Friday, November 1
Matthew Smith (solo acoustic)
John Krautner (solo acoustic)
696 Blues Band (solo electric)
Doors 7:30 pm | $10
Matthew Smith performs new songs on acoustic guitar and piano, and he'll also be playing songs from the 1999 Outrageous Cherry LP Out There in the Dark, which was just released in a 25th-anniversary vinyl edition. Matthew has played with numerous groups/artists, including Outrageous Cherry, Crime and the City Solution, Rodriguez, Odd Clouds, THTX, Nathaniel Mayer, and Andre Williams. He currently plays with the Matthew Smith Group, Chatoyant, and the Volebeats.
John Krautner performs new songs on acoustic guitar. John has written songs and played with the Go, Conspiracy of Owls, as well as his own group. He is currently working on a new solo album.
696 Blues Band is James Baljo, who plays solo guitar and electronics through various devices, generating hypnotic riffs and interstellar atmospheres. James is also the drummer in Chatoyant and Spectrum 3, and has played guitar with Wolf Eyes, Richard Pinhas, Crazy Doberman, and countless other experimental and psychedelic artists.
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
Saturday, November 2
Ava Mendoza
King Sophia
Doors 7:30 pm
Advance ticket sales are now closed. Tickets will be $18 cash at entry.
Ava Mendoza
Ava Medoza grew up in California and attended Interlochen Arts Academy (in Michigan) before studying with legendary experimental musician/composer Fred Frith at Mills College. She has gone on to work in projects with many notable figures of contemporary music, including William Parker, Gerald Cleaver, Susan Alcorn, Nate Wooley, Shayna Dulberger, John Zorn, Sir Richard Bishop, William Hooker and many others, while simultaneously releasing 10 records as a bandleader in 11 years. Mendoza also performs in Bill Orcutt's Guitar Quintet, leads the avant-rock band Unnatural Ways (a trio with Tim Dahl and Sam Ospov) and performs in a duo with Nels Cline. As a guitarist, Mendoza has received acclaim for her technique and viscerality. In any context she is committed to bringing expressivity, energy and a wide sonic range to the music.
King Sophia
Classically trained with a degree from the Frost School of Music - University of Miami, King Sophia's cellistic and compositional skills are their main processors for the world around them. They’re also an electric guitarist, vocalist, conductor, educator, disc jockey and poet.
As a well-rounded creator with roots in many genres from blues to bossa nova to avant-garde, King Sophia is known for their versatility expressed through multidisciplinary explorations of strategic resistance and radical joy.
King is especially revered for their live arranging and live composing—what others call ‘improvisation.’ Each new creation is grounded in their identities of Black Indigenous Queerness and a desire to preserve, showcase, and build upon non-hegemonic music history. Using these core cultural threads as a foundation for their practices, King Sophia explores art and intention through a holistic lens to concoct sonic experiences that motivate, illuminate, alleviate, and empower.
Sunday, November 3
Jakal
featuring Keefe Jackson, Julian Kirshner, Fred Lonberg-Holm
Doors 7:30 pm
[Tickets will be $20 at entry]
Primarily based in Chicago, the members of Jakal are all well-established creative musicians/improvisers who are no strangers to Detroit. Keefe Jackson (tenor & sopranino saxophone), Julian Kirshner (drums) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, tenor guitar and electronics) have been performing their no-holds-barred improvisations as Jakal since 2014. Collectively, they've worked with Peter Brötzmann, Tomeka Reid, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, The Flying Luttenbachers, Sylvie Courvoisier and many others. As they've all graced our stage in various ensembles, we're sure this will be a world-class improvising trio.
Friday, November 8
Sensorium Chamber Ensemble
Scavenger Quartet
Doors 7:30 pm $12 at entry
We've postponed our festival of chamber music until the spring, but we kept a couple of the unusual outlier groups as its own billing.
Detroit's Scavenger Quartet has been making surreal and charming instrumental music since the last few years of the twentieth century. Composer/tinkerer/multi-instrumentalist Frank Pahl (Only a Mother, Sublime Wedge, Little Bang Theory) has been an important part of Detroit's creative music fabric for almost 40 years, with Scavenger Quartet having the distinction of being his first group to utilize musical automatons of his own whimsical design. For the entire run of the band, he's been supported by Doug Gorlay (percussion), Tim Holmes (winds) and Joel Peterson (bass). Described by one reviewer as "future-rustic," Scavenger Quartet occupies an unusual musical space, balancing very approachable themes and rather challenging or unusual sounds. They have three releases on American and European labels, plus features on compilations and a stray single or two, and although they haven't played live since the pandemic, they been making new recordings throughout the past five years. Their fourth full-length record is planned for release in 2025 on Two Rooms.
Sensorium Chamber Ensemble is led by noted Michigan experimental musician/composer Benjamin Miller. This medium-sized chamber orchestra will perform works by the great Eric Satie, "the other 12-tone composer," Josef Hauer and Miller himself.
Benjamin Miller: Conductor, Guitar, Alto Saxophone
Elvin Sharp: Soprano Saxophone
Tim Holmes: F Mezzo Sax, Alto Flute
Laurence: Miller Bass Clarinet
Mike Khoury: Violin
Brice Madden: Cello
Jenny Miller: Double Bass
Scott Lockard: Guitar
Martin Schiller: 5-String Bass Guitar
Josh Cook: Vibraphone, Drums
Sunday, November 10
The Night Lives of Bats
A lecture by Vanessa Rojas, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
4 pm | free and open to the public
Listen in on the night lives of bats with Dr. Vanessa Rojas. Join us to learn more about the local bats in your neighborhood, including how they benefit our ecosystems. See and hear their recorded echolocation sounds and learn to look for unique characteristics to identify bats by sight and sound.
Vanessa Rojas has been studying bats for over 15 years, beginning with her graduate research at University of Michigan – Flint. She then continued her work as a bat educator and researcher, splitting her time between Detroit and the Smoky Mountains National Park. Her work studying bat habitats continued with a PhD in Wildlife Ecology. She is now an Associate Professor at a State University of New York campus based in the Adirondack Park but enjoys returning home to Flint and Detroit regularly.
Photo credit: Michael Durham
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Trinosophes Projects is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization in the state of Michigan that supports live programming, exhibitions, research and publishing. We are an independent, artist-operated entity located in the city of Detroit. Contributed and earned income goes directly into the hands of the artists we work with, so if you appreciate our efforts, consider making a donation to support our ongoing mission. Click here for a Paypal link.
How does your support help? Your donations go directly to our programming, publishing, media manufacturing, archival work, artist commissioning, project collaborations and regranting in the form of artist prizes, awards and emergency assitance. While we prefer to operate mostly anonymously and we’re always hesitant to ask for financial support, we recognize that now more than ever our work is important to the cultral health of our community, both through supporting, highlighting and perserving our region’s cultural legacy and by keeping it in dialogue with devlopments in the rest of the country and the world.