The Cedar Presents
ESTUARY album release with Lazerbeak
Sunday, June 9, 2024 / Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 7:30 PM
All Ages
Seated
$25 Advance, $30 Day of Show
This is a seated show with general admission, first-come-first-served seating. The Cedar is happy to reserve seats for patrons who require special seating accommodations. To request access accommodations, please go to our Access page.
General Admission tickets are available online.
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Estuary is a collaboration led by percussionist Zack Baltich, with Ritika Ganguly (voice), Ilan Blanck (guitar), Cam Fassett (violin), and Maggie Fae (stage design/projections). A reference to the point where the tidal mouth of a large river meets other water, Estuary is a meeting of genre, ideas, language, personality, and textures to find new ways of musical expression. The Cedar is honored to host this very special release show made up of several former Cedar Commissions artists!
ESTUARY
Estuary is a collaboration led by percussionist Zack Baltich, with Ritika Ganguly (voice), Ilan Blanck (guitar), and Cam Fassett (violin). A reference to the point where the tidal mouth of a large river meets other water, creating unique ecosystems and drawing in wildlife, Estuary is a meeting of genre, ideas, language, personality, and textures to find new ways of musical expression.
Each ensemble member comes from differing musical backgrounds - Zack from percussive contemporary classical/a life of playing in bands; Ilan from funk/progressive-folk/orchestration; Cam from bluegrass/improvisation; and Ritika from a Bangla vocal tradition/modern blues/contemporary Indian musical theater. Zack composed the layout, structure, and percussive/electronic base of each song and then invited the other artists to add their own ideas, sounds, and words. Through this process, they have worked since 2020 to co-compose idiosyncratic music that all at once feels familiar and like untouched new threads of sound.
Pulling from so many different places, each member of the group has built up a career in and out of MN over the past decade - three members of the ensemble are former Cedar Commissions artists, Ritika was a 2021 McKnight Fellow, and between them all, they have played throughout Minnesota and the United States in a bundle of different collaborative settings.
This ensemble is art which embraces difference and wields it as a means towards connection and into new sonic and emotive grounds. Their self-titled album is out on May 31st, 2024, with a release show celebration on June 9th at the Cedar Cultural Center, the place where, in many ways, this project began. The live show will feature stage design and projection by Duluth-based visual artist Maggie Fae.
To learn more about Ritika:
To learn more about Zack Baltich:
To learn more about Ilan Blanck:
MAGGIE FAE
Maggie Hannelore Fae is a multimedia artist based in Duluth, MN. Using paper, found materials, and stop motion animation, she creates self-reflective work to develop empathetic and honest connections with people that, as an introvert, she often finds difficult to make. Through long hours of introspection during labor-heavy creation, her goal is to make work that is unfiltered and genuine to her experience. It is a form of self-acceptance as well as an offering of sincerity to the world, given in the hope that that vulnerability and openness are contagious. She has found through self-discovery comes acceptance and through that acceptance comes a curiosity about what other people might have gone through to become who they are. Through her work, she wants to spark empathy.
Fae gravitates towards intricate, manual processes, spending hundreds of hours cutting, burning, and animating, because it is important to her to intentionally and physically pour herself into each of her works. In that way, each piece becomes a self-portrait, a reflection of who she is and how she sees herself. She spends the long working hours thinking about what she is making and slowly realizing why. Inevitably the process becomes the concept.
In the last few years, Fae has been a project manager on “Each, together,” a photo installation that covered the facades of twelve buildings; been a project manager and co-designer for Hennepin History Museum’s “Human Toll: A Public History of 35W”; animated two five-minute stop motion animations for the GRAMMY nominated Seven Pillars by Andy Akiho; was an artist in residence for Guild Hall Artist Residency in East Hampton, NY; and also received the MSAB Creative Support Grant and ARAC Artist Access Grant.
To learn more about Maggie Fae:
Lazerbeak
Aaron Mader, known professionally as Lazerbeak, is a Minneapolis-based artist and producer. Over the past two decades he has collaborated with everyone from reigning pop queen Lizzo (producing her entire debut album), Doja Cat, Dessa, bluegrass heavyweights Trampled By Turtles, indie supergroup GAYNGS, and the Grammy-winning Minnesota Orchestra, all while continuing to build and create with life-long comrades from his own Doomtree artist collective and notching production credits on everything from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton Mixtape to the dark electro-pop of Banks’ critically acclaimed III album. For this one-off performance at The Cedar, Beak will be debuting music from a brand new instrumental ambient project. Don't miss your chance to be the first to hear these lush works in progress.
To learn more about Lazerbeak:
To learn more about Lazerbeak: