2024 ARTISTS
Scroll down to read about this season’s artists!
Majel Connery
Majel Connery is an unclassifiable artist who rarely says no to anything. Her music ranges from the guttural to the sublime, appearing in punk rock clubs at night and by day at major destinations from The Kennedy Center to The Kitchen.
A vocalist and composer, Connery combines Classical influences with electronic mentality. Her singing has been called “superb” by the New York Times and her composition “thoroughly Schubertian” by the Wall Street Journal.
Connery is the host and producer of A Music of Their Own, an interview podcast on women in music (CapRadio/NPR). Her interest in radio began in 2019 after creating music for five episodes of Radiolab’s “Gonads” series (available on Bandcamp).
As a composer, her work includes “The Rivers are Our Brothers," an environmental song cycle currently on tour with Grammy-winning choir Chanticleer. She has also released multiple albums with composer-collective Oracle Hysterical, and the double EP Bear Mountain/Childworld with her art-rock duo Sky Creature.
In academia, Connery has held a variety of artist residencies and professorships at institutions including Princeton, Stanford, the University of Chicago, Wellesley College, and the University of California Berkeley. From 2007-2018, she co-founded and ran the experimental opera company, Opera Cabal, a think tank for the conjunction of creative and academic work on opera. Opera Cabal’s production of ATTHIS at The Kitchen was called “mesmerizing” by the New York Times.
Connery holds an M.A/Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and musicology from the University of Chicago and an A.B. in music from Princeton University. She lives part-time in Catskill, NY, part-time in Rockaway Beach, NY and the rest of the time in the world at large.
Anju Madhok
Anju is a singer, songwriter, producer, and performer shaped by the people and places in Minnesota and Massachusetts. Their music conjures imaginary lovers, scents of citrus, and visions of hairy brown skin under the sun.
Anju’s work has been highlighted by NPR’s All Songs Considered, Rolling Stone India, and Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current. They were commissioned by South Asian American Digital Archive to create original work for a sound tour of Philadelphia.
Anju recently completed their Zest Fest East Coast Tour this past February, a summoning spell for all things warm, bright, and juicy to help us stay the course of Winter, performing at venues including The Burren in Boston, Rockwood Music Hall in NYC, and 12 Gates Arts in Philadelphia. Anju is currently teaching piano, violin, and guitar to young musicians and working on their debut full-length album. You can connect and follow their journey @anjutunes on social media and www.anjutunes.com
Kimaya Diggs
Musician Kimaya Diggs navigates her world with stories. Penning her first one-woman show as a little kid, she’s published fiction, earned a Callaloo fellowship for poetry, and works days as a speechwriter—not to mention the accolades her songwriting’s earned, including a New England Music Awards nod, gigs at legendary folk haunts like Club Passim, and appearances at Green River Festival, Rubblebucket’s Dream Picnic, and the Emily Dickinson festival.
“I’ve always thought of my writing and music as one thing—connective storytelling,” Diggs explains. But while her mother was sick with a twelve-year illness, Diggs felt unable to share the whole truth. Her first LP, 2018’s Breastfed, was largely about her mom, but it wasn’t until her passing that Diggs was free to use songwriting to process. “Sharing my grieving experience has resonated with people; they’re excited to hear something that’s not all good,” notes Diggs. To help cope, Diggs and her husband Jacob Rosazza—also her musical collaborator—rescued an ex-racing dog, Quincy. Though they shared only two years together, caring for the traumatized animal helped Diggs find purpose. “Having him was challenging, but at the same time, he’s why we survived the first year without my mom,” offers Diggs. “It was special to get to love a creature so much—because of, in spite of, and in addition to the challenges he came with.” Losing Quincy gave her greater insight on heartache, so she named her newest album after him.
Born and raised in Western Massachusetts, Diggs boasted an expansive musical résumé when she was just a teen. She grew up playing piano and cello, and sang in a trio with her siblings, the Diggs Sisters. Only a high schooler, she learned a range of vocal techniques—choral singing, musical theater, and improvisation among them. “Western Mass has given me a lot of the primary figures in my life who put me on this path—people who pushed me out of my comfort zone,” acknowledges Diggs. After touring internationally with polyphonic singing group Northern Harmony, Diggs left Massachusetts to study opera in Philadelphia. When she moved home in 2015, she began performing her own songs on guitar, falling in with a diverse crew of musicians: contemporary folk artist Wallace Field, psychedelic electropoppers Sun Parade, and LuxDeluxe, an eccentric, beloved rock outfit featuring Rosazza, who helped to record Breastfed.
Friction Quartet
Friction Quartet, lauded for performances described as "terribly beautiful" (San Francisco Classical Voice), "stunningly passionate" (Calgary Herald), and "exquisitely skilled" (ZealNYC), is dedicated to modernizing the chamber music experience and expanding the string quartet repertoire. The quartet achieves its mission by commissioning cutting-edge composers, curating imaginative concert programs, collaborating with diverse artists, and engaging in interactive educational outreach.
