Novel Stages Presents:

ROOMFUL OF TEETH

Saturday, November 18th, 2023 / Doors 6pm / Show 8pm

Roomful of Teeth is a Grammy® winning vocal ensemble dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice. By engaging collaboratively with artists, thinkers, and community leaders from around the world, the group seeks to uplift and amplify voices old and new while creating and performing meaningful and adventurous music. Dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice, Roomful of Teeth is redefining classical vocal music. As The New York Times puts it: ‘Because the group writes or commissions almost all of its pieces, it can create vocal effects that most singers would never attempt.’

Founded in 2009 by Brad Wells, the band was incubated at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts, where members studied with some of the world’s top performers and teachers and commissioned composers who were known for breaking molds. They have learned that the boundaries of the human voice are never what they seem, that rules can be bent, and broken, and perhaps they should be.

“Roomful of Teeth is revolutionizing choral music…the group produces music that’s both primal and sophisticated, ancient and startlingly modern.”

—The New Yorker

Novel Stages Presents:

SEN MORIMOTO

WITH KINFU

Friday, November 10th, 2023 / Doors 6pm / Show 8pm

Chicago artist Sen Morimoto, who’s coming off a career-defining Pitchfork Fest performance and who announced Diagnosis, his third LP for November 3rd last month, is back with “Bad State,” the next track from it. The song balances brightly lit jazz-pop with big, menacing rock guitars and comes with a visualizer filmed by Sen’s brother, the Japan-based filmmaker Yuya Morimoto. Of the track, Sen notes of the song and video. 

"Bad State" is about learning to ask for help and using real human connection to escape the shame and numbness that comes from constant forward momentum and our self worth being so deeply tied to productivity under the logic of capitalism. 

The 13-track-long effort marks a fundamental shift both sonically and thematically. Exploring a wide range of genres and musical influences— alternative pop, dark rock, bright jazzy-infused pop, glistening orchestral soundscapes, and even subdued singer-songwriter sounds are detectable within the musical revelation that is Diagnosis. The topical shift as well brings exploration of childhood, American identity, nostalgia, and the insidious nature of late-stage capitalism— a notable change from his previous introspective works such as his 2018 debut Cannonball! and the 2021 self-titled follow-up. 

Novel Stages Presents:

CRAIG TABORN

Tuesday, October 24th, 2023 / Doors 6pm / Show 8pm

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Craig Taborn has been performing piano and electronic music in the jazz, improvisational, and creative music scene for over twenty five years. He has experience composing for and performing in a wide variety of situations including jazz, new music, electronic, rock, noise and avant garde contexts.

Taborn has played and recorded with many luminaries in the fields of jazz, improvised, new music and electronic music including Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Lester Bowie, Dave Holland, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Evan Parker, Steve Coleman, David Torn, Chris Potter, William Parker, Vijay Iyer, Kris Davis, Nicole Mitchell, Susie Ibarra, Ikue Mori, Carl Craig, Dave Douglas, Meat Beat Manifesto, Dan Weiss, Chris Lightcap, Gerald Cleaver, and Rudresh Manhathappa.

Novel Stages Presents:

MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND

WITH STEPHEN STEINBRINK

Friday, October 20th, 2023 / Doors 6pm / Show 8pmShara Nova shared selections from her baroque chamber p'opera “You Us We All” as part Novel Stages’ digital festival in May of 2020 - and we are thrilled to bring her to the Icehouse stage in person for a remarkable evening of song and storytelling.

Shara Nova, a classically trained vocalist and self-taught multi-instrumentalist, records dazzling, shapeshifting music as My Brightest Diamond, her chamber pop band assembled in 2006. With each song written and album released, she has resisted the conventions of genre, blending elements of rock, art pop, and chamber music into a sound totally her own. 

Shara always knew she wanted to be a musician. She grew up in a family of traveling evangelicals, and together they crisscrossed the country, her father leading church choirs and her mother playing organ. When Shara was a teenager, they settled in a city outside Detroit. It was the early '90s, and hip-hop and soul were on the airwaves. Shara listened to everything from Run DMC to Stevie Wonder to Anita Baker and K C & the Sunshine Band. After studying classical voice at The University of North Texas, she moved to New York City, where she formed My Brightest Diamond, releasing her critically acclaimed debut album, Bring Me The Workhorse. To date, My Brightest Diamond has released five groundbreaking albums, each with a different musical landscape, yet always centered around Shara's voice. 

Nova recently appeared as both co-composer and featured singer on Nonesuch/ New Amsterdam Records' The Blue Hour with the string orchestra A Far Cry and co-composers Rachel Grimes, Angelica Negron, Sarah Kirkland Snider and Caroline Shaw. The album received notable acclaim upon its release and was included in NPR's Top 10 Albums of 2022. 

She is currently recording new My Brightest Diamond material for release in 2023. She has lived in Detroit since 2008. 

