Raven Chacon, L’Rain, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste

115 7th Street,Verplanck NY 10596

22 October, 2022

Description

For this series of performances, KinoSaito will present the premiere of Raven Chacon’s American Ledger No. 3 (2020), a composition devoted to the journalist and anti-lynching campaigner Ida B. Wells. Like many of the Pulitzer Prize-winning artist and composer’s works, American Ledger No. 3 is a graphic score to be interpreted, in this case, by an ensemble of vocalists. (American Ledger No. 3 includes a flag emblazoned with the score and a newsprint publication that connects Wells’s writing to contemporary police violence.) The musician L’Rain will perform solo and in a duo with her bandmate Ben Chapoteau-Katz. Eschewing the conventions that link genres to identities, expressions to experiences, L’Rain’s music ranges from propulsive, gospel-tinged pop to dense, sample-laden abstraction; from intimate, unadorned ballads to clattering, free-jazz-influenced improvisations. L’Rain, who will be an artist in residence during the exhibition, recently released Fatigue (2021), which the New York Times described as “truly amazing” and Pitchfork called “a graceful record whose wearied landscapes of synth, air horn, strings, and saxophone distill a suite of low moods—depression, regret, and fear—into resilience and hope.” Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste will perform a composition for an unmarked police car that he has turned into a sound system and instrument: … and Drive Far Away (2022), his contribution to the exhibition. (The work will be installed in KinoSaito’s garden throughout the exhibition; visit this page in the coming weeks for information about additional performances.) After the performance, Toussaint-Baptiste will speak about the work and his relationship to bass, Gulf Coast rap, car-audio culture, and policing. This event is co-presented by the magazine Triple Canopy, which is edited by Alexander Provan, the curator of “Signaling."