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Drum Major Instinct with Katherine Young:
Drum Major Instinct is an experimental music duo from Asheville, North Carolina. Jeff Arnal plays (mostly) percussion and Curt Cloninger plays (mostly) modular synthesizer. The Wire describes Jeff’s drumming as a “highly original concept” having “a balletic sense of time and imaginative deployment of colour;” and Byron Coley says Curt’s modular synthesis “moves like blocks of radioactive adobe being shifted around by architects in space suits.” But, of course, nothing is ever that straightforward. The resultant music is about waves of energy, patterns within patterns (within patterns), sounds from the natural world, and running the voodoo down. Their self-titled first release is on Mahakala Music (2022) and their latest 2025 LP (entitled "Almost Nothing") is on Haunted Apparatus.
As a bassoonist and improviser, Katherine Young amplifies her instrument and employs a flexible electronics setup. She performs as a soloist, in ad hoc improvised groups, and with projects such as Beautifulish (duo with Sam Scranton) and Architeuthis Walks on Land (duo with Amy Cimini). Her debut solo album garnered praise in The Wire (“Bassoon colossus”) and Downbeat (“seriously bold leaps for the bassoon”). She has documented her work on numerous recordings, including her quartet Pretty Monsters self-titled debut, a duo recording with Anthony Braxton, and the multi-movement work "Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight" (Parlour Tapes+) created with violinist Austin Wulliman of the JACK Quartet. Katherine is based in Atlanta, where she teaches composition, electronic music, and improvisation at Emory University. In 2021, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition. As a scholar, she researches the incorporation of idiosyncratic electronics and improvisation in contemporary notated music.
Negar Soley is an Iranian composer, vocalist, and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores multiplicity, memory, and the emotional landscapes of everyday life. Drawing from field recordings, improvisation, poetry, and the physicality of performance, her music moves between delicacy and intensity, guided by an interest in breaking containment and revealing the different selves that coexist within a single voice. She recently completed her studies at Wesleyan University, where she integrated pre-recorded materials, improvisation, and embodied performance, influenced by courses and faculty in experimental music, improvisation, and electronic music—especially SuperCollider—as well as her experiences in vocal and piano practice and her research into Morton Feldman, Frank O’Hara, and the expressive possibilities of quietness and multiplicity. In addition, deeply inspired by the textures of everyday life in Tehran, her hometown, she has navigated complex emotions of vulnerability, shame, and self-discovery through her field recordings. Currently residing in Philadelphia, she continues to work on composition projects and commissions while maintaining an active composer-performer practice.
accessibility: two steps from street to venue.
Please note, entrance is via the side door on Arizona Street.
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