More Good News

Announcement day is particularly fun for us, because we get to tell you what we’ve been working on for so long. Today we are excited to share with you news of our upcoming season. The Lampo WS18 line-up includes Thomas Lehn and Marcus Schmickler, Leila Bordreuil, Jana Winderen, Sarah Davachi, Nate Wooley, Graham Lambkin and Joe McPhee, with performances running between February and June.

The season begins on Feb 17 with Lehn and Schmickler. The analog-digital duo premieres Prediction Control Allocation—a three-part improvisation and a new performance strategy, with each section exploring a different musical form. The German artists take their cue from Point Line Cloud by composer and researcher Curtis Roads, while referencing the formal ideas of Stockhausen, Xenakis and Ligeti (Graham Foundation, support provided by the Goethe-Institut Chicago). In March, cellist Leila Bordreuil makes her Chicago debut in a Friday night multichannel performance. She uses microphones placed around the cello to amplify small gestures that are otherwise inaudible to the human ear (March 16, Logan Center for the Arts/Smart Museum of Art).

We stay on the south side to kick off April, welcoming Oslo-based Jana Winderen. Her work focuses on audio topographies and ecosystems that are difficult for humans to reach, both physically and aurally. Here, she offers Spring Bloom in the Marginal Ice Zone—a new, live eight-channel mix of underwater sounds recorded in the marginal ice zone, or the transition between open sea and sea ice, in the Barents Sea between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters. The performance takes place in a new space for us on the campus of the University of Chicago. (Apr 7, STAGE Lab/Renaissance Society). The day before the concert, Winderen discusses her trips in the field, how she works with sound, and the ecological and political issues concerning the Barents Sea, in conversation with Karsten Lund from the Renaissance Society (Apr 6, Lampo Annex).

On April 21 we are thrilled to have Sarah Davachi return to Lampo, just a little over a year removed from her stunning Chicago debut at the Stony Island Arts Bank in January 2017. The Canadian composer presents new work for reed organ, violin, viola da gamba and electronics, joined by Whitney Johnson and Philip Serna (Graham Foundation).

In addition to the Chicago debuts and new works that you’ve come to expect, we also are trying an experiment of our own this spring. On May 12, Nate Wooley will respond to a new, intimate format of our design. He will premiere Coyote: a 4-hour solo trumpet performance, broken down into 15-minute segments, with attendance limited to four people per segment, presented in our small 10 x 20 foot office. We believe these constraints open up some very interesting questions about the artist-audience relationship, shared experience, spectacle and significance. And as we continue to celebrate our milestone year, it seemed appropriate to reassess our usual model—and to think big by thinking small (Lampo Annex).

We close the season and our 20th year with something very special from Graham Lambkin and Joe McPhee. Joe is no stranger to Chicago, of course. He has returned to the city regularly since 1996, to play with local improvisers. Graham was last here in 1997 with The Shadow Ring (June 16, Graham Foundation).