In “Confluences”, local musicians Michele Blu, Rachel Beetz, Melissa Foss, and Bonnie Lander come together to create an evening of experimental sounds and improvised music featuring an eclectic array of instruments including voice, singing bowls, flutes, electronics, handmade sculptural instruments, and more.
Come immerse yourself in some of the strangest, most beautiful, and evocative music you’ve ever heard, in this not-to-be-missed event!
This performance is part of the programming for the exhibition Kith & Kin: A Rewilding of Sound and Form, which is up from March 14 – April 18 at Creative Alliance.
Doors at 7
Performance starts at 730pm
Exhibition On View: March 14 – April 18, 2025
Exhibition Opening: March 14, 6-9pm
Instrument Demo: March 22 & 29, 7pm
Artist Talk: April 10, 6:30pm
“Confluences” Performance: April 17, 7pm
– ARTIST BIOS –
Rachel Beetz
As a composer and sound artist, Beetz considers sound as touch and is particularly influenced by natural and mechanical environments, the life of objects, interpersonal collaboration, and deep listening. Combining experimental field recordings and electronically modified flutes, her works examine community, environmentalism, and women’s work through sound, textiles, and lighting. Beetz’s sound projects have taken her from a sunless winter fjord to the mountains of Southern California, and to empty grain bins of the American Midwest. She held residencies in art houses in rural Iceland, the Women’s Center for Creative Work in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts in Los Angeles, the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, and the Walden Creative Musicians retreat. Her projects have been featured in concert halls and galleries in Australia, Iceland, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Michele Blu
Michele Blu is a visionary sound healer, musician, and multidimensional artist dedicated to using sound as a tool for healing, transformation, and ancestral connection. As a certified sound healer and co-founder of Kemetic Lullaby, an experimental call-and-response musical collective, Michele merges deep vibrational healing with improvisational soundscapes that bridge ancient traditions and contemporary expression.
Her work spans live performances, sound healing sessions, and commissioned compositions, including a 10-minute recorded piece for the Elizabeth Talford Scott exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art. She has performed at esteemed venues such as the Last Resort Artist Retreat, High Zero Festival, and Baltimore Center Stage and has collaborated with artists across disciplines, including immersive movement experiences, youth music programs, and international musical exchanges.
Michele’s approach integrates vocal toning, vibrational instruments, and intuitive sound healing techniques, creating sonic journeys that resonate deeply with both individual and collective energies. Whether performing, curating, or facilitating sound healing, her work remains rooted in the transformative power of frequency, breath, and ancestral wisdom.
Melissa Hyatt Foss
Melissa Hyatt Foss is an interdisciplinary artist who co-creates with an ever-growing collection of instruments that she hand-crafts with clay and other natural materials. Her evocative music is an intimate dialogue between the primordial, organic sound material conjured from her bespoke instruments: flutes, horns, trumpets, noise generators and whistling bottles, and electronic tools: granular processors, loopers, and electronic instruments.
Foss’ instruments, which are both visually and sonically compelling, recreate and reimagine Pre-Columbian sound artifacts of the Americas through the lens of personal narrative and regional mythology. Often described as ritualistic, her music moves from delicate, fragile sounds to expansive and commanding sonic spaces. Her work, whether in the form of a sculptural instrument, an improvised performance, or an electroacoustic composition, is an exploration of sound, its ability to affect consciousness, and its power to generate moments of collective effervescence.
Dr. Bonnie Lander
Dr. Bonnie Lander is a multifaceted professional musician whose career encompasses performance, composition, and improvisation. Immersed in the eclectic world of new and experimental music, she has performed with a wide selection of collaborators in improvised music, new opera, new chamber music, and composition.
Versatile, dramatic, with a “stratospheric legato” and a “signature ability to embody a seemingly endless supply of vocal timbres and personalities,” Lander combines an intuitive, spontaneous use of the voice with resonant operatic technique, in order to create a performance experience that is virtuosic, intimate, and sonically overwhelming.
Lander is a volunteer and performer with the High Zero Foundation, co-founder of SSAA vocal quartet The Charm City Trebles, performer with the improvisatory group Dovetail Duo with Shelly Purdy, and a composer of graphic and off the score notation works. She has a DMA in Contemporary Music from UC San Diego, a Master of Music from the Peabody Institute, and a Bachelor of Music from the University of Miami Frost School of Music.
Mud to Music workshops:
Mud to Music: taller de sonajeros de arcilla – Thu. Dec 4th, 6:00 pm
Mud to Music: Clay Rattle Making – Thu. Sep 18th, 6:00 pm
Mud to Music: Taller de Flautas de Arcilla – Fri. Jul 25th, 6:00 pm
Mud to Music: Clay Flute Making – Fri. May 16th, 6:00 pm
Location: The Patterson
Location: Patterson Theater
Location: The Patterson
Location: The Patterson
