Resonance Series: Fonema Consort, Akosuen, Noise Bias

The Resonance Series is the exploration of different soundscapes and spaces at the Hideout, focusing on ambient, drone, and creative music.

1) “Thicket ii” by Stefan Maier (World Premiere) / for prepared clarinet and electronics
2) “the only improvisation is being born” by Alex Grimes / bass clarinet and double bass
3) “Excerpts from “Voice and Piano” by Peter Ablinger / transcribed for vibraphone
4) “Doublespeak” by Bethany Younge / soprano+clarinet+percussion

Performers:
Emily Beisel, clarinet
Ryan Packard, percussion
Eli Namay, double bass
Bethany Younge, voice (guest artist)

Akosuen /aa-KŌZ-eh-win/ is a solo project involving sounds that focus on breathing cycles, chronic pain, and mediation on both quiet and extremely loud sounds. The Akosuen ensemble has appeared as solo synth and voice, operatic voice and violin duet, a trio playing ritual prepared piano and percussion, and a six-piece doom metal band.

Akosuen recently scored the short film, Olion, which was accepted into the 2017 Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival.

Noise Bias is a new music ensemble consisting exclusively of female-identified musicians and artists who collaborate to perform works by female-identified composers.

Existing as a collective of over 30 musicians, composers, poets, and artists, the women of Noise Bias share a common goal of creating and sustaining an environment where women are in positions of creative power and musical decision-making.

Our goal is to curate new music performances that directly confront and challenge the gender disparity within the Chicago new music scene.

Parlour Tape DJs

Those of us who live here know that Chicago is abuzz with sounds — and not just the wailing of police sirens and the thrumming of train tracks and the hiss of surf on sand — but the sounds of horsehair across cello strings and of felt hammers patting piano wire. The city vibrates with the voices of its makers of music — composers, performers, improvisers, programmers, instrument-builders — and Parlour Tapes+ aims to capture these rustlings, large and small, on eighth-inch oxide-coated magnetic tape.

Yes, tape. Cassette tape.* We are, per our name, a new music cassette tape label. We are also, per our growing interests, a media and performance collective that mounts unlikely concert-happenings and publishes an online magazine. We are also-also a group of performing, composing, improvising rug-cutters who create and realize new work ourselves.

We aim to fuel creative thought in our field with stimulating, encouraging, and at times completely over-the-top projects to nurture the earnest and unbridled fulfillment of artistic desire. We are as likely to mount heartbreaking and intimate concert-concerts (looking at you, Spektral Quartet) as we are to fabricate a Clue-esque musical murder mystery (what would the world do without David Skidmore?) or stage a fake job fair and completely benign brainwashing initiative nested in the perfectly unassuming shell of the contemporary concert.