FEaST 2023
November 1st - 4th
Iowa City, Iowa
Feed Me Weird Things, a listening series focusing on rare and esoteric musics meant to arouse empathy from deep listening, celebrates another year programming in Iowa City by hosting the second annual FEaST. It’s a moment after the harvest and before the coming winter to sit together, share in the bounty, and commune in our shared love of strange and beautiful music (as the threat of “All I Want For Xmas Is You” looms large on the horizon).
FEaST is our invitation to you, our audience, who we are thrilled to share all this with. FEaST is an exultation of artists we revere and welcome here in our home. FEaST is a sumptuous… feast.
And yeah, fine, okay, it’s a festival.
The set up is simple: ten performances over four nights (and one afternoon) in Iowa City. The artists are exemplary. The venues familiar. The pass gets you into everything. All events will have individual tickets onsale Thursday July 1st 10am
Sun Ra Arkestra
Sun Ra was a jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions, and performances. He was one of the most important figure in 60's avante garde jazz along with artists such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler. "Of all the jazz musicians, Sun Ra was probably the most controversial," critic Scott Yanow said, due to Sun Ra's eclectic music and unorthodox lifestyle. Claiming that he was of the "Angel Race" and not from Earth, but from Saturn, Sun Ra developed a complex persona of "cosmic" philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of Afrofuturism as he preached awareness and peace above all. He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra being the ancient Egyptian god of the sun), and used several other names throughout his career, including Le Sony'r Ra and Sonny Lee. Sun Ra denied any connection with his birth name, saying "That's an imaginary person, never existed ... Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym." From the mid-1950s to when he left the planet in 1993, Sun Ra led "The Arkestra" (a deliberate re-spelling of "orchestra"), an ensemble with an ever-changing lineup and name (it was also called "The Solar Myth Arkestra", the "Cosmo Discipline Arkestra", the "Blue Universe Arkestra", the "Jet Set Omniverse Arkestra", among many other permutations. Sun Ra asserted that the ever-changing name of his ensemble reflected the ever-changing nature of his music. Sun Ra's music ranged from keyboard solos to big bands of over 30 musicians. His music touched on virtually the entire history of jazz, from ragtime to swing music, from bebop to free jazz. He was also a pioneer of electronic music, space music, and free improvisation, and was one of the first musicians, regardless of genre, to make extensive use of electronic keyboards.
After Sun Ra left the planet, the Arkestra was led by tenor saxophonist John Gilmore. Following Gilmore's death in 1995, the group has performed under the direction of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who celebrated his 99th birthday (or Arkestrally "Arrival Day") on stage during a Sun Ra Arkestra performances in Philadelphia on May 25, 2023. Marshall Allen has now given 62 years of uninterrupted dedicated service to the Sun Ra Arkestra. He continues to move the Arkestra forward not as a repertory band or a ghost band, but as a spirit band, maintaining the discipline centered on the study, research, and further development of Sun Ra's precepts. The spirit of Sun Ra is alive and well in the present day manifestation of the Sun Ra Arkestra with Marshall featuring a mix of classic Sun Ra compositions and arrangements alongside Marshall's own compositions and arrangements that are deeply rooted in the spirit of Sun Ra. Along with leading the Arkestra, Marshall plays the alto saxophone, flute, clarinet, oboe, kora, and EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument). He is internationally recognized as the premier avant-garde saxophonist on the planet.
Laurel Halo
Laurel Halo has had to cancel her tour dates due to illness. It's not a decision that was reached lightly, but born out of care and consideration for Laurel and you in the audience. We of course wish her a speedy recovery and honor her until we can reschedule.
Through a flurry of late night / early morning emails, texts, panicked phone calls - at one point I was talking to someone who was on an airplane over the ocean while I was speeding down a midwestern highway (the future is crazy)- to find an artist who would not just fill the slot, but fulfill the intentionality of the original programming. And could be here in 24 hours notice.
I am thrilled to announce Canadian electroacoustic composer Kara-Lis Coverdale. I witnessed her in a single night 6 years ago hold a capacity cathedral enthralled with her organ performance and then five hours later level a rock club with her playful and abstract beat oriented electronic work. Kara-lis agreed to fly in and perform for us Friday Nov 3rd at The James (7pm doors) joined by Kalia Vandever.
This is a rare one-off, and my gratitude to her is immeasurable, and given what I've heard next year is going to be huge for her, so this may be our only chance to host.
I will of course honor all refund requests, though I hope you'll be open to giving Kara-lis your ears.
Thank you for your continued trust and patronage.
