The experience of the pandemic has demonstrated that strength lies in unity. This belief refers to the idea behind the exhibition and defines the concept of the concert. The crisis in the music industry also convinced musicians of the need to stick together, that it’s important not to be afraid to interact with one another.
The musical curator of the concert is the Institute of Music Initiatives. Each pair of musicians received a small grant to implement their joint ideas.
Kedr Livanskiy + Ushko
Kedr Livanskiy is a resident of the New York label 2MR and Moscow’s GOST ZVUK. Before the pandemic, Yana Kedrina toured the United States extensively, while also performing at a number of major international festivals.
Dasha Ushko received recognition for her 2020 album Silver Hits. She collaborates with the electronic producer Moa Pillar, releasing music on his label, ПИР. Each of Dasha’s on-stage appearances is a performance: she works with make-up, costumes, and visual and sound design.
Inturist + istochnik
Evgeny Gorbunov is a Moscow-based musician and producer, a member of the band ГШ, who also runs a solo project under the alias Inturist. The music of Inturist is a mix of weird pop, jazz, one-man theater, and lots of improvisation. Gorbunov’s artistic approach is based on intuition and spontaneous creative solutions.
Istochnik is a young indie band from Moscow. Members Andrey Tarasov and Lyoka Iordanyan began recording and releasing music at school. Over the past few years, the band has gone from an emo rock trio to a pop group: the musicians got interested in soul and jazz, paving the way for experiments with arrangements and structures. Their album POP Trip was one of the most notable releases of 2020.
Ilya Baramia (AIGEL) + Koyil
Ilya Baramia’s music career began in the 1990s, when he and Alexander Zaitsev co-founded the electronic duo Elochnye Igrushki (Christmas Toys). Later, the musicians went on to perform together with Kirill Ivanov and his indie band СБПЧ. Today, Ilya produces and writes music for the duo AIGEL.
Leva Zhitsky is a DJ and author of the project Koyil. The artist’s debut album Healing Cycles, inspired by New Age and ethnic music, was released on the DIG record store’s label.
CEO of Everything + The RIG
Andrey Lee, known as Obgon and as a former member of the band Interchain, is currently releasing tracks under the alias CEO of Everything. As part of the project, he mocks corporate culture, office newspeak, and the phenomenon of business coaching.
The RIG is an avant-jazz quartet brought together by the indefatigable Moscow saxophonist Sergey Khramtsevich, who is an improviser, a resident of the label ТОПОТ, and a musician in the bands ГШ and Inturist. The quartet features Alina Petrova from the Kymatic ensemble of new academic music, free jazz drummer Oksana Grigorieva, and double bass player Maxim Shutikov.
Anna Fobia
Artist Anna Fobia, who featured in the exhibition Assuming Distance: Speculations, Fakes, and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene, produced for the concert a new work called Scenery. Building on her series Ultraviolence, which was shown in the exhibition, this work is also an experiment in working with space.
Ultraviolence brings together projects made using a particular method. Deconstructing the design of Russian ruble banknotes, Anna Fobia reassembles them into collages that explore the symbolic role of money as a measure of value. In Scenery, she transfers this imagery onto debris netting—a material used to disguise construction sites that is common in the urban space—and looks at how the architecture of the city changes.
All income from ticket sales will go to Garage Endowment Fund.