Natural Information Society
Past event
- Price
- $25*
- Genre
- Music
- Season
- Fall 2023
- DATE
- SEP 16
- TIME
- SAT, 8:30 PM
- RUNTIME
- Approx. 75 minutes, no intermission
- COUNTRY
- USA
- Program
- Download Program Notes (PDF)
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About
Natural Information Society is led by the acclaimed composer and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams, alongside artist Lisa Alvarado, who returns to REDCAT following her recent exhibition, Pulse Meridian Foliation. Since first developing the Natural Information Society in 2010, Abrams has been gradually expanding the group’s conceptual underpinnings, its musical references, and the sheer number of the group’s members. Their music is, in a sense, an expansive form of minimalism, based in repeated and overlaid rhythmic patterns, ostinatos, and modalities. Their most recent album, Since Time Is Gravity, was released on Eremite Records in April. Natural Information Society will perform as a quartet with Joshua Abrams (guimbri, composition), Lisa Alvarado (harmonium, setting), Mikel Patrick Avery (drums), and Jason Stein (bass clarinet).
… layered music that’s always heading somewhere, sometimes spare and sometimes complex and shimmering.
—
Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
about the artists
Natural Information Society
Natural Information Society (NIS) is a band led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams. The group’s music is grounded in Abrams’ hypnotic and interwoven writing. Performing with Lisa Alvarado’s free hanging paintings as mobile sets, NIS creates environments at once meditative and propulsive. NIS navigates forms that emphasize simultaneous differences, rhythm, and collective listening. The group has released seven records, including Since Time Is Gravity, for Eremite Records.
NIS tours as a quartet with Abrams on guimbri, Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, and Jason Stein on bass clarinet, occasionally appearing in larger formations and with guests.
Outside of NIS, Abrams has played and recorded with a broad range of artists, including Fred Anderson, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Nicole Mitchell, and The Roots. He has composed scores to 10 feature films, including the Oscar-nominated Abacus: Small Enough to Jail and recently the 30 for 30 series The Luckiest Guy in the World. Abrams was a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts 2018 Grants to Artists award.
