This Iowa City ‘supergroup’ is an unforgettable act. Meet the bandleaders behind the ensemble.

That is considered one of an ongoing sequence profiling creatives who’ve made an impression within the Iowa Metropolis space.

In the event you’ve seen a efficiency by Iowa Metropolis’s Lex Leto x Christine Burke Ensemble, you recognize it is an expertise.

Seems, so is their rehearsal.

The six ensemble members gathered in a nook of a room on the Voxman Music Constructing one January night, training an almost six-minute tune that, to the listener, is unpredictable.

Their devices — together with a saxophone, melodica and flute — emitted generally sharp, different instances dissonant sounds.

A few of the musicians wandered in regards to the area, one reducing to the ground with a small smile because the others stood round. One other grabbed a handful of pencils, the noise including to the tune.

This “supergroup,” as they have been dubbed, consists of Lex Letourneau, Christine Burke, Gabi Vanek, Justin Comer, Laura Canelo Cohen and Ramin Roshandel, all “classically educated musicians” who, of their phrases, “depart from their roots in favor of aleatory, noise, and tune.”

It’s possible you’ll acknowledge their names or have seen them carry out in different gigs.

Comer is a part of the Iowa Metropolis trio Wombat. Vanek based Oxcart New Music, Little Village reported. Letourneau has carried out with Elly Hofmaier, aka Penny Peach. Roshandel carried out with Jean-François Charles on the Englert Theatre and the duo launched an album. Burke has written for Duo Axis, amongst others, and Cohen is a latest College of Iowa alumnae who works at music4life in North Liberty.

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After they come collectively, their experimental, improvisatory, collaborative pursuits end in a theatrical, playful and compelling present that audiences at Iowa Metropolis’s Mission Creek Pageant, Gabe’s, Public Area One and extra have gotten the prospect to expertise.

In the event you’ve missed their reveals, the ensemble is recording an album with a $1,000 grant from the Iowa Arts Council. Filmmaker Rachel Lazar is engaged on a movie in regards to the making of the album.

Now, bandleaders Burke and Letourneau, who carried out as a duo for the opening night time of the Refocus Movie Pageant in Iowa Metropolis, share how their paths led to an ensemble that embraces the unconventional and their musical pursuits.

Exploring the experimental and the improvisatory

It’s due to the experimental scene in Iowa Metropolis that Letourneau, who makes use of they/them pronouns, met Burke, getting concerned in an ensemble that really started in 2016.

Burke’s ensemble — a bunch of people with a shared curiosity in a recent, improvisational, experimental music — have been booked for Comer’s month-to-month live performance sequence iHearIC. Comer, who performs saxophones within the ensemble, launched them because the Christine Burke Ensemble to the viewers.

That’s how they bought their identify, he defined.

In 2021, the ensemble carried out a present at Public Area One, and it’s that iteration of the ensemble that performs right this moment.

However for his or her Mission Creek Pageant efficiency, Letourneau’s identify was added, and its remained that manner since.

Rehearsing and recording the primary three songs they wrote for his or her Mission Creek Pageant submission Letourneau recalled as “magical.”

“I simply keep in mind feeling like, ‘Holy s***, we stumbled onto one thing right here,” they mentioned. “The way in which that everyone was simply enjoying collectively and we have been making one thing that we had by no means actually heard earlier than.”

The ensemble doesn’t simply play. They carry out.

Take “The Fly,” a tune about Letourneau caught inside, no daylight and an annoying fly. On stage, Letourneau’s fellow ensemble members antagonize them. In a single case, that meant bassoonist Vanek whispering into Letourneau’s ear utilizing a superb Australian accent throughout their Mission Creek Pageant efficiency.

“Lex all the time says that she has to apply to not chuckle after we’re round her on the middle,” Vanek mentioned in an e mail. “I needed to see if I might make her crack and that foolish voice was a great guess.”

Within the piece, the ensemble members are improvising, although it’s not with out route.

“We have labored out — inside the thought of improvising — what sounds work on this piece. What will we need to convey whereas we’re improvising and what is the sequence of occasions,” Comer mentioned. “It is not a totally ‘do no matter you need.’ It is like, do no matter you need inside this construction and trying to convey this concept to the viewers.”

Collaboration is necessary to the ensemble. For instance, whereas a tune might start with Letourneau’s written lyrics or melody, the ensemble members develop it by way of experimentation and ideas, Burke defined.

