Following the success of their duo album, NOWS, multi-instrumentalists and composers Sarah Belle Reid and David Rosenboom will present premiere performances of new creations encapsulating the spirit of their album with instruments ranging from strings, horns, and keyboards to modular synthesizers, analog signal processors, urban and desert soundscapes, and much more. NOWS was created during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Reid and Rosenboom working remotely from their home studios. The music examines “co-presence,” or togetherness, when experienced in isolation, and the power of imaginative listening as a means of connecting with one another across great distances.

Starting with no goal other than to listen and play, Reid and Rosenboom sent sonic ideas and fragments back and forth to each other, gradually collecting threads, themes, and commonalities. These links revealed themselves in surprising ways, emerging from experiments, transference, and concurrent imagining. A frenzy, a dance, a reverie, a pause, a corridor, a leap, a shattering, a whisper…ear-stopping musical moments emerged as they navigated and validated alternative means of converging on a musical “co-presence” in an altered world, finding new pathways for co-creation. For the first time, this music will be brought before an in-person audience, reimagined for live performance and accompanied by premieres of new works written by the composers.

David Rosenboom electronics, computer, e-viola, piano, auxiliary sounds
Sarah Belle Reid electronics, computer, trumpet, auxiliary sounds

“Strongly avant-garde and highly immersive, full of radical experimentation…fans of experimental music will appreciate this release.”
—Waveform