Back to All Events

OPTION: Charmaine Lee with Sam Pluta

  • ESS 5925 North Ravenswood Avenue Chicago, IL, 60660 United States (map)

CHARMAINE LEE is an improvising vocalist from Sydney, Australia. Her work favors a uniquely personal approach to vocal expression, concerned with spontaneity, playfulness, and risk taking. She has performed with leading improvisers Joe Morris, Nate Wooley, and Tyshawn Sorey, and has collaborated with inspiring contemporaries such as Lester St. Louis, Zach Rowden, and Leila Bordreuil. Among the prominent spaces she has performed in are The Stone, The Met Breuer (for Vijay Iyer’s residency Relation) and the Museum of Fine Arts–Boston. Charmaine currently resides in New York.

SAM PLUTA is a composer and electronics performer whose work explores the intersections between instrumental forces, reactive computerized sound worlds, traditionally notated scores, improvisation, audio-visuals, psycho-acoustic phenomena, and installation-like soundscapes. Since 2009, Sam has served as Technical Director and composing member of Wet Ink Ensemble. He has also received commissions and written music for groups like Yarn/Wire, Ensemble Dal Niente, International Contemporary Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, Mantra Percussion, Spektral Quartet, TAK, and the New York Philharmonic. Laptop improvisation is a core part of Pluta’s artistic practice. Performing on his custom software instrument, the Live Modular Instrument, he has toured internationally with Rocket Science, the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, and the Peter Evans Quintet. Sam appears as a composer and performer on over twenty albums of new music and jazz, many of which are released on his label, Carrier Records. He is currently Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Chicago, where he teaches composition and directs the CHIME Studio.