An evening with two stunningly original bowed string masters:

Judith Hamann (Australia/Berlin)
solo cello and duo with cellist Lori Goldston (Seattle)

Swil Kanim (Ferndale, WA)
Solo violin

Swil Kanim is a US Army Veteran, classically trained violinist, native storyteller/actor, and a member of the Lummi Nation. Swil Kanim considers himself and his music to be the product of a well-supported public school music program. Music and the performance of music helped him to process the traumas associated with his early placement into the foster care system. His compositions incorporate classical influences as well as musical interpretations of his journey from depression and despair to spiritual and emotional freedom. The music and stories that emerge from his experiences have been transforming people’s lives for decades. Because of his unique ability to inspire audiences to express themselves honorably, Swil Kanim is a sought-after keynote speaker for conferences, workshops, school assemblies, and rehabilitation centers, and travels extensively throughout the United States, enchanting audiences with his original composition music and native storytelling.

Judith Hamann is a cellist and performer/composer from Narrm/Birraranga/Melbourne, in so-called Australia. They have “long been recognised as one of Australia’s foremost contemporary-music cellists” (RealTime Arts) and as a composer who “destroys the fiction of the musician who lives and works outside conventional parameters and puts in its place a series of compositions that are fundamentally humane” (Louise Grey, WIRE Magazine). Their work encompasses performance, improvisation, electro-acoustic composition, field recording, electronics, site specific generative work, and micro-tonal systems in a deeply considered process-based, or even ‘nomadic’ approach to creative practice.

Judith will perform studies drawing on their work for cello and humming, and shaking. Here, Judith challenges the boundaries of their instruments, cello and voice, considering how bodily and sonic thresholds offer generative sites of instability and movement, vulnerability and intimacy. Currently their work is focused on an examination of expressions and manifestations of ‘shaking’ in solo performance practice, a collection of new works for cello and humming, and ongoing research surrounding ‘collapse’ and the ‘de-mastering’ of instrumental practice.

Curated for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series by Lori Goldston.