My Brightest Diamond will be joined this evening by Stephen Steinbrink. Stephen Steinbrink was born in 1988 in a non-descript stucco hospital franchise adjacent to a Circle K in the ultra-conservative Phoenix suburb of Mesa, AZ. He grew up and learned to play guitar to deal. The majority of his teens and twenties were spent living an improvised and experimental existence, being nowhere and recording incessantly. His 8 LPs of pop songs have been released in Japan, Europe & North America, and has performed in dozens of countries around the world. As a session player, he has collaborated with Girlpool, Dear Nora, Broken Water, AJJ, Flying Circles, Ever Ending Kicks and LAKE. He currently lives and works in Oakland, CA.

“Recalls the magic pop purity of Arthur Russell… its minimalism manages to feel enlightened and transformative.” -Pitchfork

“Lushly arranged pop songs, the listener can tie and untie Steinbrink’s vivid and unrelated images into something meaningful” -NPR

“Melodic and self-assured. Steinbrink delivers his knotted lyricism with a smooth lilt.” -Stereogum

Novel Stages Presents:

RAFIQ BHATIA

Wednesday, October 4th, 2023 / Doors 6pm / Show 8pm

Join Rafiq Bhatia for a special evening at Icehouse in Minneapolis, MN sharing new sounds inspired by environmental form. He will be joined by trumpeter Riley Mulherkar, and Son Lux bandmate Ian Chang on acoustic and electronic percussion.

The New York Times proclaims "Rafiq Bhatia is writing his own musical language," describing him as "a guitarist who refuses to be pinned to one genre, culture or instrument." "His transient approach, combined with his obsession of assiduously studying the past in order to break cleanly from it, makes him one of the most intriguing figures in music today."

Bhatia's 2018 album Breaking English (Anti- Records) finds a visceral common ground between ecstatic avant-jazz, mournful soul, tangled strings and building-shaking electronics, resulting in a "stunningly-focused new sound" (Chicago Reader) that “resemble[s] science fiction on a blockbuster scale” (Washington Post). His 2020 EP, Standards Vol. 1 (Anti-) renders repertoire from the American songbook "completely deconstructed, infused with brand new textures and electronic effects, dreamlike and beautiful" (BBC).

Since 2014, Bhatia has been a member of the trio Son Lux; together, they have released several critically-acclaimed albums and given hundreds of performances internationally. A voracious collaborator, Bhatia has also worked with a multitude of artists across generations and musical communities, including Arooj Aftab, Holland Andrews, Hanna Benn, Ian Chang, Sam Dew, Dave Douglas, Marcus Gilmore, Mary Halvorson, Billy Hart, Shahzad Ismaily, Vijay Iyer, Kassa Overall, Kronos Quartet, Okkyung Lee, Nina Moffitt, Qasim Naqvi, Kassa Overall, Chris Pattishall, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Alex Somers, Moses Sumney, Anjna Swaminathan, Rajna Swaminathan, and David Virelles.

"Rafiq Bhatia has a gift for turning expectations inside out. In his hands, the guitar sounds less like a melodic tool of rock bands and more like a mythical beast, coaxing out growls and roars and gurgling shrieks instead of notes.” — NPR

"He treats his guitar, synthesizers, drum machines, and electronic effects as architectural elements — sound becomes contour; music becomes something to step into rather than merely follow.” — The New York Times

"[Bhatia's] music manages to marry the busyness and vibrancy of jazz and the sparseness and sparkle of electronic music.” — BBC

Novel Stages Presents:

KASSA OVERALL

WITH XINA

Thursday, September 28th, 2023 / Doors 6pm / Show 8pm

Kassa Overall is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap in unmapped directions. He previously released four critically acclaimed projects: I THINK I’M GOOD, Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz, Shades of Flu and Shades of Flu 2.

On ANIMALS, his Warp Records debut, Kassa pushes his kaleidoscopic, subversive vision further. He layers Roland 808s against avant-garde drumming in the vein of his mentors Elvin Jones and Billy Hart, the latter of whom he studied with at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Virtuoso musos appear alongside rap poets, including Danny Brown, Wiki, Lil B, and Shabazz Palaces. Top-flight jazz improvisation weaves in and out of orchestral string arrangements by Jherek Bischoff. The album’s diverse, all-star roster of collaborators includes several of his close friends, like vocalists Nick Hakim, Laura Mvula, Francis and the Lights, and jazz stars like Theo Croker and Vijay Iyer.

ANIMALS pushes Kassa’s message further too, the title a loaded metaphor for the paradoxes of his life as an entertainer and as a black man in America. ANIMALS is the sound of an artist aware of the cost of embodying one’s natural self in the public eye, a deep reckoning with the two-sided truth that to perform one’s freedom for an audience can mean succumbing to life inside a cage.

XINA (rhymes with China) is a 23-year-old, multi-disciplinary artist based in the Twin Cities. If you ask what she does, she'll simply say "arts and crafts," an umbrella term for her expansive roles as a singer/songwriter, dancer, choreographer, producer, director, designer, and entertainer. With both hands on every aspect of the process, she creates genre-bending music with intensity and vulnerability balanced with a sophisticated mystique. By exercising her intuitive finesse across a growing body of work and into rich, inventive live performances, XINA is proving impossible to ignore.