Bringing together music across genres that embraces texture, improvisation, and the environment.

IKWE is an African American and Ojibwe artist and musician from St. Paul–Minneapolis, now based in Brooklyn. A first-generation descendant of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, her multidisciplinary practice includes music composition, storytelling, audio-visual installation, and hand drum making. She is a two-time recipient of the Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Grant (2018, 2019) and was awarded the 2022 AudioFemme Agenda Grant. In 2018, she was an Artist-in-Residence at The Shed, where she developed MAKADEWIIYAASIKWE (“a woman of African descent” in Ojibwe), a multidisciplinary performance work. Her work has been presented at the Wyckoff House, Lincoln Center Out of Doors with La Casita, Brooklyn Prelude Festival, SECCA (NC), Buckham Gallery (MI), Wa Na Wari (WA), and Blindside Gallery (Melbourne, Australia). Kelsey holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an MA in Music Technology from NYU Steinhardt, where she developed a virtual Indigenous hand drum. linktr.ee/KelseytheIkwe

Friends with Heads is an electro-acoustic ensemble exploring compositional improvisation and experimental sound. Led by drummer Luke Runels, the group focuses on experiments in timbral dialogues, reductivist beats, and live warping. The pieces come together into a music that moves fluidly between droning ambient sound worlds, deep electronic grooves, and modal melodic jazz. Pulling from late Miles, along with the underground rhythms of the 90s, the late electronic work of Brad Mehldau, and Sakamoto—Friends with Heads feels like surrealism made sound; creating work that is both alien, and soulfully human. Luke Runels @friendswithheads Ethan Cohn https://ethan-cohn.com/ Tree Palmedo linktr.ee/treepalmedo Alexander Baiz linktr.ee/alexanderbaiz

paper gem produces sample-based hip hop and is experimenting with melding ambient, slowcore and electronic styles. He is a part of the 100Fold collective (a mix of rappers and producers) and has previously released projects with the collective, as a duo alongside rapper Nigel Xavier and beat tapes/remixes as a solo artist. He’s exploring visual art/collage and DJing to share some of his eclectic music tastes. @paper_gem

Leftpop is the project of composer, improviser, and producer Harrison Adams. He is the curator of Environs and passionate about environmental music in many forms. His current keyboard work is inspired poetically and concretely by the natural world–the movements of wind, rain, clouds; open spaces and landscape; the life-cycle of flowers. Across a decade of performances and recordings, he has interwoven field-recordings, analog synthesis, spoken-word poetry, data sonification, and experimental beats, interrogating ecology, media, mental health, and urban life. His album Rain Enough is out now on New Memento. https://linktr.ee/leftpop

Environs: IKWE, Friends with Heads, Leftpop, paper gem, Logan Takahashi