We are very pleased to present an evening of live sound by Charmaine Lee and C. Spencer Yeh, who will both perform a short solo set, followed by an improvised collaborative set as a duo.
The two New York-based sound artists both push the expressive possibilities of voice and acoustic instruments through original techniques, electronics and digital devices, although with different modalities.
The approximately one-hour long program will find Yeh performing with violin, voice and electronics, and Lee with “augmented” vocals and electronics.
More info about the artists follows below.
Charmaine Lee is a New York-based vocalist. Her music is predominantly improvised, favoring a uniquely personal approach to vocal expression concerned with spontaneity, playfulness, and risk-taking. Beyond extended vocal technique, Charmaine uses amplification, feedback, and microphones to augment and distort the voice. She has performed with leading improvisers Nate Wooley, id m theft able, and Joe Morris, and maintains ongoing collaborations with contemporaries Conrad Tao, Zach Rowden, Eric Wubbels, Victoria Shen, and Leila Bordreuil. She has performed at the Met Breuer, ISSUE Project Room, Roulette, the Stone, the Kitchen, and MoMA PS1. As a composer, Charmaine has been commissioned by the Wet Ink Ensemble (2018) and Spektral Quartet (2018). She was recently an Artist-in-Residence at ISSUE Project Room (2019).
C. Spencer Yeh is recognized for his interdisciplinary activities and collaborations as an artist, improviser, and composer, as well his music project Burning Star Core. His video works are distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix and he is a senior editor at Triple Canopy and contributing editor to BOMB magazine. Yeh also volunteers as a programmer and trailer editor for Spectacle Theater, a microcinema in Brooklyn NY.
Recent exhibitions and presentations of work include "Shocking Asia" at Empty Gallery Hong Kong, "Two Workaround Works Around Calder" at the Whitney Museum NYC, "Modern Mondays" at MoMA NYC, "Sound Horizon" at the Walker Art Center Minneapolis MN, "Tarek Atoui: Organ Within" at Kurimanzutto and the Guggenheim Museum NYC, "The World Is Sound" at the Rubin Museum NYC, "Mei-Jia & Ting-Ting & Chih-fu & Sin-Ji" at MOCA Cleveland Ohio, "Closer to the Edge" in Singapore and "Crossing Over" in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, the Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, "Tony Conrad Tribute" at Atelier Nord/Ultima Festival in Oslo Norway, and LAMPO at the Renaissance Society in Chicago IL. In 2019, Yeh was also included in the exhibition "The Moon Represents My Heart: Music Memory and Belonging" at the Museum of Chinese in America NYC, and "Inner Ear Vision: Sound As Medium" at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Omaha NE. He was also one of the artists invited to workshop and perform David Tudor's "Forest Speech" under the guidance of Composers Inside Electronics to launch MoMA's new The Studio space.
Yeh was a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award in 2019. In 2015 he was an Artist-in-Residence at ISSUE Project Room NYC, and was included in the performance program for Greater New York at MoMA/PS1. A new project on vinyl record, "The RCA Mark II," was recently published by Primary Information.