Zosha Warpeha / Skúli Sverrisson & John McCowen

Saturday, October 10th

ZOSHA WARPEHA (US)

+ SKÚLI SVERRISSON & JOHN McCOWEN

doors 19:30 / show 20:00

3000kr / 2500kr students / pay what u can

ZOSHA WARPEHA is a Brooklyn-based composer-performer working in a meditative space at the intersection of contemporary improvisation and folk traditions. Using bowed stringed instruments alongside her own voice, her long-form compositions explore transformations of time, tonality, and resonant space. She performs primarily on Hardanger d’amore, a sympathetic-stringed instrument closely related to the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. While her work is informed by the cyclical forms and physical momentum of Nordic folk music, her solo practice "subverts tradition not as a political act, but as a point of departure" (Peter Margasak, Nowhere Street).

Warpeha’s debut solo album, silver dawn, was released on Relative Pitch Records in 2024. Orbweaver, a duo collaboration with Mariel Terán, was released on Outside Time in 2025 to critical acclaim, described by The Wire as “simultaneously centered on intimacy and deeply imaginative sound building, delivering a kind of improvisation that, in spite of its experimental edge, feels decidedly human.” Her second solo album, I grow accustomed to the dark, will be released on Outside Time in March 2026.

Notable performances have taken place at ISSUE Project Room, Lampo, Emanuel Vigeland Museum, Frequency Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, Vesterheim Museum, The Stone, Detroit Institute of Arts, Greenwood Cemetery Catacombs, and Duluth-stämman Nordic Music Festival. Warpeha has collaborated with artists including Bill Frisell, Eyvind Kang, Shahzad Ismaily, Henry Birdsey, Leila Bordreuil, Elori Saxl, Kaïa Kater, Anne Hytta, and Unni Løvlid. Ongoing creative projects include duos with percussionist Carlo Costa, bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause, and instrument-builder Webb Crawford, as well as a string trio with improvisers Biliana Voutchkova and Isidora Edwards.

She has been an artist in residence at ISSUE Project Room and the Anderson Center, and her work has also been supported by the US-Norway Fulbright Foundation, Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. She holds degrees in Nordic folk music and jazz & contemporary music from the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo and The New School in New York.

LINKS

Website: www.zoshawarpeha.com

Bandcamp: www.zosha.bandcamp.com

Instagram: @zoshazosha / www.instagram.com/zoshazosha

SKÚLI SVERRISSON has built a unique international career as a composer, instrumentalist, and creative collaborator with a very broad spectrum of international artists. Skúli was active in the downtown music scene of New York, where he collaborated with Ben Monder, Pachora, among others. During this period, he recorded and toured worldwide with the legendary guitarist Alan Holdsworth and was a member of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s band. Skúli worked closely with artist Laurie Anderson for over a decade as a creative collaborator, performer, and producer. He was the music director of Life on a String, which won Anderson a Grammy for the best-sounding record of the year. Skúli has played with free jazz legends such as Wadada Leo Smith and Derek Bailey, performed with revolutionaries like Lou Reed, Jon Hassell, David Sylvian, and Arto Lindsay, and collaborated with new music composers and performers such as Anthony Burr, Sidsel Endresen, and Bára Gísladóttir.

JOHN McCOWEN's musical life has become an obsession with discovering a polyphonic language on a historically monophonic instrument - the clarinet. This has led him to a unique acoustic vocabulary that is similar to a shifting soundscape of electronic feedback. John's multiphonic approach is based in drones, difference tones, and beating harmonics as a means to showcase the compositional potential within a single, acoustic sound source. His work has been described by The New Yorker (Steve Smith) as “the sonic equivalent of microscopic life viewed on a slide” and “an astonishing demonstration of pure sound and human will” by The Wire (Phil Freeman). John has collaborated extensively with the composer and instrumentalist, Roscoe Mitchell. He has orchestrated, arranged, and transcribed Mitchell’s works for orchestras and other ensembles as well as performing as a duo of bass saxophone and contrabass clarinet.

He has released albums with International Anthem, Edition Wandelweiser, Black Truffle, GRM/Shelter Press, Hallow Ground, and others. He has collaborated with artists such as Roscoe

Mitchell, Arto Lindsay, Skúli Sverrisson, Lucy Railton, Weston Olencki, Marja Ahti, and others. John has been artist-in-residence at Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA-2024),

ISSUE Project Room (Brooklyn, NY-2020), & Lijiang Studio (Yunnan, China-2017,2019). He currently resides in Reykjavík, Iceland where he teaches Music Improvisation at the Iceland

University of the Arts and is the artistic director of the experimental arts space, Mengi.