Natacha Diels’ work blends choreographed movement, video animation, instrumental practice, and cynical play to construct worlds that are equal parts wonder and unease. Rooted in collage, collaboration, and the transformation of life into ritual, her compositions forge a poetic logic all their own. Critics have described her music as “brilliant, bananas in the best sense, elegant, eloquent, and loopy” (Steve Smith Night After Night); “a tour de force of reckless imagination and confident craft” (Musical America); “a fairy tale for a fractured world” (Music We Care About), and “the liveliest music of the evening” (LA Review of Books).
Her work has also been performed by JACK Quartet, who came to BMCM+AC in 2021.
Cleek Schrey is a fiddler, improviser, and composer from Virginia. He plays traditional music from Appalachia and Ireland and makes experimental work using composition, film, and field recordings. His work is preoccupied with the physical phenomena of vibrating strings and the histories and aesthetics of recording technologies. He collaborates with experimental composers such as David Behrman and Alvin Lucier and the downtown improviser Shelley Hirsch. Solo appearances include the Big Ears Festival (Knoxville), SuperSense Festival of the Ecstatic (AUS), and the Kilkenny Arts Festival (IE). He was a 2021-2022 Jerome Foundation Artist in Residence at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn. The journal Sound Post has noted that Cleek “possesses a rare combination of traits: deep respect for traditional music and the people who make it, and an unbounded curiosity about new directions for sound.” He is currently pursuing a Masters in Music Composition at Wesleyan University.