library experimental – june 2018

Library Experimental is an ongoing series focusing on Chicago’s experimental musicians. It is happening at the Chicago Public Library in Jefferson Park on Saturday, June 9, from 2-4pm.

Early! Free! Kid friendly! If the kids are patient!

The fourth installment of the 2018 season features Lindsey French / Willy Smart; Sarah J. Ritch; and Morgan Krauss!

Jefferson Park library is located at 5363 W Lawrence. Convenient to both bus and blue line. https://www.chipublib.org/locations/38/

artist info:

Lindsey French / Willy Smart

Lindsey french is an artist whose work engages in gestures of sensual and mediated communication with landscapes and the nonhuman. Her projects materialize as texts written in collaboration with trees, scent transmissions, and performative lectures. She currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Departments of Art and Technology Studies and Contemporary Practices.

Stemming from Anna Tsing’s idea of contamination as collaboration, Willy Smart and Lindsey french offer a space for listening to the landscape. Field recordings of contaminated landscapes, live local environmental input, and human error suggest modes for rereading and hearing Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

Sarah Ritch

Along with classical training in cello and piano, Sarah Ritch has also played guitar and bass in several punk and metal bands prior to her academic music studies. Ms. Ritch holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Studio Arts from SAIC’s Sound department, and a Master’s Degree in Computer Science. Sarah studied cello performance at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with Moonlight Tran and Dr. Andrew Smith, and with Barbara Haffner at the Chicago College of Performing Arts.

Sarah Ritch’s work ranges from improvisational noise to tonal notated music to musical studies on algorithmic expression. She has been the composer-in-residence for Chicago classical ensembles the Millennium Chamber Players and the Anaphora Ensemble. Ms. Ritch is an advocate for education in the arts and technology, having taught Music Theory, Composition, and Cello at the Southport Performing Arts Conservatory, and serving as Director of Technology and Professor of The History and Science of Sound
for the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts at UIC.

Morgan Krauss

Morgan Krauss (b. 1985) is a composer currently living in Chicago. She received her Bachelor of Music in Composition at Columbia College Chicago in the winter of 2012. She is now continuing her studies in Music Composition as a Doctoral student at Northwestern University.

Krauss’ ambitions in her works are to produce tactile explorations based on ones physical awareness and elements of allurement. Her music is focused on the latent instability of seemingly fixed gestures where the interaction between the performer and the score creates yet a third entity, often guided by improvisation and the clashing of emotional opposites.