Our series with gallery performances at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art kick off with the Ozark Wind Quintet & the Fayette Junction Bassoons for a deep reedy performance featuring the rarely heard contrabassoon. The free concert is at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 4, in the salon area of the early American galleries. Mark your calendars for 6 p.m. on the first Thursday of May through October to experience music and visual art colliding!
Ambient Meditations
We’re thrilled to present Lake Mary and Chaz Knapp for an evening of ambient transcendence in collaboration with Ozark Free Music Society from 7-10 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at Likewise Community in Fayetteville. Through spacious personal hymns exploring the wilderness of deep emotional narrative, Lake Mary’s long-form compositions and improvisations for acoustic, electric and lap-steel guitar are boundless meditations on the landscapes, river ways, and wildlife of the American West. The night will open with local musician Chaz Knapp, a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose sounds revolve around feelings of desolation while blending in moments when light presents itself, blending organic sounds with folk traditions, marking the summation of a natural ambience he calls microfolk. This show is all ages with a suggested donation of $15. We’ll have a donations snacks & drinks table available and can’t wait to resonate with you!
Gallery Performances Season Announcement!
There’s something undeniably magical when music collides with art, as resonant sounds immerse you into transportative visual works. So we’re thrilled that our collaboration with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art continues this year, kicking off in May and running through Oct. on the first Thursday of each month at 6 p.m. Here’s the full line-up (and a full video performance from when Eve Maret played last November)!
May 4 - Ozark Wind Quintet + Fayette Junction Bassoons - featuring the rarely heard contra bassoon in the Early American Gallery
June 8 - C4 clarinet quartet performance of all women composers in the Contemporary Gallery
July 6 -Pianist D. Riley Nicholson presents rarely heard minimalist works of the 20th and 21st century in the Early American Gallery
Aug 3 - Untight performs music composed specifically to coincide with the lighting inside the James Turrell Sky Space
Sept. 7 - Kansas City-based violist & improviser Christina Silvius in the Contemporary Gallery
Oct. 5 -Analog synths and improv trumpeter Sarah Belle Reid performs in the Contemporary Gallery
Sign up for our newsletter for more details about each free performance!
Man, Woman, Friend, Computer
Trillium is thrilled to welcome back our first ever artist-in-residence, guitarist/composer Thomas Echols, whose work is an amalgam of classical, jazz, modernist, and pop music forays. He’ll present a free gallery performance inside the contemporary galleries of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art from 6-7 p.m., Thursday, December 8. Thomas will be performing new songs and compositions from the Man, Woman, Friend, Computer catalogue in an immersive, electro-acoustic setting. Thomas uses GRADUS, his Gesture Responsive Analogue and Digital Untethered System, to create an exotic sonic pallet interweaving with his classical guitar, modular synthesizer, and voice while exploring themes of memory and forgetting, grief and loss.
As visiting artistic director for Austin Classical Guitar, Thomas curated programs incorporating traditional instrumental recitalists, experimental electronics, newly commissioned works, and interactive visual projections. His experimental-pop alter ego, Man, Woman, Friend, Computer, creates deconstructed pop songs that unfold into meandering compositions, synth fetishism, polyrhythmic laments, bebop ballads, and somnambulist visions —with a spontaneous interplay between performer and the generative algorithms of his custom software. Thomas’s performances include engagements with the Grammy Nominated choral ensemble Conspirare with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Palazzo Chigi (Siena, Italy), Los Angeles’s The Whittier Bach Festival, and Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art. As a classical guitarist, music technologist, composer, and songwriter, Thomas is a mainstay in the thriving classical guitar and experimental music scenes in Austin, as well as an active performer and lecturer. His popular YouTube channel “The Labyrinth of Limitations” combines his work as an educator, theorist, composer, jazz improviser, and music technologist to teach the concepts of the great jazz pianist and teacher Barry Harris.
