Facebook event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/724049535084083/
In their latest edition of their Friday Night Live series, the Detroit Institute of Arts will host “Holes in Hearts | Handles for Holding” tomorrow night, an event curated by musician and organizer Matthew Daher meant to bring awareness to the multi-faceted dynamics of mental health to center stage through thoughtful, contemplative music.
Check out the event description below, and look out for the recap video coming soon!
“Conversations that address mental health are crucial for communities of many backgrounds and identities. Artists that explore mental health in and through their work can provide an entry point into these conversations, and in turn into collective support, coping, and healing.
‘Holes in Hearts | Handles for Holding’ is an evening of performances by local and national musicians who integrate creative practices with healing practices in their own personal journeys and/or in their work supporting the healing and well being of others. Solo performances and ensemble improvisations by Betsy Soukup (Detroit), Zena Carlota (Oakland), Matthew Daher (Detroit), and Jennifer Simone (Cincinnati).
7 PM – Betsy Soukup (Solo)
7:30 PM – zena Carlota (Solo)
8:00 – Group Improvisation I
8:15 – Intermission
8:30 – Matthew Daher – The Wisdom to Know the Difference (solo)
9:00 PM – Jennifer Simone (Solo)
9:30 – Group Improvisation II
This event is presented by the Detroit Institute of Arts. Entrance is free with museum admission. Museum admission is free for all residents of Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland counties.
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Betsy Soukup is a bassist, composer, and improvisor living in Detroit. She studied classical music for seventeen years, but currently focuses her creative energy on playing freely improvised music, writing and performing her own compositions, writing poetry, and performing comedy improv. Betsy is one half of Shade and Light: a bass duo with collaborator Megan McDevitt.
https://betsysoukup.bandcamp.com/releases
zena (zay-nah) Carlota is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, visual & theater artist whose work navigates the space between dreams, ancestry and memory through sound and imagery. For the past 11 years, Zena has studied and performed as a Kora musician, a traditional West African harp, in West Africa, Europe and the US. As a healing artist, she weaves the tenuous boundaries of matter and spirit into form through storytelling, puppetry, mask-making and live sonic ceremonies inspired by the folkloric traditions of the African Diaspora.
Matthew Daher’s creative work is an exploration of mental health, empathy, masculinity, and spirituality. His music and healing practices draw on 13 years of experimentation in ambient, electroacoustic, free jazz, hip-hop, and folk music, as well as Zen meditation practice, Authentic Movement, Nonviolent Communication and recovery support groups. His solo project “The Wisdom To Know the Difference” is an exploration of control on both a sonic and a spiritual level. Vocals and acoustic drums processed, blended with lush textures, triggering other sonic events at varying degrees of randomness. A song-structured web of intended and unintended sonic consequences emerges, bringing free jazz, ambient, noise, hip-hop, art rock, and chance operations into communion in sound and process.
https://matthewdahermusic.bandcamp.com
Jennifer Simone is an eclectic improvisational artist with roots in jazz; playing the baritone saxophone and singing. Jennifer has used the skills learned over the years to play several shows around Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, New York City, Missouri and Asheville, North Carolina. Drawing influences from Jazz, Sufism, African and Indigenous dance rhythms, classical Indian singing, animal sounds, Tibetan singing bowls and chimes, sitar music, water, electronic music, healing vibrations, binaural beats and sound therapy; Simone uses her loop station to lay down a bottom layer of throat singing, humming, breathing or saxophone upon which to build complex, intricate vocal and rhythm loops. She tops this new creation off with spiritual, minimalistic and poetic lyrics, sung in her unique tone, thus creating an ethereal, smart, meditative, and truly original sound. Often described as afropunk, and compared to the likes of The Bayaka Forest People and Zap Mamma, Jennifer Simone manages to always create a world, sound and atmosphere all her own.
