Two Nights With Ka Baird (USA) – Auckland Events Announced

An artist who has released works via such reliably boundary-pushing imprints as RVNG Intl. and Drag City, NYC composer / performer / sound designer / body musician Ka Baird is visiting Tāmaki Makaurau next month for a two night residency at Audio Foundation. Baird’s recent recorded output includes back to back 2019 / 2020 long players Respires and Bespires, a FRKWYS collaboration with the Finnish electronic composer Pekka Airaksinen (who passed away in 2019), and 2024’s Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos, which featured a large scale cast of contributors including “the purr of their beloved cat” Nisa.

Ka Baird will perform solo at Audio Foundation on 16th July and in collaboration with local practitioners Hermione Johnson and Rāhana Tito-Taylor (WAIWHAI.) on 17th July — we urge you to attend both evenings…

“I am obsessed with hyper-presence and physicality. There is an earnest precision, teetering between slapstick and ritual, to the visceral delivery of my sound shaping. I want to spew sound around, much like spit or the exhalation of a breath, deconstructing it as it is dispersed.” – Ka Baird

Ka Baird (NYC)

Thursday 16th July – Audio Foundation, Auckland (solo performance)

Friday 17th July – Audio Foundation, Auckland w/ Hermione Johnson & Rāhana Tito-Taylor

Tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Experience ‘Gate VIII’ from 2024’s Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos…

Press release:

Audio Foundation is thrilled to present two nights with Ka Baird.

Ka Baird is an American recording artist, multi-instrumentalist, producer and performer based in New York City, known for their raw, boundary pushing solo performances that bridge experimental sound, performance art, and ritual, incorporating body movement, extended voice and microphone techniques, electronics, flute and other instrumentation.

First emerging in Chicago during the early 2000s as one of the core members of avant psyche outfit, Spires That In The Sunset Rise, since their relocation to New York, Baird has continuously pushed into radically experimental and deeply personal creative ground. Following their debut solo album Sapropelic Pycnic, issued by Drag City in 2017, they have issued a series of collaborations with Chris Corsano, Muyassar Kurdi, John Zuma St. Pelvyn, Camilla Padgitt-Coles, and Andy Ortmann, on various imprints including Nihilist, Astral Editions, and Various/Artists, as well as their acclaimed 2019 album, Respires, and its follow up, Bespires (2020).

Baird’s most recent album, Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos (2024), pushes even further into uncharted territories. Initially conceived as Bearings, a 22 minute performance commissioned by Lampo in Chicago during the spring of 2022, the album’s full scope came into focus over the course of the ensuing year while Barid cared for their mother following a terminal diagnosis. Subsequently expanded into the 11 Gates, or “in-betweens / bardos,” that comprise the album, each nodding to impermanence, traveling, obstacles, portals, power lines, surrender, and release. Realized with an all-star cast of collaborators including Troy Schafer (strings), Max Eilbacher (flute processing, electronics), Henry Fraser (double bass), Nate Wooley (trumpet), gabby fluke-mogul (violin), Joanna Mattrey (viola), Chris Williams (trumpet), Camilla Padgitt-Coles (bowls, warterphone), John McCowen (contra clarinet), Greg Fox (percussion), and Andrew Bernstein (alto saxophone), and the purr of their beloved cat, Nisa, Bearings: Soundtracks for the Bardos is a durational work of profound abstraction and focus, within which sonorous elements, structure, and meaning reach a single, unified form.

Ka is a road warrior who tours the world often/when possible; their live performances are not to be missed.