Saturday 6 June 2026, 7.30pm
Finding equilibrium in an ever evolving practice of improvisation and collective composition, the trio of Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart traverse a new sonic space in the spirit of play and intuitive experimentation. Three voices and three string instruments – viola, cello, and violin, respectively – create an organic, intertwined sound that can be both singular and astonishingly multitudinous. The trio work in a unique combination of completely free improvisation and careful production, using multiple tape machines and effects to re-imagine improvised material into meticulously crafted compositions.
Whitney Johnson is an artist using sound to understand bodies and minds. Based in Chicago, she composes, performs, and installs multi-channel sound with viola, sine waves, Max/MSP, organ, synthesizers, vocalization, tape looping, and field recording. As artist-in-residence at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm and Inkonst in Malmö, Sweden, she composed sine waves, marimba, viola, ARP Odyssey synthesizer, and Halldorophone into a multi-channel performance-installation and her latest LP, Hav (2024, Drag City). As Matchess, the Stena cassette (2024, Drag City) embodies an alter ego to join the cult of Hermaphroditus in Cypriot and Greek antiquity. Recent performance-installations FIAT (2023-2025, Indexical, Roulette Intermedium, Forecast Platform Berlin), The Tuning of the Elements (2023, Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago), Death in Trafo (or, The Crater) (2023, Logan Center for the Arts), and Huizkol (2020, Lampo) consider the possibility of brainwave entrainment, an alternative healing technique using binaural beats to induce relaxed or energized mental states. These works offer audiences the opportunity to explore their own skepticism and belief in the effects of sound on bodies and minds. In tandem with her sound practice, she received her doctorate in the sociology of sound from the University of Chicago in 2018. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship on sound and technology in the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala Universitet in 2022 and an artist research residency on gender-based canonization at Q-O2 Brussels in 2025. She is currently Assistant Professor of Art and Technology/Sound Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Lia Kohl is a composer and sound artist based in Chicago. Trained as a cellist, she also incorporates synthesizers, field recordings, toy instruments and radios into her work, searching for a balance between virtuosity and curiosity. She gravitates towards sound practices which reveal and speak to their time and place: field recording, improvisation, radio broadcast and transmission. She often focuses on mundane or pedestrian sounds – sounds which often go unnoticed or under-documented, searching for the profound, unknown, and beautiful in everyday life.
She performs as a soloist, a collaborator and composes works for ensembles. She has presented work and performed at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Renaissance Society, Union Station Chicago, Eckhart Park Pool, and Big Ears Festival. She has created sound installations for Experimental Sound Studios' Audible Gallery and Roman
Susan Art Foundation. She has been a resident artist at ACRE, Vashon Artist Residency, High Concept Labs, dfbrl8r Performance Art Gallery, Mana Contemporary, Stanford University, and Mills College and a Transmission Art Fellow at Wave Farm. An active recording artist, she has arranged strings and recorded with Makaya McCraven, Circuit des Yeux, claire rousay, and Steve Hauschildt, among others.
Her work has been featured in Pitchfork, The Quietus, The Chicago Tribune , The Wire Magazine, and Downbeat Magazine, and on NPR, NTS Radio, Kunstradio, BBC Radio 6 Music, Dublab, and WFMU. Recent releases include The Ceiling Reposes on American Dreams Records and Normal Sounds, on Moon Glyph. She tours nationally and internationally.
Macie Stewart is a musician and multi-disciplinary artist based in Chicago, IL. Heralded for their versatility, Stewart works with piano, violin, guitar, voice, and synthesizers, effortlessly traversing styles and scenes. Stewart is a distinguished, go-to collaborator who Pitchfork credits with “making some of the best tracks of the past five years transcendent.” As a composer, Stewart’s work continues to dissolve the boundaries between disciplines. Aside from her debut record, “Mouth Full of Glass” released in 2021 on Orindal Records and rereleased in 2022 on Full Time Hobby Records- Macie also composed a piece for Hubbard Street Dance’s film, “Half of Us,” alongside Sima Cunningham in 2021. That same year, they worked with Sima Cunningham and Alex Grelle to produce a performance piece paying homage to Kate Bush. In 2022, Stewart/Cunningham composed the score for a 50-piece orchestra premiering the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Before I Was.” And in 2023, choreographer Robyn Mineko Williams enlisted Stewart to create a sound installation for her dreamlike performance piece, Hisako House. Most recently, Stewart was invited to compose a site-specific piece for the ESS Florisonic Installation at Lincoln Park Conservatory. As part of the longest running sound installation in North America, their twenty-minute composition titled “The World Doubles in Size” played in the conservatory’s fern room from September through November of 2024.
