Ka Baird

Ka Baird premieres Yomp, a performance piece featuring live-processed flutes, samples, electronics, voice, broken rhythms, and movement. Yomp plays with the idea of a march that repeatedly falls apart, taking various sonic detours throughout the performance.

“The general time pressures destroy all that has the character of a detour, all that is indirect, and thus makes the world poor in forms. Every form, every figure, is a detour. If walking lacks all hesitation, all pausing, then it freezes into a march.”—Byung-Chul Han

Ka Baird (b.1976, Decatur, Ill.) is a performer, sound artist, musician and composer based in New York City. They are known for their live performances that include extended voice and microphone techniques, which are combined with electronics and psychoacoustic interplay of flutes and other woodwinds.

In March 2024, Baird released their most recent record, Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos (RVNG Intl.), which was built on a Lampo commission. Other releases include Sapropelic Pycnic (Drag City 2017), Respires (RVNG Intl. 2019), Brooding Exercises (Longform Editions 2021), and Vivification Exercises (RVNG Intl. 2021).

Performances include the Unsound Festival, Krakow; Lampo, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; MoMA PS1, Queens; Issue Project Room, Brooklyn; The Kitchen, New York City; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; TUSK Festival, Newcastle; Incubate, Tilburg; KRAAK, Brussels; Le Guess Who, Utrecht; and the Festival Of Endless Gratitude, Copenhagen. They have been artist-in-residence at We Jazz Festival, Helsinki; Sonoscopia, Porto; Inkonst, Malmo; ESS, Chicago; and Pioneer Works, Brooklyn. Baird has received the Foundation of Contemporary Art’s Emergency Grant, a Jerome Foundation Artist-In-Residence at Roulette Intermedium, and is currently a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow 2023-25. They are one of the core members of Spires That In The Sunset Rise, founded in Chicago in 2001.

Ka Baird last appeared at Lampo in March 2022, when they performed Bearings, which was commissioned for small audiences in the Lampo office. Ka explored the concept of “bearings” through a series of intimate performances, where they shifted guises between magician, shaman, clown, and athlete. This piece, in tandem with the heaviness of caring for a dying parent during the subsequent year, laid the groundwork for their 2024 album Bearings.

Presented in partnership with the Graham Foundation