Good Grief - Handle With Care:
Laraaji, A Place to Go, iiisa, Rafa
May 16th, 2025
7pm-12am
Laraaji, A Place to Go, iiisa, Rafa
May 16th, 2025
7pm-12am
'vienna', a new release on Small Forms Records w FIM Basel Concert March 2023 Hypersurface is a NYC-based trio consisting of Drew Wesely (guitar/objects), Lester St. Louis (cello), and Carlo Costa (percussion). Hypersurface explores timbral, durational, and formal aspects of improvisation with lenses focused on their instruments' acoustic particularities alongside employing tiles, railroad spikes, ceramic plates and other objects to expand them further. In coming together Carlo, Drew and Lester wanted to create a music that puts emphasis on the erasure of sonic boundaries, embracing the liminal spaces between their instruments, their sounds and the greater sonic environment. Timbre, gesture, duration, particles, layers… a real time tapestry of its own. The trio has given performances throughout the United States and Europe in a diversity of concert settings from clubs to large halls and galleries; with each utilizing the acoustics to follow potent musical pathways. Kamau Amu Patton is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work examines history and culture through engagement with archives, documents, stories, and sites. Patton’s projects are dialogic and take form as expanded field conversations. http://kamaupatton.com
Good Grief is a deep listening live event series curated by Drew Litowitz (A Place to Go, Marble Rye) and friends. This edition, the fifth in the series, is titled “Handle with Care" and features three live acts of patient electronic inclinations: Laraaji, A Place to Go, and iiisa), plus deep interludes and a unique closing dj set by Rafa.
Laraaji
Laraaji is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner based in New York City. He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising experimental jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. He has since released albums for a variety of labels, often recording himself at home and selling the results as cassettes during his street performances.
Laraaji is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner based in New York City. He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising experimental jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. He has since released albums for a variety of labels, often recording himself at home and selling the results as cassettes during his street performances.
A Place to Go
A Place to Go is the musical project of NY-based designer and artist Drew Litowitz. Litowitz crafts his music by distorting emotive folk songs and hard-hitting poetry through immersive, dystopian new age filters, creating a psychedelic world where the lines between singer-songwriter and sound designer blur and the tensions between euphoria and dysphoria blossom. On APTG’s sophomore LP, 'Tie-Dye Your Tombstone,' songs are sonically hijacked, warped, and twisted into vivid dreams and snaking nightmares. For this show, Litowitz is joined by Aaron is Your Friend and Red Lunch to form the three-piece live incarnation of the A Place to Go, an ambient synth-odyssey of carefully conducted chaos.
iiisa
iiisa is the budding solo project of NYC-based latinx vocalist and improviser-composer, isabel crespo pardo. Their intimate songs emerge from warm sonic landscapes filled with familial chatter and field recordings from their home in Costa Rica. Taking great care, they transform opaque memories into powerful ephemera in hopes of offering solace.
In addition to their solo practice, crespo is known for their work with sinonó, tilt, and toso toso, as well as ongoing interdisciplinary work. They have the joy of collaborating with a myriad of artists, including Raven Chacon, Sandra Mujinga, and Matthew Barney, and have performed at Roulette Intermedium, Lincoln Center Atrium, and the DiMenna Center.
iiisa is the budding solo project of NYC-based latinx vocalist and improviser-composer, isabel crespo pardo. Their intimate songs emerge from warm sonic landscapes filled with familial chatter and field recordings from their home in Costa Rica. Taking great care, they transform opaque memories into powerful ephemera in hopes of offering solace.
In addition to their solo practice, crespo is known for their work with sinonó, tilt, and toso toso, as well as ongoing interdisciplinary work. They have the joy of collaborating with a myriad of artists, including Raven Chacon, Sandra Mujinga, and Matthew Barney, and have performed at Roulette Intermedium, Lincoln Center Atrium, and the DiMenna Center.
Rafa
Rafa weaves immersive sonic landscapes, blending a background in classical piano with the raw energy of Brooklyn’s underground electronic scene. Guided by emotional connections between sonic worlds over genre constraints, he crafts evocative journeys that invite emotional connection, shifting fluidly through ambient depths and instrumental interludes. With a sensibility for lush textures, their sound drifts between organic and electronic elements, creating a space for healing, introspection, and renewal.