Gray Sound continues its fifth season with an experimental solo show by renowned Berlin-based violinist Sarah Saviet in the Great Hall at Midway Studios. One of contemporary music’s most inventive and searching performers, Saviet explores shifting limits: between interpreter and author, idea and body, virtuosity and failure, periphery and interior; her performance will thread her own music with work by Jack Sheen and Lawrence Dunn. This event will also serve as a prelude to the 2024 installment of Chicago’s legendary Frequency Festival, where Saviet will perform again in a double bill with Nate Wooley on Feb. 21 at Constellation, capping a full week of performances, talks, and workshops for Saviet in Chicago.

Free and open to the public
Masks recommended
**Entrance to the building is on the west side, facing the Logan Center for the Arts

About Sarah Saviet
Sarah Saviet is dedicated to the performance of contemporary music, performing as a soloist and as a member of Riot Ensemble, the Saviet/Houston Duo, and Ensemble Mosaik among others. She is the subject of a recent profile in Van Magazine. Her debut solo album SPUN (Coviello Contemporary) was recently nominated for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik for new music. She has also released on all that dust and another timbre, and her recording of Liza Lim’s violin concerto “Speak, Be Silent,” with the Riot Ensemble on HCR/NMC records was selected as one of New Yorker Magazine’s Best Recordings of 2019.

Recent performances include duo concerts at Ultraschall and AFEKT festivals, soloist with Klangforum Wien as part of Märzmusik in the Berliner Philharmonie, and the premiere of Rebecca Saunders and Enno Poppe’s duo Taste at Witten Festival 2022. Saviet has held visiting artist positions in the composition departments of the University of the Arts Berlin, Huddersfield University, at Goldsmith University London with the Riot Ensemble, and at Harvard University with ELISION Ensemble. She has given workshops on contemporary violin technique at the Manhattan School of Music University of the Arts Berlin, Manhattan School of Music, and Darmstadt Akademie für Tonkunst, and held artist residencies at Aldeburgh Music with composers Lawrence Dunn, Jack Sheen, and artist Rowland Hill.

About Gray Sound
Founded in 2019 by Gray Center Director and UChicago Associate Professor of Music and the Humanities, Seth Brodsky, Gray Sound was envisioned as an ongoing performance and discussion series that represents a chance for artists and the broader community to tease the boundaries of sound—when it moves from voice to music, recognizable tune to noise, experience to idea, and back.

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Tags: Chicago, Gray Sound 5: Sarah Saviet, Midway Studios, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, Sarah Saviet, Washington Park