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Tongue Depressor + Trevor Saint | Ritual Magick

Tongue Depressor + Trevor Saint is a band that formed over the love of microtonal tuning, drone, religious musics, and Black Sabbath. Currently based out of New Haven, CT. Tongue Depressor is the duo of Zach Rowden and Henry Birdsey - two quietly prolific artists working in New Haven, CT - who’ve incorporated Trevor Saint’s dynamic approach to glockenspiel to the project. The newly minted trio will expand on experiments delving into long bouts of trance inducing microtonal drone, utilizing strings (primarily violin) and glockenspiel. The trio’s creates a vibrant, sustained tension delicately balanced along discordant, iconoclastic visions of a vacant world.

Trevor Saint plays the glockenspiel. He performs the first solo works for the extended-range instrument, and improvises wildly with the instrument’s extreme offerings. Trevor performs in the duos Skewed and Such (Jeff Herriott, laptop) and Tanngrisnir (Christopher Burns, electric guitar), with the duo Tongue Depressor (Henry Birdsey/Zach Rowden, fiddles), and in the Ever Present Orchestra.

Henry Birdsey is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and recording engineer from Vermont, working primarily with microtonal organ, lap steel, violin, and homemade instruments. His music is often drone-based and involves microtonal tunings, the amplification of raw metal, and fragments of church music. 

Zach Rowden deals with the acoustic and performative possibilities of the upright/electric bass & violin. Current collaborations with Iancu Dumitrescu and the late Ana-Maria Avram’s Hyperion Ensemble as member and soloist, Michael Foster’s The Ghost, Tyshawn Sorey, Robert Black, Leila Bordreuil, Paul Flaherty, Chris Cretella, Matt Sargent, Charmaine Lee, and Gus Caldwell.

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Ritual Magick is a solo project of Scott Burton. Using the guitar and the modular synthesizer to create an ever evolving soundscape performed live. Combining improvised guitar and repetition with a strict set of predetermined parameters, Ritual Magick invites the audience to enter a trance-like state along with the performer. It’s an exercise in ecstatic minimalism.

Scott Burton is a guitarist and composer living in Richmond, Virginia. For over a decade Scott has been creating music in a wide variety of settings combining composed and free improvised sounds and practices. Burton has worked with everyone from artist/saxophonist Matana Roberts, to expat hip hop producer Jneiro Jarel (JJ DOOM) and his music has been featured on NPR and BBC Radio. In addition Scott has shared the stage with artists as diverse as MacArthur Grant winner Ken Vandermark to songwriter Julien Baker. 

Earlier Event: December 8
Frode Gjerstad Trio | Virga
Later Event: February 13
Hatcher/Maunu/Kirshner | Jono Stewart