OPTION: Joe Westerlund

Description

Joe Westerlund performs electroacoustic percussion pieces from past and forthcoming records with improvisations.

This performance and interview are presented in the ESS garden, and will premiere online on ESS’s YouTube. This event is free and open to the public. Walk-ins welcome; reservations recommended.

The OPTION series is curated by Andrew Clinkman, Lily Finnegan, and Dorothy Carlos.

About Joe Westerlund

Under his own name, Joe Westerlund has emerged as an intuitive improviser and composer during the last decade, scoring deep meditative practice over the course of three full-length solo records. After all, Westerlund—a longtime student of Milford Graves—has now spent more than a quarter-century gleaning lessons from folk musicians and avant-garde icons, from close friends and challenging strangers alike. He served as the dynamic backbone of Megafaun, the North Carolina trio that he cofounded, and initiated collaborations with Arnold Dreyblatt, On Fillmore and Justin Vernon. As a session drummer, he has worked as the pulse beneath the plaintive Americana of Watchhouse, Daughter of Swords, and Jake Xerxes Fussell and been a textural anchor for the folk abstraction of Califone. Currently, he tours and records primarily in an improvisational trio, Setting (with Jaime Fennelly and Nathan Bowles), as a duo with trumpeter Trever Hagen, and as a solo artist on Psychic Hotline.

www.joewesterlund.com

About OPTION

OPTION is an ongoing music salon curated by Chicago musicians Andrew Clinkman, Lily Finnegan, and Dorothy Carlos and presented by Experimental Sound Studio. Its programming explores contemporary perspectives on improvisation and composition in a ‘salon’ format, enabling local, national, and international artists to publicly discuss their practice and ideas as well as perform.