Saturday, January 25th at 8pm, ISSUE Project Room’s 2025 Winter Season Opening concert co-presented with Brooklyn Music School brings together Ethiopian-born Swedish experimental vocalist Sofia Jernberg and American composer-cellist Tomeka Reid. Building on their first collaboration in 2021–Meditations for Voice & Cello, a digital commission for ISSUE’s Distant Pairs series–the duo reunites for their first-ever live collaboration in the US. This year’s season-opening event will also feature Jernberg and Reid in a unique quartet, joined by NYC-based pianist Craig Taborn and Norwegian bassist Ole Morten Vågan.
The rich, collaborative history between North American jazz musicians and Scandinavian artists is well-documented. Legends such as Albert Ayler, Joe Harris, Don Cherry and Quincy Jones have all spent time in the country, leaving an indelible mark on both the Swedish and American music landscapes. In the past decade, a vibrant connection has developed between Chicago and Sweden, paving the way for Jernberg and Reid to meet and forge their creative partnership. Jernberg, who investigates the instrumental possibilities of the voice (including sounds that delve into nonverbal vocalization and diphonic singing), will meet Reid’s distinct melodic sensibility in an inimitable musical encounter.
The quartet, featuring Taborn and Vågan, will open with a Swedish song “Visa i Molom” (“Song in Molom”) by Alf Hambe, evoking a style often referred to as Fäbo jazz that blends traditional Swedish folk music with elements of jazz. “Molom” is a fictional place and a metaphor for melancholy that is strongly connected with the people in Scandinavia, due to the long periods of absent sunlight. The group will close the evening with an interpretation of “Portrait,” a rare composition with lyrics by Charles Mingus.
As an extension of their US collaboration made possible by ISSUE Project Room and the Swedish and Norwegian Consulates, the artists will participate in a series of educational outreach activities at Brooklyn Music School’s Playhouse and Dartmouth College.
Respect your RSVP
ISSUE encourages a culture of respect around free arts programming–by honoring your RSVP, you recognize ISSUE’s ongoing efforts to cultivate new work by underrepresented artists. ISSUE encourages audiences to arrive on-time to ensure access. If you can no longer attend a free event, please contact sylver@issueprojectroom.org to let us know. Thank you for respecting the reservation.
All ISSUE Members will receive two (2) free drink tickets to redeem at the 2025 Winter Opening concert. Please sign up as an ISSUE Member any time before the event to access this and other membership perks.
Sofia Jernberg, born in Ethiopia and brought up in Ethiopia, Vietnam and Sweden, is a singer and composer. Central to her work are unconventional techniques and sounds with focus on the human acoustic voice. Touching themes like identity, internationality, origin, belonging as well as a strong belief in communion and collaboration. Music theatre and contemporary opera play a significant part in her artistic oeuvre. She has received several commissions as a composer and collaborates with choreographers, visual artists and film makers. She performed at Wien Modern, Ultima Festival Oslo, Festival d'Automne, Warsaw Autumn, Lucerne Forward Festival among many others.
Cellist and composer Tomeka Reid has emerged as one of the most original, versatile, and curious musicians in Chicago’s bustling jazz and improvised music community over the last decade. Her distinctive melodic sensibility, always rooted in a strong sense of groove, has been featured in many distinguished ensembles over the years. Reid has been a key member of ensembles led by legendary reedists like Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell, as well as a younger generation of visionaries including flutist Nicole Mitchell, vocalist Dee Alexander, and drummer Mike Reed. She co-leads the adventurous string trio HEAR IN NOW and in 2013 launched the first Chicago Jazz String Summit, an international festival of cutting edge string players held in Chicago. A 2021 USA Fellow, Reid has received awards from the Foundation of the Arts 3Arts and received her doctorate in music from the University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign in 2017. In the Fall of 2019, Tomeka Reid received a teaching appointment at Mills College as the Darius Milhaud chair in composition.
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Craig Taborn has been performing piano and electronic music in the jazz, improvisational, and creative music scene for over twenty five years. He has experience composing for and performing in a wide variety of situations including jazz, new music, electronic, rock, noise and avant garde contexts. Taborn has played and recorded with many luminaries in the fields of jazz, improvised, new music and electronic music including Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Lester Bowie, Dave Holland, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Evan Parker, Steve Coleman, David Torn, Chris Potter, William Parker, Vijay Iyer, Kris Davis, Nicole Mitchell, Susie Ibarra, Ikue Mori, Carl Craig, Dave Douglas, Meat Beat Manifesto, Dan Weiss, Chris Lightcap, Gerald Cleaver, and Rudresh Manhathappa. Taborn is currently occupied creating and performing music for solo piano performance (Avenging Angel), piano trio (Craig Taborn Trio), an electronic project (Junk Magic), the Daylight Ghosts Quartet, a piano/drums/electronics duo with Dave King (Heroic Enthusiasts) and a new trio with Tomeka Reid and Ches Smith as well as piano duo collaborations with Vijay Iyer (The Transitory Poems), Kris Davis (Octopus) and Cory Smythe. He is also a member of the instrumental electronic art-pop group Golden Valley is Now and performs frequently on solo electronics. His conceptual work 60 x Sixty is now available worldwide, for free at 60xSixty.com Craig lives in Brooklyn.
Since the late nineties, Ole Morten Vågan has been active on the Norwegian scene, both as a bass player, and band leader. Coming out of the jazz- and improv communities of Trondheim and Oslo, he has gone on to perform with many central musicians of both the Scandinavian and the international jazz scene, generations across. Vågan is also a noted composer, and has been the artistic director for the well renowned Trondheim Jazz Orchestra since 2017, working with both his own music and that of guest artists like Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell and Jason Moran. His two records with the TJO as a leader has received critical acclaim, and his collaboration with the TJO and Jason Moran will be out on Moran’s Yes Records in 2025.
