In her first Chicago appearance, Clara de Asís collaborates with Aperiodic to model the aesthetic virtues of nonintervention

Clara de Asís is a Spanish-born, France-based multi-instrumentalist and sound artist who uses played and collected sounds as prompts to focus the power of the listener’s attention on the potentialities of the sound fields around them. The crackle of static and the decaying reverberations of struck metal on her new collaboration with Ryoko Akama, Sisbiosis (Erstwhile), are so involved that the presence of any traditional instrument would feel like a gauche intrusion. That’s not to say Asís doesn’t use such instruments, though—she employs them in her own performances as well as in her compositions for other players. On her 2018 solo album, Do Nothing (Another Timbre), the dissonant dialogue between her widely spaced guitar harmonics and a tolling Tibetan singing bowl generates enormous tension. And on Without (Elsewhere, 2018), performed by violinist Erik Carlson and percussionist Greg Stuart, discrete plucks and abrasions highlight the vast spaces that surround them. For her first Chicago appearance, de Asís will share the bill with local experimental ensemble Aperiodic. She will perform a solo piece for electronics and percussion, and then Aperiodic will play two of her pieces on a program that also presents works by Argentine composer Gabriela Areal. De Asís will spend the week following the concert collaborating with local sound artist Veronica Anne Salinas in a residency organized by the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain and Experimental Sound Studio.

Aperiodic, Clara de Asís Aperiodic performs music by Clara de Asís and Gabriela Areal; de Asís opens with a solo set. 8 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208, all ages

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