Cult,” a monthly performance art vocal community ritual.
Nick Hallett is a Brooklyn-based composer, vocalist, and cultural producer working between the worlds of sound, art, and performance. Hallett recently completed work on a trilogy of dance- theater scores for choreographer-director Bill T. Jones’s Analogy cycle, which he has been touring with the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company for the past three years. He received a 2017 New York Dance & Performance Bessie award for his music in Variations on Themes from Lost & Found, a reconstruction of work by choreographer John Bernd (1953-1988). His first opera, co-authored with artist Shana Moulton (and featuring Daisy Press), Whispering Pines 10, is currently being adapted for the internet. Hallett is the music director of the Joshua Light Show and co-directs the Darmstadt new music series. In their decade of working together, Daisy Press and Nick Hallett have teamed up in a range of cultural contexts — including opera, video, and performance art — at such venues as National Sawdust, New Museum, The Kitchen, SFMOMA, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, ISSUE Project Room, among others.
Rachika S is a Brooklyn-based ambient-electronic producer and multi- instrumentalist whose work touches upon electro-acoustic methods, installation, and video. She magnifies latent sonic and harmonic qualities of her instrumental work using electronic processing techniques like granular synthesis, while pushing and resampling those digital apparatuses to the point of revealing their artifacts—situating her work within the transitional space between physical acoustics and digital audio, the real and the virtual. She also drums for several local bands, including queercore quartet MALLRAT, and writes for national music magazines including Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and Time Out NY. She has spoken on panels and presented music at universities such as Hampshire College, Cornell University, and Wesleyan University, and her work in her various projects has been featured in publications including Tiny Mixtapes, Mask Magazine, Afropunk, New Noise Magazine and more.