I wish I could take credit for bringing Bill Nace and Haley Fohr together, but the idea was their own. I just figured out a way to make it happen; Covid delayed the inaugural performance a year, until February of 2022, when they played the opening night concert of Frequency Festival at Constellation in Chicago, but the wait was worth it. I was and remain a huge admirer of both artists, musicians driven by gut instinct and for whom nothing is outside the realm of possibilities. Although Nace’s playing might initially hit with gale-force intensity, beneath the lacerating surface is a detail-rich poetry, as one needling phrase or another whipsaw gesture opens up a rich tapestry to slowly-morphing patterns and internal networks of sound. Nace might play guitar or he might choose tashigoto, but it doesn’t matter in the end, because he utterly transforms whatever he touches into something new.
I first heard Fohr in her Circuit des Yeux guise, where she unbound voice throbs at the heart of mini-symphonies, blending primal howls and elegant arias into a devastatingly rich art-pop. I also had the pleasure of presenting a concert where she improvised using wordless voice and electronics that opened up radically different pathways. Their work seemed miles apart but their shared fearlessness seemed to guarantee a creative supernova. There’s no point in trying to pin down or describe what happens when they collaborate, because such encounters are deliriously unpredictable, apart from the promise that what they make together will leave you confused, transformed, and reeling. What more could a listener ask for?
-Peter Margasak
Based in Philly, guitarist Bill Nace‘s experimental improvisations and compositions extend the boundaries of electric guitar technique, using bows, metal, wood, glass bowls, and other implements. His distinctive musical vocabulary references folk, rock, and punk traditions as he works to make a ubiquitous instrument sound new. “I use this energy to see if there is a space in between that I can call my own,” he says, “where I can draw from all of these traditions while also exerting something that feels personal and not beholden to one discipline.”
Based in Philly, Nace performs in the band Body/Head with Kim Gordon, as well as in duos with Samara Lubelski and Steve Baczkowski, and he has collaborated with Yoko Ono, Joe McPhee, Thurston Moore, and many others. As a touring musician, he has performed at venues and festivals such as Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Primavera Sound in Barcelona, the Benaki Museum in Athens, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Nace released Both, his first solo album, in 2020 via Drag City. He founded Open Mouth Records to release experimental music and hosts Open Mouth Presents, an ongoing local performance series for interdisciplinary, multigenerational groups of performers.
Haley Fohr (b. Dec 16 1988) is a vocalist, composer and singer-songwriter based in Chicago, Illinois. Her musical endeavors focus around our human condition, and her 10-year career as Circuit des Yeux has grown into one of America’s most successful efforts to connect the personal to the universal.
She is most distinctly identified by her 4-octave voice and unique style of 12-string guitar. Her mysterious “Jackie Lynn” project landed her on the cover of Wire Magazine in August of 2016. Her recent works include an Original Soundtrack for Charles Bryant’s silent film Salomé (1923), commissioned by Opera North, and her critically acclaimed 2021 album -io, released on Matador Records.
Jordan Sand is a bassist, vocalist, and improviser based in Trondheim, Norway. Her solo music, described as "Joni Mitchell meets Ligeti" (Omaha Under the Radar), blends song, free improv and noise to haunting effects. Blurring the lines between her bowed bass and siren voice, Sand delivers new myths from a familiar acoustic space, fusing strings and chords into an organ-like sound that transcends the sum of two parts.
Doors are at 7pm and music will begin sometime between 730 and 8; seating is limited and first come first served. All ages!