KARA-LIS COVERDALE
"Kara-Lis Coverdale is one of the most exciting young composers in North America." -Ben Beaumont-Thomas, The Guardian
Driven by a patient devotion to sonic afterlife, memory, and material curiosity, Kara-Lis Coverdale’s dynamic work has been met with consistent critical acclaim. It has been described as an “arresting” “masterful work” of “uncompromisingly distinct,” “indescribable beauty.” live shows can evoke the unpredictable, chaotic, eerie, dynamic, and confrontational; all for which she has earned a steady reputation as a festival favourite (The Guardian, The New York Times, RA, The Fader) as a highly dynamic and explorative artist, resistant to categorization and stasis.
Theon
Cross
Theon Cross is one of those rare musicians whose vision has redefined their instrument. His unique approach to the tuba has expanded the instrument’s sonic possibilities in revolutionary fashion, restoring it to a long-forgotten prominence as a crucial part of the contemporary jazz ensemble. Through his combination of technical mastery, studio smarts, deep musical knowledge and expansive vision, the power and originality of Theon’s playing has reinvented the tuba’s place in modern music.
His most recent album, Intra-I (meaning ‘Within Self’) released in 2021 synthesizes the diversity of his musical art and experience to deliver an essential message to a world gripped by tribulation. Across ten sonically divergent and bass-rich tracks, Intra-I explores themes of self-reliance, origins, identity and more. Since its release he has contributed a version of Monk’s Epistrophy for Blue Note Re:Imagined II, been a core part of Miles Davis channeling collective London Brew and featured on Matthew Herbert’s single The Horse Has A Voice. He has also released his first 7” single Wings b/w a version of Aswad’s Back to Africa.
He completed his first tour of North America in October 2022 with a combination of headline shows and supports for Makaya McCraven. This year will see him play multiple live dates in solo, duo and band configurations across the UK, Europe, North and South America.
Bill Orcutt
As one of experimental music's most influential guitarists, Bill Orcutt weaves looping melodic lines and angular attack into a dense, fissured landscape of American primitivism, outsider jazz, and a stripped-down re-envisioning of the possibilities of the guitar. Whether he’s playing his decrepit Kay acoustic or gutted electric Telecaster (both stripped of two of their strings, as has been Orcutt’s custom since 1985), Orcutt’s jagged sound is utterly unique and instantly recognizable, compared with equal frequency to avant-garde composers and rural bluesmen. The New York Times has called him a "powerful musician... a go-for-broke guitar improviser," and described his sound as "articulated sprays of arpeggiated chords and dissonance."
“No one is playing acoustic guitar like Bill Orcutt right now. No one.”
Lars Gotrich writing about How The Thing Sings on npr.org
“Quite awe-inspiring, and unlike anything else I can think of.”
Byron Coley, Wire Magazine
“When Bill Orcutt starts playing the acoustic guitar, it's clear there are still so many new things to be said with it.”
The Guardian
Drew
McDowall
Drew McDowall is a Scottish born, NYC based composer and musician. He was a member of Coil in the 90’s contributing heavily to some of their most respected and influential works.
An artist who has refused to conform in music and in life, McDowall mines the hallucinatory spaces that exist between reality and transcendental otherness. His work has been described as “sacraments to alterity”, with meditative compositions that are haunting and spiritual, melding intricate modular soundscapes with cut-up field recordings, deconstructing and reconfiguring sounds into otherworldly structures and shapes. The disorienting ambient mirages that result elicit terror, tender melancholy, and heavenly flickers of expansive beauty.
He has released four albums on Dais Records since 2015 the most recent being Agalma (2020) and is known for his diverse collaborations, working with Kali Malone, Catarina Barbieri, Robert Aki Aubrey Lowe, Hiro Kone, Varg, Puce Mary and many others and has performed at many international festivals including CTM, Berlin Atonal, Dark Mofo, Unsound, Le Guess Who, Semibreve, WOS and Ambient Church.
Lea Bertucci
Lea Bertucci is an experimental musician, composer and performer whose work describes relationships between acoustic phenomena and biological resonance. In addition to her longstanding practice with woodwind instruments, her work incorporates spatialized speaker arrays, radical methods of free improvisation and creative misuses of audio technology. In recent years, her projects have expanded toward site-specific and spatially aware projects that initiate new access points to architecture. Her approach to music is marked by dense masses of sustained dissonance and a fascination with the sonic substance of common experience.
Her discography spans over a decade, with eight full-length solo albums and a number of collaborative projects. In 2018 and 2019, she released solo albums Metal Aether and Resonant Field on NNA Tapes, and has since gone on to found her own label, Cibachrome Editions, with 2021’s A Visible Length of Light as the inaugural release followed by 2022’s Murmurations, a duo with Ben Vida. She has also worked with SA Recordings, Ultraviolet Light, American Dreams, and Astral Spirits records, among others.