Sonic Chemistry
Trillium is thrilled to present a homecoming concert of sorts for reed player Keefe Jackson, who was a classmate since elementary school with founder Katy Henriksen. His improv trio, the Chicago-based Jackson/Heinemann/Shead Trio will perform at 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13, inside Millar Lodge on Mount Sequoyah in Fayetteville. RSVP your spot here.
The Jackson/Heinemann/Shead trio performs original compositions by its members as well as compositions by Free Jazz giants such as John Tchicai, Ornette Coleman, Dewey Redman, and Henry Threadgill. Specializing in the composition and improvisation processes of the late 1960's through present day jazz and improvised music scene the trio of Keefe Jackson, Jakob Heinemann, and Adam Shead provide a fresh reimagining of a variety of sonic narratives through the tight knit chemistry the group has developed since its inception in 2019.
Keefe Jackson, a Fayetteville native, has been described as having"an impressive grasp of the tenor's textural capabilities, he exploits this knowledge to vary his attack; one minute ripe or overblown, guttural or throaty, then poppy or wailful." by Michael Jackson of Downbeat Magazine. Peter Margasek of the Chicago Reader states Jackson's "marbled tone expresses a lovely lyricism no matter how brusque or serrated his lines get." Since the start of Jackson's storied career he has developed a consistent and prolific performance, recording, and compositional practice.
Though considerably younger than their woodwind counterpart, Jakob Heinemann and Adam Shead have become formidable members of the Chicago improvised music community. Stef Gijsells of Free Jazz Blog writes, "the creative techniques of Chicagoan Adam Shead are a new force to be reckoned with", while Peter Margasek of the Quietus writes, “Shead stands out with a frenetic sensibility that injects fractured patter informed by European free improv within the lurching grooves.”“Shead stands out with a frenetic sensibility that injects fractured patter informed by European free improv within the lurching grooves.". Jakob Heinemann is an Ashkenaz bass player and composer from Madison, Wisconsin. Now living in Chicago, his work is wide-ranging, but consistently centers around both intuitive and analytical investigations into sound and the many layers lying therein. As a composer, Jakob currently works with field recordings and spectral analysis to map the pitch content of natural systems onto instruments with augmented tunings.
Ethereal Experimentation with Eve Maret
“So buoyant and inventive are Maret’s tones and arrangements … an intriguing new name in experimental pop” - The Wire Magazine
We’re thrilled to announce a weeklong residency this November with Eve Maret, a Nashville-based composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist. Integrating ethereal drones with experimental vocals, clarinet, and funky synthesizer grooves, Eve seeks to create an immersive and healing experience for listeners with every performance. During Eve’s stay she’ll perform inside the contemporary galleries of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, lead a an experimental improv with electronics workshop and close out the residency with an immersive performance up on Mount Sequoyah. Bonus! We’ll have paintings on display from David Anderson during the week! Anderson’s pieces are impressions of sensory and spiritual experiences with images. Anderson employs experimental, non-objective and intuitive approaches to process and materials, with influences from Jewish mysticism and tantric art to cosmic philosophy.
Eve has performed across the United States alongside artists such as Xiu Xiu, JEFF the Brotherhood, Lydia Lunch, and Sun Araw. In March of 2018 and 2019, she performed at Big Ears Festival’s 12-Hour drone. In 2020 she performed at Iowa City’s Witching Hour Festival where she also led a Moog workshop.
Time, Meditation, Loss: Percussionist Jon Mueller with clarinetist Craig Colorusso
We’re thrilled to announce our next gallery show at Crystal Bridges will feature experimental percussionist Jon Mueller with clarinetist Craig Colorusso. The performance will take place from 4-5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome.
Jon Mueller’s The Future is Unlimited, Always is an examination of time, meditation and loss. In this piece, released in 2022 on the Virtues label as a CD/book, the Wisconsin-based percussionist’s usual bombast of repetitive rhythms and textures are replaced with fluid, calm tones, overlaid with otherworldly wails. In live performances of the piece, Mueller employs a variety of gongs, percussion and electronics to create an atmosphere equally as easy to get lost in as it is to be propelled by.
