Sarah Belle Reid‘s work centers on experimental electroacoustic performance, improvisation, and human-machine interaction. Performing with trumpet, voice, modular synthesizer, and custom electronic instruments of her own design, she creates interactive performance systems in which performers, technologies, environments, and listeners continuously shape one another. Often praised for her ability to transport audiences through vivid sonic worlds, her musical language has been described as ranging from “graceful” and “danceable” to “silk-falling-through-space” and “pit-full-of-centipedes” (San Francisco Classical Voice).

Notes on tonight’s performance: Over the past year, my performance practice has taken a new direction, shaped by growth, new life, and the kinds of loss that accompany transformation. During this time, I found myself listening differently: drawn toward unfamiliar sounds, moments of harshness and unexpected beauty, textures that evoke childhood memories, and fragile melodic fragments that seem to appear out of nowhere. It has also required a different kind of patience, making space for uncertainty, for healing, and for things that reveal themselves gradually. Presented in quadraphonic sound, these ideas unfold through improvisation as feedback, breath, pops, clicks, noise, and melody collide—moving between fragility and intensity, density and stillness.

Curated by Haley Freedlund for Nonsequitur’s NonSeq series.

(photo: Etta Gerdes)