This February, the walls of Audium Theater will come alive with a chorus of empowerment, connection and loss as New Voices IV takes flight. Known as the world’s only “theater of sound,” Audium’s latest sound residency series highlights the emotionally rich and powerfully resonant works of three Bay Area artists: Briana Marela, Phillip Laurent, and Shanti Lalita.
The 2024/25 Residency Artists:
Shanti Lalita is an interdisciplinary artist who blends cello performance and spoken word poetry. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Shanti draws inspiration from their queer, non-binary Afro-Caribbean identity and cultural heritage. Shanti uses sound improvisation and poetry to explore identity and diaspora.
Shanti Lalita’s installation: Sense/less- Sense/less is a multimedia, multi-sensory experience confronting the societal relationship to marginalized bodies. Incorporating sounds of the rainforest, electric cello, spoken word, and improvisation, Lalita’s work delves into themes of xenophobia, resistance, and the artist’s struggles with food, body image, and visibility. Through structured improvisation and layered soundscapes, Sense/less challenges the audience to reflect on the standards in which we hold other bodies/beings, and to be present with ourselves.
Phillip Laurent is a Haitian-American artist living and working in San Francisco. He works in multiple disciplines including music, visual art, and dramaturgy. Laurent approaches his practice as an inquiry into ethnogenesis and a mediation between identity as asserted by oneself and that which is observed by others.
Phillip Laurent’s installation: Remote Viewing– Embracing music as an augmentation of the visual act, Remote Viewing uses site specific composition to explore themes of distance, perspective, and the qualities of place that are perceived between the senses. Featuring an ensemble of Zekarias Thompson (Alto Sax), Benjamin Rodgers (Cello), Herb Diamant (Flute, Soprano Sax, Bassoon) and Laurent himself on pipe organ and synthesizer, Remote Viewing considers how space can be “measured in possibilities.”
Briana Marela is a Peruvian American composer, vocalist, and performing artist based out of Oakland, CA. Her recent music centers the voice, embodied technology through gesture and enhanced objects. Her gestural and lyrical song performances draw from elements of both experimental electronic music and vocal-driven pop music.
Briana Marela’s installation: Qué Pena- A series of vignettes exploring Marela’s grief and identity in a vulnerable and intimate way, Qué Pena is crafted with a Buchla Music Easel synthesizer, live vocal performance, and text. The piece explores the complexity of grieving her father’s death in relation to her sorrow of not having gained fluency in Spanish. Her struggle and desire to continue learning a language, intertwined with her own shame and familial trauma, is laid bare. Qué Pena invites audiences to explore and attempt to heal parts of their own inner worlds that keep us from living to our full potential, by being witness to Marela’s own exploration.
