Roulette ++ Audiofemme ++ MATA Presents Shara Lunon: Bitter Fruits. Bitter Fruits is an electronic song cycle exploring survival techniques that have developed in response to oppression and injustice within our government, society, and communities. There are intentional injustices and passive. Both have cultivated methods of coping so that marginalized people can function in their daily lives. Defined by Tina Campt in her Quiet Soundings: The Grammar of Black Futurity, these everyday tools, or the quotidian, are what black and brown people need to survive. Lunon defines “Bitter Fruits” as the gains reaped by marginalized people in the United States. The performance examines ideas of erasure and displacement and engages with tokenism, code-switching, and other forms of quotidian survival techniques. Lunon explores the feelings that emerge when these tools are put into action using a light-reactive custom synthesizer in the form of a 10-foot braided wig. 

The braided wig represents the generational traditions of Black and Indigenous Americans. Historically, braids have mapped routes to freedom, held food and nourishment, and even defined societal classifications. In today’s culture, the lace front is now a symbol of expression, choice, and experimentation. In Lunon’s piece, the braided wig holds tokens and rice to represent the past and the photocells hard-wired to it serve as a way to give voice to her ancestors. The photocells are connected to an Arduino Uno and have two sides—one of a buzzy oscillator representing the suffocating voice of being unheard or unable to fully express truth and honesty in her Black experience, and the other is a soft-toned mode that represents the strength of resilience, harmony in community, and hope.

This piece has been workshopped as a solo piece at the New School with Levy Lorenzo’s Tech Forward series during the pandemic and was only available to be seen by other students and faculty. This is the world premiere as a full ensemble piece and open to the public.

Shara Lunon voice electronics, wig theremin
Lesley Mok percussion, electronics
Chris Williams trumpet, electronics
Kalia Vandever trombone, electronics
Lester St. Louis electronics
13th Law bass, guitar, electronics

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.

Shara Lunon is the product of the evolution of Black American musical traditions. As a poet, vocalist, composer, and improviser, her art finds the ethereal in the chaotic. With voice as the foundation, Shara’s music is an exploration of text and sound that seamlessly weaves through the ongoing relationship of struggle, resilience, and resolution. Her goal is to challenge lassitude and in its place, instill hope.

Lunon has collaborated with artists including Darius Jones, Fay Victor, Ches Smith, Asia Stewart, Milagros Art Collective, Chris Williams, Lester St. Louis, Luke Stewart, Laura Cocks,  Joy Guidry, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Her work has been featured in The Gothamist and has won residencies with Amanda + James Pollinate residency, Metropolis Ensemble Flame Keeper’s, and the 1beat Fellowship. Shara has also won awards from Audiofemme Agenda Grant, MATA Presents Grant, and Innova Recording Open Call. Currently, Shara is working with MATA Presents, Audiofemme,  and the Innova Recording Label to release new projects in the fall of 2023.

Lesley Mok is a percussionist and interdisciplinary artist who works in sound, installation, film, and theater. Interested in the ways social conditions shape our beings, Lesley’s work focuses on overacting humanness to explore ideas about alienness and privilege. Their work draws from queer and feminist art practices, Chinese philosophy, Caribbean folkloric musical traditions, futurist perspectives, and ancestral knowledge. Their ongoing explorations with composition and improvisation are most notably documented in their ten-piece improvising chamber ensemble, The Living Collection (American Dreams Records).

Mok’s work has been recognized by the ASCAP Foundation, Roulette Intermedium, and the Asian American Arts Alliance, and has been performed by International Contemporary Ensemble, Metropolis Ensemble, and JACK Quartet. They have collaborated with Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, William Parker, Cory Smythe, Jen Shyu, Myra Melford, Isabel Crespo Pardo, edi kwon, Zekkereya El-margharbel, David Leon, Doyeon Kim, Adam O’Farrill, and others.

Chris Williams is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Brooklyn, NY and is most at home collaborating with contemporary improvisers and experimentalists. He has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe. His work explores the dyad of ancestral trauma and power existing in all Black Americans. Williams has been commissioned by WasteLAnd and International Contemporary Ensemble and has been in residence or with BANFF Centre for the Arts, Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Musik Installationen Nürnberg and others. He has collaborated with creators including Eyvind Kang, Joanna Mattrey, Miriam Parker, Patrick Shiroishi, Bennie Maupin, Nicole Mitchell, Fay Victor, Wendy Eisenberg, Luke Stewart, Pink Siifu, and Marjani Forte-Saunders.

Kalia Vandever is a trombonist, composer, and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. She released her debut album, “In Bloom” in 2019 which has been described as “the rise of an exciting voice for the music” (Seton Hawkins, Hot House Jazz Magazine). Kalia’s sophomore album, Regrowth —released in May, 2022 on New Amsterdam Records—”confirms her strengths as a composer and bandleader with a distinctly contemporary point of view” (Nate Chinen, WBGO Jazz). She has toured and performed internationally with her quartet, as well as a side-woman, performing with jazz artists including Joel Ross, Immanuel Wilkins, Maria Grand, Fay Victor and others. She is also known for her side-woman work with pop artists including Harry Styles, Lizzo, Jennifer Hudson, Demi Lovato, Japanese Breakfast, and Moses Sumney. Kalia is an awardee of the 2022 Next Jazz Legacy, a program founded by New Music USA and Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. She has performed in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Preservation Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, The Jazz Gallery, The BlueWhale, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, SMOKE Jazz Club, the Blue Note, and the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. While performing regularly as a bandleader and side-woman, Kalia is also an active composer and arranger. She has been commissioned to write works for groups and individuals including Tesla Quartet, The Westerlies, Katherine Kyu Hyeon Lim, Hats & Heels Duo and more.

Lester St. Louis (b.1993) is a New York born and based Composer, Improviser, Cellist, Sound Designer and Curator. His work traverses through performance, installation, curation, artistic research and recording. His works are rooted in dynamic environments of improvisation both sonically and socially, ecstatic sound worlds. flow and interaction.  He has performed internationally throughout The U.S, The E.U, Canada, China and in South America; and collaborates with artists such as Chris Williams [under the moniker HxH],  Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die, Ben Lamar Gay, Yaeji, Tortoise, Yo La Tengo, Miho Hatori, Dré A. Hočevar, Charmaine Lee, Isabel Crespo Pardo, TAK Ensemble, Random International, Irreversible Entanglements, Superblue, Terence Nance, Found Sound Nation, Wet Ink Ensemble and many more. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists such as The JACK Quartet, RAGE THORMBONES, Jennifer Koh, String noise and Ghost Ensemble among others.