Sinonó – Isabel Pardo/Lester St Louis/Henry Fraser; Shelley Hirsch/Fred Lonberg-Holm; Joanna Mattrey
Sinonó – Isabel Crespo Pardo/Lester St Louis/Henry Fraser – Touring experimental poetry and vocal work with avant-garde cello and upright bass.
Shelley Hirsch/Fred Lonberg-Holm – Two veterans of improvised music. Shelley will perform vocals with Fred LH on cello. First performance meeting, although they have admired each other’s work for decades.
Joanna Mattrey – violist improvisor and composer working within the avant-garde lineage of outsider playing.
Isabel Crespo Pardo is a NYC-based latinx vocalist, improviser-composer, and interdisciplinary artist. Rooted in conceptual clarity, their work actively entangles music, visual art, text and performance, always evolving to reflect the intra/interpersonal spaces they inhabit. Reveling in soft chaos, they embrace openness and specificity to create poetic work(s).
Lester St Louis is a New York City-born and based multi-instrumentalist, composer and curator. Lester has worked in, performed and created in artistic environments in The United States, Canada, South America, Europe and China with groups and artists such as Dré Hočevar Trio, Jaimie Branch Fly or Die, Ensemble Adapter, TAK Ensemble and many more. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists such as the JACK Quartet, Mahan Esfahani and Stefan Jackiw, RAGE THORMBONES, Lauren Cauley and others. In the near future Lester will be continuing to develop groups such as MADD (with Dré Hočevar and Leafar) as well as TRANSFER (with Jordan Balaber, Daniel Brew and Rocío Bolaños) along with many new ventures.
Henry Fraser grew up immersed in music – singing, playing piano and cello, studying theory and ear training. He began playing the double bass at 14, sparking an interest in improvisation via the music of Charles Mingus. Fraser moved to NYC in 2014, after graduating from New England Conservatory of Music, and has been actively working in the areas of jazz, free-improv, noise, and spectral music. Much of Fraser’s work is rooted in his music for solo double bass, which has culminated in three releases – Briggs, Buzzed, and as is the morning, is – establishing him as a technical and creative force among his generation of bassists.
Shelley Hirsch born and raised in East New York Brooklyn. Vocal artist, performer, composer, storyteller, interdisciplinary artist. Shelley Hirsch has been pushing boundaries with her unique vocal art and performance work, drawing on her life experiences, her memory, her vivid imagination for decades. Hirsch’s multimedia performances, compositions, improvisations, electronic music pieces, sound installations, collaborations and radio plays have been presented at concert halls, museums, theaters, galleries, clubs, radio, worldwide in venues including Alice Tully Hall, Roulette, Experimental Intermedia Foundation and CBGB’s in NYC; Experimenta Festival in Buenos Aires, What is Music? Festival Melbourne Australia; Beyond Innocence Festival in Kobe Japan; City of Women Festival Llubliana Slovenia; Dom Cultural Center Moscow; Akademie Der Künste Berlin; Next Festival Bratislava Slovakia; Time Festival Ghent, Belgium; Angelica Festival Bologna Italy, All Ears Festival Oslo Norway; Red House Sofia Bulgaria; Taktlos Festival Bern Switzerland; New Music America Festival Helena Montana, TBA Festival Portland Oregon, and hundreds more..
Fred Lonberg-Holm is a Kingston, NY-based cellist. Played and studied music in a variety of situations from the Juilliard School to the gutter. A former student of Anthony Braxton, Morton Feldman, Bunita Marcus and Pauline Oliveros. Past and current collaborators include Joe McPhee, Dave Rempis, Michael Bisio, Frode Gjerstad, Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, Glenn Kotche, Nicole Mitchell, Torsten Müller, Jim O’Rourke, The Boxhead Ensemble, Michael Zerang, Keefe Jackson, and Jeff Parker.
Joanna Mattrey is a NYC violist and composer active in both the new music and free improvisation communities who’s playing often incorporates textural gestures, preparations, and electronic alterations. She is searching for moments of ceremony and ritual in a modern soundscape. As a 2021 ISSUE project room artist-in-residence, she presented her new works THRUM, a staged film performance piece with poet No Land, POV: Simulation, a synesthesia collaboration with physicist Dr. Graham Walker, and New Compositions for Improvisor, a performance of 5 world premieres written for Mattrey’s unique playing style, featuring works by Nick Dunston, Leila Bordreuil, Lucie Vitkova, Weasel Walter, an a new piece for improvisor and installation by Mattrey.
