Katinka Kleijn (photo by Sarah Larson)
Caroline Jesalva (photo by PoYu Lee)
Avreeayl Ra (above), Erez Dessel (below)
The Improvised Music Series concludes 2024 with a pair of duos demonstrating the strength of the scene across generations.
8:30 pm:
Avreeayl Ra - Drums
Erez Dessel - Piano
9:30 pm:
Caroline Jesalva - Violin, Voice
Katinka Kleijn - Cello, Voice, Electronics
$15 / $10 w/ Student ID -
Tickets Available at the Door
About the artists
Hailed by The New York Times as “a player of formidable expressive gifts,” Katinka Kleijn enjoys a genre-defying, interdisciplinary career. Classically trained, she has cultivated an exploratory, interactive practice at the intersection of improvisation, composition, and collaboration. Much of Kleijn’s work illuminates the cello’s anthropomorphic qualities, often by placing the instrument in thought-provoking new contexts (Water On the Bridge, The Body as a Variable Resistor, RESIDUUM). Her collaborations with the performance art duo Industry of the Ordinary resulted in the widely publicized Intelligence in the Human-Machine, a duet between Kleijn’s cello and her own brainwaves which Time magazine called “a balancing act for Kleijn’s whole body.” Kleijn presents many of her conceptual projects as co-constructions with the performer(s) or audience, as in her situation-based composition Forward Echo, for 11 improvisers (2019), performed at Big Ears Festival by Ensemble Dal Niente. A member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and International Contemporary Ensemble, she performed as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Hague Philharmonic, the Chicago Sinfonietta, and presented recitals at North Carolina Performing Arts, the Library of Congress, and the Chicago Humanities Festival. She recorded for SONY Japan, Cedille Records and the Drag City labels.
Caroline Jesalva is a genre-fluid violinist and vocalist traversing the worlds of classical performance, improvisation and experimental music. Inspired by Dadaism, her music explores experimental theater, glossolalia, poetry, and free improvisation. Caroline is the co-artistic director of Music in the Garden, an independent concert series for improvisers, creatives, and experimental artists in Chicago, IL. She is also the co-founder of Subject to Change, a national commissioning project to perform, record, and publish new works for two violins by women and gender minorities. As an improviser, Caroline can be seen performing with Banana Acid (Chicago) and Blind Glass (Boston/Chicago).
The duo of pianist Erez Dessel and drummer Avreeayl Ra represents an intense meeting of sonic aesthetics. Ra is a pillar in the world of improvised music music, working within the AACM, with the Sun Ra Arkestra, and with Chicago legends like Fred Anderson and Ari Brown. Dessel, a younger musician in the Chicago scene, is quickly making waves, releasing his debut solo album last year and following it with an album from his newest group endeavor “Look Both Days” out this winter on local label Amalgam records. Together, these two musicians push the boundaries of free improvisation, letting their intuitions guide them and their commitment to openness shape their music.