NEWSLETTER
Musical lineup featuring Moor Mother, William Basinski, Circuit des Yeux, Tomberlin, and more TBD
Hudson, NY - Multidisciplinary arts center Basilica Hudson has announced the return of Basilica SoundScape - its annual weekend of music and art - in collaboration with PS21, The Creative Independent and new partner H0l0. This year, Basilica SoundScape will be presented at the outdoor venue PS21 Performance Spaces for the 21st Century, a state-of-the-art open-air venue on 100 acres of orchards and meadows in Chatham, NY.
With a host of regional and local partners, Basilica Hudson and PS21 join forces together as part of an Upstate / Downstate Independent Art Alliance to present their first collaboration and site-specific event. The Alliance is composed of an initial group of arts and culture organizations to celebrate resilience, strength and solidarity among artists, arts communities and arts organizations. The participating organizations redouble their efforts post-COVID to show support of each other's missions, and to demonstrate the importance of alliance, partnership and collaboration in a social and cultural landscape bruised by the pandemic.
As the first of Basilica Hudson’s anchor programs to return in-person since 2019, Basilica SoundScape represents the spirit of alliance between some of those hit hardest by the pandemic in the creative sector: arts organizations, the independent artists they elevate, and the steadfast audiences who cherish in-person experiential art. PS21 as a venue is an idyllic haven, with an open-air pavilion, breathtaking 100-acre campus and unmatched physical and environmental assets including apple orchards and trails that create a serene weekend location to meditate on the meaning of soundscape and performance.
“Rebuilding our world Post-COVID better than how it was will take deep heart and fearless creativity. Humbled by the challenges we reckoned with globally this past year, we must work together to be the change we want to see. To inspire that change, Basilica Hudson believes we must fuel our hearts and minds by supporting radical artists and gathering around them once again. This year Basilica Soundscape has been reimagined with an alliance of New York upstate and downstate shepherds of alternative culture, and is culminating in a mindful line up of boundary pushing pioneers. Like a salve to our longing for a better world, we look forward to communing in a big green field of sound with you!” - Melissa Auf der Maur, Basilica Hudson co-founder and director.
Far from a typical music festival, Basilica SoundScape features live concert performances, conceptual sound performances, author readings, installations, collaborations, curated local vendors and artisans, on-site activities and more, creating an immersive, innovative weekend of art, music, and culture. Basilica SoundScape features a lineup of some of the most innovative and genre-pushing musicians, visual artists and writers working today, with unique collaborations across disciplines. Basilica SoundScape was founded and is curated by Basilica Hudson co-founders Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone, along with collaborator Brandon Stosuy of The Creative Independent, with creative direction from Mike Renaud.
Brandon Stosuy has co-curated SoundScape since the festival’s inception. The Creative Independent, the online resource / daily publication he co-founded, was launched at the festival in 2016 and has co-presented Basilica SoundScape ever since. As a growing resource of emotional and practical guidance for creative people, TCI shares a commitment to artists and underground/avant-garde creators central to Basilica Hudson’s mission.
“Due to COVID, there were no live shows for more than a year. I was hoping people would take that time off to rethink how live music works, but as shows have returned, it’s mostly felt like business as usual. For our part, we thought it felt like a good time to tear the idea of a festival apart and put it back together again—and set it in an apple orchard." - Brandon Stosuy, co-founder of The Creative Independent and Basilica SoundScape co-curator.
Due to COVID-19, Basilica SoundScape’s 2020 10-year anniversary season was cancelled and missed by the devoted and diverse audience it has brought together annually. This year, Basilica Hudson and The Creative Independent have curated a musical lineup featuring Moor Mother, William Basinski, Circuit des Yeux, Tomberlin and more TBA, the likes of which have made Basilica SoundScape a staple of outsider music connoisseurs over the last decade.
Moor Mother is a prolific national and international touring musician, poet, visual artist, and educator, whose recent work includes a collaborative collection called BRASS with rapper billy woods, jazz-tinged, time-traveling experimental hip-hop for her Anti- debut, expansive art installations as part of Black Quantum Futurism, and a compositional project commissioned by the Broad Museum to soundtrack the work of Kara Walker. Her next full-length is due later in 2021.
William Basinski is a classically trained musician and composer who has been working in experimental media for over 30 years in NYC and most recently, California. Employing obsolete technology and analogue tape loops, his haunting and melancholy soundscapes explore the temporal nature of life and resound with the reverberations of memory and the mystery of time.
Haley Fohr is a vocalist, composer and singer-songwriter based in Chicago, Illinois. Her musical endeavors focus around our human condition, and her 15 year career as Circuit des Yeux has grown into one of America’s most successful efforts to connect the personal to the universal. She is most distinctly identified by her 4-octave voice and unique style of 12-string guitar. Her next album will arrive later in 2021.
Louisville, Kentucky-native Sarah Beth Tomberlin’s work centers rich vocal harmonies and guitar lines, with new percussive backing and instrumental flourishes that pan across the general disaster of human relationality and then zoom in on an effervescent moment of pure intimacy. Since releasing her debut album, At Weddings, in 2018, she's toured extensively, played a Tiny Desk for NPR, and performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! She’s currently based in New York City and at work on her expansive second LP.
In keeping with its reputation as “the anti-festival,” Basilica SoundScape will continue to push the boundaries of how attendees traditionally experience festival-going, this year welcoming acts as Artists In Residence to collaborate and create musical sets unique to Basilica SoundScape.
