EXCEPTET is a seven-piece pocket orchestra built around a virtuosic array of “chattering, post-minimalist sound” (New Sounds). The NYC-based ensemble is on tour with their debut album, featuring a new commission by Rome Prize winner Katherine Balch. Her composition, “Tree Lines” is an ode to old-growth trees, a phenomenon of nature that often live more than 400 years. Balch chose to divide the work into eleven short character movements, drawing a contrast between our lived experience and the tree’s expansive lifespan.

https://newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/tree-lines

“Someone once said friendship is the purest form of love and when I read KELLY XIO’s poems, I know that’s true. “Everything is what you can fit in that tiny pocket of denim jeans” Xio writes, and in her shimmering alchemy the moon, microdosing, girl dinner, aliens, creatine, aching joints, guns, humidity, the kid who just wants the fallen tree branch glued back--nothing, no one, gets left. The tiny denim pocket expands, a world.” - Kate Durbin on Kelly Xio

https://www.bruisermag.com/xio_twopoems



Hanna Olivegren, Greg Hatem, and Liz Downing present a budding project: THE CUPS. Cups, for our purposes, are short structures of sound forms who conjure places in the psyche, soundscapes. The purpose of a Cup is to hold vocal incantations and utterances, singing conversations in near-human language. Our hope is that when presented in this way, the Mother Cups may nurture our developing collective utterances and musical intuitions.

http://www.hannaolivegren.com
http://www.gregsaudio.work
https://lizdowningart.com