Library Experimental with Janna Lee and Christopher Riggs/Kieran Daly – April 27, 2024

Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Saturday, April 27 at 2pm, and features Janna Lee and Christopher Riggs / Kieran Daly!

Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!

Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/

Janna Lee is a Chicago artist who uses her voice to explore various facets of herself, and blurs the line between angel and demon. In addition to being the vocalist of Snek Trio and Obsequies, her solo work combines harsh noise and haunting vocals into a maelstrom that confronts the dark side of humanity. Her versatility has garnered a diverse range of collaborations, including Bob Genghis Khan, Galaxxu, Unmanned Ship, Ben Zucker, and Scarlet Diva.

https://jannaleemusic.bandcamp.com/

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Photo Credit: Erin Workman

Kieran Daly is a composer and guitarist with concentrations in electroacoustic and improvised music. Some of his prolific work has been featured by the Chicago Reader, Flea, Hibari, Issue Project Room, Lateral Addition, Madacy Jazz, Pitchfork, Triple Canopy, and Wire Magazine.

Photo Credit: Gonzalo Guzman for Chicago Reader

Christopher Riggs is an autistic person who plays experimental music on the electric guitar. Without the use of processing or FX, they squeeze sounds from their guitar the Chicago Reader has called “brutalist, abstract, cold”.

https://www.christophertriggs.com/

Library Experimental with Reversed Bear Trap and Sun Picture – March 16, 2024

Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Saturday, March 16 from 2-4pm, and features Reversed Bear Trap and Sun Picture!

Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!

Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/

Reversed Bear Trap is the musical side project of English PhD student Krista Muratore aka Krista Bloom. Krista Muratore is also a video artist, writer and general hooligan.

https://reversedbeartrap.bandcamp.com/

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Sun Picture is the instrumental home studio project of Venezuelan-American musician Carlos Lowenstein.

Using everything from modular synths to live instruments, Sun Picture blends elements of ambient, dub, spiritual jazz, and Latin-American beats. This mix is approached with a restraint suggestive of krautrock’s detached stance.

https://sunpicture.bandcamp.com/

Library Experimental with Hali Palombo and Meredith Haines – October 28, 2023

Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Saturday, October 28 from 2-4pm, and features Hali Palombo and Meredith Haines!

Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!

Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/

Hali Palombo is an avid practitioner of “plunderphonics”: sampling existing musical/aural works and intertwining them into something brand new, whether it’s shortwave radio and CB radio samples, wax cylinder audio, and field recordings taken from Midwestern points of interest. Through her music and art, she aims to make the perceived ordinary hypnotic, haunting and memorable.

www.halipalombo.com

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Meredith Haines is a multidisciplinary artist and educator working with sound, installation, performance, and video. Her work engages the political capacities of sound, and explores noise as a method of social resistance. She has performed and exhibited work all over the country at venues such as No Nation, High Concept Labs, New Boone Gallery, AS220, Space 1026, and the DUMBO Dance Festival.

After earning a BFA in dance and choreography at Temple University and working as a musician in Philadelphia for over a decade, Meredith’s work led her to Chicago in 2019 to earn her Master’s in Sound Arts and Industries at Northwestern University on a merit scholarship. She is a current Fellow Artist-in-Residence at High Concept Labs in Chicago, Illinois, and also performs under the moniker, MAIR

www.meredithfranceshaines.com

Library Experimental with [star] and Pastel Fractal – June 10, 2023

Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Saturday, June from 2-4pm, and features [star] and Pastel Fractal!

Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!

Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/

[star] pronounced Hypothetical Star, was conceived by an Artist and a Satellite Engineer in New Mexico during Covid-19 lockdown.

They perform at venues with their original music, video projections, & lecture performance. In person [star] brings a touchable archive of lesser-known Space artifacts, musical instruments, and Space themed ephemera creating a Space peace jamm.