With the complete schedule still to be announced, the Artists in Residence will be the core to the weekend and perform both Friday and Saturday evening, offering site-specific inspired work as other local musicians and poets flesh out the rest of the programming. Basilica SoundScape aims to foster an environment that encourages these artists to tap into true creative freedom without limits and to immerse themselves in a weekend in Upstate NY.
H0L0, a Ridgewood Queens based music and performance venue, will curate a series of ambient after parties as well as a maze-like visual art installation. You Are Here (AKA The Maze) is a performance festival in a sculptural maze by and performance crew TROUBLE, aka Laura Paris with collaborators Sam Hillmer and Lawrence Mesich. Together, they design and build a maze that challenges traditional notions of performance and is accompanied by light, projections, sound, sculpture and a myriad of performance and time-based arts events. The Maze began in 2007 at Chashama Gallery in New York City, and has since traveled around the world. The sets will be interactive and provide a soundtrack for the installation, offering a time for reflection and repose at the end of each day of the festival.
Wave Farm’s WGXC will serve as the SoundScape 2021 broadcast partner, bringing event sounds to radio listeners across New York’s Upper Hudson Valley on WGXC 90.7-FM Radio for Open Ears and online listeners across the globe on Wave Farm Radio at wavefarm.org/listen.
With capacity at 500 per night, attendees are welcome to opt for a single evening, as each night will feature unique sounds and experimentation. This year will benefit from PS21’s outdoor campus, which ensures a spacious environment for audiences. Basilica SoundScape will adhere to all NYS event regulations, which currently encourages anyone unvaccinated to wear a mask per federal CDC guidance.
The partnership between Basilica Hudson, PS21 and the Upstate / Downstate Independent Art Alliance is a platform to foster collaboration and resource-sharing between local arts groups with the goal of strengthening communities, promoting and appreciating Columbia County's rural environment, hosting inspirational art and celebrating the arts' importance and impacts on rural livability. Tickets can be found at basilicahudson.org.
About Basilica Hudson
Founded in 2010 by Melissa Auf der Maur and Tony Stone, Basilica Hudson is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts center located in Hudson N.Y. that aims to foster a more sustainable community, ecology and economy through advocacy and innovative multidisciplinary programming.
Housed in a reclaimed solar-powered 1880s industrial factory on the riverfront in Hudson, NY and walking distance to a major Amtrak station, Basilica Hudson supports the creation, production and presentation of independent arts and culture, and strives to forge experiences that aspire to the scale, grit and beauty of its surroundings. Basilica welcomes over 40,000 visitors each season to grene-pushing music festivals, large scale market place events, a regular film screenings series and artist in residence program, eclectic performances, public art installations and other community gatherings. The majority of its programs are free or sliding scale, and invite visitors to discover the Hudson Valley’s rich legacy of cultural and environmental movements.
About The Creative Independent
Launched in September 2016, The Creative Independent is a growing resource of emotional and practical guidance for creative people. TCI is currently Co-founder and Editor in Chief Brandon Stosuy, Senior Editor T Cole Rachel and Creative Content Director Willa Köerner.
TCI’s goal is to educate, inspire, and grow the community of people who create or dream of creating through discussions with working artists leading creative, independent lives. TCI publishes interviews, how-to guides, surveys and worksheets, advice and wisdom and other creative tools; organizes live events and workshops and curates publications that align with our mission. The Creative Independent is ad-free and published by Kickstarter, PBC.
About PS21
Nestled in an old apple orchard on a pristine 100-acre site, of which only 5 acres are developed, PS21 is committed to presenting innovative performances by leading and emerging artists in our state-of-the-art black box and open-air pavilion theaters. While fostering creativity through residencies and encouraging collaborations between performers working across disciplines and genres, PS21 also serves the community via free and low-cost workshops, performances, and other programming. We work to preserve our open spaces, meadows, woodlands, and orchards, essential resources for artists and the community, and to extend opportunities for arts engagement to all, regardless of age, economic status, or cultural background.
PS21’s New Pavilion Theater: Completed in 2018, the theater is a 350-seat open-air proscenium stage protected by a pavilion roof that converts in cooler months to a geothermally heated and air-conditioned black box theater seating 99. The new facility is built with technologically advanced systems that can accommodate all levels of artistic needs—from our extensive system of sprung dance floors critical to movement-based performance, to our state-of-the-art lighting and sound capacities. The theater features one of the only fully LED green theatrical lighting systems in the country.
About H0l0
H0LO is a Ridgewood Queens based music and performance venue devoted to presenting the work of outsider communities of creative practice from every lane of the cultural sphere. H0L0 was founded in July of 2017 by Sam Hillmer, Marco Boggio-Sella, and Craig Kalpakjian.
About Wave Farm
Wave Farm is a non-profit arts organization driven by experimentation with broadcast media and the airwaves. A pioneer of the Transmission Arts genre, Wave Farm programs provide access to transmission technologies and support artists and organizations that engage with media as an art form through residencies, installations, broadcast, and other public presentations. Wave Farm’s WGXC-FM is a full-power, non-commercial, listener-supported station operating out of studios in Acra and Hudson, NY as well as pop-up remote studios throughout the listening area and beyond. WGXC transmits 3,300 Watts to more than 78,000 potential listeners on 90.7-FM and unlimited international listeners at wavefarm.org/listen.
Basilica Hudson presents at PS21's state-of-the-art open-air Pavilion Theater a site specific creation of: Basilica SoundScape
A Weekend of Music + Art in collaboration with PS21, The Creative Independent and H0l0
Friday, September 17 - Saturday, September 18, 2021
Press Contact: Allison Young, allison@basilicahudson.org