Chicago-based sound artist and composer Lia Kohl and guitarist Shane Parish return to Roulette to present solo work from each of their respective recent releases. Parish opens with a solo acoustic opening set featuring music from his acclaimed 2024 album, Repertoire (Palilalia Records), a collection of solo acoustic fingerstyle arrangements of jazz, minimalist, and electronic masterpieces by such musical giants as Alice Coltrane, John Cage, Aphex Twin, Kraftwerk, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, and more.

Kohl performs her recent album, Normal Sounds: cello and synthesizer improvisations in conversation with field recordings (Moon Glyph). Equal parts reverent and playful, Normal Sounds is built around field recordings of anthropogenic sounds: fridge drones, grocery store beeps, car horns. Using a textural cloud of cello and synthesizers, Kohl alternately hallows and mimics them, offering them to the listener in a new light. The live performance will draw on Kohl‘s practice as an improviser, as she plays with and around the material of the album.

“Shane Parish is a relentless interpreter. The guitarist’s catalog is full of folk songs, sea shanties and the Chet Baker Sings album thoughtfully and playfully mangled.” –NPR

“As an arranger and transcriber, Shane has incredible attention to detail and a devotion to get it right. As a performer and improvisor, he’s passionate and has terrific drive and charisma. On stage, he’s impossible not to like.” –Bill Orcutt

“It’s remarkable: She finds meditative grace in the city’s most annoying sounds.” –Pitchfork (on Normal Sounds)

“An otherworldly album that’s very much of the physical world.” –Bandcamp (on Normal Sounds)

“Normal Sounds is most magical when slivers from our contemporary cacophony cohabit with Kohl and her collaborators’ playing, when they feel integral rather than incidental…Exploring the boundary between noise and music isn’t unusual. But Kohl finds songs hiding in their whispers, squeaks and hums.” –The Wire

Shane Parish is a guitarist, composer, improviser and interpreter. He is the leader of the avant-rock band Ahleuchatistas, a member of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, and a renowned acoustic soloist. Parish first gained widespread attention as a solo guitarist upon the release of his 2016 album of folk interpretations, Undertaker Please Drive Slow, on Tzadik Records. Over the years he has released nine albums with his band Ahleuchatistas (est. 2002) on labels such as Tzadik, Cuneiform, and International Anthem. The current lineup features bass legend Trevor Dunn and drum virtuoso Danny Piechocki.

Parish began working with Harry Pussy guitarist Bill Orcutt in 2022. Orcutt hired Parish to transcribe and produce a score of his album Music For Four Guitars, which became an instant classic. This led to the formation of a touring band, The Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, with Orcutt and Parish joined by NYC-based virtuosos Wendy Eisenberg and Ava Mendoza. The band achieved huge underground acclaim with their legendary performance on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts. In 2024, they released a live album on Palilalia Records called Four Guitars Live documenting their set at the 2023 Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Lia Kohl is a cellist, composer, and sound artist based in Chicago. Trained as a cellist, she also incorporates synthesizers, field recordings, toy instruments and radios into her work, searching for a balance between virtuosity and curiosity. She gravitates towards sound practices which reveal and speak to their time and place: field recording, improvisation, radio broadcast and transmission. She often focuses on mundane or pedestrian sounds – sounds which often go unnoticed or under-documented, searching for the profound, unknown, or beautiful in everyday life.

She performs as a soloist, a collaborator and composes works for ensembles. She has presented work and performed at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Walker Art Center, Chicago Symphony Center, and Eckhart Park Pool. She has created sound installations for Experimental Sound Studios’ Audible Gallery, Grunt’s Rare Books, and Roman Susan Art Foundation. She has been a resident artist at ACRE, Vashon Artist Residency, High Concept Labs, dfbrl8r Performance Art Gallery, Mana Contemporary, Stanford University, and Mills College. Recent releases include The Ceiling Reposes on American Dreams Records and Normal Sounds on Moon Glyph. She tours nationally and internationally.