False Harmonics #22: Franck Vigroux & Werktank, Amma Ateria, Michael Foster & Strings feat. Shelley Hirsch

To kick off False Harmonics in 2025, for the 22nd iteration, Pioneer Works is excited to welcome the A/V collab between sound artist Franck Vigroux & video artist Werktank, a solo set by electroacoustic composer Amma Ateria & a large string-based ensemble led by Saxophonist (and more) Michael Foster feat. Shelley Hirsch (vocals), Zosha Warpeha (hardanger fiddle), Webb Crawford (assorted instruments), Anna Abondolo (bass) & Nava Dunkelman (percussion).

Franck Vigroux live electronics

Video by Werktank

Franck Vigroux is a multifaceted artist whose works range from experimental electronic music to modern composition and music theatre. Vigroux‘s music is made of tectonic tensions, beats, electronic textures and a very personal approach to sonic exploration. He is equally prolific as a solo artist and as a collaborator, he has worked with musician such as Mika Vainio (Pan Sonic), Reinhold Friedl, Ars Nova... Vigroux’s uniqueness comes from his artistic approach that integrates new media and performance arts.

Drawing inspiration from the lexicon of road movies, Americanized iconography, and hyper-colored, image-saturated aesthetics, the live AV concert THIRST offers a sensory journey that prompts reflections on past symbols of transgression, picaresque adventures, and romanticism. These symbols are now challenged by contemporary societal, digital, and environmental developments.

Production: Compagnie d’ Autres CordesWith the support of the Flemish Authorities, Spedidam and CNMPhoto’s: Quentin Chevrier

Amma Ateria, derived from 'flammable material’, is a philosophy held through her work, — to give strength to disintegration and fragility, to rebuild from aftermath of destruction, of dust. An electroacoustic composer / sound artist, her work focuses on psychoacoustics in binaural beats, brainwave entrainment, and equal-loudness contour. With immediacy of tension / release, she navigates between oppositions in search of transcending moments, transforming deafening noise into self hypnosis and metamorphosis. Compositions developed during her concussion recovery utilizes brainwave entrainment, time shifts, and changes of neurological responses to DELTA, THETA, ALPHA, BETA, GAMMA waves as materials and focal point. With memories of condensed cities, she gravitates to frequencies of close-ranged airplanes, polyrhythmic occurrences, out-of-body experiences, sustained harmonics intersected with musique concrète, and lost speech. ammaateria.com

Michael Foster & Strings feat. Shelley Hirsch

Michael Foster (NYC) is a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist working in the fields of free improvisation, jazz, and performance. His project Michael Foster with Strings in his words is a “distinctly queer and feminist reading” of the traditions embodied by the giants of jazz such as Bop legend Charlie Parker with his band and a team of string players. For this special concert, Foster has assembled a sextet with a variety of musicians:Zosha Warpeha (hardanger fiddle) Webb Crawford (guitar, tenor banjo, homemade instruments) Anna Abondolo (bass), Nava Dunkelman (percussion) & Shelley Hirsch (voice).

Born and raised in East New York Brooklyn, Vocal Artist, Performer, Composer, Storyteller, Interdisciplinary Artist Shelley Hirsch has been pushing boundaries with her unique vocal art and performance work, drawing on her life experiences, her memory, her vivid imagination for decades.

The New York Times called her "A woman of a thousand voices... She offered an enthralling demonstration of the way songs, vocal styles and language might have evolved out of more primal musical impulses".