A Microscope + Curtis Dahl

If Morton Feldman had a baby with Mahalia Jackson, that baby would grow up to have a lot in common with NYC-based musician Kris Wettstein. Performing as A MICROSCOPE, Kris blends minimalist piano textures with gospel music and West African guitar lines. Trained as a classical pianist, Kris also spent time in Dakar, Senegal collaborating and performing with musicians including Carlou D and Alfadio Dara. Since then, he has been playing gospel music at a church in the Bronx. In 2014, he released For Nothing Holds You In, an EP of quiet, sparse pop songs he made in collaboration with members of itsnotyouitsme, Kelley Polar, and the Boston Public Quartet. He is currently touring in support of an hour-long new piano piece, Tent of Meeting, which brings these different styles of music together into one shifting cloud of sound.

CURTIS DAHL is a pianist living in Seattle who likes to experiment with spontaneous melodies, made-up harmonies, and previously unheard-of forms. He also likes to dabble in electronic sounds, recording household items and other unlikely sound sources to manipulate in the studio to come up with original soundscapes not usually heard in waking life. Once in a while he finds time to produce other peoples’ work, and enjoys bringing an impressionistic aesthetic and a sense of the infinite to a project. As a member of the Three Corners trio with Kenny Mandell and Tim Volpicella, Curtis successfully brought to the table his classical and aleatoric background to a purposefully broken jazz collective. In the Tonal Vision duo, again with Mandell, Curtis and Kenny weave together lines and pointillistic notes with circuitous harmonies and sudden changes of direction to create and express impossible feelings.