SWOONFEST25

TAK ensemble’s biannual festival celebrating multi-genre modes of experimentalism and highlighting the rich ecosystem of avant garde time-based art

SWOONFEST25 NIGHT ONE :

TAK ENSEMBLE + QIUJIANG LEVI LU • RAGE THORMBONES • GUSHES • LAS MARIQUITAS

SWOONFEST25 NIGHT TWO :

NURSALIM YADI ANUGERAH • YARN/WIRE • TAK ENSEMBLE + VICTORIA CHEAH • BLASÉ

Featuring Jessie Cox, Panel Moderator

SWOONFEST highlights experimental musical practices across genre lines and celebrates the dynamic ecosystem of the avant garde in new york city. SWOONFEST25 spans drone, video art, punk, free improvisation, ritual, and folk music to weave an eclectic tapestry of genre-defying experimental music.

Cultivating conversation and introspection, SWOONFEST25 will feature panels moderated by scholar/composer/performer Jessie Cox to enable participatory dialogue amonst artists and audience.

LOGISTICS:

FINANCIALS:
TAK was fortunate to receive minor funding to support to fund half of SWOONFEST25’s costs. We are able to allocate $3.5K to Roulette per day for rental ($7K) total, and based this number off the fees with associated with our 2024 co-production of Olencki’s when the great fires were lit on the other side of the ocean.
TAK will be responsible for paying each SWOONFEST artist.

DATES:
We are hoping to have SWOONFEST25 occur on the 13th and 14th of September.
The 20-21st of September is also an option, but would mean finding an alternate for Yarn/Wire.

EVENTS:
We’re planning for four 30-40-minute sets per evening. These would be as follows:
Night One:
6:30pm: Gusehs
7:30pm: RAGE THORMBONES
8:30pm: TAK + Qiujiang Levi Lu
9:30pm: Las Mariquitas

Night Two:
6:30pm: Yarn/Wire
7:30pm: Nursalim Yadi Anugerah
8:30pm: TAK + Victoria Cheah
9:30pm: Blasé

There will be either one or two panels as well, that will take place offsite.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS: While we confirm repertoire and needs with artists, we can offer further information, and are happy to align this with Roulette capacity as well. TAK has two technical directors that can be present and involved as well if/as necessary.

AUDIENCE: We hope to sell ~150-200 tickets per night. Our 2023 iteration of SWOONFEST was extremely successfull, with a sold-out first night, and a packed second night at The Clemente.

MARKETING: TAK does all of our own in-house marketing and we have thirteen years of PR relationships with various publications, invdividuals, and listing services. We use emails, social media, postering, and word of mouth to get the word out & our events are consistently well attended.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS ——

QIUJIANG LEVI LU: Qiujiang Levi Lu/卢秋江 (they/them) is a Beijing-born, NYC-based performance artist, vocalist, experimental improviser, composer, and lecturer in music at University of Pennsylvania.
For their solo performance art practice, Lu designs Max/MSP-based electroacoustic feedback systems with cyborg-like body augmentations inspired by Objectophilia/animism, which include special microphones and speakers placed within bodily orifices, augmented amplified laptop, and a custom-mapped flight joystick controller. Their resulting performances consist of choreographed, ritualistic improvisations that build on ancient Chinese drumming traditions and explore body dysmorphia, sexuality, spirituality, and mortality, linking together sound, movement, and violence in divine ceremony.
As a collaborative musician/improviser, Lu makes up half of the Chinese-American experimental electronic act Warp Duo with fellow improviser and violinist Scott Li, which fuses deeply emotional and melodic music with maximalist sound design. Lu has also performed extensively across the country with artists such as Ka Baird, Camilo Ángeles, Zoh Amba, Laura Cocks, Dana Jessen, Dave Ballou, Devin Grey, Drew Wesely, Manuel Perez III, Adam Kantz, Julian Pujols Quall, etc.

RAGE THORMBONES: RAGE Thormbones is a low-frequency duo whose work exists at the intersections of “fuck around” and “find out”. Both members, Weston from Berlin and Mattie from Los Angeles, are classically trained trombonists but abandoned that ship a while ago and have been performing as a duo since 2014. They mainly use trombones to produce sculpted masses of high-density sound, carving metallic resonance and subcutaneous tones to make rooms feel really heavy. They aim to shift the role of brass instruments away from vocal virtuosity and more toward their true selves as improvising organic air compressors - physically-modeled synthesis transcribed back into the acoustic domain.
RAGE has collaborated with a range of artists including Clara Iannotta, Kevin Drumm, Sarah Davachi, Michelle Lou, and British pop maverick Scott Walker. They’ve presented work everywhere from Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Darmstadt Summers Courses, Borealis Festival, Donaueshinger Musiktage, and ISSUE Project Room to their favorite basements/living rooms/warehouses/ crypts, and more recently, as soloists with the Helsinki Phulharmonic and the SWR Symphonieorchester.

