Robbie Lynn Hunsinger
Mike Khoury
Michael Zerang (photo by Cristina Marx)
Improvised chamber music with global roots:
Robbie Lynn Hunsinger returns to Chicago November 4 with her brand new trio featuring legendary Chicago percussionist Michael Zerang and Detroit based violin master Mike Khoury. Robbie Lynn will bring Eastern and Western oboes to the mix along with saxes, a fiddle and her newest middle eastern horn, the Zurna. Each player is deeply influenced by Middle Eastern musical traditions and Robbie Lynn and Mike are also professional Western classical players. All three are composers and multidisciplinary artists.
HUNSINGER/KHOURY/ZERANG
Robbie Lynn Hunsinger - double reeds
Mike Khoury - violin
Michael Zerang - percussion
8:30 PM / 2 sets
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Robbie Lynn Hunsinger
Robbie Lynn Hunsinger had an illustrious career as a classical oboist before becoming a cutting edge interactive artist, improviser and multimedia performer. She was an obbligato soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, toured France as an oboe d'amore soloist with The Robert Shaw Institute and toured Europe with the Chicago and Atlanta Symphony Orchestras. Hunsinger dove into Chicago’s free jazz experience after a shoulder injury. She added Chinese and Indian oboes to her quiver as well as single reeded and invented horns. She studied composition and improvisation with Roscoe Mitchell as a Resident Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and was featured in duets with Evan Parker at Chicago's Empty Bottle Festival and FMP Festival. She played the Chicago Jazz Festival and World Music Festivals with Tatsu Aoki and performed with Pauline Oliveros, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Kent Kessler, Davu Seru, Avreeayl Ra, Harrison Bankhead and Fred Lomberg-Holm. Her “Trio” recording with Tatsu and legendary Art Ensemble member Joseph Jarman garnered a 4 star review from Downbeat Magazine and was featured on several top 10 playlists.
During this period, Robbie Lynn also started the XoinX improvised music series, sang, played bass and various horns in the alt country band the Wichita Shut-Ins, and Founded the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, an all volunteer conservation effort that continues to save thousands of migratory birds each year.
Hunsinger has taught for decades and held positions at Fisk University, Watkins School of Art, Northern Illinois University, Elmhurst College and North Park University. She has taught students of all ages and has been a visiting teaching artist at University of Tennessee, Tennessee Tech and Georgia Tech. She has presented creative code sessions at ITP Camp at New York University, at the Performing Arts Exchange in Orlando and at Chamber Music America's 2020 Conference in New York.
Her interactive installations have been exhibited at the Georgia Tech Ferst Center, ISEA Chicago, Chicago's Thomas Blackman Gallery, and Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art. Hunsinger’s immersive audiovisual experience "Blue-Yellow-Red" at Nashville’s Frist Center for Visual Art won a “Best of Year” acknowledgement from Burnaway Magazine and was written up in Make Magazine. Her trans-media chamber music and installations include robotics, live projections, hacked game controllers and audience participation. Recent work includes “Constellation,” commissioned by Nashville's Metro Arts and partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, and "Eclipse," a sound-responsive multimedia chamber work commission by chatterbird.
http://robbiehunsinger.com
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Mike Khoury
Mike Khoury is an Arab-American composer, improviser, and curator focused on composition, performance, and documentation. Khoury's focus has been on the establishment of the Arab-American avant-garde and document the movement's intellectual heritage through presenting his own work, publishing on the topic, and presenting other artists work. As a curator, Khoury has engaged in community building through his curation of the Entropy Studios space in Hamtramck (1998-2001) and Redford (2014-present), and the Entropy Stereo record label publishing artists such as Faruq Z. Bey and Wendell Harrison.
Raised in Mt. Pleasant, MI, Khoury studied violin and choir in the local school system. During his formative years, Khoury also played electric bass in several rock groups. Exposure to the visual arts, especially abstract expressionism, played a large role in Khoury's early years.
