PRESENTNESS Trio

John King, viola; Laura Ortman, violin; Lester St. Louis, cello

PRESENTNESS brings these three composer/performers together for the first time - 12 strings resonant in shared space and time, improvisations with intersections of chance and dream. 

Tickets can be purchased at the door.
Admission is $20. (CASH ONLY)
All proceeds go to the artists.

At Zürcher Gallery
33 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012

John King is a composer, guitarist and violist who has worked collaboratively with and been commissioned by Kronos Quartet, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Ethel, String Noise, Bang On A Can All-Stars and Avant Media; as well as by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, New York City Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Mannheim Ballett, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Würzburg Ballet and Ballet BC. From March 2020-April 2022 he organized, composed for and performed in more than 50 iterations of “Sonic Gatherings” an online weekly collaboration with Brandon Collwes, choreographer, and a diverse cast of more than 24 dancers and 31 musicians from within the US, Europe and South America. He has worked collaboratively with Gelsey Bell, Paul Pinto, Anaïs Maviel, William Parker, William Hooker, David Behrman, Fast Forward, and William Wimberly, among others. He is also the recipient of the 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts for Music, the 2014 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award for Sound/Music, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. King has been awarded a Rockefeller Foundation/Bellagio Residency for March 2016, in addition to residencies at The McDowell Colony and The Emily Harvey Foundation residency in Venice, Italy. johnkingmusic.com

A soloist musician, composer and vibrant collaborator, Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. She has collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Martha Colburn, New Red Order, and as part of the trio, In Defense of Memory. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, and often sings through a megaphone. She is a producer of capacious field recordings. Ortman has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, The Stone residency, The New Museum, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, The Toronto Biennial, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless established and DIY venues in the US, Canada, and Europe. In 2008, She founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Native American cast. Ortman is the recipient of the 2023 Institute of American Indian Arts Fellowship, 2022 Forge Project Fellowship, 2022 United States Artists Fellowship, 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists, 2020 Jerome@Camargo Residency in Cassis, France, 2017 Jerome Foundation Composer and Sound Artist Fellowship, 2016 Art Matters Grant, 2016 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship, 2015 IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Arts Social Engagement Residency, 2014-15 Rauschenberg Residency, and 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Issue Project Room. Ortman was also a participating artist in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Lester St. Louis (b.1993) is a New York born and based Composer, Improviser, Cellist, Sound Designer and Curator. His work traverses through performance, installation, curation, artistic research and recording. His works are rooted in dynamic environments of improvisation both sonically and socially, ecstatic sound worlds. flow and interaction.  He has performed internationally throughout The U.S, The E.U, Canada, China and South America. He  collaborates with artists such as Chris Williams [under the moniker HxH],  Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die, Ben Lamar Gay, Yaeji, Tortoise, Yo La Tengo, Miho Hatori, Dré A. Hočevar, Charmaine Lee, Isabel Crespo Pardo, TAK Ensemble, Random International, Irreversible Entanglements, Pheroan Aklaff, Superblue, ICE, Speaker Music, Terence Nance, Found Sound Nation, Wet Ink Ensemble and many more. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists such as The JACK Quartet, RAGE THORMBONES, Jennifer Koh, String noise and Ghost Ensemble among others.