Press Play Fair 2018 Opening Night Concert
co-presented with The Hum

Pioneer Works and The Hum co-present a night of music to open our Second Annual Press Play Fair. We will open the night with a conversation on building community through collaboration in the performing arts with Rachael Pazdan (The Hum) and Mindy Abovitz Monk (Tom Tom Magazine). Performances by Harmony Tividad (Girlpool), Ellen Kempner (Palehound), Maia Friedman (Dirty Projectors + Uni Ika Ai), Renata Zeiguer, Opal Hoyt (Zenizen), Zoë Brecher (Sad13), Loni Landon Dance Project, and DJ Haram (Discwoman) to follow.

Harmony Tividad is half of the songwriting project Girlpool. She has spent her life wandering and looking for answers to realize there are none. Soon, she will sing again and the illusion of an answer will reenter her mind like a whisper or prayer, only to leave once more after driving by McDonalds on her way home.

Ellen Kempner is the fierce lead vocalist and prolific creative force behind Boston’s Palehound, formed in 2014. Palehound has taken their plainspoken, technique-heavy indie rock from the basements of Boston to festivals around the world. The band’s critically acclaimed 2015 debut album, Dry Food, landed them on numerous “Best Of 2015” lists. Their critically acclaimed sophomore album, A Place I’ll Always Go, released in June 2017 on Polyvinyl Record Co., is a frank look at love and loss, cushioned by indelible hooks and gently propulsive, fuzzed-out rock showcasing songs that breathe Kempner’s evolved maturity. Palehound has toured extensively, including runs with Waxahatchee, Big Thief, Torres, M Ward, Mitski, and Jay Som, as well as their own headline tours.

Maia Friedman is a California-born and -bred songwriter, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist living in New York City. She began singing at age 7 in the North Fork, California Girl Scouts, later graduated from Bennington College with a degree in Music Composition, and has continued singing, writing, and performing ever since. Maia is the founder of the band Uni Ika Ai and is currently a guitarist and vocalist with Dirty Projectors. She has also collaborated and toured with Bobby, Toebow, and Anawan.

Renata Zeiguer is a Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter, the daughter of Argentinean and Philippine immigrants. A New York City native, she grew up playing classical and jazz music, beginning with the violin and piano at age 6 and listening to her grandmother play ragtime and tango music obsessively on a baby grand during family visits to Buenos Aires. She began writing music as a kid, with mostly instrumental compositions that evolved from hours-long improvisations while seated at the keys after school. Initially drawn to composers like Prokofiev and Debussy, she grew to like songs that could be sung, falling in love with the great early 20th century American jazz standards, Brazilian tropicália, and the Beatles. She eventually expanded her compositions into lyrical song writing while studying at NYU, where she met long-time collaborator and producer of her upcoming debut, Adam Schatz. Since joining New York’s independent rock scene as an original member of Schatz’s band, Landlady, Renata has sung and played violin and keys on many projects including Ava Luna, Twin Sister, Leapling, Cassandra Jenkins, The Relatives (Ian McLellan Davis), Christopher Burke (Beach Fossils), Quilt, Skaters, and Ex-Reyes. In 2013, Renata self-released an EP entitled Horizons, a ghostly bouquet of “wildflowers growing tall and fast, decorated with percussive rattles, fiddles, bird sounds, harmonies, and passages for light to travel through” (DeliMagazine). Since then, Renata has been performing under the name Cantina. Her music is both wonderfully dreamy and strange – there is an ambiance that exudes a kind of dreamy exotica, a “timeless portal where Les Paul and Mary Ford meet Os Mutantes and the Pixies.” Some may hear a sort of weightless negative space where Joe Meek’s “I Hear a New World” meets Kate Bush. Renata’s debut full-length entitled Old Ghost was released on Northern Spy in February 2018.

