The Sacred & The Irrelevant: An Afternoon with Louise Landes Levi & Her Friends

Saturday October 19, 2019, 2PM–5PM

Join Louise Landes Levi—poet, translator, and musician, whose sonic output rivals the most loquacious of cosmic jokes—and friends for an afternoon of poetry, music, and improvisation. Louise’s works draw on her travels both geographic and temporal: to Afghanistan and India by way of the East Village; to the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company in the late 1960s by way of time travel to the 16th century mystic woman poet Mirabai; to the sacred by way of the irrelevant.

Louise will perform an extended improvisation both spoken and sung, accompanied by her own sarangi (a traditional bowed harp), as well as by newly invented instruments designed and played by Kelvin Daly, and electroacoustic soundscapes by Lee Ann Brown, Dok Gregory, and Ash Martin. This improvisation is a bid to reclaim the inspired energy of an as-yet-unreleased recording made by several of the musicians in the summer of 2017 at the former site of 23 Windows, recorded and mixed by Dok Gregory of Plan 23.

Lee Ann Brown, polyphonous filmic singer-poet and founding editor of Tender Buttons Press, will perform original variations on old ballads and hymns.

Ash Martin and Kelvin Daly will debut original lyrical works from their Orphic-folk project, Vernal Peril.


(Flyer image from Harry Smith's Heaven and Earth Magic)