12/06 - 19/06/2025 –
Dropa House
A new wave of artists from Chicago’s alternative music scene Macie Stewart, Lia Kohl and Whitney Johnson set out for a seven day Dropa House residency, exploring new possibilities in their ongoing collaboration, combining piano, strings, voice and electronics. In the context of sustainable touring, Dropa House is also the tour base for a series of concerts Stewart, Kohl & Johnson play at partner venues of Sound in Motion in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Macie Stewart (piano, violin, voice) presents When the Distance Is Blue, a stunning solo piano record – featuring guest appearances by Kohl and Johnson – and her debut for the ubiquitous International Anthem. The duo of Lia Kohl (cello, electronics) and Whitney Johnson (viola, electronics) presents For Translucence, a superb debut release on the iconic Drag City label, where they fuse string instruments, synthesizers, ambient sound, and radio interference into what they describe as a challenging neophonic orchestral expression.
You can see them live at:
AB Brussels: 12 June
POM Eindhoven: 15 June
Occii Amsterdam: 18 June
Trix Antwerp: 19 June
Macie Stewart is a prominent, highly sought-after collaborator with an impressive track record. She has previously worked with Makaya McCraven, Ben LaMar Gay and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), written arrangements for Alabaster DePlume, Resavoir, Mannequin Pussy, and SZA, was part of Ken Vandermark’s Marker, and immerses herself in the art of songwriting with Finom, her duo with songwriter Sima Cunningham. For her debut, When the Distance Is Blue, she returns to her first musical love, the piano, and takes the listener to all the forgotten and lost moments that inevitably occur during intensive touring.
The debut album of Whitney Johnson & Lia Kohl has evolved over several years from their initial practice of free improvisation on viola and cello into (for the moment), this: a neophonic orchestral expression. For Translucence is a captivating and simultaneously calming experience, a vivid meditation in which layers of acoustic strings, synthesizers, field recordings, radio and sine waves enhance and blend into each other.
Cellist, composer, and multidisciplinary artist Lia Kohl is part of the new generation of experimental and improvisational musicians from Chicago. With cello, synthesizers, field recordings, and live radio, she explores the everyday and all-encompassing possibilities of sound, blurring the lines between performance, concert, and installation work. Collaborations with artists such as Circuit des Yeux, Steve Gunn, claire rousay, Steve Hauschildt, and Makaya McCraven have provided Kohl with a strong foundation in the international music world.
Violist and academic Whitney Johnson lives a double life. There is the musical entity named Matchess, and there is the sociologist of sound who goes by the name Whitney Johnson. In September 2024, Drag City simultaneously released Hav (Johnson) and Stena (Matchess), in which her two personalities musically challenged each other to create new hypnotic parallels…
