SANDY EWEN
Sandy Ewen is a sound artist, visual artist and architect who has recently relocated to NYC from Houston, TX. Ewen’s audio practice focuses on extended guitar techniques, improvisation, graphic scores and interdisciplinary collaboration. Her unique approach to guitar incorporates a wide array of implements – railroad spikes, sidewalk chalk, threaded bolts, steel wool and other items become an arsenal of abstraction. Ewen has worked extensively with film makers, dancers, poets and musicians to create films, audio recording, sound interventions and performance art. Ewen’s musical collaborations include trio Etched in the Eye, duo with Tom Carter called Spiderwebs, the trio Garden medium, and ongoing collaborations with percussionist Weasel Walter and bassist Damon Smith. For nearly ten years, Ewen has been the leader of an all-female large ensemble. The ensemble conceptualizes and performs sound and performance art, utilizing graphic and text based scores and improvisational constraints. The ensemble performed with an amplified bathtub at Diverse Works in 2016, and performed a suite of installation-specific compositions for Francis Alÿs’ Fabiola Project at the Menil. Sandy has spent much of 2017 touring, performing solo sets and in collaboration with Steve Jansen (tapes and electronics) and Maria Chavez (turntables) around Europe. In years past, Ewen has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Keith Rowe, Lydia Lunch and many others, and has performed and recorded with Jaap Blonk, Henry Kaiser and more. In 2014 she performed at San Francisco’s 13th Annual Outsound New Music Summit, and she has made several appearances at Austin’s annual No Idea Festival.
LOUISE KRISTENSKY
Among other things, composer, sound sculptor, and systems artist Louise Fristensky [ ˌlʉˈiːz ˌfɹ̞ ɪstʰˈɜˑnscʰi̞ ] (b. 1987) creates works focused along the micro-refractions of reality’s pointillistic network of personally-aggregated and mutually agreed-upon mythologies; the places where the air tastes of electricity.
ERNESTO MONTIEL
Born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, Ernesto Montiel is a visual artist, experimental musician, concert organizer, broadcaster, and DJ. Formally trained in architecture, he moved to Dallas in 2015.
He is one half of the electroacoustic improvisation duo Monte Espina and has collaborated with artists such as Liz Tonne, Louise Fristensky, Kory Reeder, Christina Carter, Alan F. Jones, Jason Kahn, Rebecca Novak, anne-f jacques, Andrew Weathers, Justin Lemons, Aaron Gonzalez, and Chris Cogburn, among many others.
Ernesto currently curates the porous sonorous series, focused on other musics and further sounds. He began organizing concerts in North Texas with the Further Sounds/Further Jazz series at The Wild Detectives, where he now serves as music coordinator. He has also curated events at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, the Texas Theatre, Site 131 art gallery, Fuel City Rooster, and co-ran the now-defunct Molten Plains series and festival in Denton.
As a broadcaster, he has produced Sonido Tumbarrancho on KUZU 92.9 LP FM every two weeks for the past eight years. DJing since his early teens, he adopted the moniker Mutarrancho after relocating to Dallas. He is a regular at Dallas Ambient Music Nights, a resident DJ at No Idea Festival since 2017, and several editions of the Sonic Transmissions festival.