Carnegie Hill Concerts presents:
Kevin Ramsay and Sam Yulsman’s Veiled Gazelle
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Hello O'shay - vocals
Laura Cocks - alto flute
Yuma Uesaka - contrabass clarinet
Joe Moffett - trumpets
Kevin Ramsay - electronics
Sam Yulsman - piano and keyboards
Conrad Harris - violin
Marika Hughes - cello
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Drawing on a bewildering array of global experimental traditions, Ramsay and Yulsman’s Veiled Gazelle is an evening length concert experience blending synesthetic illusion, elegy, aural spaces and their signature dissonant styles of post-colonial psychonautic research. The piece features world premieres of both their work, custom sound design by Ramsay and virtuosic performances by the Carnegie Hill Chamber Players.
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Kevin Ramsay is a composer, producer, recording/mixing/mastering/sound engineer, and musician on several critically acclaimed international albums. Brooklyn born and based, Ramsay’s work focuses primarily on theoretical, practical aspects of sound recording/reproduction with unpredictable pairings of acoustic and electronic instruments. Kevin’s current works explore new ways to capture, mix, and process. immersive audio for playback, on multichannel sound systems. In addition to serving as the Lead Sound Engineer at Harvestworks Digital Media, he continues to collaborate with a variety of international artists committed to using sound as their main creative medium. Kevin has worked with notable artist such as Michael Byron,
Henry Threadgil, Art Jones, Joan Jonas,, Anne Tardos, Danilio Correale, Maria Grand, Prince Harvey, Emilio Vavarella, Malik Ameer Crumpler, Daniel Belquer, Jon-Carlos Evans and many others.
Composer and pianist Sam Yulsman has worked with visionary artists in new, improvisational and classical music, from Séverine Ballon, Talea Ensemble and Ensemble Korea, to Brandon Lopez, the Sun Ra Arkestra, and Anaïs Maviel. His compositions include acoustic and electroacoustic works for soloists, chamber ensembles, jazz ensembles and improvisers, as well as fixed media pieces, installations, and collaborations with artists working across disciplines. Recent honors include a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation, the Columbia University Charles S. Miller Award, the Conservatoire Américain's Prix Langage Musical, and Copland House's Cultivate Fellowship.
Hello O'shay is a Singer-Songwriter, Producer and Musician out of Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. With his soulful vocals, intricate flow and off-kilter production, his sound is unique yet familiar. Hello O'shay's music can be best described as a blend of R&B, HipHop, NeoSoul and Pop.
Joe Moffett approaches his work with a keen interest in unconventional sounds and forms, collective improvisation, and the intersection of action and stillness. He is a co-founder of several projects, including ambient improv trio Earth Tongues and the avant-art song duo Twins of El Dorado, in addition to performing frequently as a solo artist. He has also appeared with a number of artists and projects including Yoshi Wada, Joe Morris, and Tredici Bacci. His material appears on Neither/Nor, Underwolf, Eh?, NotTwo, Tubapede and Prom Night Records.
Laura Cocks is a flutist with “febrile instrumental prowess” (The New York Times), who works in a wide array of environments as a performer of experimental music and “creates intricate, spellbinding works that have a visceral physicality to them” (Foxy Digitalis).
Laura is the executive director and flutist of TAK ensemble, “one of the most prominent ensembles in the United States practicing truly experimental music” (I Care If You Listen) with whom Laura makes musics "that combine crystalline clarity with the disorienting turbulence of a sonic vortex.” (WIRE Magazine).
Laura performs regularly as a soloist, an improviser, and with ensembles such as Talea Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many others in NYC and abroad. They can be heard on labels such as ECM, Denovali Records, TAK editions, Tripticks Tapes, Carrier Records, Chambray Records, Double Whammy Whammy, New Focus Records, Sound American, Orange Mountain Music, Amplify, Winspear, Supertrain, Gold Bolus, Centaur Records, Infrequent Seams, and Sideband Records. Their recent solo album, field anatomies (Carrier Records), noted as one of Stereogum’s top-ten experimental releases of the year, was praised for its “superhuman physicality” and “disciplined patience” (Bandcamp Best Contemporary Release and Experimental Release).
They have been in residence at institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Cornell University, The Delian Academy for New Music, and many others, and have given masterclasses and taught seminars in performance practice, composition, professional development, and applied critical theory at institutions such as DePaul University, Williams College, Oberlin Conservatory, University of California San Diego, Bowling Green State University, California Institute of the Arts, and many others. Laura holds a doctorate from The Graduate Center and continues their writing and research in corporeal analyses of art and musical praxis. They studied with Michel Debost, Kate Hill, William Bennett, Kathleen Chastain, and Tara Helen O’Connor at Oberlin Conservatory, The Royal Academy of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and The Graduate Center.
