Playing is an improvisational ensemble based in Chicago, performing within the constructs of games and rules.
Often raucous, often joyful, often falling apart, Playing is many things, but is rarely the same twice.
Jordan Knecht and Chaz Prymek are playing — mediating misuse, Improvising with iteration, goofing, bopping, clanking, clanging, plinking, crinkling, ringing, mangling,
https://playing.bandcamp.com/album/lumps-mixtape
MASSMOCA_Bang On A Can rehearsals and participants including portraits of David Lang, Ken Thomson, Philippa Thompson, opening band for The Pretender, taken on 7.26.19
Credit: Stephanie Berger.
Will Yager is a bassist/improviser committed to experimental music, improvisation, and collaborating with living creative musicians in the creation of new solo and chamber repertoire for the double bass. He has worked directly with composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, Miya Masaoka, Jean-François Charles, Mary Jane Leach, Sivan Cohen Elias, and Scott Wollschleger among others. He is a founding member of the soprano/double bass duo LIGAMENT and improvising trio Wombat. Recent appearances include performances at Omaha Under the Radar, Experimental Sound Studio’s Quarantine Concerts, Nief-Norf Virtual Marathon, Oh My Ears Festival, Big Ears Festival, Feed Me Weird Things, New Music on the Point, Cortona Sessions for New Music, and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, where he was a Robert Black Double Bass Fellow. Yager has multiple recordings available on the Bandcamp platform, including irreducibility, a recording of new works for solo double bass.
As members of LIGAMENT, Anika Kildegaard and Will Yager have been Ensemble Fellows at New Music on the Point (Vermont) and the Cortona Sessions for New Music (Italy). LIGAMENT were also semifinalists in the SAVVY Chamber Music Competition at the University of South Carolina. Recent performances include the Kansas City Contemporary Music Festival, and the premiere of a new video version of their ongoing original project dontal for Cleveland Uncommon Sound’s Re:Sound 2021. Their performance of Lila Meretzky’s All Mute Things Speak Today is featured on the ScoreFollower Youtube channel. LIGAMENT is currently the ensemble-in-residence for District New Music Coalition’s summer residency program. Wombat, along with Justin Comer and Carlos Cotallo Solares, is an improvising trio dedicated to experimental and intermedia performance. Wombat has performed at the Oh My Ears Festival (Phoenix, AZ), MOXsonic Experimental Electronic Music festival, and the University of Iowa Center for New Music. Wombat has multiple self-produced recordings available on Bandcamp.
