We’ve got an exciting Elastro planned for November featuring the trio Garden Parties, a duo of Jack Langdon / Olivia Shortt, and a solo set from Nolan Chin. Garden Parties is an experimental improvisational trio consisting of Jeff Kimmel, Ben MacDonald, and MT Coast. The group was formed with the aim of bringing friends together to share in the joy of making improvised music. Their music can be described as minimal, jazz, noise, and ambient, but the motivation behind the music is to create spaces for exploration.

Nolan Chin’s current program will feature prepared piano with electric guitar in a solo performance exploring pathways related to acoustic/electric manipulation under constraint, sympathetic resonance, free improvisation, and sonic textures created under the lens of mid 20th century music.

Chicago-based organist Jack Langdon (he/him, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians), and the Toronto-based saxophonist and multimedia performer Olivia Shortt (they/them, Anishinaabe, Nipissing First Nation) will play an improvised set of electroacoustic, drone-influenced improvised music.

We’ll get started at 8pm. Join us!

$15 / $10 w/ Student ID – Tickets Available at the Door

Artist Bios

Nolan Chin is a Chicago born and based pianist. He has collaborated with an innumerous number of musicians in contexts ranging from free-improvisation, written composition & indie rock from a young age– Those including Julian Kirshner, Gerrit Hatcher, Mike Reed, Marvin Tate, Ben LaMar Gay, Trey Gruber, Liam Kazar, Macie Stewart, Quinn Tsan, Ayanna Woods.

Jack Langdon (b. 1994) is a musician, filmmaker, and writer with concentrations in experimental music, minimalist documentary, and cultural politics. Across mediums, Jack’s work stages elusive, complex encounters with commonplace subjects, scenes, and sounds. As a musician, he has created extensive work for pipe organs, and regularly performs on a variety of keyboard instruments as well as the Ojibwe bibigwan. His films focus on landscape and memory. He writes on the political economy of cultural production and the workplace politics of American independent music making. His recordings have been released by IMPREC, Sawyer Editions, and Lobby Art Records. His written work has been published by Sound American, Cacophony, and Shred Magazine. Jack is a founding editor for Culture as Care Journal with Eli Namay and John Pippen. He runs an independent record label and music journal called Empty Stage.

Olivia Shortt is a storyteller and performing artist working across Turtle Island and internationally. They are a vocalist, noisemaker, improviser, composer, sound designer, video artist, drag artist, curator, administrator, and producer. Shortt was featured in the 2020 Winter edition of Musicworks Magazine and was described as a “glittering, rising star in the exploratory music firmament.” They have appeared on CBC Kids ‘Gary the Unicorn and their voice has been used off-screen for Stephen King’s ‘In the Tall Grass’ and Season 3 of ‘Chucky’; they made their Lincoln Center debut in 2018 with the International Contemporary Ensemble; they made their film debut, onscreen playing saxophone, in Atom Egoyan’s 2019 film Guest of Honour; and recorded an album with their duo Stereoscope, two kilometres underground in the SnoLAB (an underground laboratory specializing in Neutrinos and dark matter physics in Northern Ontario, Canada). Shortt performed and premiered Raven Chacon’s (Diné) ‘For Olivia Shortt’ at The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC) as part of Chacon’s series of solo works ‘For Zitkála-Šá’ during the 2022 Whitney Biennial and has performed the work at The Holland Festival (Amsterdam) and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, DC).

Official Website

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Tags: Ben MacDonald, Chicago, Elastic Arts, Elastro, Elastro Series, Garden Parties, Jack Langdon, Jeff Kimmel, Logan Square, MT Coast, Nolan Chin, Olivia Shortt