Best known as the guitarist and frontman for Brooklyn’s psych-rock luminaries Cloud Becomes Your Hand and bassist for art dance-rock innovators Guerilla Toss, Stephe Cooper premieres a new body of work featuring an eight-piece ensemble and brand new music written for the occasion. This performance will feature new arrangements from Cloud Becomes Your Hands and songs from Cooper’s recent solo album, Home of Bread.
Roberta Michel: flute
Mara Mayer: clarinet
Christopher Foss: bassoon
Stephe Cooper: guitar, synth, vocals
Jesse Heasly: bass
Nick Neuburg: drums, percussion
Abby Swidler: violin
Lydia Velichkovski: piano / synth
Visuals by Caroline Beatrice Bennett
Stephe Cooper is a musician and composer from Stony Brook, Long Island. He studied music at SUNY Purchase College with Joel Thome. Past projects include: Cloud Becomes Your Hand, theatrically minded musical endeavors Living Things and Kagel Nacht (the music of Mauricio Kagel), the Dan Deacon Ensemble, musical director for “Less Miserables,” multimedia band “Eagle Ager,” and many scores/sound designs for dance. He currently plays electric bass in the art-dance-rock band Guerilla Toss, Zach Phillips’s various bands, and has been working as a sound engineer in NYC since 2006.
Cloud Becomes Your Hand is so skilled at breaking and challenging song structures that they occasionally bring to mind Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs’ legendary collaborative band Gastr Del Sol, who stretched the idea of a song to (and often past) its structural breaking point, though Cooper’s crew allow more color and warmth to come through. — Stereogum