Sound and memories both come back to us. Norderval and collaborators use a multi-modal palette of sound, dance, and ceramics to explore themes of resonance, presence, place, and how our intergenerational pasts inform our futures. What Comes Back to Us is an improvised performance in which the musicians combine voice, glass, ceramics, modular synths, percussion, and gesturally controlled live electronics, listen with care, and create a commons in which we navigate how to move forward together.
Q4 is a collaboration of Kristin Norderval with Gustavo Aguilar, Miguel Frasconi and Jill Sigman. This is the world premiere of their quartet.
Kristin Norderval vocals, laptop, gestural controllers
Gustavo Aguilar percussion
Miguel Frasconi glass instruments, modular synths
Jill Sigman dancer, ceramic artist
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube.
Q4 is a quartet of creater-performer colleagues who have known each other a long time: Kristin Norderval, Miguel Frasconi, Gustavo Aguilar, Jill Sigman. All the members have worked with each other in various configurations, but suprisingly, this is the first time they will work together as a quartet. Kristin Norderval and Jill Sigman have worked together for 20 years collaborating on multiple projects in the US, Europe and Mexico. Gustavo Aguilar has also worked with Jill and Kristin as a collaborator in multiple projects. Kristin and Miguel recently gave duo concerts in Norway and the Netherlands, and Miguel performed in Kristin´s latest opera “Crane Reflects on a Favor – an eco-opera”, for which Jill Sigman was the director. Miguel has also worked together with Jill Sigman on several projects produced by her company, jill sigman/thinkdance. Q4 is thrilled to debut at Roulette Intermedium!
Kristin Norderval´s career has been twofold; as a singer of contemporary music working with composers such as Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Tania Leon, Annea Lockwood and many others, and as a composer-improviser working with technology. Kristin is inspired by hybridity, interactivity, and the idea that everything we do is site-specific. She blends acoustic and electronic sound, and is fascinated with de-tuned instruments, machines, and ambient sound. Kristin´s recording of her solo electro-acoustic works – Aural Histories – was listed as one of Ten Notable Classical Music Recordings of 2012 by The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross. Her opera The Trials of Patricia Isasa (2016) won Quebec´s OPUS prize for best contemporary music and best production. From 2019-2023 Kristin was a PhD Research Fellow at the Oslo National Academy of Opera in Norway, where she developed an Expanded Vocal Improvising Instrument (EVII) for gestural vocal processing using wireless MIDI rings. Kristin has used the EVII in her latest opera and in collaborations with Limpe Fuchs, Peter van Bergen, Jill Sigman, and Miguel Frasconi.
Gustavo Aguilar is an interdisciplinary artist whose approach to making cooperatively combines the archive (preconceived elements such as notation, texts, documents) and the repertoire (present-conceived elements such as gesture, orality, aurality). A Brownsville, Texas native, Gustavo has performed at major festivals throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Pacific. Gustavo is the Co-Artistic Director of Tug an interdisciplinary arts collective that creates contact zones where people can generate insights about, and produce actions around, contemporary social issues, and is an Associate Arts Professor at the Tisch School of the Arts/NYU.
Miguel Frasconi is a composer and improviser whose instrumentarium includes glass objects, analog electronics, and instruments of his own design. His glass instruments are struck, blown, stroked, smashed and otherwise coaxed into vibration, while his unique approach to modular synthesis takes a similar approach in the sonic domain. He has composed numerous operas, chamber works, dance scores and performs in the ensembles NewBorn Trio and Lampshade. Miguel’s recent events include a performance at the Electric Eclectics Festival, a residency at Art Omi, and performances in Norway with composer Kristin Norderval. His music has been released on New Albion, Porter, Clang, and independently through his own Bandcamp page, frasconimusic.
Jill Sigman is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and agent of change whose work exists at the intersection of dance, visual art, and social practice. She has been making dances and installations since the early 1990s, and in 1998 she founded jill sigman/thinkdance to think about pressing social issues through the body. In 2016, Sigman developed Body Politic, a program of workshops and laboratories that ask political questions somatically. Her work, incorporating cast-offs such as “garbage” and “weeds”, often addresses environmental themes. She has been collaborating with composer Kristin Norderval since 2003.
