7:30 PM, May 30 @ The Creamery (216 W. Birch in Rogers) | We’re thrilled to present an album release show for Untight, an improvisation-driven sound art project by artist and musician Sam King, who performed at the James Turrell skyspace at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art for an unforgettable (and extremely hot) Trillium last summer! Fair is an experimental expansion of just-intonated electric guitar from a live performance at Gallery 211 South. Documenting a cathartic half hour, rich with sonic images of grief, dread, bliss and release, Fair is being released digitally and via cassette, limited to 100 copies, each with individually hand-drawn and editioned covers. As with all Trillium shows, this is an all ages event with a donations drinks/snacks table! Suggested donation of $10.
Incandescent Explorations
2 pm, Sunday, May 12 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art | We’re thrilled to host autoharp + angelic vocalist Stephanie Smittle to kick off this year’s series in the galleries of Crystal Bridges that will take place the 2nd Sunday of each month from May through October! Smittle’s self-titled debut solo album is a collection of ten songs for voice and electric autoharp, which the Arkansas Democrat Gazette called “stunning” and “incandescent … a skilled and observant lyricist unafraid to express vulnerability and wonder and rage.” A native of Cave Springs, Arkansas, Smittle's history of engagements includes howling in front of roaring amplifiers as a member of southern sludge rock group Iron Tongue, taking the stage as a guest vocalist with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, singing ancient chant as a cantor in a 200-year-old Episcopal church, and slinking around the set in an avant-garde Kurt Weill opera. {{ FREE + open to the public }}
Unconventional Articulations
7pm, April 14 @ The Creamery (216 W. Birch in Rogers) | We’re thrilled to present a night with Brooklyn-based guitarist, composer, and improvisor Drew Wesely. Focused on relationships between noise, timbre, and duration using various preparations and amplification systems to expand the sonic potential of the instrument, his practice draws from the fractal scales of form that emerge in improvisation as well as the spatial and physical aspects of sound perception.
Recent works include ‘blank body’ an intermedia solo work released via Infrequent Seams, and ‘hypersurface’ an improvising trio with Lester St. Louis and Carlo Costa.
Drew has performed at The Stone, Roulette Intermedium, Offene Ohren, Fire Museum, and many other venues nationally and internationally throughout Europe and Asia. Drew was recently a recipient of Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant in support of an extended tour in mainland Japan.
Expressive Resonance
7pm, April 4 @ 21 C Museum Hotel in Bentonville // We can’t wait for a night of expressive resonance with guitarists Mak Grgic and Jake Hertzog in collaboration with the music department at the University of Arkansas and 21c Museum Hotel Bentonville. This special evening, which is free and open to the public, is part of the University of Arkansas Department of Music’s Bridging Differences series and is sponsored by the McIlroy Family Endowment in Visual and Performing Arts and the SEC Faculty Travel Program. If you’d like to donate to Trillium, a 501(c)3 nonprofit and reserve your spot, you can do so, but it’s not required!
Touted as a “gifted guitarist” by the New York Times, 2-time Grammy®-nominated artist Mak Grgic [GER-gich] is a star on the worldwide stage. An expansive and adventurous repertoire attests to his versatility and wide-ranging interests. From the ethnic music of his native Balkans to extreme avant-garde and microtonal music, his roles as soloist, collaborator, and Grammy-nominated recording artist are fueled by curiosity, imagination, and boundless energy. As a testament to his versatility and wide-ranging appeal, in 2018 Mak was invited by legendary singer-songwriter k.d. lang to perform as the opening act for the North American leg of her Ingénue Redux Tour.
Described as playing “an unapologetic brand of jazz-rock guitar that does not look back,” in All About Jazz, Jake Hertzog is a critically acclaimed guitarist, composer and educator whose career to-date has spanned eleven albums as bandleader across jazz, rock and classical new music styles. Most recently, Jake Hertzog is pushing the boundaries of improvisation, guitar, and technology with a turn of events, a release in collaboration media artist Adam Hogan. The pair blend free jazz, and ambisonic technology on a completely innovative new album released in 2023. A grand prize winner of the Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition, among many other accolades, Hertzog currently serves as Jazz Area Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Guitar at the University of Arkansas.
Timbral Intricacy
7pm, March 13 @ Likewise Community // Join us to celebrate our first Trillium of 2024 when we present Hour, an instrumental ensemble that demonstrates a compositional ethos grounded in rote arrangement and group improvisation while aiming for breathy timbral intricacy and carefully balanced melodicism. Formed in the flourishing underground of West Philadelphia in the latter half of the 2010s, Hour fluctuates in size and scope around composer and multi-instrumentalist Michael Cormier-O'Leary (Friendship, 2nd Grade, Dear Life Records) who provides a clear yet open-ended harmonic framework and an ambitious ear towards evoking atmosphere, both expansive and intimate. En route to perform at SXSW, this performance will feature a four-piece ensemble of clarinet, violin, electric percussion and guitar.