Opal Hoyt is a Brooklyn-based singer, producer, and band leader. When she’s not standing up web experiences for clients like Samsung during the day, she’s writing or touring with her band Zenizen. She plays keyboards mainly but can find her way around a bass and produces experimental beats on the side. Recent show favorites were a short tour run down to SXSW with Anna Wise & Madison McFerrin and five East Coast dates with Speedy Ortiz that featured Soccer Mommy & Nnamdi Ogbonnaya. Zenizen is gearing up to launch their debut LP as a follow-up to the Australia EP whose physical is available from Don Giovanni Records. She has also been featured on recordings/live shows for Suzi Analogue, Black Spade, Quin, and more.

Zoë Brecher, 28, has been playing drums since age 9. She has toured the U.S. and internationally with Sad13 and Sammus; played nationwide with Oberhofer, Total Slacker and others; and will soon be seen on NPR’s Tiny Desk with Kalbells, with whom she will be touring later this year. With various groups, she has supported Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Deerhoof, And the Kids, Sunflower Bean and many others. She is a regular contributor to TomTom Magazine, where she profiles drummers and also conceived and produces a feature called “Show Us Your Kits” that discusses what equipment specific drummers use and why. Her solo project, for which she writes all the songs and plays guitar and sings, is HUSHPUPPY. She graduated cum laude from Skidmore College in 2012, where she majored in music, founded three bands and co-hosted a female-music themed radio program.

Loni Landon Dance Project is a New York City-based contemporary dance company that creates and performs original works by artistic director Loni Landon.  LLDP is known for creating lush, innovative movement full of subtle detail and sophistication, and maintaining a highly charged emotional current throughout. Upholding to the integrity of the movement itself, LLDP’s works search for honest reaction and expression while shedding the performance persona.

DJ Haram is a producer and DJ originally from New Jersey, currently based in Philadelphia. Stylistically versatile, she throws down for Jersey, Philly, and Baltimore with club and booty bounce sets but also has been known to pay homage to her roots in the tradition of Middle Eastern dance music and of DIY noise and experimental sound. DJ Haram (along with Moor Mother) is half of the noise/rap group 700 BLISS. In spring 2017 Haram composed and original score for the debut tour of Richard Siegal’s Munich-based modern dance company “Ballet of Difference.” Dj Haram participated in Redbull Music Academy Bass Camp in summer 2017. While in Philly, Haram curates a few nights; a legal fundraiser party series (f)LAWLESS; a monthly live/DIY hip hop night ‘Gas’; and a monthly radio program RAGE RADIO on 91.7 FM. She has curated events for MoMa PS1 Sunday Sessions and Fringe Arts Festival Philadelphia. Dj Haram is touring North America and Europe in summer/fall 2017. Recent and upcoming tour highlight performances include Unsound Krakow, MoMa Ps1 Warm Up, Bonnaroo, De School Amsterdam, Creamcake Berlin, Razzmatazz Barcelona, Damas Lisbon, Paradox Baltimore, GHE2OG0TH1K New York City, Club Chai Oakland, and Drake Hotel Toronto.

Founded by Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson, Emma Burgess-Olson and Christine McCharen-Tran, Discwoman is a New York-based platform, collective, and booking agency—that showcases and represents talent in electronic music. Started as a two-day festival in September 2014 at Bossa Nova Civic Club Discwoman has since produced and curated events in 15+ cities—working with over 250 DJs and producers to-date.

The Hum is an all female and non binary concert series that celebrates, instigates, and nourishes the community of female and non binary musicians in New York City and beyond. Since its formation in April 2015, the series has fostered collaborations between 250+ musicians including Kimbra, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, Julie Byrne, OSHUN, Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief, Kelsey Lu, members of Tune-Yards, The Cranberries, Lake Street Dive, Cat Power, The Julie Ruin, Cibo Matto, and more. Hum concerts feature only women or non binary artists on stage, and all walks of life in attendance. Each installment invites a group of female and/or non binary musicians to form impromptu “dream bands” bands, shedding the usual dynamics of their main projects and exploring new avenues of their creativity.