Turntable Trio: Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, Evicshen—Wet Sounds #3

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph.

Suggested PWYC tickets of $15 will be donated TBD.
No one turned away for lack of funds (NOTAFLOF). 
Purchase your tickets here!

More About the Event

On Sunday March 30th, 2025, Wet Sounds: feminist + queer music practices in the polycrisis, presents a performance and conversation with female pioneers of new turntablism, Turntable Trio—Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, and Evicshen (Victoria Shen).

Premiered at Counterflows festival in Glasgow and Rewire in The Hague in April 2023, the project represents the first time three female turntablists of colour have come together in this way. The trio bring together elements of musique concrète, free improvisation, noise, techno and hip-hop with instrument building and modification. Each artist has a wildly different approach to turntablism. Among the techniques deployed will be skratching, beatjuggling, sampling and looping, while the technologies will include double needle head shells and acrylic needle nails. The trio’s compositional aesthetics weave through sound sculpture, maximalism/minimalism and sonic destruction. Together, they will show that New Turntablism is beyond technique, genre or compositional theory; it’s about the unknown.

The event launches with a conversation with the artists around queer and feminist performance and practice in the polycrisis.

More About the Artists

Maria Chavez (she/her) is an abstract turntablist, sound artist and DJ, renowned for repurposing broken vinyl into sonic sculptures that can sometimes be compared to improvised musique concrète pieces, or, conceptually, improvised sonic sculpture sessions. Her recital style approach focuses on the various forms of Deep Listening, a practice developed by her mentor Pauline Oliveros. Coincidence, chance and failure are themes that run through her projects. Chavez’s 2012 book on abstract turntablism, Of Technique: Chance Procedures on Turntable, written and illustrated by Maria, was the first book on abstract turntablism and has developed a reputation as both an academic resource and a foundational text for a new generation of turntablists. Born in Lima, Peru, Chavez is based in New York.

Evicshen is the nom de guerre of San Francisco-based sound artist, experimental music performer, and inventor Victoria Shen (she/her). Shen’s sound practice is concerned with the materiality/physicality of sound and its relationship to the human body. Her music features analogue modular synthesizers, vinyl/resin records, and self-built electronics. Shen’s music eschews conventions in harmony and rhythm in favour of extreme textures and gestural tones. Notable for her Needle Nails, Shen uses modified acrylic fingernails with embedded turntable needles, allowing her to play up to five grooves of a record at once. Her DIY approach extends to hand-made resin records embedded with found materials. Each piece functions not only as playable music media but a unique art object.

Mariam Rezaei (she/her) is a multi-award winning composer, turntablist and performer. She previously led experimental arts project TOPH, TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH, and in November 2022, she received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation #AwardsForArtists, in recognition of her contribution to music composition. Her music has recently been described as ‘genuinely ground-breaking’ (London Jazz News 2022) and ‘high-velocity sonic surrealism’ (4* The Guardian 2022). Recent release BOWN (Heat Crimes) charted no.6 in The Wire and no10 in The Quietus’ best albums of 2023. Recent performances include a three-day residency at Café Oto, soloist with Frankfurt Radio Orchestra for the closing concert at IM Darmstadt 2023, soloist with London Sinfonietta at HCMF 2023 and Taipei Biennial 2023 in a quartet with DJ Sniff, Rex Chen and DJ SlowPitchSound.

Turntable Trio is the third guest in the Wet Sounds series hosted by Musagetes in Guelph, co-presented by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) at their ImprovLab venue.

Suggested PWYC tickets of $15 will be donated TBD
No one turned away for lack of funds (NOTAFLOF)

Improv Lab at the University of Guelph
MacKinnon Building, Room 108

Masks will be available; we encourage guests to stay home if they’re not feeling well. Please reduce the use of scented products (e.g. perfume, cologne) for this event.

More About the Series

Wet Sounds is a quarterly arts series that presents conversations and performances centring the intersections of feminist and queer musicians’ academic work, artistic practice, and collaborations in the polycrisis. This series will examine notions of grief, ritual, queerness, pleasure, land, embodiment, colonialisms, decay, noise, and sound. Wet Sounds will ask how artists see their practice as impacted by or responding to the interconnected crises unfolding around us—climate chaos, genocide, fascism, an erosion of democracy, and multiple sites of oppression and resistance.