Charmaine Lee

Thursday, September 6th, ISSUE Project Room's 2018 Fall season opens at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights with legendary experimental free jazz artist Milford Graves, performing alongside renowned multi-instrumentalist and ISSUE Art Advisory Board Member Shahzad Ismaily. The evening also features a performance by composer and artist Marina Rosenfeld, as well as a New York based improvising vocalist Charmaine Lee.

Improvising vocalist Charmaine Lee opens the evening, showcasing her unique style that tensely balances piercing, rapid-fire free improvisation with the sober austerity of Japanese onkyo. Often heavily amplifying the guttural manipulations of her otherwise unaffected voice, Lee approaches elements of ASMR, drone, jazz, and noise all sewn together into a musical language simultaneously lucid and severe.

Charmaine Lee is a New York-based vocalist from Sydney, Australia. Her work 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, electroacoustic feedback, and microphones to augment and distort the human voice. She has performed with leading improvisers Nate Wooley, id m theft able, and Joe Morris, and maintains ongoing collaborations with contemporaries Lester St. Louis, Conrad Tao, Zach Rowden, and Leila Bordreuil. She has performed at venues such as the Met Breuer, Roulette, the Stone, and Experimental Sound Studios (Chicago). As a composer, Charmaine has been commissioned by the Wet Ink Ensemble (2018), and has a forthcoming commission with Spektral Quartet (2018).