Anja Lauvdal and Exotic Sin + Earth Horns

On the second night of the series, Anja Lauvdal’s solo performance will be followed by a new collaborative composition played by Exotic Sin, Devin Waldman on saxophone and electronics, and Nate Wooley on an Earth Horn designed by artist and composer Yoshi Wada. This piece pays homage to Wada’s formative 1974 composition Earth Horns with Electronic Drone, which combined synthesizer electronics with his instruments constructed from plumbing materials. Don Cherry, Naima’s grandfather, knew Wada; the two musicians both studied with Pandit Pran Nath. This soprano Earth Horn was originally built as a gift for Simone Forti. 

Anja Lauvdal works free form on acoustic piano, organs, and synthesizers and is a graduate of the jazz program at the Trondheim Conservatory of Music. In recent years, she has been a creative force on the experimental music scene in Oslo and has also lent her support to such Norwegian artful notables as Jenny Hval and Sverre Knudsen, while collaborating with members of Sydney’s The Necks and London’s Chaos Orchestra. Though stylistically disparate, her projects share a disdain for musical safety, leaning into spontaneity, while exhibiting Lauvdal’s equal comfort with naive acoustic melancholy or digital colorful matter. 

With a contorted, cosmic sound that fuses the free-form expressions of spiritual jazz with the compositional strategies of classic minimalism, Exotic Sin—composed of visual artist, archivist, and musician Naima Karlsson and multi-instrumentalist and improvisor Kenichi Iwasa—revels in the exhilaration of sonic contrast. Karlsson and Iwasa initially collaborated in a tribute Karlsson’s forebears, Don and Moki Cherry, and subsequently formed Exotic Sin,—playing Don’s trumpet and jerry-rigged “zen saxophones” alongside their own synthesizers, celesta, bells, a Yamaha keyboard and a guitaret to make a sound entirely their own. Their interdisciplinary roots and commitment to tonal and stylistic juxtapositions continue and update the synergistic approach that defined Don and Moki’s art and life.