We’re excited for another summer Pleiades Series where we welcome an traveling guest alongside a Chicago staple. Hen of the Woods is the noise project of Los Angeles-based musician Clementine Wink. Raised in Berwyn and inoculated with a DIY work ethic in the Chicago punk scene(s) of the 2010s, she draws inspiration from sources as disparate as musique concrète, surrealism, disco, Catholicism, hip hop, psychiatry, and the Youth International Party. Since 2017, Hen of the Woods (named for the edible mushroom Grifola frondosa) has utilized an ever-growing variety of sounds including guitar, no-input mixing board, cello, and audio samples. Listeners are encouraged to think about the nature(s) of sound as a physical, social, and potentially spiritual occurrence.

Melon Sprout makes sound with electro-acoustic ceramic instruments which range from discrete shaker boxes to monolithic drums. High-energy performances amplify and intensify micro-sonic ceramic sounds and their kinetic counterparts. Central to Melon’s instrument activations are the capacity to break them, and therefore to offer them to the listener as an ephemeral vessel which holds the trace of impact in the multitude of shards left behind. Melon captures ceramic sonics through a specialized signal processing chain in which tone shaping parameters are controlled by the volume and intensity of the ceramic instrument’s playing. Using each ceramic instrument as the sole sonic source, Melon’s ceramic instruments and live activations are at once kinetic and highly energetic. Tactile performances facilitate appreciation for the ceramic object’s inherent link to craft, tool making, and function while encouraging viewers to commune in the deep listening and creation of the sound of ceramic.

Following these planned performances we’ll open it up for a classic Pleiades Improv Jam, open to all femme/trans/nonbinary artists. Come by with your instrument, body, or voice, and jam! You can sign up ahead of time at pleiades@elasticarts.org, or just show up.

$15 / $10 w/ Student ID - Tickets Available at the Door
Free Admission for Jam Participants!