Open Mouth Presents:
Luke Stewart and Madam data
at Brickbat Books
Friday, December 20th, 7:00pm
$10 suggested -- byob/snax
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Luke Stewart is a DC/NYC-based musician and organizer of important musical presentations. He also has a presence in the national and international professional music community. He was profiled in the Washington Post in early 2017 as “holding down the jazz scene,” selected as “Best Musical Omnivore” in the Washington City Paper’s 2017 “Best of DC,” chosen as “Jazz Artist of the Year” for 2017 in the District Now, and in the 2014 People Issue of the Washington City Paper as a “Jazz Revolutionary,” citing his multi-faceted cultural activities throughout DC. In DC his regular ensembles include experimental jazz trio Heart of the Ghost, Low Ways Quartet featuring guitarist Anthony Pirog, and experimental rock duo Blacks’ Myths. As a solo artist, he has been compiling a series of improvisational sound structures for Upright Bass and Amplifier, utilizing the resonant qualities of the instrument to explore real-time harmonic and melodic possibilities. He has performed at many of Washington’s high-profile venues including the Kennedy Center, the Atlas Performing Arts Center, Smithsonian Portrait Gallery, 9:30 Club, Black Cat, and many others throughout DC’s storied DIY community. Luke is also a presence in the greater community of Creative Musicians, with regular multi-city ensembles including Irreversible Entanglements featuring Moor Mother, James Brandon Lewis Trio, Heroes are Gang Leaders, Ancestral Duo, and has performed in a myriad of other notable collaborations. He has been a featured artist at the Vision Festival, Sonic Circuits Festival of Experimental Music, High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music, Fields Festival, Philadelphia Free Form Festival, Forward Festival, Furious Flower Poetry Festival, and has toured abroad at North Sea Jazz Festival, Toulouse Jazz Festival, Vitoria Jazz Festival, Belgrade Jazz Festival, and Rotterdam Jazz Festival. As a scholar/performer, he has performed and lectured at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Medgar Evers College, George Mason University, Wayne State University, University of Montana, New Mexico State University, and the University of South Carolina. He holds a BA in International Studies and a BA in Audio Production from American University, and an MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship from the New School.
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Ada Adhiyatma is a musician who explores machine interfaces and the embodied idea of distance. Working with handmade computer programs, field recordings and old samplers, they fantasize about sound as a way to echolocate spaces defined by separations, the trauma of dislocation, the impossibility of empathy. Ada's performance personas in Philadelphia include the apocalyptic insect noise purveyor Madam Data, and various component identities of sci fi noise-thrash quintet OOLOI and the environmental improvisation duo 'place'. They also produce a podcast of discarded sound called The Floating World.
Ada's pronouns are they / them / theirs and they sit at the crossroads of certain disabilities and certain queernesses, often unsure what they're doing there.
(Open Mouth = Bill Nace)