Lia Kohl

Cellist, composer, and multidisciplinary artist Lia Kohl is a representative of the new generation of experimental and improvisational musicians in Chicago. She creates and performs sonic landscapes utilizing cello, synthesizers, field recordings, and live radio to explore the mundane and profound possibilities of sound. Earlier this year, she released her second solo album ‘The Ceiling Reposes’, earning high praise form reviewers at The Quietus and Pitchfork: “In the most exhilarating moments, it sounds like standing outside La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s Dream House while a neighbor tunes a busted AM radio, an enveloping cocoon of drone and static.”

Kohl has a duo with violinist and fellow Chicagoan Macie Stewart and is part of the contemporary music quintet Honestly Same. She has collaborated with artists such as Tim Daisy and Mikel Patrick Avery and can be heard on recordings of Makaya McCraven, Steve Gunn, Claire Rousay and Circuit Des Yeux amongst others. At the upcoming Music Unlimited festival in Wels, she will join Ken Vandermark, Christof Kurzmann, Katinka Kleijn, Lily Finnegan and Dave Rempis in the new ensemble El Infierno Musical.

Audrey Lauro

Apart from a solo performance, Kohl will play a duo concert with Audrey Lauro. The French, Brussels-based alto saxophonist has been devoting her energies to experimental music and improvisation for years, constantly questioning the language of instrument, phrase and sonic event. She has performed with broad range of artists, from Champ d’Action to Mette Rasmussen and Ken Vandermark, mostly focusing on free improvisation.

With the long running Lauroshilau, a trio that also featues Pak Yan Lau and Yuko Oshima, she recorded three albums this past decade. She is also part of the saxophone ensemble La Nuée and together with guitarist Giotis Damianidis she forms the duo Dark Ballads. Recently, she co-founded the Canopée Improvisation Music Ensemble (C-IME), an all female, 8-piece improvisation ensemble gathered around a desire to experiment the meeting of timbres, voids and fullness that silence draws.