Join us in welcoming Nika for her Chicago debut performance on analog synthesizer + a solo set by Kikù Hibino, alongside a trio of inventive working improvisers.
Nika’s classical music training began—somewhat reluctantly—on the piano. In college, she fell in love with the theremin and its many connections to her life. This led her down a path of electronic music and analog synthesizer repair. Nika enjoys composing multi-speaker ambient noise pieces and activations from recorded sounds. She has performed at MIT, UMass Dartmouth, and around Boston at Non-event and Boston Hassle shows. She is thrilled to make her debut performance in Chicago on her vintage Serge analog synthesizer.
Nika holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chicago-based and Japanese-born sound artist KIKÙ HIBINO produces cross-genre electronic music.
From chamber music for media productions to digital micro sound for art installations, he has collaborated internationally with a wide variety of artists and scholars, including Kawaguchi Takao (Dumb Type), Curtis Roads, Theaster Gates , Mike Weis (Zelienople) and Norma Field.
The publication, The Wire once described his music as "trying to cram in as many memories as possible before it all disappears" and that the music "concerns itself with themes of capturing and preserving fleeting moments" (2007, issue 279).
His recent work “Radial Categories” attempts to deconstruct Chicago House Music through the noise music production approach. The project was funded by DCASE and presented at various locations in Chicago.
He studied electronic music composition at Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus with Toru Iwatake, Atau Tanaka, and Christopher Penrose, and at University of California at Santa Barbara with Curtis Roads and Karen Tanaka, and holds M.A. in media art and technology.
