Bar Laika presents Satellite 27: Black Renaissance Fair with Bookworms and Lester St. Louis

Join us at Bar Laika on Wednesday, December 20 at 8pm for the 26th edition of Satellite, featuring live music performances by Bookworms and Lester St. Louis. The duo will be premiering their collaboration for the first time in New York with the theme Black Renaissance Fair. 

What does an improvised experimental music set at a black renaissance fair sound like? If a regular renaissance fair includes historically accurate music, what type of music would there be at a black one? Will there be beats, since Africa always had drums, or will it be ambient drones and strings? While Afrofuturism deals with an imagined future, Bookworms and Lester St. Louis introduce Black Renaissance Fair as an imagined fantastical past. They launch this duo at Bar Laika, which is partially inspired by the absurdity of the Netflix show Bridgerton and by Brian Eno’s album-series Fourth World. 

Nicholas Dawson (Bookworms) is a Los Angeles-born, New York-based electronic composer. His work is often concerned with various modes of representation and interpretation through audio and non-linear living sonic histories. By way of advanced synthesis, generative sequencing, and audio collage, Dawson accesses detuned realities, and conjures harmonics, rhythms, and ghosts of the truths which have come to signify across time and space through repetition a multi-dimensional blues. He has released music through L.I.E.S. Records, Anòmia, BANK Records, DFA, Bánh Mi Verlag, and Break World Records. Dawson has performed in varying contexts internationally, ranging from clubs like Contact Tokyo and squat raves in Germany and Mexico, to festivals like Out Festival Portugal and Off Festival Katowice, to art spaces and museums like MoMA PS1, ISSUE Project Room, and The Museum of Fine Arts alongside the likes of Charlemagne Palestine, Moor Mother, Drew McDowell, DJ Stingray, Sun Ra Arkestra, and Rrose. He is part of two collaborative projects with Miho Hatori and Austin Williamson, respectively. 

Lester St. Louis is a New York-born and -based cellist, composer, improviser, sound designer, and curator. His works are rooted in dynamic environments of improvisation both sonically and socially. St. Louis began playing the cello at age sixteen and quickly learned that he had perfect pitch. Encouraged by his high school orchestra teacher, he dove into the cello with energy and respect. St. Louis has since had an extensive career, touring around the world and collaborating with artists such as Jaimie Branch, as part of the band Fly or Die, Chris Williams (under the moniker HxH), Edi Kwon, Dre A. Hočevar, Charmaine Lee, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Emeka Okereke, TAK Ensemble, The International Contemporary Ensemble, Random International, Superblue, Terrence Nance, Found Sound Nation, Amirtha Kidambi, and many more. As a composer, St. Louis has been commissioned by artists such as the JACK Quartet, RAGE THORMBONES, Jennifer Koh, String Noise, and Ghost Ensemble.

Satellite is a monthly experimental music series curated by Sanna Almajedi. 

For more information, contact laika@e-flux.com.