Darkness Sounding
…innovation being too tame a word for this extraordinary collective. Wild Up’s message is that the shortening of days calls for special fanfares, and on Thursday night the group began by stunningly drumming down the sun and strategically bagpiping up the full moon in the Joshua Tree desert.
…a series of concerts to combat holiday overload and the general malaise that comes with shorter days and longer nights.
Navel’s floor-to-ceiling windows offered a noir cityscape. The audience sat in the middle of the room. The musicians circled us. The hour was late afternoon and as darkness descended, streetlights and neon provided a cinematic backdrop of loneliness.
Deep listening, Intentional Gathering, Thoughtful Questioning
About Darkness Sounding 2024
This year features the work of composers claire rousay, Leilehua Lanzilotti, inti figgis-vizueta, mattie barbier, Ellen Arkbro, Odeya Nini, Booker Stardrum, and Patrick Shiroishi.
For this year’s festival, we will partner with the outdoor art series floating and TreePeople, the largest environmental movement headquartered in Southern California. It takes place at the scenic and serene TreePeople high above LA on Mulholland Drive.
Darkness Sounding explores how sound and music shape our understanding of the world. It convenes around mindfulness and nature, featuring drone, minimal, and ambient music. Through deep listening, intentional gathering, and thoughtful questioning, we will foster awareness and understanding to expand our connections to ourselves, each other, and the natural world.
at TreePeople, Los Angeles
Time Together, Surrounded by Sound, In the Dark
About Darkness Sounding 2022
Los Angeles and Joshua Tree
Spaced out music for the shortest days of the year.
Each winter we embark on a new venture, a series set against the darkest days of the year.
We ask: what is it about the end of the year? It’s dark already, our clocks have jumped. And even in LA nights seem to overtake the days. Pagan and sacred holidays abound: rituals collecting themselves around the darkness. We’re hungry for something specifics, for something wrapped and warm, yet we search for a newness unbounded by the trappings of the past. Wild Up’s winter festival Darkness Sounding is our ongoing response to these conditions and questions.
About Darkness Sounding 2020 – 21
Wild Up’s winter festival Darkness Sounding started last year as a questioning and yearning for something mindful during the year’s darkest days. What were then thoughts about these lingering nights seeming to overtake the days, gave way — over the past twelve months — to thoughts of times together now totally apart. Our then-new sacred “rituals in the desert” have become fantasy. While our mundane rituals in home spaces occupy now almost the entirety of our focus. Our questions then about music, and its places making mindfulness and community, seem an impossible distance away from reality, and for that reason: music’s place in our psyche is more important to recognize than ever. We must question how art takes shape in our lives. We must question why we love and miss it so much. We must call out our longing for sound to take shape into music. Even through these most difficult and lonely times, we must not lose hope.
Darkness Sounding in 2020 – 21 included the work of:
Jiji, Gulli Bjornsson, Drew Busmire, Andrew McIntosh, Holland Andrews, Jodie Landau, Marta Tiesenga, Eliza Bagg, richard valitutto, Ann Southam, Valentin Silvestrov, Alvin Curran,Chris Kallmyer, Andrew Tholl, Odeya Nini, Archie Carey, Lewis Pesacov, Christopher Rountree, Annie Saunders, rest, Emma O’Halloran, and Andrew Schneider
Mindful music during the darkest time of the year.
About Darkness Sounding 2019 – 20
In December 2019 and January 2020 Wild Up embarked on the new venture, an experiment, and a series set against the darkest days of the year. We made mindful, joyful, and maybe melancholic music, endeavoring to drone sounds of the earth. The sounds of community being drawn together in contemplation.
In 2019-20 we presented the works of:
Odeya Nini, Archie Carey, Booker Stardum, Richard Valitutto, Sarah Hennies, Jiji, Tal Katz, Seth Olinksy, Matt Barbier, Mandy Kahn, Chris Kallmyer, Andrew Tholl, Derek Stein, Catherine Brookman, Kathryn Shuman, Marta Tiesenga, Lucky Dragons, Chris Rountree, Annie Saunders, Brian Walsh, Emma O’Halloran, Andrew McIntosh, Lina Bahn, Adrianne Pope, Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, Cat Lamb, Cassandra Miller, Tashi Wada.
Performances
- 12.12.2019 darkness sounding | Desert Moon
- 12.13.2019 darkness sounding | Valitutto plays Hennies | SOVT
- 12.15.2019 darkness sounding | Satsang 1 – Nini | Voice Bath
- 12.20.2019 darkness sounding | Jiji | you (流) | flow | music for electric guitar
- 12.21.2019 - 12.22.2019 darkness sounding | solstice sounding | dusk til dawn
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12.29.2019
darkness sounding | Satsang 2 – Rountree reads parables
Mast on Fig Los Angeles, CA
- 01.05.2020 darkness sounding | Satsang 3 – Nini | Circle Song
- 01.09.2020 darkness sounding | Saunders and Rountree | On Sensory Deprivation
- 01.10.2020 darkness sounding | songs for one | Valitutto
- 01.11.2020 darkness sounding | Satsang 4 – Nini | House of the Book
- 01.19.2020 darkness sounding | McIntosh | strings, darkness, movement
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01.15.2021
Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Festival Opening
zoom More Info
- 01.16.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Jiji, Gulli Bjornsson, Drew Busmire: Aleph, Desert Gaze
- 01.17.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | richard valitutto: simple lines / quiet music / silent songs
- 01.18.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Chris Kallmyer: Two hearts are better than one, applications begin
- 01.19.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Holland Andrews: There You Are, event sign-ups
- 01.20.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Odeya Nini: Window Concerts, event sign-ups
- 01.21.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Archie Carey: Desert Sound Visit, event sign-ups
- 01.22.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Andrew McIntosh: A moonbeam is just a filtered sunbeam
- 01.23.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Andrew McIntosh: A moonbeam is just a filtered sunbeam
- 01.24.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Chris Kallmyer: Two hearts Household # 1, 2
- 01.24.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Andrew McIntosh: A moonbeam is just a filtered sunbeam
- 01.25.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Annie Saunders, Emma O’Halloran: Rest Concept Film with EMPAC
- 01.26.2021 - 02.07.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Holland Andrews: There You Are
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01.30.2021
Darkness Sounding 20-21 | QR Show # 1: Marta Tiesenga*
Los Angeles, CA More Info
- 01.31.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Chris Kallmyer: Two hearts Household # 3, 4
- 02.04.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Andrews, Landau: There You Are Responses
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02.06.2021
Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Archie Carey: Desert Sound Visit*
Joshua Tree, CA More Info
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02.07.2021
Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Archie Carey: Desert Sound Visit*
Joshua Tree, CA More Info
- 02.07.2021 Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Chris Kallmyer: Two hearts Household # 5, 6
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02.11.2021
- 02.12.2021
Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Odeya Nini: Window Concerts
your house, by appointment More Info
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02.14.2021
Darkness Sounding 20-21 | QR Show # 3: Christopher Rountree*
Los Angeles, CA More Info
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05.14.2021
Darkness Sounding 20-21 | Eliza Bagg / Lisel: Heat Signature
Los Angeles, CA More Info
- 05.15.2022 M.A. Tiesenga + AIYYER
- 01.20.2024 claire rousay
- 01.27.2024 Odeya Nini / Patrick Shiroishi / Booker Stardrum
- 01.28.2024 Leilehua Lanzilotti / inti figgis-vizueta
