Friday October 24th
Desert Island Studios
1316 SE 12th Ave, Portland, OR 97214
$15-30
8pm
Lori Goldston + Chloe Alexandra Thompson
Ilyas Ahmed
Craig Burk
Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, possessor of a restless, semi-feral spirit, Lori Goldston is a cellist, composer, improvisor, producer, writer and teacher from Seattle. Her voice as a cellist, amplified or acoustic, is full, textured, committed and original. A relentless inquirer, her work drifts freely across borders that separate genre, discipline, time and geography.
Current and former collaborators and/or bosses include Earth, Nirvana, Mirah, Jessika Kenney, Ilan Volkov, Eyvind Kang, Stuart Dempster, David Byrne, Terry Riley, Jherek Bischoff, Malcom Goldstein, Steve Von Till, Lonnie Holley, Cat Power, Ellen Fullman, Maya Dunietz, Mik Quantius, Embryo, O Paon, Tara Jane O’Neil, Natacha Atlas, Broken Water, Ed Pias, Christian Rizzo and Sophie Laly, Threnody Ensemble, Cynthia Hopkins, 33 Fainting Spells, Vanessa Renwick, Mark Mitchell, Lynn Shelton, and many more.
Her work has been commissioned by and/or performed at the Kennedy Center, Sydney Festival, Cineteca Nacional de México, Tectonics Festival, Frye Art Museum, Time Based Art Festival (TBA), WNYC, The New Foundation, Paris Fashion Week, Northwest Film Forum, On the Boards, Seattle International Film Festival, Seattle Jewish Film Festival, Bumbershoot, Crossing Border Festival, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Joe’s Pub, the Stone, University of Chicago, and venues large and small throughout North America, Mexico, Australia, and Europe.
Chloe Alexandra Thompson is a Cree interdisciplinary artist, director and composer. Her practice explores listening as a way of knowing and relating which is shaped by Indigenous resonance, spatial perception, and embodied vulnerability. Working with psychoacoustic tones, algorithmic systems, and sculptural spatialization as materials, she composes spaces that shift awareness, inviting deep relational encounters between bodies, technologies, and the land.
Thompson’s work has been presented by CTM Berlin, MUTEK (Tokyo & Montreal), Onassis Foundation (Greece & USA), ImagineNative, Pioneer Works, PICA, Performance Space New York, among others. A current Onassis ONX Studio member, she has participated in residencies at Pioneer Works, MIT OpenDoc Lab with the Indigenous Screen Office of Canada, and HERVISIONS x Arebyte (UK).
In January 2021, Cycling ‘74, announced Thompson as one of the first Max Certified Trainers. She has also worked as a Creative Director, Technologist, Artist, and Audio Direction for immersive experiences. Her sound design has been featured in the works of artists across the fields of music, performance, TV and film.
She was a founding member of the Working Consortium in developing First Nations Performing Arts.
Ilyas Ahmed has been releasing records as a solo & collaborative artist for almost 20 years. His most recent solo album A Dream of Another was released in 2023. He is also a member of the experimental rock band Grails whose last record Miracle Music was released this year. New solo album forthcoming in 2026. Ilyas lives and works in Portland Oregon.
https://ilyasahmed.bandcamp.com
Craig Burk first presented his music to the public on November 28, 1979 when he and his band played at the legendary CBGB’s in New York City. Their next performance took place a few weeks later at the equally legendary Max’s Kansas City.
Craig and his colleagues would play at all the popular venues during that Golden Age of the experimental/avant-garde music scene in downtown Manhattan (early 1980s): Mudd Club, Soundscape, Public Access Synthesizer Studio, Roulette, Inroads, 8 B.C., The Pyramid, John Zorn’s clubs The Saint and The Chandelier, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
At that time, Burk described his music as a blend of punk rock, free jazz, Broadway show tunes, industrial noise, Indian movie music, and French pop, as well as classical: ranging from Mozart’s operas to Schoenberg’s art lieder to the aleatory tendencies of John Cage.
Burk went on to perform his music for audiences in Europe and then in Portland. He was a founding member of the New West Electro-Acoustic Music Association (NWEAMO) and played a central role in the organization of NWEAMO’s first two annual festivals, which took place at Lewis and Clark College in 1999 and 2000. Burk presented original works at both events.
From 2007 to 2009, he hosted a radio program on KBOO-FM devoted to music from all genres around the world. Burk has also performed Italian popular songs from the 1960s to the present in Portland clubs, bringing to each his own very individual interpretation, inspired by his past musical explorations.
In 2021, Burk retired after over 30 years in international business. He then made the Reaper Digital Audio Work Station his instrument of choice. In his most recent works, he has used this software program to create collages of sound, arranging samples from past works (dating back to 1984) and fragments of newly recorded improvisations, using electric guitar, voice, trumpet, toys, and household utensils.
Burk has employed this collage approach in Dotted Outlines in the Air (2023), Save It for Anticlimax! and surprise me! (2024) Dix-sept petits exercices d’une humeur ludique (2024), Slouching Towards the Garden of Earthly Delights (2025), Familiar Faces! Sudden Geysers of Incense! (2025), and A Whole New Way to Use Black-and-White (2025). He describes these latest works as “atmospheric late-evening sounds for the lobby of a small hotel in some exotic locale — seasoned with a small dose of unrelenting provocation.”
All his works can be heard at: https://craigburk.bandcamp.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/@craigburk
