Jessica Aszodi & Jenna Lyle / Samuel Dunscombe & Curt Miller

Jessica Aszodi and Jenna Lyle performing their choreographic voice and electronics piece: “Grafter”.

Two duos on one night

Lyle and Aszodi’s Grafter

and the monolithic

1 + 1 = 1 by Pierluigi Billone

NOTE: Cash bar (beer & wine available) for this event.

1 + 1 = 1
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“One drop plus another drop makes one larger drop, not two.”

This is how the “nutcase” Domenico in Andrei Tarkowsky´s film Nostalghia explains the inscription 1+1=1 on the wall of his house, pouring two drops of oil into his hand.”

2016 marks the ten year anniversary of Pierluigi Billone’s masterwork for two bass clarinets: 1+1=1. Samuel Dunscombe and Curt Miller have been playing this work together since 2013, and have received critical acclaim for the performances they have staged around the country, from San Diego to Boston. They have worked directly with the composer to derive their interpretation of this work, which is strongly influenced by their engagements with free jazz, improvisation, electronic and experimental music, and various folk traditions.

Grafter
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Grafter is an evolving project for moving voices with electronics, collaboratively developed by Jessica Aszodi and Jenna Lyle, that places heightened focus on the physical act of sound production. The gestural language of the work fuses sounds and movements together; placing energetic focus on particular body areas, simultaneously altering sonic outcomes through choreographic and electronic affectation of vocal tone. Incorporating the performer’s backgrounds in opera, contemporary dance, electro-acoustic music, composition, and extended vocal techniques, the performers earnestly attempt various near-impossible tasks (sharing embodied experience, echolocation). Grafter is a space to contemplate the hand-stitched-togetherness of voices, with the material that makes and moves them.

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Australian vocalist Jessica Aszodi is thirsty for adventure. She is a performer of notated and improvised music, a researcher, teacher, curator and producer of music that challenges the status quo. In her genre bounding career Jessica has premiered over 70 new pieces of notated music, performed works that have lain dormant for centuries, sung a dozen roles from the standard operatic repertoire and collaborated with a constellation of artists from the far reaches of the musical palate. The New York Times has praised her “…virtuosic whimsy” while the Australian media calls her simply “…one of the finest actress-singers in the country” (The Age).

When not working on some solo project or research voyage she has performed with ensembles as diverse as ICE, the Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras, Pinchgut Opera, Victorian Opera, Sydney Chamber Opera, in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella series, with Bang on a Can and Wild Up, and in the chamber series of the San Diego and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. She has been a soloist on recording for Chandos, Ars Publica, Hospital Hill and Cajid and has sung in festivals around Australia and the world, including the Vivid Sydney and the Melbourne Festivals, Aldeburgh Festival (UK) and Tanglewood Festival (USA).

Jessica is an alunna of Victorian Opera’s Young Artist Progam and has performed a diverse range of roles for that company, from Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni) and Sesto (Guilio Cesare) to Popova (Walton’s The Bear) and Rose (Elliot Carter’s What Next?). She has degrees from the University of California and the Victorian College of the Arts where she was taught by Anna Connolly. Jessica has twice been nominated for Greenroom awards as ‘best female operatic performer’ in both the leading and supporting categories.

Jessica is in the final stage of a doctorate at the Queensland Conservatorium (Griffith University), undertaking artistic research into subjectivity in the performance of vocal music.

Jenna Lyle is a composer, vocalist, and performing artist from Carrollton, Georgia. Currently in Chicago, she is pursuing a Doctorate of Music in Composition at Northwestern University. An active composer, performer, installation-builder, and administrator, Jenna has worked with various ensembles and specialized in the performance of works by living composers. She has presented her own works as well as those of her colleagues throughout the U.S. and abroad, with performances recently by Chicago’s Spektral Quartet, Mocrep, Northwestern University’s Contemporary Music Ensemble, Loadbang, and The Riot Ensemble, of London. In 2014 and ‘15, Lyle appeared as a vocalist and dancer in the world premiere and subsequent performances of 3Singers, a large-scale opera and dance project directed by Erica Mott and composed by Ryan Ingebritsen. 3Singers premiered as the inaugural performance commission at the newly constructed Ośrodek Dokumentacji Sztuki Tadeusza Kantora Cricoteka in Krakow, October 2014. In September of 2015, Lyle, along with Australian mezzo soprano Jessica Aszodi, premiered Grafter, a collaboratively-devised piece for solo voice, accompanimental voice, electronics, and hanging speakers, at New York’s Resonant Bodies Festival. Grafter will tour in the Winter and Spring of 2016. Her artistic concerns are rooted in the unification of physicality with the creative process for the sake of immediacy, complexity of expression, and intimate exchange. Jenna is also co-founder and co-administrator of Parlour Tapes+, a New Music cassette tape label and media/performance collective based in Chicago.

Samuel Dunscombe is a composer-performer specialising in the use of clarinets, computers, and microphones.  From free improvisation to field recording and the performance of contemporary classical repertoire, Samuel is involved in a diverse range of activities.

Curt Miller is a Boston based clarinetist and sound artist specializing in the performance of contemporary chamber music and the creation of new performance and installation works with a current focus on the role of recording technology on musical transcription and translation.