Chicago composer-guitarist-poet Bill MacKay has worked extensively in folk, experimental rock, and improvised jazz music circles. His work as a solo artist, with his group Darts & Arrows, and in recent collaborations with LeRoy Bach, Matt Schneider, and Jeff Greene have all seen great creative leaps in the last couple years. He has also been a long-time student of the Spanish, Portuguese and French languages. MacKay remains intrigued not only by the connections between these studies and music making, but also by the ever-evolving arc from the traditional to the avant-garde.

MacKay’s concert-project for the Oscillations series centers on an exploration of his compositions via stringed instruments: guitar, bass, & requinto. He will be joined by composer-bassist Matthew Lux. MacKay and Lux first performed together about 10 years ago at Heaven Gallery, and have sporadically appeared together since then, most recently in projects led by LeRoy Bach and Tobin Summerfield. The project’s compositions and improvisations will treat themes of tradition: their birth, dismantling and re-birth, the winter as a meditational period, the shifting power of the seasons, and the expression of the psyche’s own hibernation.

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Cinchel is an ambient/drone guitarist from Chicago. Influenced by the guitar ensembles of Glen Branca and the production work of Christian Fennesz he aims to further explore the sounds one can abstract from a guitar. Using a mixture of guitar pedals and laptop processing he creates dense drones of looped and manipulated guitar haze: the music of abstract color fields and alien terrains. Cinchel will perform a 30-minute set of his music at Oscillations.