Catalytic Sound and BMCM+AC Present CATALYTIC SOUND FESTIVAL ASHEVILLE

The second annual Catalytic Sound Festival is a sprawling international affair, spanning 5 different weekends with versions taking place in Amsterdam, Vienna, New York, Chicago, Washington DC, and Trondheim.

All of these various weekends will feature artists who are a part of the innovative Catalytic Sound co-operative, an initiative formed in 2015 to help create a more sustainable working environment for its pool of experimental and innovative musicians across the globe. Curated by Asheville local, Tashi Dorji.

December 2nd - Catalytic Sound and Static Age Records in Partnership with Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center presents:

Chris Williams / Patrick Shiroishi Duo
Farewell Phoenix
Min Xiao-Fen / Tashi Dorji Duo
MANAS w/ Zoh Amba & Chris Williams

December 3rd - Catalytic Sound and Static Age Records presents:

Otay:onii
Thom Nguyen / Alex Zhang Hungtai Percussion Duo
Lunar Creature
MANAS w/ Che Chen, Alex Hungtai, and Patrick Shiroishi
Drum Major Instinct
BEAM SPLITTER

Chris Ryan Williams is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York and most at home collaborating with improvisers and experimentalists. Williams' work includes Of Yours (2020), a free jazz setting for imagined exchanges between Black leaders, and a recent release, 'Live,' described as "tuneful passages and dissonant abstraction, cutting-and-pasting...with a keen sense of scale and variation" (The Quietus).

Patrick Shiroishi is a Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Los Angeles who is perhaps best known for his extensive and incredibly intense work with the saxophone. Over the last decade he has established himself as one of the premier improvising musicians in Los Angeles, playing solo and in numerous collaborative projects. Shiroishi may well be considered a foundational player in the city's vast musical expanse.

Lynn Fister is a Vietnamese-American experimental musician, writer and visual artist residing in Asheville, NC. She grew up in Saudi Arabia and West Papua. A self-taught musician, she has been exploring synthesis with ambient layered vocals for over a decade. Initially recording and performing under the guise of Aloonaluna, Farewell Phoenix is their current project.

Few artists have done more to both honor and reinvent the 2000-year history of the pipa than soloist, vocalist and composer Min Xiao-Fen. Classically trained in her native China, Min was an in-demand interpreter of traditional music before relocating to the United States and forging a new path for her instrument alongside many of the leading lights in modern jazz, free improvisation, experimental and contemporary classical music. NPR Weekend Edition lauded Ms. Min as "one of the world's greatest virtuosos" and The New York Times raved that her singular work "has traversed a sweeping musical odyssey."

Tashi Dorji is a guitarist improviser based in Asheville NC. Tashi was born and raised in Bhutan. Tashi has released music both as a soloist and as a collaborator, notably with Mette Rasmussen, Aaron Turner (Sumac, Mamiffer), Che Chen (75 Dollar Bill), Aki Onda, Michael Zerang, John Deiterich (Deerhoof), C Spencer Yeh, Dave Rempis, Tyler Damon, Patrick Shiroishi, KUZU ( w/ Dave Rempis & Tyler Damon), and MANAS (w/ Thom Nguyen).

Thom Nguyen is an Asheville, North Carolina-based improviser and drummer of MANAS and more. Producing energetic bursts and invoking a sensitivity to space that one often associates with Free-Jazz and New Music percussion, Nguyen's approach elegantly bridges works of sonic sculpture with a punk aesthetic of immediacy, aggression, and playfulness.

Originally from Kingsport, Tennessee, New York-based Zoh Amba is a notable rising star in the avant-garde music scene. Amba studied with David Murray in New York, and also at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music & New England Conservatory in Boston. Today, her music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, repeated incantations and powerfully executed Free Jazz reminiscent of Albert Ayler.

Born in Haining, China, Otay:onii (Lane Shi) is a troubadour, performing musician, multidisciplinary installation artist, working sound designer and film composer currently residing in NY. She is also the vocalist and keyboardist of the punk spit band Elizabeth Colour Wheel (US). Otay:onii 's installation performance piece Unwrap! opened its first edition at Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai (2021).

Drum Major Instinct is an experimental music duo from Asheville, North Carolina. Jeff Arnal plays (mostly) percussion and Curt Cloninger plays (mostly) modular synthesizer. The Wire describes Jeff's drumming as a "highly original concept" having "a balletic sense of time and imaginative deployment of colour;" and Byron Coley says Curt's modular synthesis "moves like blocks of radioactive adobe being shifted around by architects in space suits."

Lunar Creature is Meghan Mulhearn and David Lynch. Rich, dark mood music combining violin, guitar, bass and synth in unexpected ways.

Che Chen is a multi-instrumentalist based in Queens, NY. Born in 1978 to Taiwanese immigrant parents, he grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC. In 2012 he and percussionist Rick Brown formed 75 Dollar Bill, a community-based, multi-generational, multicultural ensemble that combines free improvisation, rock, minimalism, and African and Asian music traditions.

After retiring his project Dirty Beaches, Alex Zhang Hungtai has been focusing on explorations of improvised music, Free Jazz, film scores and compositions. Zhang predominantly works with saxophone, synthesizers, percussion and piano, furthering his research on ritualistic music of liminality and its correlation with the unconscious mind.

BEAM SPLITTER is a duo for amplified voice, trombone and analog electronics. Utilizing the pure sounds of acoustic and closely amplified sound sources, the duo joins together two individual voices into a distinct dialog that delves beyond the borders of the corporeal elements of extended technique and sound.

 

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