And every bit the ensemble performs isn’t performed the identical manner twice. Although the ideas stay the identical, the precise sounds differ, Letourneau defined.

“You are experiencing one thing totally new within the second and it requires you to be extremely current with your self and together with your ensemble members they usually’re such expert and intuitive musicians that that makes that actually thrilling,” they mentioned. “You don’t know precisely what’s going to occur each time.”

Enjoying to one another’s strengths

How is it that there are six individuals in Iowa Metropolis who share these music pursuits and are available collectively to carry out?

It is a query Letourneau and Burke ask themselves, although it could possibly be defined away by quite a lot of components: programming similar to Iowa Metropolis’s Feed Me Bizarre Issues, the college, destiny or an agglomeration of issues.

Like the opposite ensemble members, Burke and Letourneau are concerned in initiatives exterior the ensemble. However they write music that performs to the strengths of their ensemble.

In flip, the ensemble makes music that, of their phrases, makes listeners say, “Wow, I by no means thought I might sing alongside to music this bizarre!”

Relaxation assured that the ensemble doesn’t anticipate its viewers to know what they’re stepping into, if evident by the Iowa Metropolis music scene that helps the ensemble whatever the stage of familiarity individuals have with their music.

“What I discovered is that just about everybody that is into music in Iowa Metropolis is open to experiencing almost something,” Comer mentioned.

How the ensemble fulfills completely different elements of Burke and Letourneau’s pursuits

One in every of Burke’s earliest reminiscences was listening to a Simon & Garfunkel album with headphones on.

“The expertise of sound itself, it is one thing I feel loads about now in my very own work,” she mentioned. “Like a lot for me is simply in regards to the expertise of listening and just like the pleasure of listening and that may get to be pretty subjective, I assume, however I feel loads of the sound materials I find yourself choosing in my very own work — and this interprets to work with the group too — however that is one thing I might take heed to for six hours.”

Burke grew up within the Chicago suburbs earlier than shifting to Indiana as a excessive schooler. Music was a part of Burke’s life early on. Her mom, a pianist, launched she and her siblings to classical repertoire.

Her undergrad was at Duquesne College in Pittsburgh. A clarinet participant, composing grew as her ardour as a result of she bought to create somewhat than simply carry out.

“I keep in mind at considerably of a youthful age, realizing that I might consider sounds in my head, and that I could possibly be fully answerable for directing wherever they go, which is like very reverse from my strategy to composing now,” Burke mentioned.

In her first few years of composing, Burke wished to make each choice appropriately. It wasn’t sustainable, she realized, as a result of it meant that if there may be one right choice, every thing else is fallacious.

Being a rock star was Letourneau’s dream as a toddler, however insecurities and a crippling efficiency nervousness meant the band, one thing communal, was the extra smart possibility.

Despite it, Letourneau cast on with performances, singing in highschool choir to pulling apart friends on the College of Georgia to carry out in entrance of and construct their resolve.

It was additionally throughout school the place Letourneau interrogated the thought of efficiency in a classical music setting, unhappy with how little the interplay was between performer and audiences.

For 2 longtime musicians exploring their craft, the ensemble fulfills what they know, and didn’t know, they wanted.

For Burke, as a composer, the ensemble permits her to apply her inventive worth: to not do the identical factor. And he or she will get to do it with 5 different proficient musicians on a constant foundation, their sound and strategy by no means missing of their integrity.

For Letourneau, it’s each an exploration and an assurance of their identification.

They knew they liked performing. However with the ensemble, they get to run round at Gabe’s yelling at individuals. They are often theatrical, a “a part of myself that I hadn’t met but.”

“Making music with Christine and our bandmates felt, for me, like coming house to one thing that I hadn’t identified was fairly there for me,” Letourneau mentioned. “I used to be like, ‘Oh, that is it for me. That is the undertaking that I’ve all the time wanted to make.’”

Lex Leto x Christine Burke Ensemble

Recognized for: Up-and-coming experimental music group based mostly in Iowa Metropolis that dabbles efficiency artwork.

What to look ahead to: Their upcoming album.

The place to seek out them: Catch the members at these reveals, together with Burke at Public Area One Feb. 25, Comer and Vanek as half iHearIC at PS1 Feb. 26, and Comer and Burke on the James Theater March 7.

Paris Barraza covers leisure, life-style and humanities on the Iowa Metropolis Press-Citizen. Attain her at PBarraza@press-citizen.com or 319-519-9731. Observe her on Twitter @ParisBarraza.