Mind Over Mirrors: Bellowing Sun
@ Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
Opening Friday, April 6th, at 7:30PM
On view through Saturday, April 7th
THERE’S AN ANCIENT, PASTORAL THRILL TO THIS MUSIC, WHICH … IS SHAPING UP TO BE PRAISE MUSIC FOR THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE.
—NPR Music
With his evolving project Mind Over Mirrors, Chicago-based musician and composer Jaime Fennelly premieres Bellowing Sun, a work that creates an aural prism through the layering of acoustic and electronic instruments. A departure from Fennelly’s solo practice as a harmoniumist and synthesist, Bellowing Sun also includes vocalist and percussionist Janet Beveridge Bean, violinist Jim Becker, and percussionist Jon Mueller—four musicians who share an interest in the intersections of the American vernacular and contemporary avant-garde.
Bellowing Sun is performed with the audience encircling the musicians underneath a large kinetic sculpture. The visual centerpiece, designed in collaboration with Timothy Breen, Eliot Irwin, and Keith Parham, was hand-built in the shape of a great lighted drum. A rotating cylindrical textile adorned with patterns, abstract figures, and dyed gradients creates an ever-changing kaleidoscope of organic shapes and color that simultaneously form celestial bodies and microscopic life forms. The radiant audiovisual environment results in a space, not unlike a Quaker meeting room, for people to withdraw from daily life and consider questions of the human spirit.
Bellowing Sun is being released on Paradise of Bachelors in April 2018. Listen to Mind Over Mirrors’ song “Matchstick Grip” live on NPR and “Zeitgebers” on Stereogum.
NOTE: Strobe effects are used during this performance.
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About the Artist:
Composer, harmoniumist, and synthesist Jaime Fennelly has been making work as Mind Over Mirrors since 2010. Fennelly has fostered a close relationship with choreographer Miguel Gutierrez since 2001 and often collaborates with other performers. In 2002, for example, he cofounded the iconoclastic group Peeesseye in Brooklyn. NPR has described his music as “an out-of-body experience.” His recordings have been released on a number of notable labels, including Paradise of Bachelors, which released his sixth album Undying Color in 2017. Fennelly received his MFA from Bard College in 2006, where he studied with Maryanne Amacher, David Behrman, and Pauline Oliveros, among other music luminaries.
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Tags: Bellowing Sun, Chicago, Eliot Irwin, Illinois, Jaime Fennelly, Keith Parham, MCA Stage, Mind Over Mirrors, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Near North Side, Timothy Breen
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