Bitchlovsky Storms the Castle
Events
Handmade Music
Biog
Bitchlovsky Storms the Castle brings together two exciting cutting-edge improvisors from disparate musical realms. Laurel Pardue hails from the Augmented Instruments Lab where she developed the award winning svampolin, a hybrid electro-acoustic violin, that is a functional decomposition and recomposition of the violin designed to play, present, feel like, and even sound like a violin, but can equally sound completely unlike a violin. She teams up with master vocal improviser Kate Smith. Kate uses her voice as a dexterous instrument that traverses all the way from melody to sonic textures while using movement and space to inspire sound from an embodied perspective, often creating performances that toe the line between music, dance, and theatre. The end result is an interdisciplinary improvisation crashing through traditional walls spanning the range from fully acoustic to fully electronic, and much in between.
Kate Smith is a vocal artist, composer and workshop leader who is passionate about creating music and facilitating collective music-making for voices and bodies in motion. With a MMus in Leadership from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she is the creator of The Embodied Voice, a research, performance, and teaching practice bringing together voice, movement, mindfulness and improvisation. While Kate enjoys a diverse performing career spanning the worlds of classical voice to improvisation, she also facilitates workshops for a range of clients from the BBC to the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. Kate is making a name for herself as an emerging composer, creating mesmerizing pieces combining voice, electronics, and movement, with commissions from the Whitechapel Gallery and from the Eugénio de Almeida Foundation Art and Culture Center in Portugal, and more.
Laurel has worked in music technology and instrument design for over 15 years focusing on real-world performance. She holds degrees from MIT, a PhD at Queen Mary University of London, and worked at Aalborg University in Copenhagen researching technologically based violin augmentations for redefining the way we learn and play violin. She is currently working at Ableton AG helping to shape the future of Live. Concurrently as a classical and folk violinist, she’s played at festivals throughout the UK, France, NY, SF, live on BBC Radios 3,4, & 6, and appeared on German television, with artists including Sam Lee, Mishaped Pearls, Arnold Dreyblatt, and, as Bitchlovsky, playing semi-improvised violin with live electronic music.