Stereo Mandrax (FREE w/ RSVP) Paul Wallfisch • Secret Music Society • Anna Johnson

in the U.S. in 2015. Joining Swans in 2016, Paul toured with the band for two years, appearing on the 2017 live album Deliquescence and 2019’s Leaving Meaning, (Young God/Mute Records) Entering New York’s East-Village demimonde as an eighteen-year-old keyboardist in the pioneering gay comic Frank Maya’s New Wave band, Paul has also lived in Europe and Los Angeles, (where he started Botanica), “…acquiring decades of world weary insights to fill his exquisitely crafted rock songs and Tom Waits-tinged ballads” (The New Yorker). Apart from eight albums with Botanica, Paul has contributed to dozens of albums and toured North America, Europe and Asia performing and/or recording with Firewater, Love & Rockets, Congo Norvell, Angela McCluskey, Syl Sylvain, Stiv Bators, Anne Pigalle, Johnny Haliday, Marissa Nadler, Rose McGowan, Joey Arias and many more. He is the long-standing writing and performing partner of underground tortured soul legend Little Annie, producing their new album together, A Bar Too Far. 52 Jokers, a co-production of Sommerfest, Kampnagel, Volkstheater, Vienna, Noorderzon Festival, NL and Pop Kultur, Berlin, created with Annie, Beth B, Evelyn Frantti and Jim Coleman, directed and with films by Beth B, premiered in 2022. Paul’s first job in the theater was music director and photographer for an adaptation of Kafka parables at the Theatre du Rond Point in Paris, while concurrently playing six sets of rock ‘n roll a night at a Pigalle strip-club. Paul’s acclaimed “mighty minimal” music series Small Beast, following a 4 year run at The Delancey in New York, played to sold-out rooms in Dortmund and at the Kampnagel in Hamburg. More at: www.paulwallfisch.com • Jackson Krall originally formed the Secret Music Society in the early 1980's with a lineup that included iconic musicians William Parker, Marco Eneidi, Yahya Abdul-Majid, and the legendary trumpeter Earl Cross whose recorded presence with the group represents the last known example of his artistry. Over the ensuing decades the evolving cast of talent has been compared to that of Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers with Karen Borca, JD Paran, Mark Hennen, Joe Rigby, Arthur Brooks, Larry Roland, Michelle Yung, Hill Greene, Rose Tang, Juan Quinones, John Blum and Raphe Malik being just a few of the talented artists who claim membership. The current cadre of Tor Snyder and Tom Rollison; guitar, David Warren; bass, the power house horn section of Daniel Carter and Elliott Levin, who also will contribute spoken word, and Jackson Krall; drums, will continue the legacy and tradition with an energetic and exciting set of Avant Jazz. • Anna Johnson unites backgrounds in medieval folk traditions and sacred music with electronic improvisation. Based in drone and hypnotic repetition, she is invested in vocal expression as a portal to somatic and emotional presence. Anna’s performances often integrate projection installations of her textural film work. Her approach to live art is ritualistic; she seeks embodied and communal experiences of vulnerability and spiritual catharsis. She is drawn to the meeting points between personal and mythical, present and ancient. Anna is based in Chicago and tours regularly in North America and Europe. She originates from Minnesota, where she was raised with Celtic and Anglo folk traditions and sacred choral music, and studied both Western classical as well as traditional Eastern European vocal polyphony.