Fire Over Heaven ushers in a new lunar year with a celebratory bill featuring song/sound makers Sue Garner & Talice Lee, and minimalist "lounge" combo, J/C/C Trio...Sue Garner (guitar, voice) and Talice Lee (violin, voice) make beautifully unhurried, human-scale music where song forms appear just as often as they are used as points of departure. Each brings their considerable talents and experience to bear here, Garner's decades of playing in outré rock outfits Run On, Fish & Roses, etc and the charmingly down to earth songwriting of the turn of the millennium solo records for which she is best known are distilled in mix, and Lee's fluid violin and vocal work, which can turn from bell-toned harmony to noisy extemporizations with a simple change of bow direction, are the perfect foil. They have collaborated over the years in several different configurations, with various players from the downtown and 75 Dollar Bill orbits in supporting roles, but we're very pleased to welcome their duo debut at this Fire Over Heaven...Something of a minor supergroup, if such a thing can be said to exist, J/C/C Trio is Dan Joseph on hammered dulcimer, Jason Cady on synthesizers and Tom Chiu on violin. They have described themselves as a "free-form minimalist synth-pop lounge experiment", but to me the band, with its modular hammered dulcimer patterns, unabashedly 4-to-the-floor synth bass lines, and virtuosic violin leads, sounds more like someone playing "In C" at the same time as some Donna Summer backing tracks, or like if the Lovely Music label put together a crack(ed?) studio band to make a disco record in the late 70s. And given the rap sheets of these players, it's no surprise that their idiosyncratic take on minimalism is no less deep for how fun it is...Hope you'll join us!

C.C.
organizer, Fire Over Heaven series

7:30pm doors
8:00pm Sue Garner & Talice Lee
9:00pm J/C/C Trio

Sue Garner & Talice Lee
Singer, guitarist and bass player Sue Garner is originally from Georgia but has called New York City home since the early 80s. She's been a founding member of bands Vietnam, Last Roundup, the Shams, Run On, Fish & Roses (these last two with husband/percussionist Rick Brown), and released a series of solo records on Thrill Jockey in the late 90s/early 00s. More recently she has been collaborating with Talice Lee, 75 Dollar Bill, and US/Norwegian project, Grand Union.

Talice Lee grew up playing orchestral violin, singing in choirs and playing in bands in Baton Rouge, Louisiana before moving to New York more than a decade ago. Equally at home in song-based, composed and improvised music contexts, she has lent her violin playing and singing abilities to the songwriting projects of Sue Garner and poet Morgan Vo, modal rockers 75 Dollar Bill, experimental compositions by Cody Boyce and Che Chen, and improvised settings with veteran NYC free improvisers Daniel Carter and Todd Capp.

J/C/C Trio
Dan Joseph (hammer dulcimer), Tom Chiu (violin) and Jason Cady (modular synth). The free-form minimalist synth-pop lounge experiment that began last year at Troost has blossomed into a highly original collective, featuring original compositions by all three composer/performers.

Dan Joseph is a composer, performer, writer and curator based in New York City. For the past fifteen years, the hammer dulcimer has been the primary vehicle for his music and he is active as a performer with his own chamber ensemble, The Dan Joseph Ensemble, as well as in various improvisational collaborations and as a soloist. He produces the monthly music and sound series Musical Ecologies in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and is a contributing writer to The Brooklyn Rail, Musicworks Magazine and NewMusicBox.org

New music champion and recipient of the Chamber Music America Commissioning Grant, violinist and composer-improvisor Tom Chiu has performed over 200 premieres worldwide by influential musicians including David First, Oliver Lake, Alvin Lucier and many others. His original works have been premiered at the BBC, Mount Tremper Arts, EMPAC, Roulette, STEIM Amsterdam, Walker Art Center, Bang-on-a-Can Marathon, MOMA PS1, and Anthology Film Archives. As founder of the FLUX Quartet, he has led a pioneering ensemble which has “brought a new renaissance to quartet music.” (Village Voice)

Jason Cady is a composer and librettist. He performs on pedal steel and modular synthesizer. Cady’s CDs have been released on Lockstep Records and Peacock Recordings, and his podcast opera, Buick City, 1:00 AM is available on Apple Podcasts. The Brooklyn Arts Council, New Music USA, free103point9, ­Cady is the Artistic Director of Experiments in Opera, and the Director of Music Programming at The Flea Theater. He has an M.A. in composition from Wesleyan University, where he studied with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton. He was born in Flint, Michigan and now lives in New York City