New Horizons debuts on 2/23 with a night celebrating improvisation and community building at the
@hippcinema . The festival welcomes
@chriscogburn from Mexico City, Mike Khoury from Detroit, and highlights Gainesville’s own
@hesamabedi_ .
@lila.vrindavan will also be providing an installation for the stage!
Chris Cogburn is a percussionist, curator, and organizer based in Mexico City. Cogburn’s artistic practice and curatorial interests are rooted in the collaborative context of improvisation. Current music practices focus on the threshold between acoustic and electronic sounds, their differing timbral qualities, and their sites of resonance.
Beginning in the summer of 2003, Cogburn has hosted an annual festival of improvised music—No Idea Festival—showcasing collaborations between improvisors from around the world. Regarded for its curatorial process, No Idea Festival aspires to connect creative musicians, providing the space and time where creative process can flourish, leading towards new areas and approaches in the music.
Mike Khoury is a Palestinian-American composer, improviser, and curator focused on performance and documentation. Khoury has worked to establish an Arab-American avant-garde and document the movement’s intellectual heritage through presenting his own work, publishing on the topic, and presenting other artists’ work. As a curator, Khoury has engaged in community building through his curation of the Entropy Studios space and the Entropy Stereo record label issuing music from artists such as Faruq Z. Bey, Wendell Harrison, Bobby Bradford and Griot Galaxy. Khoury has performed across North America, in Europe, and the Arab World. In 2018, Khoury was awarded a Knight Arts Challenge Grant to create new work. In 2020, Khoury was named a Kresge Arts in Detroit fellow.
Hesam Abedi is a composer-performer and music scholar currently pursuing a PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of Florida. His research explores the socio-political dimensions of improvised music.