Their album forthcoming album Ease the Work shows us life on the boundary of composition and improvisation. It reaches for the sweeping gestures and inspired pacing of classic film scores, Frank Sinatra ballads, and Scott Walker’s pop orchestra. It also retains the arresting intimacy of the band’s early work. Strings swell and harmonize in counterpoint with electric guitar, clarinet, and piano, while drums, synth pads, and field recordings complete the aural world. RIYL: Bill Frisell, The Rachel’s, Eiko Ishibashi, ECM Records
Nakatani Gong Orchestra Live!
7 pm. Dec. 2 at Likewise Community :: We’re thrilled to host percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani’s Gong Orchestra this winter! In this large ensemble touring contemporary sound art project, Nakatani trains 16 local musicians his bowed gong technique culminating in a performance. In the last decade, the NGO has performed hundreds of concerts involving thousands of participants around the world in the creation of these transformative sound works.
For each unique performance, participating NGO players (musicians) are selected by a local presenter, meaning us! Is that you? Get in touch by emailing us! The specialized rehearsal begins at 2 p.m. that day. There is no expectation of previous experience playing a gong. Nakatani instructs the players in his unique techniques for bowing the gong and following his method of conducting. It is important to note that this project is not a traditional music program or traditional Japanese music, it is a contemporary sound art project.
Nakatani’s adaption of the Chinese wind gong to respond to his percussive bowing technique in his solo work (c. 1995) led to the inclusion of other players trained in his methods to realize his compositions. The Kobo bows, mallets, and surrounding instrumentation equipment have all been developed and are hand crafted by Tatsuya Nakatani. After ten years of planning and preparation, the NGO began touring in 2011 with four adapted gongs and has grown to 17 gongs today (January 2019). It is the only bowed gong orchestra in the world.
Likewise Community is a co-working and community space in downtown Fayetteville that we’re thrilled to partner with on this performance.
Live Scoring the Silents: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
We’re thrilled to bring back our Live Scoring the Silents series in a one-time screening of silent film horror classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari featuring a live improv performance from Thought Form Collective, whose expansive percussive palette & eerie synths score will bring this horror masterpiece to life at Likewise Community, a co-working and gathering space, in downtown Fayetteville. We’ve partnered with Pinpoint for this exclusive all-ages event, featuring dontations snacks & drinks! This all kicks off at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 30. Be sure and reserve your seat early to this one!
Intimate Shape-Shifting Sounds
6 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 5 — Our series in the galleries of Crystal Bridges culminates with Sarah Belle Reid, who will present a new work for trumpet, voice, live processing & interactive electronics. “Manifold” (2023) is an investigation into temporal perception and memory—tiny moments that seem to persist indefinitely; hazy, fragmented narratives that degrade and slip away; forgotten rituals and cherished traditions. This work explores the collection, manipulation and distortion of moments in time through the use of feedback, looping, chaotic circuits, and granular processing in combination with experimental trumpet and vocal techniques. The result is a constantly churning and shape-shifting sound world that is at once intimate, relentless, playful, and surreal—frenetic improvisation, melting melodies, & punctuated silence. This FREE performance takes place in the contemporary galleries of the museum.
Library Lounge: Sontag Shogun
We’re launching concerts in collaboration with the Fayetteville Public Library! We kick things off at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30, with with Brooklyn-based Sontag Shogun, a collaborative trio comprised of Ian Temple (piano, organ), Jeremy Young (magnetic tape loops, oscillators, radio, amplified objects & surfaces) and Jesse Perlstein (treated vocals, field recordings on cassette, and electronics). The trio uses analog sound treatments and nostalgic solo piano compositions in harmony to depict abstract places in our memory. Textures built from organic materials such as sand, slate, boiling water, brush and dried leaves, both produced live in performance and recorded to weathered ¼" tape warm up the space between lush piano themes. All of which is abstracted coolly in the reflective digital space of treated vocals and a live-processed feed from the piano. Bringing us back, like a faded passing scent or any natural emotive trigger, but to where? The wordless journey there will inevitably be more revealing than the destination itself. This is a free, all-ages show!
Meditative, Looping Viola + Electronics
6 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 7, Contemporary Galleries of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art — Our series in the galleries of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art continues with Christina Silvius, a Kansas City improviser, violist, and multidisciplinary artist who specializes in long-form improvisation. She builds immersive layered soundscapes with live electronics, looping, viola, and vocals. Christina is drawn to unlocking new sounds through improvisation that align with the natural and spiritual worlds. Her recent album Spiracles of Bees takes the listener on a meditative journey filled with mysterious and serene textured layers of the viola and voice. Her practice is informed by sounds of nature, transitional states of being, and sound healing. We can’t wait to experience this resonance with you at this FREE all-ages show. No registration required.