Religion by Leo Chang & Lucie Vítková

Double reeds soar over the mountain

What do we expect from poetry?

Reality is an organize
in the explanation of itself
No Objectively rely upon beyond space

:.. …absurdity is real the truth

Experience alone is a danger of representation


The ambivalent of visibility
That’s the life we live in


Paradox as a breakfast
Of

Unknown eclipsed


What do you expect from the world?

Dogmatic
Systematic
Romantic
Poetic
Justice
crisis
Dramatic

Epistemology of what?

Nothing don’t/can ring the gong of memories

Everything is and what is not

Plural as it’s… venerable as it can free

Crying in lossless faith

Live and die in the sea of love

---Teerapat Parnmongkol

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Leo Chang (he/him) is a Korean improviser, composer and performer of avant-garde music currently living in Brooklyn. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai, and then moved to the United States in 2011. Needing to assimilate to different cultures from a young age, Leo expresses rootlessness and multiplicity within identities through his music, while being skeptical of norms and definitions. Leo traces the origins of his fractured identity-formation to colonial legacies that continue to this day. His art is an act of home-making inspired by various musical and ideological movements that have sought to question power dynamics and imagine freedom within egalitarian possibilities. His primary methods are free improvisation, written text, graphical notation, and electronic processing.

Leo frequently performs as/with VOCALNORI, which amplifies vocal sounds through gongs and cymbals via electronic instruments. He also plays the piri, a Korean double reed instrument, in untraditional ways, often processing his piri playing using electronics.

Leo’s various performances and collaborations have been with William Parker, Alex Zhang Hungtai, gamin, DoYeon Kim, eddy kwon, Vong Pak, Chris Williams, Lester St. Louis, Miriam Parker, Erin Rogers, Lucie Vítková, Jason Nazary, Jeonghyeon Joo, Adrianne Munden-Dixon, S.E.M. ensemble, the Rhythm Method, and the JACK quartet. From 2017 to 2021, Leo organized Ensemble Consensus, a collective of experimental artists who transformed creative prompts into music by designing performative rehearsals.

Leo has shared his artistic practice at various gatherings: notably the Vision Festival, Ostrava Days New Music Festival, New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, and the International Computer Music Conference. His projects have been supported by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Korea Foundation, EMPAC at Rensselaer, Chashama, and the Tank, among others. Leo’s upcoming and recent discography can be found on Infrequent Seams, Notice Recordings, Dinzu Artefacts, SUPERPANG, and Tripticks Tapes.

http://www.listentoleo.com/
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Lucie Vítková is a composer, improviser, and performer (accordion, hichiriki, synthesizer, harmonica, voice, and dance) from the Czech Republic, living in New York. Their compositions focus on sonification (compositions based on abstract models derived from physical objects), while in their improvisation practice, Lucie works with characteristics of discrete spaces through the interaction between sound and movement. In Lucie’s recent work, they are interested in the social-political aspects of music in relation to everyday life and in reusing trash to build sonic costumes. In their pieces, they use combined notation, such as graphic, audio, text, and staff notation, to achieve a diversity of ways to communicate a musical thought. Their works range from DIY cyborg solo performances to orchestral pieces, and in their dissertation, Lucie analyzed Christian Wolff's music, researching compositional techniques that change relationships between players in order to reform established hierarchies in music.

Lucie has put together two ensembles – the NYC Constellation Ensemble (focused on musical behavior) and the OPERA Ensemble (for singing instrumentalists). Their teachers and collaborators include George Lewis, Suzanne Cusick, Ellie Hisama, Miya Masaoka, Petr Kotík, Leo Chang, Hitomi Nakamura, Teerapat Parnmongkol, Jolana Havelková, Muyassar Kurdi, Haruhiko Okabe, Jaroslav Šťastný, Teodora Stepančić, James Ilgenfritz, Mae May, and Graham Haynes.

Lucie’s music can be found on labels such as pan y rosas, Infrequent Seams (USA), MAPPA, LOM (SK), Signals from Arkaim (CZ), and upcoming albums include Nomade Label (BR), XI Records, Dear Life Records, Infrequent Seams, Tripticks Tapes (USA), and MAPPA/Skupina (SK).

www.vitkovalucie.com

experimental music label /// est. 2020 /// submissions are currently CLOSED

email: nat@triptickstapes.com

Distribution:
Tobira Records (JP)
Squidco (US)

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