*Audience members are invited to cruise in an oral/drawn speculative future for Space exploration and related concerns and affinities. (e.g. Do you want to go to Mars?)

https://hypotheticalstar.bandcamp.com/

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While Pastel Fractal is CAREfully rolling out the soft-hued data patterns (of Chicagoans, by bicycle, on floppy disks, and inspired by seashells), Pastel is just the keystone of a poly-disciplinary trifecta. This trifecta incessantly re-commissions obsolete creative tools, re-presents Chicagoans’ public-service rhetoric, and re-cursively unfolds a self-critical lifestyle dynamic punctuated by live multimedia performances, intricate M.I.D.I. compositions, and heavily branded objects + apparati. The persons known as “data_DISK jockey ȺƉǤ” and “Conch Shell” complete this trifecta.

www.PastelFractal.com/

Library Experimental with Amanda Kraus and Helena Ford – April 23, 2023

Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Sunday, April 23 from 2-4pm.

Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!

The first show after a pandemically long hiatus features Amanda Kraus and Helena Ford.

Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/

Amanda Kraus photo by Daniel Kraus.

photo by Daniel Kraus

Amanda Kraus is a local educator/percussionist. She can be found online at amandakraus.org/music.

Previous work in various ensembles:
Arc Pair (ongoing)
March 25, 2020 ESS Quarantine Concert
Previous Jefferson Park EXP performance Nov 1, 2020
Boob Sweat (2017)
PLAN Quartet (2019)

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Helena Ford (Chicago, IL) is a Chicago experimental musician. Her practice focuses on drone and durational performances, incorporating elements of musique concrete, minimalism, and free improvisation. Her primary instruments include no-input mixing board, baritone guitar, and synthesizers.

https://helenaford.bandcamp.com/

Jefferson Park EXP with tay_ploops and Jenna Junk – December 12, 2pm

In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Sunday December 12 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!

https://www.twitch.tv/jeffersonparkexp

Jessica Gabriel is a multidisciplinary artist, puppeteer, life model, permaculturalist, poet, clown, currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Her project tay_ploops is based on tape loops and other textures.

https://jessicagabriel.ca/

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Jenna Boyles aka Jenna Junk is an interdisciplinary artist and magnet for things no one else wants. Joyfully defying landfills, she gleans sound from objects labeled “trash” and “obsolete.” Rewiring old electronics and embedding conductive textiles into trash instruments, she articulates the ubiquity and resonance of unwanted things. Touching upon the resilience and power of memory held within material, her performances play between the sensitivity and unpredictability of squishy-bodies and hard-wired machines. She received her MFA in Art and Technology Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018 and BFA in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012. Her costumes and illuminated objects have appeared in parades and forests, on rivers and beaches. Jenna has performed at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago IL and was a recent New Media Artist in residence at Mana Contemporary Chicago.

https://jennaboyles.com/

IG: @jennajunk

Jefferson Park EXP with Visda Goudarzi/Anna Xambó and Gerard Roma – November 21, 2pm

In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Sunday November 21 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!

https://www.twitch.tv/jeffersonparkexp

‘immerse in the lake’ is a remote live coding performance for two laptop performers distributed on two different continents. The performance is based on processing sound generated by crowdsourced and personal site-specific field recordings from Chicago throughout the year. The piece is a real-time improvisation and a free interpretation of John Cage’s ‘A Dip in the Lake’.

Visda Goudarzi and Anna Xambó started this collaboration in summer 2021 for the performance “Livesourcing: Audience Participation in a Live Coding Performance” premiered at Ear Taxi Festival, Chicago, IL, USA. https://youtu.be/FQXAOBvSZBk

Visda Goudarzi is a computer musician working at the intersection of audio and human-computer interaction. Her research interests include sound and music computing, live coding, and data sonification, sound synthesis, and the application of new media in art. She designs and performs using interactive and participatory sonic interfaces. Her sonic works include live electronic performances, live coding and data driven sound. She is an Assistant Professor of Audio Arts and Acoustics at Columbia College Chicago.

