Landon Kuhlmann

Mary Halvorson’s instrument is the guitar, says music writer Landon Kuhlmann, but the style she’s become known for requires the listener to leave all their previous understandings of that instrument at the door. In advance of her February 8 appearance with Code Girl and Thumbscrew, he looks at her many roles, from composer and band leader to companion and collaborator.

“You don’t need a roadmap for Resonance: you will want to get lost.” In anticipation of the May 18 Resonance sound art marathon, a guide to the ten multidisciplinary artists and the ideas they’ll be exploring at the intersections of sound, sight, and touch.

A constant blur of activity, the National, just announced as headliner for Rock the Garden 2019, seems to be on an infinite cycle of LPs, videos, and tours. Yet each member somehow retains a robust personal life that involves other creative projects—from side gigs with Big Red Machine to film scoring, collaborations with visual artists to classical composing—each one informing another and serving as both a testament and a proving ground for the National’s ever-evolving sound.

“Henry’s work is always a few miles ahead of and around several unanticipated corners than what you think he’s up to. The code is never fully cracked, which allows for a lifetime of interest and compelling listening. The energy of his music is continually lifting higher and higher, like a cyclone.” Landon Kulhmann digs into the life and legacy of Henry Threadgill in advance of the Walker’s two-night musical homage, capped off by a performance by Threadgill himself with his quintet Zooid.

The score for calling glenn, a new work by Danielle Agami’s dance company Ate9, mixes strictly arranged music with intuition. Composed and performed live by Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, the versatile and inventive musician alternates between structure and improvisation, utilizing a surprising array of tools, from shell chimes to electronic percussion to electric toothbrushes. Here, a look at his process.

Nearly a decade since Heaven, their 2010 investigation of perfection and spirituality, Morgan Thorson and Alan Sparhawk have again come together to create Public Love, an intimate act of resistance against an encroaching physical power. Fresh off a critically acclaimed album release with his band Low, Sparhawk will be embracing the pervasive powers of low frequencies to physically interact with the large list of dance-collaborators as well as Thorson’s open yet precise method of choreography. In a new discussion, the pair tackles timely questions of power, agency over one’s own body, and where dance meets music on the map of modern art.

For his 60th birthday, Sonic Youth cofounder Thurston Moore has curated a two-night exploration into his own past and future, his influences and influencers, through collaborative performances with Nels Cline, Anne Waldman, crys cole, Danez Smith, and others. The night, writes Landon Kuhlmann, promises a raucous celebration at the intersection of words and sound, but it also offers a mystery: what the radical chemistry of these collaborations will yield on the Walker stage.