Waterworks 2025 – Festival of Experimental Sound (April 25 & 26)
Poster designed by Jeff DiPerna
Waterworks 2025 – Festival of Experimental Sound
Friday, April 25, 2025 | Doors at 7:30pm, music at 8pm
saturday, April 26, 2025 | Doors at 7pm, music at 7:30pm
tickets on sale soon!!!
Metropolitan Waterworks Museum
2450 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02467
Tickets
$30 general admission each night
$20 students or members each night
$50 2-day passes (limited availability)
No one turned away for lack of funds
There is limited parking at the museum. Please use the T (Reservoir or Cleveland Circle stops on the Green line), if possible!
The museum is fully accessible to people with disabilities. If you have questions, call the museum at 617-277-0065 or email susanna@nonevent.org.
Night 1: Doors 7:30pm, Music 8pm
id m theft able and The Choir Required, The Peeling Revealing
Nima Janmohammadi
Keith Fullerton Whitman
Night 2: Doors 7pm, Music 7:30pm
Regan Bowering
Lean
Mariam Rezaei
Sheer Anxiety
About the artists
Regan Bowering is a percussionist, improviser and sound artist based in London. Her solo work explores various combinations of objects and materials, drums and percussion, amps, speakers, and feedback. Her debut album Solos for _ _ _ _ spaces (Dec 2023, Bezirk Tapes) captures this process across a variety of settings, from cavernous concert halls to studios and micro-edits on a laptop. According to the Quietus, Solos is “a play of contrasts, contradicting voluminous expressions with confined phrases, taming resounding feedback with faint percussive flutters, but one that feels driven by the desire to craft electrifying drama rather than pure autotelic dissonance.” Bowering is one third of a trio with Li Song and Conal Blake, whose tape Music for Snare Drums and Portable Speakers was released on Infant Tree in May 2023.
The Choir Required, The Peeling Revealing is what happens when Maine’s id m theft able puts together and conducts a choir. Known for his insubordinate and virtuosic improvisational approach to electroacoustic music, id m theft able’s performances consist of stream-of-consciousness vocal technique, performative manipulations and gestures with collected objects, as well as the use of an amplified wire and wood sculpture that amasses echoes, shrieks, crashes, and creaks — assembling all manner of media sources. His works fit into an expansive visual universe and release history collected in mangdisc, an audiovisual label that serves as a vehicle for distribution (including a “found” series) that releases modest quantities of individualized works presented in whatever medium is available at the time. Id m theft able performs within and without the realms of noise, avant-improvisation, sound poetry, performance, etc. using voice, found objects, electronics, and whatever else is available. He has given hundreds of performances across four continents in various settings.
Nima Janmohammadi (solo setar) is a composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist. As a performer of Persian classical music, he has studied with great masters of Persian Music, including legendary Mohammad Reza Lotfi and Hossein Alizadeh. He has performed in numerous recordings and concerts including solo recitals in venues such as Boston's historic Jordan Hall, MIT, Harvard University, Tuft University, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has recorded two solo Setar albums, The Kiss Belongs to Nobody (2017), and Night of Lilac in the Absence of Language (2023). As a composer, Nima has written for symphony orchestra, chamber music of various large and small ensembles, string quartet, and saxophone orchestra. He has also written open form and graphic scores that incorporate elements of composition and improvisation.
Lean is the sound collage, free bloop duo of Seamus Williams, who also runs the Ayurvedic Tapes label, and Mickey O’Hara (formerly of Floating Shapes). The pair are stalwarts of Worcester’s experimental music scene, where they also host the free form experimental music show Music Under the Moon on WCUW.
Mariam Rezaei is an award winning composer, turntablist, writer and performer. She previously led the experimental arts project TOPH, and was a curator of TUSK FRINGE and TUSK NORTH for TUSK Festival in Newcastle (UK). Her work— often centered around contemporary turntablism and other experimental forms—has been showcased at the London Contemporary Music Festival, Tectonics Festival, Counterflows, EKKO Festival, amongst others. Rezaei’s music has been described as “high-velocity sonic surrealism” (The Guardian) that “harness[es] extreme technical prowess” (Boomkat). She has earned acclaim for her work from outlets such as London Jazz News, The Guardian, and The Wire magazine. In addition to her solo work, she is one third of The Turntable Trio with Maria Chavez and Victoria Shen. This will be her Boston debut.
Sheer Anxiety is the longstanding duo of Chris Strunk and Andrea Pensado. Boston-based drummer and curator Chris Strunk focuses on cymbal overtones, friction, and using non-traditional objects, such as table knives and marbles. Experimental musician, composer, and concert organizer Andrea Pensado lives in Salem, Massachusetts. Known for her intense live performances, she creates a highly personal sonic language using harsh, dense layers of sounds, often interwoven with her voice.
Keith Fullerton Whitman is a Brooklyn-based live electronics and computer music composer. Whitman’s formative experiments in software-based micro-sequencing & generative rhythms coupled with novel digital signal processing techniques (as Hrvatski) gave way to the ongoing exploration of glacially-paced shifts in timbre & tonality (“Playthroughs”) segueing into the pairing of relatively primitive analogue-computing concepts & contemporary sound-tools to yield deceptively complex, self-sustaining musical frameworks (“Generators”, “Occlusions”, & “Redactions”). In parallel, repeat-commissions from the GRM to compose for & diffuse Electroacoustic works on the Acousmonium have brought a childhood fascination with Musique Concrète & Tape-Music full circle. While initially concerned primarily with making records (for kranky, Planet µ, Editions Mego, PAN, Nakid, & countless others), his focus has shifted to performing, with over 500 concerts under his belt; many at the world’s most prestigious festivals & houses of culture. This will be his first Boston performance in almost a decade!
Waterworks 2025 is presented with the support of the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, WZBC 90.3 FM, the Newton Cultural Council & Brookline Commission for the Arts (local agencies supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council), Streetcar Wine & Beer, Café Fixe, and Digital Soup.
Non-Event’s programming is also made possible with the support of the Boston Cultural Commission, The Oedipus Foundation, and the Wagner Foundation.
