current projects
AKOSUEN
Akosuen /aa-KŌZ-eh-win/ is a music and performance project by Billie Howard involving sounds that focus on breathing cycles, chronic pain, and mediation on both quiet and extremely loud sounds. Billie appears on her primary instruments: violin and piano, as well as with an ensemble including expanded strings, voices, organ, and percussion. Akosuen is at work on a trilogy of recordings for different instrumentation. “At Sea: five movements for violin” was released in October 2019 followed by “In Flux (for piano + drum” in 2020. Akosuen also released two in 2018 with Rebecca Himelstein, supercollider, and Cinchel, guitar and electronics (Scripts Records).
Akosuen’s “At Sea” album is meditative, achingly beautiful, contemporary classical music.
—-the Deli, October 2019
Facebook / Bandcamp / Instagram
curation
Experimental Sound Studio: The Quarantine Concerts ess.org/the-quarantine-concerts
High Concept Labs
Remoto
Fall 2018 Open House
Mocrep: Work Week
Spring 2018 Open House
Anthony Janas: Playing the Room
Lisa Gonzales & Tom Lee: "Place (No) Place"
Spring 2017 Open House
Fall 2016 Open House
the paver
The Paver formed in 2008 as a power trio. We added cello in 2010. Our music is a carefully articulated study in aggression and consonance. Listeners have said we remind them of Milemarker, Cursive, Murder By Death, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, "Codeine songs sung by Steve Albini and Nina Hagen," "Shostakovich played through loudspeakers during wartime" or "Baroque-Core." The Paver has released two full-length albums, two EPs and two singles, and have toured the United States. The Paver will release a new full-length in 2021.
A Memory Palace of Fear (2016-2017)
sound installations
(untitled) 2020, Elastic Arts
created for Elastic’s CLEAT 16-speaker system
voice and sine wave
A Memory Palace of Fear 2016-2017, Silent Funny, Chicago
Stereo sound installation and phone receiver listening devices
companion micro podcast
We do what we can. 2016, GAG Chicago
Two-channel sound installation, bench using family tape recordings, field recordings, prepared piano, church organ, voice.
Curated by Christopher Michael Hefner for Five Ways to Skin a Cat exhibition.
past projects
a.pe.ri.od.ic
a.pe.ri.od.ic is a Chicago-based concert series and performance collective curated by Nomi Epstein featuring post-Cagean notated, experimental music. Repertoire explores the indeterminacy of various musical elements including instrumentation, structure, pitch, and/or duration. a.pe.ri.od.ic’s inaugural release “more or less” of three recent works by the Swiss composer, Jürg Frey was released on New Focus Recordings in 2014. The ensemble is currently in the studio recording a new album of pieces written specifically for a.pe.ri.od.ic. Billie was the founding violinist in the ensemble from 2010-2018.
amusia collective
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
April 27, 2018
Taking inspiration from Foley artists, Man in Motion is a non-musical sound-track set to video clips of NFL football. By controlling the audience's auditory access to the video, Man in Motion illuminates both the violent and tender interactions that occur between the athletes on the field.
Video, synthesizer, voice, field recordings, graphic design: Daniel Tovar
Violin, field recordings, voice: Billie Howard
Guitar, metals, voice: Fyodor Sakhnovski
NBN TRIO
NbN Trio (Nora Barton, Billie Howard, and Nomi Epstein) explores sonic textures through manipulation of acoustic instruments. While the three instruments of the ensemble - cello, violin, and inside of the piano - monopolize the sound space, there is extensive involvement of found sound, and/or percussive instruments by all three members of the trio. The ensemble works carefully to investigate various color combinations between instrumental forces, while also creating juxtapositions of textural strata. Interests in sound dimensions include types of white noise, the juxtaposition of sound and noise, and the degree of clarity of pitch within sound.