Friction made their debut at Carnegie Hall in 2016 as participants in the Kronos Quartet Fifty for the Future Workshop. They returned in March of 2018 to perform George Crumb’s Black Angels as part of “The 60’s” festival and their performance was described as, “one of the truest and most moving things I’ve ever heard or seen.” (Zeal NYC)
Since forming in 2011, Friction has commissioned 47 works for string quartet and given world premiere performances of more than 100 works. They developed the Friction Commissioning Initiative in 2017 as a way to work together with their audience to fund specific commissions. The money raised to date has helped Friction commission a total of 12 new works, including six by young composers between the ages 16 and 21. They were awarded a 2019 Intermusic SF Musical Grant to develop a participatory educational program with composer Danny Clay that is designed to be accessible and sensory-friendly. Friction’s past grants include a grant from Chamber Music America that was used to commission a piano quintet from Andy Akiho, which debuted in November 2016, as well as project grants from Intermusic SF and Zellerbach Family Foundation supporting special projects involving the performance of commissioned works.
While Friction has garnered international attention as commissioners and interpreters of new music, they are also devoted to performing masterworks of the string quartet repertoire at the highest level. They won Second Prize in the 2016 Schoenfeld Competition, they were quarter-finalists in the 2015 Fischoff Competition and placed second at the 2015 Frances Walton Competition
Friction has held residencies at the New Music for Strings Festival in Denmark, Interlochen Arts Camp, Lunenburg Academy of Music in Nova Scotia, Napa Valley Performing Arts Center, Old First Concerts, San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, and was the first ensemble in residence at the Center for New Music.
Friction Quartet is dedicated to building new audiences for contemporary music through interactive musical enrichment programs. They participated for three consecutive years in the San Francisco Symphony’s Adventures in Music program, visiting over 60 public schools annually. They are Ensemble Partners with Young Composers & Improvisors Workshop, workshopping and premiering new works written by young composers in the Bay Area. They have also given presentations at Oakland public schools through KDFC’s Playground Pop Up program. In collaboration with Meridian Hill Pictures, they created a short documentary, titled Friction, that profiles their early educational outreach in Washington DC’s Mundo Verde Public Charter School. Their presentations regularly utilize Doug’s adventurous arrangements of pop songs alongside excerpts from standard string quartet repertoire to help young audiences build connections to musical concepts.
Friction appears on recordings with National Sawdust Tracks, Innova Records, Albany Records, Pinna Records, and many independent releases. They released their full-length debut album, resolve, in 2018 through Bandcamp. Friction has appeared on radio stations such as NPR, KALW, KING-FM, and KUT, among others.
Friction’s video of the second movement of First Quartet by John Adams was named the #2 video of the year in 2015 by Second Inversion. John Adams shared this video on his own homepage and called it “spectacular.” Their video for Andy Akiho’s In/ Exchange, featuring Friction and Akiho, was also chosen by Second Inversion for their Top 5 videos of 2016. The video was also featured on American Public Media’s Performance Today.
Friction Quartet takes risks to enlarge the audience’s understanding of what a string quartet can be using arrangements of pop music, digital processing, percussion, amplification, movement, and additional media. Their multimedia and interdisciplinary projects have received critical acclaim. In 2017 they produced Spaced Out, an evening-length suite of music about the cosmos that utilizes surround sound electronics and includes a Friction Commission written by Jon Kulpa. The San Francisco Classical Voice called it “accessible, yet surreal.” No matter where their musical exploration takes them, they never lose sight of the string quartet’s essence– the timeless and endlessly nuanced interaction of four analog voices.
Artists of the
Songweaver Sessions
Indë
Indë (they/he) is a prolific artist creating multimedia compositions to combat the lynching, disenfranchisement, and misrepresentation of queer people of color. Their work as an artist and educator are rooted in a love of creative problem-solving and an uncompromising commitment to advancing equity and media literacy. A skilled composer and producer, Indë's songwriting practice took shape at the Berklee College of Music, and over the past six years their repertoire has grown to include four studio albums, all colored by their distinct bass-baritone vocals and progressive approach to harmony.
Indë was born and raised on Norwottuck land (Northampton) to Afro-Caribbean American heritage, and their recent work redresses the absence of queer BIPoC in this white-dominated area who might have served as role models in their youth. Their debut solo show, Mirror, Mirror: I'm My Own Role Model, explores this subject through painting, sculpture, recorded music, and live performance. The installation will open in September 2024 at the 50 Arrow Gallery in Easthampton, and Indë is thrilled to present the soundtrack of Mirror, Mirror in the ACF Songweaver Series! artbyinde.com ~ @artbyinde
Wylder Ayres
Wylder Ayres calls what they write "folk journalism." Like a magpie sitting on a shimmering nest of 31 years of stories, the cinematic reel of Americana-inspired sounds leads the listener through an archive of familial memory, the high lonesome rasp of loves lost and won, and an unshakable political ethos.