Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang: Azure

Collaborators for over two decades, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang’s ethereal music arises from their study of land and place, temporal forms, sonic resonances, and transcultural conversations. Over three nights in residence at Blank Forms, the pair will present a rare overview of the myriad interwoven elements of their duo practice, which, in Kang’s words, allows the two to “be shadows of each other.” For Saturday’s performance, Kenney and Kang will develop a new work which integrates their current thinking around geomusicalities, dislocation, disorientation, and the incommensurability of space and gender.

A vocalist, composer, sound artist, and autodidact, Kenney has developed a vocal practice at a unique intersection of haptic and aural sensibilities. Utilizing imaginative approaches to oral traditions and the one-on-one transmission of texts and sounds, as well as the spatialized experience of "diffuse listening," she hones timbral and microtonal awareness while defying clinical approaches to sound. 

On his part, Kang—a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger—works across genre and discipline, bringing subtlety, fluidity, and emotional intensity to each of his varied projects. Wary of the divisions of music by nation, Kang makes “people music” influenced by geology, collective memory, and sonic possibility.