Gray Sound Sessions, Vol. 4: Viola Yip + Nicola Hein, Cooper Crain + Haley Fohr
The Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry hosts its fourth in a series of Gray Sound Sessions, a double feature: Nicola L. Hein + Viola Yip, and Cooper Crain + Haley Fohr.
View live on YouTube OR on Vimeo here (for Hein and Yip) and here (for Crain and Fohr).
First up, Nicola L. Hein + Viola Yip: Tuesday's concert marks Viola and Nicola’s first-ever purely online performance. They will convey their intense set as a duo with lights and electric guitar, with surround sound and site-specific installation into the online space. To make this telematic journey in a virtual space as sensible and “joinable” as possible, we ask you to turn off the lights in your room, turn the video to fullscreen, and listen with headphones. Click here for a preview of their performance.
Then, Cooper Crain + Haley Fohr: Multi-instrumentalist, composer, and recording aficionado Cooper Crain (Bitchin Bajas, Jackie Lynn, CAVE) and vocalist, singer-songwriter Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux, Jackie Lynn) team up to create a voice and synthesis piece that evokes the elasticity of time during our present quarantine. The piece is accompanied with a one-of-a-kind visual response by Sanae Yamada (Moon Duo, Vive la Void).
About the artists:
Nicola L. Hein and Viola Yip are an experimental transmedial duo that creates immersive site-specific performances and installations bridging the vibrations of light and sound. Trained as musicians, both look into the ontology of sound and how musical experience can be transformed beyond its common material—sound. For their artistic research project Transsonic, they explore light as an expanded musical material. They research and create performances, improvising between lights and sounds as equally important but dialectical musical materials. Hein and Yip have been commissioned by Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, and have presented at New York University, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Sonic Lab in SARC at Queen's University Belfast, Huddersfield, Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, Klex Festival in Kuala Lumpur, De Tanker in Amsterdam, Alte Feuerwache Köln, Fuhrwerkswaage, Willows Nest, studio Börne 45, West Germany in Berlin.
Cooper Crain is an avid collaborator internationally recognized by his works in both composition and recording arts. When not performing in Bitchin Bajas and Jackie Lynn, you can find Cooper’s name behind many of Chicago’s most unique records including Ryley Walker, Natural Information Society, ONO, and Matchess. Haley Fohr is a vocalist and composer working under the names Circuit des Yeux and Jackie Lynn. Her recent works include an Original Soundtrack for Charles Bryant’s silent film Salomé (1923), commissioned by Opera North, and a critically acclaimed 2017 album Reaching For Indigo, released on Drag City Records. Together, Cooper Crain and Haley Fohr equal one half of the band Jackie Lynn (comprised also of Rob Frye & Dan Quinlivan). Jackie Lynn’s new record “Jacqueline” was released April 10, 2020 on Drag City Records.
***This free performance is sponsored by the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, but we encourage listener-watchers to consider making their own donations to the artists via Paypal to: violayiptinwai@gmail.com for Viola Yip and Nicola Hein, circuitdesyeux@gmail.com for Cooper Crain and Haley Fohr, paypal.me/vivelavoid for Crain and Fohr's video artist Sanae Yamad.
About Gray Sound Sessions
The Gray Center is now streaming a free, streaming weekly music-and-sound series, Gray Sound Sessions, featuring concerts but also happenings and experiments with form and platform. The series showcases searching performances from some of our favorite musicians and sound-makers including Opera Povera, Seth Parker Woods, a•pe•ri•od•ic, Viola Yip and Nicola Hein, and many more. In each case, we ask these artists not only to present work of their choice, but also—often through the performance itself—to reflect on the peculiar place of music and sound in this moment, and on the special power of those who labor them into being.
Gray Sound Sessions take place on Tuesday evenings at 8PM Central Daylight Time on the Gray Center’s Gray Sound Sessions page and the Gray Center's Facebook page. All events are sponsored by the Gray Center and free and open to the public, but we ask listener-watchers to consider making their own donations to the featured performers. The series is the initiative of Seth Brodsky (Gray Center Director), Zachary Cahill (Gray Center Director of Programs and Projects), and Seth Parker Woods (Artist-in-Residence at the University of Chicago). Others will surely be brought into the mix. We look forward to tuning in with you, near and far!