“Mueller’s music is usually completed by the overtones and feedback that arise from the interaction between his playing and the space where it occurs, but for this recording he has drawn those elements into the foreground. Long vocal and metallic tones stretch over subliminally rumbling drums, directing the listener’s attention up and out.” – Bill Meyer, The Wire
“The Future is Unlimited, Always captures Mueller at his most spacious: layers of frequencies and tones that are as engaging as they are mysterious, and capturing more than just audio, but a deeper sense of existence.” – Creaig Dunton, Brainwashed
Mueller’s aim has long been to move drums, percussion and rhythm from its anticipated backbeat to a central musical focus, something more intuitive and natural than usually imagined. Audiences throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and the United Kingdom have experienced this idiosyncratic point of view as, paradoxically, both ‘cathartic’ and ‘meditative’. Notable solo performances have taken place at the Guggenheim Museum, New Museum, Issue Project Room, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Alverno Presents, SXSW, Big Ears Festival, Hopscotch Fest and Witching Hour Festival.
His solo work has been released by Table of the Elements, Type Recordings, Important Records, Taiga Records, SIGE Records, American Dreams, and others.
Craig Colorusso was born April 18th, 1970 in Mount Vernon, NY. With a guitar and some inspiration from the Punk Rock movement of the 1980’s he began to write his own music. By the 1990’s he was in touring bands and started his own record company. After touring the United States tirelessly Colorusso found himself in one too many bars. His music began to expand and incorporate composition and improvisation and the instruments bass clarinet and clarinet. This expansion caused his music to evolve, resulting in the pieces Tagmusik (24-hour performance in Bethel CT) and Maschine (a composition for instruments and off-set printing presses). Slowly, these explorations extended beyond music and investigated light and sculpture. First with MB 89 and then with CUBEMUSIC, both of which have toured the US. In the last decade Colorusso has combined his interests to create his latest works Sun Boxes (solar powered sound installation), Moon Pod (a structure that plays music based on the fullness of the Moon) and Sound Swings (three swings that play music when activated).
Nosferatu: Symphony of Horrors
Get your scary on with us from 7-10 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, at Likewise Community as we present a special screening of F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent film Nosferatu: Symphony of Horror that includes the expansive percussive palette & eerie synths score from new music ensemble Thought Form Collective. This all ages event is free and open to the public.
Ozark Free Music Society's Expansive Sounds
Join us in the contemporary galleries of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art for a FREE live performance from the Ozark Free Music Society at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 8 . This Fayetteville-based collective, which meets monthly to perform improvised music for randomly-assigned ensembles, presents a specially assembled combo for one night only featuring Austin Cash (acoustic guitar), Nathan Riggs (electronics), Chaz Knapp (bass guitar/percussion), Nathan Smearage (acoustic guitar), and Reilly Hoffman (electronics). More than a stoic performer on a distant stage, this evening performance promises to bring the energy of audience, musician, and place together in perfect harmony.
Extemporaneous Jazz Improv
Join us July 22 for a night of improv from Extemporaneous Music & Arts Society, a collective dedicated to advancing improvised and experimental artistic work in Kansas City. We’ll hear the trio of Evan Verploegh (drums), Seth Andrew Davis (guitar) and Benjamin Baker (woodwinds). Committed to improvisation as an artform, the group combines free jazz, contemporary classical, experimental rock and more for a one-of-a-kind experiment in live sound. We also welcome an opening solo set from Northwest Arkansas’s own sax phenom Alisha Pattillo. RSVP your seat by emailing us, or show up at Likewise Community ready to commune through music. Doors: 7 pm // Show: 7:30. We’ll have a donations drinks & snacks bar! All ages welcome!