Over the past two decades, guitarist Alan Licht has worked with a veritable who’s who of the experimental world, from free jazz legends (Rashied Ali, Derek Bailey) and electronica wizards (Fennesz, Jim O’Rourke) to turntable masters (DJ Spooky, Christian Marclay) and veteran Downtown New York composers (Rhys Chatham). Licht is also renowned in the indie rock scene as a bandleader (Run On, Love Child) and supporting player to cult legends like Tom Verlaine, Arthur Lee, Arto Lindsay, and Jandek. He has released five albums of compositions for tape and solo guitar, and his sound and video installations have been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. With Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, he founded Text of Light, an ongoing ensemble which performs freely improvised concerts alongside screenings of classic avant garde cinema. Licht was curator at the famed New York experimental music venue Tonic from 2000 until its closing in 2007, and has written extensively about the arts for the WIRE, Modern Painters, Art Review, Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Premiere, Purple, The Village Voice, The New York Sun, Time Out New York, and other publications. His first book, An Emotional Memoir of Martha Quinn, was published by Drag City Press in 2003; a second book, Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Media, the first extensive survey of the genre in English, was published by Rizzoli in fall 2007.
Alan Licht and Loren Connors have been performing improvised guitar duos since 1993. Tonight Licht will add piano to the mix.
Loren Connors has improvised and composed original guitar music for about three decades. His avant music – which combines the aesthetics of blues, Irish airs and other music genres – has been recorded on Family Vineyard, Drag City, Table of the Elements, RoadCone and other labels. He has performed with Alan Licht, John Fahey, Keiji Haino, Jandek, Suzanne Langille, Thurston Moore, Jim O’Rourke, poet Steve Dalachinsky and other artists.
Sound artists Stephan Moore and Scott Smallwood began performing as the duo Evidence in 2001. Focusing on the universe of real-world sound, Evidence pours field recordings like water into their compositional and improvisational process, resulting in music that balances between tight organization and unregulated flow. Using recording equipment, laptops, and other electronic devices, Evidence creates music that deals with gradual change, improvised over time, sometimes atmospheric, sometimes pulsating, always texturally striking and unique. Resisting classification into a single genre, Evidence is equally at home performing in experimental venues, clubs, galleries, planetariums, and rooftops.
