Friday, December 6th, Charmaine Lee presents her third and final work as a 2019 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence, Laminals III, the last of three movements of a new long-form piece for solo voice. This movement is a culmination of Charmaine’s year-long focus and exploration of the voice as an expressive vehicle for electronic and organic sound. Technical and creative practices developed over the course of her residency are utilized as a platform for new forms of risk-taking in solo live performance.
The evening concludes with a trio of improvised music featuring Tyshawn Sorey (percussion) and Ikue Mori (laptop). Tyshawn and Ikue are widely regarded for their respective innovations in sound and significant contributions to the practice and furthering of improvised music. The trio will engage in an exciting dialogue of highly original vocabularies spanning eclectic aesthetic territories.
Charmaine Lee is a New York-based vocalist. Her music is predominantly improvised, favoring a uniquely personal approach to vocal expression concerned with spontaneity, playfulness, and risk-taking. Beyond extended vocal technique, Charmaine uses amplification, feedback, and microphones to augment and distort the voice. She has performed with leading improvisers Nate Wooley, id m theft able, and Joe Morris, and maintains ongoing collaborations with contemporaries Conrad Tao, Zach Rowden, Eric Wubbels, Victoria Shen, and Leila Bordreuil. She has performed at the Met Breuer, ISSUE Project Room, Roulette, the Stone, the Kitchen, and MoMA PS1. As a composer, Charmaine has been commissioned by the Wet Ink Ensemble (2018) and Spektral Quartet (2018). She is currently an Artist-in-Residence at ISSUE Project Room (2019).
Ikue Mori began playing drums and joined the band DNA soon after arriving in New York in 1977. By the mid 80’s she started playing drum machines and became involved in the downtown improvisational community. Since then she has collaborated with numerous musicians and artists throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music. Ikue won the Distinctive Award for Prix Arts Electronics Digital Music category in 1999. Shortly after, she started using a laptop computer to expand her vocabulary - not only to play sounds but to create and control visual works as well. Various collaborations include work with John Zorn, Craig Taborn, Joan Jonas, Zeena Parkins, Sylvie Courvoisier, and Kim Gordon.
Newark-born multi-instrumentalist and composer Tyshawn Sorey (b. 1980) is celebrated for his incomparable virtuosity, effortless mastery and memorization of highly complex scores, and an extraordinary ability to blend composition and improvisation in his work. He has performed nationally and internationally with his own ensembles, as well as artists such as John Zorn, Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith, Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, Claire Chase, Steve Coleman, Steve Lehman, Robyn Schulkowsky, Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, and Myra Melford, among many others. Sorey has received support for his creative projects from The Jerome Foundation, The Shifting Foundation, Van Lier Fellowship, and was recently named a 2017 MacArthur fellow. The Spektral Quartet, Ojai Music Festival, and International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) have commissioned his works, which exemplify a penchant for a thorough exploration of the intersection between improvisation and composition. Sorey also collaborates regularly with ICE as a percussionist and resident composer. Past commissions include a residency at the Berlin Jazz Festival and Carnegie Hall’s 125 Commissions Project in partnership with Opera Philadelphia supporting a new work for tenor Lawrence Brownlee addressing themes associated with Black Lives Matter. As a leader, Sorey has released seven critically acclaimed recordings that feature his work as a composer, multi-instrumentalist and conceptualist including his latest Pillars (Firehouse 12 Records, 2018), among many others. In 2012, he was selected as one of nine composers for the Other Minds Festival, where he exchanged ideas with such like-minded peers as Ikue Mori, Ken Ueno, and Harold Budd. In 2013, Jazz Danmark invited him to serve as the Danish International Visiting Artist. He was a 2015 recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Award. Sorey has taught and lectured on composition and improvisation at Columbia University, The New School, The Banff Centre, Wesleyan University, International Realtime Music Symposium, Hochschule für Musik Köln, Berklee College of Music, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Danish Rhythmic Conservatory. His work has been premiered at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Ojai Music Festival, The Kitchen, Walt Disney Hall, Roulette, ISSUE Project Room, and the Stone, among many other established venues and festivals. As of Fall 2017 he has held the role of Assistant Professor of Composition and Creative Music at Wesleyan University, where he received his Masters degree in Composition in 2011.