https://www.colum.edu/academics/faculty/detail/visda-goudarzi.html

Anna Xambó is an experimental electronic music producer and researcher. Her research and practice focus on sound and music computing systems looking at novel approaches to collaborative, participatory, and live coding experiences. To date, she has released three solo recordings: “init” (2010, Carpal Tunnel), “On the Go” (2013, Carpal Tunnel) and “H2RI” (2018, pan y rosas). Her solo and group performances have been presented internationally in Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in music and audio technology at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK) and a member of the Music, Technology and Innovation – Institute of Sonic Creativity (MTI^2).

http://annaxambo.me

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Gerard Roma investigates the inner life of sounds by poking at computers and other electronic circuits. His work often involves digital transformation of recorded sound textures coerced into algorithmic forms via live coding and self-made audio-visual instruments.

https://g-roma.github.io

Jefferson Park EXP with Becky Grajeda/Beth McDonald and Oblivious Newton Jon – November 13, 2pm

In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Saturday November 13 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!

https://www.twitch.tv/jeffersonparkexp

Becky Grajeda and Beth McDonald first started collaborating in the mid-2010’s, performing several pieces with a variety of musicians, speakers, and actors. After the social and artistic isolation of 2020, they were eager to collaborate on a new project, but didn’t feel safe to resume in-person performance in front of audiences. This facilitated a rare opportunity to explore sound worlds both new and old, without the deadline of a particular performance date or artistic goal. This recording is one waypoint on this exploration, and is the result of several months of improvisation, research, and drinking seltzer.

http://www.beckygrajeda.com/
https://bethtuba.com/

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Jon Strasheim’s project Oblivious Newton Jon began in 2018 as an outlet for Jon to explore the relationships between sound, noise, and music through a set of lenses different than he had previously used in his music career. Using electrical power noise as the source sound, Jon processes this noise through multiple series of effects pedals that operate as a sort of makeshift synthesizer. Accompany Jon as he attempts to navigate his way home from his explorations of noises interacting with each other in their overlapping circles of harmony and chaos.

https://obliviousnewtonjon.bandcamp.com/

Jefferson Park EXP with Reid Karris and Janna Lee – November 7, 2pm


In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Sunday November 7 at 2pm (CST/UTC-06), join us!

https://www.twitch.tv/jeffersonparkexp

Reid Karris is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound enthusiast and improviser hailing from Chicago, Illinois trying very hard to get all the music stuck in his head out for all the world to hear. After spending years as an odd guitarist trying to fit in with the world of rock music Reid shifted his focus towards improvisation, noise, drone and avant-garde. His primary instruments for doing so are prepared guitar and drum kit sent through electronics.

https://reidkarris.bandcamp.com/

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Janna Lee is a Chicago-based noise artist and dancer. Her current projects include Snek Trio with Reid Karris and Erik Sowa, and Obsequies with Corey Lyons. She also performs and records solo as Mother Wound.

https://jannaleemusic.bandcamp.com/

Jefferson Park EXP with the Portland State University Laptop Ensemble – May 30, 2pm

In lieu of free live shows at the neighborhood library, we’re doing free live shows via twitch! The next show is on Sunday May 30 at 2pm (CST/UTC-05), join us!

https://www.twitch.tv/jeffersonparkexp

Portland State University’s Sonic Arts and Music Production’s Laptop Ensemble will be streaming several new compositions created in collaboration with PSU’s School of Film production students. The Laptop Ensemble is an ensemble of humans, laptops, controllers, and speakers. Ensemble members both compose and perform in the ensemble, exploring computer-mediated instrument design, sound synthesis, programming, and live interactive performance.

In addition, several pieces will be presented by the university’s Advanced Laptop Ensemble. The Advanced Laptop Ensemble is a unique ensemble experience, one that encourages each student to explore intricate production and collaborative techniques with other dedicated artists. The curriculum is centered around artistic collaboration and creative leadership. Rather than specific rubrics and strict guidelines, Advanced Laptop Ensemble pushes students not only to develop their own ideas and concepts—but to deliver upon those concepts in creative and experimental means.

https://sites.google.com/pdx.edu/sample/