Highlights from the upcoming 2022-23 season include: the world premiere of a new long-form work by Jessie Cox in collaboration with the Sun Ra Arkestra; solo performances as part of Peabody Conservatory’s George Lewis Festival; the premiere of a new work by Tyshawn Sorey presented by the New York Philharmonic’s Nightcap series; the TAK ensemble tenth anniversary festival; and recordings out on Dinzu Artefacts (TAK ensemble), Catalytic Sound (with Chris Corsano, Luke Stewart, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Timothy Angulo), and Infrequent Seams (with Weston Olencki).
Cocks will be in residence at University of Pennsylvania for the 22-23 academic year as part of TAK’s position as Long-term Visiting Ensemble in Residency, as well as teaching privately at The New School.
Laura plays a custom-made open G# Almeida with a Boston cut Powell headjoint.
Laura uses they/she pronouns.
Marika Hughes is a native New Yorker, a cellist, singer, a storyteller on The Moth. She grew up in a musical family – Marika’s grandfather was the great cellist Emanuel Feuermann, and her parents owned a jazz club, Burgundy, on the Upper West Side. As children, she and her younger brother were both regulars on Sesame Street, and attended the beloved Manhattan Country School. Marika continued her education in the double degree program at Barnard College and the Juilliard School, graduating with BAs in political science and cello performance, respectively.
Marika has worked with Whitney Houston, Lou Reed, Anthony Braxton, David Byrne, Adele, Henry Threadgill, D’Angelo, Idina Menzel, Nels Cline, Somi and Taylor Mac, among many others. She was a founding member of the Bay Area-based bands 2 Foot Yard (Two Foot Yard, Tzadik 2003 & Borrowed Arms, Yard Work, 2008) and Red Pocket(Thick, Tzadik 2004). She is a master teacher and director for Young Arts and a teaching-artist at Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project. She currently holds the cello chair at the Broadway show, Hadestown. Marika has self-released three albums: The Simplest Thing (2011), Afterlife Music Radio (2011) and New York Nostalgia (2016). She happily leads her bands Bottom Heavy and The New String Quartet and is the co-founder and co-director of Looking Glass Arts, an artist residency and youth education program in upstate New York. With a commitment to a sliding scale fee structure, LGA is democratizing access to the space, time and natural beauty critical to artistic and educational growth. Marika lives in the countryside of Kings County.
Joe Moffett approaches his work with a keen interest in unconventional sounds and forms, collective improvisation, and the intersection of action and stillness. He is a co-founder of several projects, including ambient improv trio Earth Tongues and the avant-art song duo Twins of El Dorado, in addition to performing frequently as a solo artist. He has also appeared with a number of artists and projects including Yoshi Wada, Joe Morris, and Tredici Bacci. His material appears on Neither/Nor, Underwolf, Eh?, NotTwo, Tubapede and Prom Night Records.
A boundary-pushing saxophonist and clarinetist, Yuma Uesaka is known for his work in modern creative jazz, avant-garde, and new classical music. Uesaka has been active in New York City since 2014 and came to wider attention with Ocelot, the eponymous debut from his collaborative trio with Colin Hinton and Cat Toren. In 2021, he released Streams, a critically acclaimed duo recording in collaboration with pianist Marilyn Crispell.
Born in 1991 in London, Uesaka lived in Nagoya, Japan before moving with his family to Michigan at the age of eight. There, he started on the saxophone at age ten and added clarinet two years later. After high school, he attended the University of Michigan, and he earned bachelor’s degrees in both Jazz Studies and Computer Science Engineering. He also studied at the prestigious Banff Jazz and Creative Music Workshop, where he worked with performers like Vijay Iyer, Nicole Mitchell, and Tyshawn Sorey. Based in New York City, Uesaka has performed with a bevy of forward-thinking artists, including Anna Webber, Adam O’Farrill, Jeff Lederer, Nick Dunston, among others. He regularly performs at venues such as The Jazz Gallery, Roulette, and National Sawdust.
In 2021, Yuma has received honorable mention from the ASCAP Herb Albert Young Jazz Composer Award and composition commissions from Metropolis Ensemble and Either/Or Ensemble.
Yuma is a member of Polyfold Musical Arts Collective. Polyfold is a grassroots, artist-led non-profit organization that helps create opportunities for improvising musicians to present creative works.
Violinist Conrad Harris has performed new works for violin at Ostrava Days, Darmstadt Ferrienkürse für Neue Musik, Gulbenkian Encounters of New Music, Radio France, Warsaw Autumn, and New York's Sonic Boom Festival. In addition to being a member of the FLUX Quartet and violin duo String Noise, he is concertmaster/soloist with the S.E.M. Orchestra, Ostravská Banda, STX Ensemble, Wordless Music Orchestra and Ensemble LPR.
He has performed and recorded with such artists as Elliott Sharp, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, David Behrman "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Jean-Claude Risset, Rohan de Saram and Tiny Tim. His recordings of the Lejaren Hiller Violin Sonatas with pianist Joseph Kubera will be released in 2018 on New World Records. He has also recorded for Asphodel, Vandenburg, CRI, and Vinyl Retentive Records.