Improviser and artist Rebecca Novak works with a shifting constellation of instruments and objects - cornet, piano, shortwave radio, glass vases - honing fine-grained textures and seemingly electronic- or mechanical-sounding noise, opening a multifaceted landscape of sound. Interrogating the liminal spaces between sound, vision and language, my work often combines music with sculpture, live writing, or projected image to investigate the complex relationships between environment & self, performance & being, body & object, the political & the philosophical. Called Annotations, these group-navigated improvisations refer both to a way of "annotating" or translating an experience or idea across practices, and an absence of traditional notation.
Steve Jansen is a sound maker originally from Arizona whose experimental music output includes solo and band performances on saxophone, prepared guitar, natural and manufactured objects, and cassette tape across a swath of genres, ranging from free jazz and electro-acoustic improvisation to harsh noise and primitive techno. A primary element of Jansen’s constructions hinges on live cassette tape manipulations featuring onsite field recordings and ad-libbed performances from worldwide locations such as Ghana, continental Europe, Mexico, rural Arizona deserts and forests, and a plane crash site in the Sandia Mountains. These sound emissions are often articulated through malfunctioning devices that may or may not work come performance time, which brings another improvisational element to the set.