Amirtha Kidambi & Matteo Liberatore: voice and guitar duo from NYC

Jen Gelineau: solo violin and electronics

Matt Krefting: music for cassettes

Catherine Bresner: captain video poems + 001 videopoem

Amirtha Kidambi and Matteo Liberatore’s duo of voice and guitar creates improvised aural landscapes that are glacial and highly evocative, unfurling through dynamic gestures that are at once spacious and restrained. Juxtaposed against the frenetic pace characteristic of the New York improv scene, the pair applies the compositional aesthetics of Feldman or Oliveros to a free environment. The project is set apart from Kidambi’s work with Lea Bertucci, Mary Halvorson or Elder Ones and Liberatore’s collaborations with musicians including Elliott Sharp, Mark Kelley and Catherine Sikora. Each piece explores the unique possibility space created by the union of voice and guitar, delving deep into specific permutations including registral extremes, detuning and quiet mouth sounds, all without the use of processing. After a prolonged period of isolation, the duo emerged to record and play together for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The music is nuanced, patiently developing as the subtleties of gradual seasonal change or the awareness of sound in meditation. Like shifting color gradients and patterns on a canvas of Agnes Martin, timbral shading and repetition form large scale impressions. Neutral Love investigates an emotional inner world, taking its name from The Passion of G.H. by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, a narrative monologue of a woman’s existential spiral. While Kidambi and Liberatore come from radically different backgrounds, they draw from universal sonic signifiers, like the ringing of the bell at a Hindu temple threshold or the echo of church bells across the piazza of a small Italian town, invocations to prayer and reflection. The duo’s interactions simmer beneath an anti-climax, begging the listener to observe one’s surroundings, turn inward, and confront the self.

Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Jenifer is a Feeding Tube Records artist, music educator, and mother who currently lives in Greenfield, MA. Violin is her primary instrument but Jenifer often includes viola, vocals, electronics, music box compositions, wood, and electronics into her solo improvisational work. She develops multi-layered rhythmic textures that are sampled and layered into collages and dreamlike soundscapes. As Byron Coley writes, this practice can create “an eternal quality to her signature solo bow work, which makes her melodic inventions sound traditional and freaked-out at the same time. The combination is both exquisite and transportational.” You can listen to her most recent recorded solo work at https://feedingtuberecords.com/releases/quarantunes-series-no-011/

Catherine Bresner is the author of the chapbook The Merriam Webster Series; the artist book Everyday Eros (Mount Analogue 2017); and the empty season, which won the Diode Edition Book Prize in 2017. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the VOLTA, b l u s h, Sixth Finch, Fonograf, Itinerant, The Offing, Heavy Feather Review, Gulf Coast, Passages North, Paperbag and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Juniper Summer Institute fellowship and the 2019 Cadence Residency through the Northwest Film Forum. Currently, she is the publicity director for Wave Books and lives in the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts.