Darius Jones and thingNY present the World Premiere of a new compositional work entitled “Samesoul Maker,” the companion piece to his 2014 composition “The Oversoul Manual.” While “Oversoul” took us into the alien birthing ritual of the mothers of a planet called Or’gen, ‘Samesoul Maker’ shows us the daily meditation that is performed by the fathers and community while the mothers are away from home. This alien meditation creates a world of sound, syntax, and speech patterns that are different from ours, expressing the hope and truth that real communication lies beyond the realm of words and the familiar. The “Samesoul Maker” instrumentation is for two female identifying voices and two male identifying voices, bells, and vibraphone. This work will be performed by the E/C Unit with a community of vocalists and musicians gathered to represent the alien family. “Samesoul Maker” takes us further into Jones’ mythological world of alien birthing rituals to reveal how this family bonds together to create the savior of their universe.
Gelsey Bell voice and bell
Aviva Jaye voice and bell
Sunder Ganglani voice and bell
Paul Pinto voice and bell
Levy Lorenzo vibraphone
Marisha Roxanne Scott visual artist
Darius Jones Composer
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.
Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed alto saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of Black music. Jones has been awarded the Van Lier Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Artist-in-Residence and commission, Western Front residence and commission, French-American Jazz Exchange Award, Robert D. Bielecki Foundation Award, and a Fromm Music Foundation commission from Harvard University. Jones has received acclaim for not only his studio albums featuring music and images evocative of Black Futurism, but also for his commissioned work as a composer throughout the United States and Canada. In 2021, Jones released Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) on Northern Spy Records. Jones was the 2022 MATA Festival artist in residence and festival curator, where he premiered Colored School No. 3 (Extra Credit). Forthcoming in Fall 2023, Jones’ new album fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s̶ suite but sacred) will be released by Northern Spy Records and We Jazz Records. Jones’ music is a confrontation against apathy and ego, hoping to inspire authenticity that compels us to be better humans.
Gelsey Bell is a Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter, and scholar. She is a core member of thingNY, Varispeed, and the Chutneys. She has received awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Opera America, and the Japan Foundation and her recent work includes mɔɹnɪŋ, which premiered in the Prototype Festival, Cairns, shuffleyamamba: Yamamba as a Bear, SubtacTTTTTTTTT, and Skylighght. Performance highlights also include Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway) and Ghost Quartet, Robert Ashley’s Improvement and Crash, and Kate Soper’s Here Be Sirens. www.gelseybell.com
Aviva Jaye is a performing artist & composer primarily creating music and wielding voice, keys, harp, guitar & ukulele. She often combines acoustic & electronic elements to unlock a portal for listeners to venture, exploring the dimensions of empathy, self-awareness, social justice & futurism. Her interdisciplinary work includes theater, dance, paper arts & poetry.
Born in Bucharest, Filipino-American Levy Marcel Ingles Lorenzo, Jr. works at the intersection of music, art, and technology. On an international scale, his body of work spans electronics design, sound engineering, instrument building, installation art, improvisation, and percussion performance. Dr. Lorenzo holds a position as Professor of Creative Technologies at The New School, College of Performing Arts where he is director of the Nstrument Lab.
Paul Pinto is a composer, performer, opera-sermonizer, and multi-disciplinary dabbler who makes music, new media, micro-theatres and durational performance by himself and with his friends in thingNY, Varispeed and LOVELOVELOVE. A few favorite projects include Patriots with Jeffrey Young, Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives with Varispeed, Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King, and the cyclorama video installation Whiteness with Kameron Neal. pfpinto.com
Sunder Ganglani is a musician and dramaturg based in Brooklyn, NY. His primary artistic home is on the street with the Stop Shopping Choir, and he used to run The Foundry Theatre.
Marisha Roxanne Scott is an interdisciplinary artist engaging a bubbling, body-centered practice which she calls Corporealism. With the idea that fluidity = life, she examines the slippery interstice at the pulsating, vital, yet ephemeral now and the ever looming reality of subsequent desiccation. She ponders her attempts to represent the jelly-like infinitude via art making and archive, as fascinating rituals of mummification and embalming.
As Risha Rox, she provided the visual design for Darius Jones’ 2021 album, Raw Demoon Alchemy (a lone operation). Her multidimensional makeup designs can be seen in Terence Nance’s Peabody award winning series, Random Acts of Flyness on HBO as well as the 2022 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning film, Nanny by Nikyatu Jusu. Risha’s live body painting rituals have been presented at RUSH Arts Gallery, AFROPUNK and Roulette. She was the recipient of a Musagetes Foundation Fellowship in Lecce, Italy, residencies at Chashama in NYC and the Women’s Studio Workshop in NYS, as well as grants by the NYSCA, See Me and Squarespace. A solo exhibition of her series Heavenly Bodies (photos of skyscapes painted on flesh) was presented at One Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2018 and she took part in the 2022 group show, From Atlantis to Saturn, A Portal to Joy (a tribute to Sun Ra) at William Grant Still Art Center (LA).
Oozing between mediums and milieux, Marisha maintains vision, viscosity and vibration as cardinal points.