GUSHES: Jennae Santos (they/she) casts tactile mythologies through music, sound, performance, and ceremony. Their work is fed by Indigenous Filipino psychology and combat, plant medicine, foodways, and land-sea ecologies poeticized through the lens of genderqueer fluidity, decolonization, dreaming, and pleasure. gushes is their progressive performance art-rock project for which they compose, direct, play guitar, and sing. A tapestry of interlocking polyrhythmic, ambient, and textural guitar loops form a foundation for lyrical songcraft, lovesong, sensorial ritual, and epic performance. Energized by friends and supporting artists, they arrange their music for chamber prog ensemble, rock band, movement cycle, sound installation, and drone.

LAS MARIQUITAS: “Una nueva página en el libro de la salsa,” Las Mariquitas is New York’s Queer and Trans Salsa band. A political liberation project, Las Mariquitas celebrates the community of LGBTQIA+ salserxs in an affirming safe space. Las Mariquitas shares the stage with queer and trans dance instructors, creating a culture of consent on the dance floor, and honoring the legacy of salsa as liberation music by writing new queer and transfeminist songs for the canon.

NURSALIM YADI ANUGERAH: Nursalim Yadi Anugerah is a composer and multi-instrumentalist, whose works focus on sonic experimentation through cultural practice, knowledge, and cosmology of indigenous people and their activism related to entanglements of social-cultural and environmental issue in Kalimantan (Borneo). His work contains echoes of various styles—Kalimantan indigenous music and symbols, the Indonesian underground noise scene, ritualistic chants, and European avant-garde compositions—all unified under his political project: a critique of ecological devastation and the question of survival. Through his works, Nursalim also offers a rich critique by highlighting the junction between ecology, technology, and decolonization; a path amidst the impasse between theoretical academic discourse and the urgency of Kalimantan’s environmental catastrophe.
His works have been staged in some concert and festival such as International Young Composers Meeting 2018 (The Netherlands), Gaudeamus Muziekweek  2018 (The Netherlands), AsiaTOPA 2020 (Melbourne, Australia), Holland Festival 2021, Amsterdam (The Netherlands). In 2021-2022, he is awarded by Prince Claus Mentorship Award for Cultural and Artists Response to Environmental Change by Prince Claus Foundation and Goethe Institut. Currently he is a JACK-Studio Artist in Residence for JACK Quartet (US).

YARN/WIRE: Yarn/Wire is a new music quartet dedicated to the promotion of creative, meaningful live musical experiences in the US and abroad. Yarn/Wire achieves this by supporting composers and audiences through live performances, educational activities, and large-scale collaborative projects. Our artistic programming is driven by the desire to present music that reflects the full spectrum of our community at the highest level.

VICTORIA CHEAH: Victoria Cheah is a composer whose work concerns boundaries, transitions, sustained effort, and intimacies within social-performance rituals. Her work has been commissioned and/or featured by ensembles and presenters including Talujon, Either/Or, Non-Event, Switch Ensemble, Line Upon Line, Han Chen, andPlay, Yarn/Wire, Wavefield Ensemble, MATA Festival, Guerilla Opera, Ensemble Dal Niente, Vertixe Sonora, Marilyn Nonken, PRISM Quartet, and performed by others. Recordings of their music can be found on Dinzu Artefacts, New Focus Recordings, and XAS Records. Cheah currently serves as Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory, as well as Director of Production of Talea Ensemble.

BLASÉ: Blasé is a Black feminist punk quartet fronted by vocalist and writer Shara Lunon.

TAK ENSEMBLE: Regarded as “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen), TAK delivers energetic performances "that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex” (The WIRE), and “impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity” (New Sounds, WQXR). 

The curation of the first edition of SWOONFEST in 2023 focused on artists who have played a formative role in sculpting the ensemble’s identity, and artists whose practices demonstrate a substantial investment in NYC’s local artistic community. TAK presented electronic music artist Phong Tran, composer Natacha Diels, improvisatory electroacoustic duo HxH (Lester St. Louis and Chris Williams, electronics, cello, trumpet), the free improv trio of gabby fluke-mogul, Mara Rosenbloom, and Tcheser Holmes, and the anarchic punk band Sour Spirit (Philadelphia) alongside TAK’s performances on each night. TAK’s performances included works by Tyshawn Sorey, Eric Wubbels, and premieres by DM R and Michelle Lou.

SWOONFEST 2023 was funded by the Chamber Music America Artistic Projects Grant (supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation), and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. The festival was originally conceived to celebrate the 10th anniversary of TAK.

“This sharing of space across music scenes and communities is something that’s all too rare, and in my opinion, so needed… as someone who’s also been bandleading in New York over a decade - being invited to perform anywhere in New York, where folks make space simply for you to bring all your creativity along - where people are kind, the sound is good, the compensation is respectful - it’s really something I don’t take for granted.”
Guest artist Mara Rosenbloom on SWOONFEST23