An interest in alternative tunings and the desire to create sonically intense music reflective of his Arab background and interest in psychedelia led Khoury to form the Urban Farmers. With multiple shows under their belt, the all instrumental trio issued one full length CD and had several of their pieces issued on various compilations. Khoury was one part of the proprietorship that was Uprising Records with childhood friend and musician Greg Marten. Uprising Records issued records by many notable groups of the era.
Upon migrating to the metro Detroit area, Khoury resumed his violin performance and private studies on the instrument with a focus on free improvisation. Studies with violinist/composer David Litven helped to shape his technique and approach. Performance and recording credits include those with Faruq Z. Bey, Luc Houtkamp, Le Quan Ninh, Maury Coles, Dennis Gonzalez, John Voigt, Gunda Gottschalk, John Butcher, Paul Lytton, Ben Miller and John Sinclair. In 1997, Khoury formed the Entropy Stereo Recordings music label where he documented new and archival works by improvisors. The label is still active today.
Khoury is a firm believer in learning the rules in order to break them, although the learning and breaking sometime happen simultaneously. His studies in improvisation parallel his work in studying traditional violin technique and music theory. He cites Halim El-Dabh, Lata Mangeshkar, Bill Dixon, Lucia Dlugoszewski, and Charlie Patton as influences. As a trained economist, Khoury's approach to improvisation and music theory is informed by his knowledge of statistics, mathematics and the behavioral sciences. Khoury has also curated a long standing Detroit creative music series and has composed or contributed to music for film, television and radio.
Today, Khoury conducts both ethnographical, sonic and historical research from his laboratory and studios in Redford, MI. He has authored a chapter on the composer Halim El-Dabh published in an anthology on the Arab Avant Garde by Wesleyan University Press. Khoury also divides his time between his improvisational work and the Redford Civic Symphony Orchestra of which he is a member of the first violin section. Current active projects include Inscribe (with members of Northwoods Improvisers and Wisaal), a duet with percussionist Ben Hall, a duet with dancer/choreographer Leyya Tawil, a duo with guitarist Mark Morgan, a member of Porcelain Hammer and his work as a studio musician on violin, viola and electric bass.
http://mikekhoury.com/
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Michael Zerang
Michael Zerang was born in Chicago, Illinois, and is a first-generation American of Assyrian decent. He has been a professional musician, composer, and producer since 1976, focusing extensively on improvised music, free jazz, contemporary composition, puppet theater, experimental theater, and international musical forms.
As a percussionist, composer and collaborator, Zerang has over one hundred titles in his discography and has toured nationally and internationally to 35 countries since 1981, and works with and ever-widening pool of collaborators, primarily in The United States, Western and Eastern Europe.
Beginning in 2004, Zerang began to work with musicians and artists living in the Middle East. He traveled to perform, hold workshops, and study, to Yemen, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Morocco.
In November, 2007, Zerang played his first concert in Poland. Between 2007 - 2015, he had performed over 100 concerts. Several of these concerts where from existing ensembles that visited Poland, but the majority of the concert were in collaboration with Polish musicians and artists.
Michael founded and was the artistic director of the Link's Hall Performance Series in Chicago from 1985-1989 where he produced over 300 concerts of jazz, traditional ethnic folk music, electronic music, and other forms of forward thinking music. He was a Board Member of Links Hall from 1989 - 2013. He continued to produce concerts at Cafe Urbus Orbis from 1994-1996, and at his own space, The Candlestick Maker in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, from 2001 - 2005.
Zerang has collaborated extensively with contemporary theater, dance, and other multidisciplinary forms and has received three Joseph Jefferson Awards for Original Music Composition in Theater, in collaboration with Redmoon Theater, in 1996, 1998, and 2000.
Michael has taught as a guest artist at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in performance technique, sound design, and sound/music as it relates to puppetry; rhythmic analysis for dancers at The Dance Center of Columbia College, Northwestern University, and MoMing Dance and Arts Center; courses in Composer/Choreographer Collaborations at Northwestern University; music to children at The Jane Adams Hull House.
Michael currently tours and holds workshops in improvisational music and percussion technique, and teaches private lessons in rhythmic analysis, music composition, and percussion technique.
http://www.michaelzerang.com