Nolja! (Let's Play!)
Leo Chang

Nolja! (Let’s Play!) features two performances of improvised music facilitated by Korean musician and artist Leo Chang. Leo will be playing with/as VOCALNORI which amplifies his voice through gongs, and with the piri, a Korean double-reed instrument.  Nolja! is an invitation to play; to enjoy one another’s company and spend unstructured time together.

About the Artists

Leo Chang is a Korean composer, improviser, and performer of avant-garde music currently living in New York. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and ultimately, Shanghai during his formative years. The relationships between assimilation, rootlessness, and (de)coloniality inform his artistic practice and research. Leo’s practice currently emphasizes graphic and text-based scores, free and structured improvisation, electroacoustic composition and instrument-building, ritualized group performances, and cross-media installations. Leo organizes Ensemble Consensus, a collective of experimental artists who transform creative prompts into music through co-creation and improvisation.

For more information about Leo Chang, visit his website and follow him on Instagram.

Lucie Vítková is a composer, an improviser, and a performer (accordion, harmonica, voice, and tap dance) from the Czech Republic. They are a 2017 Herb Alpert Awards in Arts nominee in the category of Music and an emerging artist of Thomas M. Messer Bohemian Creative Hub at the Czech Center New York. Their compositions focus on sonification (compositions based on abstract models derived from physical objects) while their improvisation practice explores characteristics of discrete spaces through the interaction between sound and movement. 

For more information about Lucie Vítková, visit their website and follow them on Facebook.

Miriam Parker is an interdisciplinary artist who uses movement, painting, video art, and sculpture/installation. Her work has been influenced by her experience as a dancer, her study of Buddhism and phenomenology, and her connection to the free jazz tradition. Parker is a CBA Fellow ’21 in collaboration with Marisa Michelson. She has performed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, The Fridman Gallery to name a few. She is a co-founder and a collaborator of Lost Voyage, a multimedia collaborative work, and Inner City Projects, a multimedia collaborative work group with Jo Wood Brown. 

For more information about Miriam Parker, visit her website and follow her on Instagram.

Chris Ryan Williams is an interdisciplinary artist and an educator based between NYC and LA. Chris collaborates with contemporary improvisers and experimentalists. His work explores the dyad of ancestral trauma and power existing in all Black Americans. He recently worked on projects, including Sans Soleil (2020) in collaboration with Patrick Shiroishi as a duo as well as The Platform (2020), a collaboration piece with Booker Stardrum and Miranda Javid, which premiered in the Netherlands at West Den Hagg. Chris is currently working on Mehahn, a theatrical meditation on grief and hereditary dissonance created alongside director Natali Lassalle-Morillo.  

For more information about Chris Williams, visit his website and follow him on Instagram.

Lester St. Louis is a New York City-born and based Multi-instrumentalist, composer, and curator. Lester has worked and performed in various artistic environments from the United States, Canada, South America, Europe to China. During this journey, he has worked with artists like Dré Hočevar Trio, Jaimie Branch Fly or Die, Ensemble Adapter, TAK Ensemble to name a few. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists, including JACK Quartet, Mahan Esfahani, Stefan Jackiw, RAGE THORMBONES, and Lauren Cauley. He will continue to grow with artists groups like MADD (with Dré Hočevar and Leafar) and TRANSFER (with Jordan Balaber, Daniel Brew, and Rocío Bolaños) and more.

For more information about Lester St. Louis, visit his Facebook and follow him on SoundCloud.