TAK ensemble’s biannual festival celebrating multi-genre modes of experimentalism and highlighting the rich ecosystem of avant garde music and performance art
SWOONFEST25 NIGHT ONE :
TAK ENSEMBLE + QIUJIANG LEVI LU • RAGE THORMBONES • GUSHES • BLASÉ
SWOONFEST25 NIGHT TWO :
YARN/WIRE* • TAK ENSEMBLE + VICTORIA CHEAH • LAS MARIQUITAS
Since its first edition in 2023, SWOONFEST highlights experimental musical practices across genre lines and celebrates the dynamic ecosystem of the avant garde in new york city. SWOONFEST25 spans drone, video art, punk, free improvisation, ritual, and folk music to weave an eclectic tapestry of genre-defying experimental music.
Cultivating conversation and introspection, SWOONFEST25 will also feature offsite panel discussions to enable participatory dialogue amongst artists and audience.
TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW:
FULL PRICE: $60 per night / $100 full fest
MEDIUM PRICE: $40 per night / $65 full festival
ARTIST/STUDENT: $25 per night / $40 full festival
as always, please reach out to contact@takensemble.com if ticket costs are a barrier to entry! music is for the people!
Night One:
6:30pm: Gusehs
7:30pm: RAGE THORMBONES
8:30pm: TAK + Qiujiang Levi Lu
9:30pm: Blasé
Night Two:
6:30pm: Yarn/Wire*
7:30pm: TAK + Victoria Cheah
9pm: Las Mariquitas
The Yarn/Wire concert is generously supported by James Sharp in memoriam of Scott Pollard 9/17/1958 - 11/23/2024.
I meet Scott in 1972, when we were freshmen in high school. We spent 50+ years in an ongoing dialogue about art, music, literature, and philosophy, always pushing each other into new territory. Yarn/Wire and TAK are two ensembles that both of us enjoyed. We saw Yarn/Wire at TIME:SPANS a few years ago and attended the first SWOONFEST. Supporting this performance is the perfect way to honor the memory of my friend and the conversation we had for all those years.— James Sharp
ABOUT THE ARTISTS ——
QIUJIANG LEVI LU: Qiujiang Levi Lu/卢秋江 (they/them) is a Beijing-born, NYC-based performance artist, vocalist, experimental improviser, composer, and lecturer in music at University of Pennsylvania.
For their solo performance art practice, Lu designs Max/MSP-based electroacoustic feedback systems with cyborg-like body augmentations inspired by Objectophilia/animism, which include special microphones and speakers placed within bodily orifices, augmented amplified laptop, and a custom-mapped flight joystick controller. Their resulting performances consist of choreographed, ritualistic improvisations that build on ancient Chinese drumming traditions and explore body dysmorphia, sexuality, spirituality, and mortality, linking together sound, movement, and violence in divine ceremony.
As a collaborative musician/improviser, Lu makes up half of the Chinese-American experimental electronic act Warp Duo with fellow improviser and violinist Scott Li, which fuses deeply emotional and melodic music with maximalist sound design. Lu has also performed extensively across the country with artists such as Ka Baird, Camilo Ángeles, Zoh Amba, Laura Cocks, Dana Jessen, Dave Ballou, Devin Grey, Drew Wesely, Manuel Perez III, Adam Kantz, Julian Pujols Quall, etc.
RAGE THORMBONES: RAGE Thormbones is a low-frequency duo whose work exists at the intersections of “fuck around” and “find out”. Both members, Weston from Berlin and Mattie from Los Angeles, are classically trained trombonists but abandoned that ship a while ago and have been performing as a duo since 2014. They mainly use trombones to produce sculpted masses of high-density sound, carving metallic resonance and subcutaneous tones to make rooms feel really heavy. They aim to shift the role of brass instruments away from vocal virtuosity and more toward their true selves as improvising organic air compressors - physically-modeled synthesis transcribed back into the acoustic domain.
RAGE has collaborated with a range of artists including Clara Iannotta, Kevin Drumm, Sarah Davachi, Michelle Lou, and British pop maverick Scott Walker. They’ve presented work everywhere from Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Darmstadt Summers Courses, Borealis Festival, Donaueshinger Musiktage, and ISSUE Project Room to their favorite basements/living rooms/warehouses/ crypts, and more recently, as soloists with the Helsinki Phulharmonic and the SWR Symphonieorchester.
GUSHES: Jennae Santos (they/she) casts tactile mythologies through music, sound, performance, and ceremony. Their work is fed by Indigenous Filipino psychology and combat, plant medicine, foodways, and land-sea ecologies poeticized through the lens of genderqueer fluidity, decolonization, dreaming, and pleasure. gushes is their progressive performance art-rock project for which they compose, direct, play guitar, and sing. A tapestry of interlocking polyrhythmic, ambient, and textural guitar loops form a foundation for lyrical songcraft, lovesong, sensorial ritual, and epic performance. Energized by friends and supporting artists, they arrange their music for chamber prog ensemble, rock band, movement cycle, sound installation, and drone.
LAS MARIQUITAS: “Una nueva página en el libro de la salsa,” Las Mariquitas is New York’s Queer and Trans Salsa band. A political liberation project, Las Mariquitas celebrates the community of LGBTQIA+ salserxs in an affirming safe space. Las Mariquitas shares the stage with queer and trans dance instructors, creating a culture of consent on the dance floor, and honoring the legacy of salsa as liberation music by writing new queer and transfeminist songs for the canon.
YARN/WIRE: Yarn/Wire is a new music quartet dedicated to the promotion of creative, meaningful live musical experiences in the US and abroad. Yarn/Wire achieves this by supporting composers and audiences through live performances, educational activities, and large-scale collaborative projects. Our artistic programming is driven by the desire to present music that reflects the full spectrum of our community at the highest level.
VICTORIA CHEAH: Victoria Cheah is a composer whose work concerns boundaries, transitions, sustained effort, and intimacies within social-performance rituals. Her work has been commissioned and/or featured by ensembles and presenters including Talujon, Either/Or, Non-Event, Switch Ensemble, Line Upon Line, Han Chen, andPlay, Yarn/Wire, Wavefield Ensemble, MATA Festival, Guerilla Opera, Ensemble Dal Niente, Vertixe Sonora, Marilyn Nonken, PRISM Quartet, and performed by others. Recordings of their music can be found on Dinzu Artefacts, New Focus Recordings, and XAS Records. Cheah currently serves as Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory, as well as Director of Production of Talea Ensemble.
BLASÉ: Blasé is a neo-afro post-punk band formed in 2023 in Brooklyn, NY. The band is Shara Lunon (vocals), Kirk Podell (drums), Aaron Smith (guitar), and Martin Argueta (bass).
TAK ENSEMBLE: Regarded as “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen), TAK delivers energetic performances "that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” (The WIRE), and “impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity” (New Sounds, WQXR).