Drawing on techniques and histories of experimental music, hip hop, and the aesthetics of recording technology to create collaborative improvisations and compositions, Cleek Schrey and Yo! Vinyl Richie are two halves of the experimental ensemble Vinyl Quartet. This evening, the duo presents a range of materials and improvisations on violin, turntables, daxophone, and electronics.

Cleek Schrey: violin, daxophone, electronics
Yo! Vinyl Richie: turntable, electronics

with special guest Shelley Hirsch performing an excerpt from Samuel Beckett’s Unnamable.  “A woman of a thousand voices… She offered an enthralling demonstration of the way songs, vocal styles and language might have evolved out of more primal musical impulses. —New York Times

Cleek Schrey is a fiddler, composer, and filmmaker from Virginia, now based in NYC. He plays a range of instruments including the hardanger d’amore, a violin with sympathetic strings, and the daxophone, a wooden idiophone designed by Hans Reichel. Recent engagements include the Big Ears Festival (TN), the Kilkenny Arts Festival (IR), SuperSense Festival of the Ecstatic (Aus) and Issue Project Room (NYC). Frequent collaborators include electronic music pioneer David Behrman, the viol da gamba player Liam Byrne, traditional fiddle icon Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, and composer Alvin Lucier. The journal Sound Post has noted that Cleek “possesses a rare combination of traits: deep respect for traditional music and the people who make it, and an unbounded curiosity about new directions for sound.” He is currently Pioneer Works Sound Artist-in-Residence on Governors Island.

Bronx native Richard “Yo! Vinyl Richie” Nathaniel is a Turntablist, composer, and performer who uses his experiences from Hip Hop to evolve as a sound partitioner. Throughout his travels, Yo! Vinyl has developed his skills as a DJ to be used more technical on his use of the turntable as an instrument. Inspired by various music genres and incidentals of performing, Richie is willing to follow the waves of the groove. While being an ambassador of the international Hip Hop collective, End of the Weak, he also creates as a member of the electronic music group Dotcrawl and the sound group Vinyl Quartet. His collaboration with Moko Fukuyama, American Recordings, was recently presented at The Kitchen (NYC).
yovinyl.com (updating soon)
instagram.com/yovinyl