Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang: Mirror Stage

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.” On Thursday, the residency’s first evening, Kenney and Kang will revisit and expand upon their early compositions from the records Aestuarium (Endless Records, 2005, rereleased on Ideologic Organ/Editions Mego in 2011), an Isle of Lewis- and Tibetan-inspired rumination on the interaction of salt and fresh water in the Salish Sea for a predominantly unison voice and viola, and the face of the earth (Ideologic Organ/Editions Mego 2012), which draws its timbres and themes from experiments in imagined musical histories.

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.