She has performed extensively across the US and Europe with presenters such as The Museum of Modern Art New York, Blank Forms, Gagosian Gallery, Pioneer Works, The Kitchen, The Walker Museum, Tempo Reale in Florence, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, Museo Reina Sofia Madrid, Sound of Stockholm Festival, ReWire Festival, Borderline Festival, and Unsound Festival Krakow. Artist residencies include the MacDowell Colony, ISSUE Project Room, Headlands Center for the Arts and The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art.
claire
rousay
claire rousay is based in Los Angeles. Her music zeroes in on personal emotions and the minutiae of everyday life -- voicemails, haptics, environmental recordings, stopwatches, whispers and conversations -- exploding their significance.
This is music for Oliveros-inspired deep listeners and for poets finding meaning among the mundane. - The Gaurdian
Listening to rousay's music often feels like experiencing the world through someone else's ears, instilled with tenderness. - NPR
What a songwriter might convey in poetry, Rousay evokes with raw audio. You could call it sound art, but it’s viscerally vulnerable. -NYT
El Khat
El Khat - a homemade junkyard band led by multi-instrumentalist Eyal El Wahab. Named for the drug used so widely chewed across the Arab Peninsula, The band brings original compositions inspired by the music of the golden age in Aden, Yemen. El Wahab plays many instruments, like the dli and the Kearat that he constructed himself. It's something he started doing several years ago, using his skills to make music from the items people discard. A child of the Yemeni diaspora who's grown up in Tel Aviv Jaffa, Israel, it's a practice that harks back to the family homeland, where even rubbish can have become an instrument. El Wahab has always been a man of invention. He talked his way into the Jerusalem Andalusian Orchestra as a cellist, self-taught from busking and unable to read music, learning the repertoire by ear as he went along, and picking up music theory. It gave him a strong foundation, but his world changed when he was given 'Qat, Coffee & Qambus: Raw 45s from Yemen' an LP of Yemeni traditional music from the 1960s. It came as an epiphany. He quit the orchestra, began building instruments and put together El Khat.
Zoh Amba & Chris Corsano
Zoh Amba is a young composer, saxophonist, and flutist from Tennessee. Her music blends avant-garde, noise, and devotional hymns. Before studying music at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music, New England Conservatory and studying with David Murray in New York, she spent most of her time writing and practicing saxophone in the forest near her home. Today, her powerfully unique avant-garde music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, and repeated incantations. Amba released two records in 2022, her debut record O, Sun which was produced by John Zorn and released on the prestigious label Tzadik. Zoh Amba’s second record, Bhakti features Micah Thomas, Tyshawn Sorey, and Matt Hollenberg. She has collaborated with a variety of high profile musicians such as Jim White (Dirty Three), legendary bassist William Parker, Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Frank Rosaly, Thomas Morgan, etc. Amba has also performed at well respected festivals and venues such as Roulette (NY), Ars Nova Workshop (PA), Vision Festival (NY), ReWire Festival (NL), BRDCST Festival (BE), and Angel City Jazz Festival (LA), Big Ears Festival, etc. Bhakti has become the moniker for Amba’s ongoing live and recording ensemble project with ever changing members.
Chris Corsano is the rim-batterer of choice for some of the heaviest contemporary purveyors of both “jazz” (Evan Parker, Paul Flaherty, Joe McPhee, Mette Rasmussen) and “rock” (Björk, Sir Richard Bishop, Jim O'Rourke). He's also a formidable solo performer in his own right, as heard on solo recordings like The Young Cricketer, Another Dull Dawn, and Cut. “Corsano, despite being arguably the most riotously energetic and creative drummer in contemporary free jazz, does far more than merely bash his kit into submission. Playing loud does not mean abandoning subtlety, and Corsano’s sudden shifts of texture and dynamics are a wonder to behold” - The Wire
Kalia Vandever
Kalia Vandever is an American trombonist and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her approach to the trombone is distinctive and defined by her sonorous tone and lyrical improvisational voice. She leans into the challenges of the instrument and allows patience and melody guide her process.
In her compositional practice, Kalia draws from her love of songs and improvisation, creating a landscape of sounds that resonate in the body and hold the listener. She released her debut ensemble album, "In Bloom" in 2019 which has been described as "the rise of an exciting voice for the music" (Seton Hawkins, Hot House Jazz Magazine). Her sophomore album, Regrowth released in May, 2022 on New Amsterdam Records and "confirms her strengths as a composer and bandleader with a distinctly contemporary point of view." (Nate Chinen, WBGO Jazz) Her debut solo album,We Fell In Turn featuring her works for trombone, voice and electronics will be released on AKP Records in March, 2023.
Kalia received her Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Studies at the Juilliard School in 2017. She has toured and performed internationally with her quartet, performing at festivals such as the Winter Jazz Festival and BRIC Jazz Festival. She is also known for her work as a side-woman, performing with jazz artists including Joel Ross, Immanuel Wilkins, Fay Victor, to name a few. She has also performed with popular artists including Harry Styles, Lizzo, Japanese Breakfast, Moses Sumney, Jennifer Hudson, and Demi Lovato. She has appeared on Saturday Night Live twice, as well as Samantha Bee's Full Frontal.
