Jeff Arnal, Ken Vandermark, Bonnie Han Jones - photo by Alex Inglizian
We’re excited to present a special Sunday night Improvised Music Series event with two sets from the trio of Bonnie Han Jones, Jeff Arnal, and Ken Vandermark!
Bonnie Han Jones (electronics/voice), Jeff Arnal (drums/percussion), and Ken Vandermark (saxophones/clarinets) reconvene to celebrate their first collaboration, Signal Otherwise, the 67th edition in the Catalytic Sound Artist Albums series. The music was recorded at Experimental Sound Studio in December of 2022. Its seven pieces are an amalgamation of many things: individual music histories, pitch and texture, arrhythmic phrasing and pulse, fervent declamation and introspection, which results in an electroacoustic document unique in the discographies of all three musicians. This concert is a rare occasion to hear these three musicians working together through improvisation and experimentation over the course of two sets.
Signal Otherwise is now available to the public as part of Catalytic Sound's CAA Fundraising program and all proceeds from sales of this digital album go toward Beloved Asheville (www.belovedasheville.com), "a trusted, grassroots, and equity-focused organization. With over fifteen years of experience in movement building and advocacy for human rights, the organization’s success is credited to the ability to build relationships, create visible change, and generate community-led momentum for collective action."
Link to purchase: https://bonniejones1.bandcamp.com/album/signal-otherwise-caa-067
Music at 8pm!
$15 / $10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door
Artist Bios
Bonnie Han Jones is an Korean American improvising musician, poet, and educator working primarily with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and board member of High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, along with Suzanne Thorpe she co-founded TECHNE, https://technesound.org/, an organization that develops anti-racist, feminist workshops that center on technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea, she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, spent her formative years in Baltimore, Maryland and currently resides in Chicago, IL on the nceded homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations.. https://bonnie-jones.com/
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Jeff Arnal is an American percussionist, composer, and community organizer working across experimental, improvised, and interdisciplinary music. His practice is shaped by over three decades of work in contemporary classical music, jazz, and free improvisation, and by long-term collaborations centered on listening, structure, and ensemble interaction.
Recent work includes Drum Major Instinct (Mahakala Music, 2022; Haunted Apparatus, 2025) with Curt Cloninger, featuring guest collaborations with Katherine Young and performances at venues including the Big Ears Festival. He is active in Chrononaux, an ensemble with Camila Nebbia, Dietrich Eichmann, and John Hughes, developed through long-term collaborations across the U.S. and Europe.
He maintains a long-standing duo with Dietrich Eichmann, released on NoBusiness Records (Tides of Unrest, 2023), and a decades-long collaboration with saxophonist John Dierker, documented on Mahakala Music (Astral Chronology, 2023).
Arnal is Executive Director of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, North Carolina, where he has led exhibitions, performances, residencies, and research initiatives since 2016.
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Ken Vandermark (USA 1964) is an avant-garde composer, improviser, saxophonist/clarinetist, curator, and writer whose unique history has given him the opportunity to perform extensively and record with key figures of the AACM (Fred Anderson), New York’s Downtown scene (Ikue Mori), FMP (Peter Brötzmann), the English improvisers scene (Paul Lytton), post-punk (Terrie Ex), Ethiopian music (Getachew Mekuria), and free jazz from Japan (Akira Sakata). He's been the director of the Catalytic Sound musician cooperative since 2012, has run Audiographic Records since 2014, in 1999 was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in music, and in 2024 he curated the Music Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria. Vandermark moved to Chicago from Boston in 1989 and has worked continuously from the early 1990s onward, both as a performer and organizer in North America, Europe, Latin America, Japan, and Ethiopia, recording in a large array of contexts, with many internationally renowned musicians.